Fellow bloggers, we NEED YOUR HELP!

One of the toughest things to find time for in our insanely busy world (aside from actually reading, we mean) is keeping up with all of the wonderful blogs out there. And if you have kidlets running around like we do, you know it can be impossible to actually sit down at the computer and catch up on all the goings-on in blogland.

Apple has just made it easier via the iPhone. Yep, you guessed it....there's an app for that.


And so, A Reader's Respite needs your help! If you have a blog, please copy your blog's RSS feed either here on this post or via email. Importing our feeds would be the easiest solution, we know, but this is also an opportunity for everyone to use this post to get caught up on their feeds (or maybe even discover new ones!).

So don't be shy! Post your feeds for us!

War is hell.....

Despite all of our protests last year, A Reader's Respite caved and signed up for too many reading challenges. We can't think why we do this, unless it's to satisfy our unreasonable desire for lists. We're inexplicably drawn to any type of list, especially a list that is vaguely related to books.

So this being November, it is now the inevitable time of year where we start realizing how many reading challenges we are clearly NOT going to finish this year. We then kick ourselves, promise not to join any further reading challenges and then - and you saw this coming - sign up for a half dozen more come January 1st.

It is indeed a vicious cycle.

One of the worthy challenges that we are just not going to complete this year is the fabulous War Through the Generations Challenge, hosted by Anna and Serena. The challenge required participants to read a set number of books with a WWII theme in 2009. A Reader's Respite fell short of our goal of eight books, ultimately ending up with only five books read with this theme.


We're not sure how that happened, unless it was because we got slightly sidetracked this past year by some fabulous Arthurian fiction and became smitten with novels set during WWI. Either way, you might consider our failure a tad shameful, but A Reader's Respite is holding our head high because our five WWII-themed books this year were, on the whole, excellent reads.

Our last one this year was a novel written by Betsy Carter, called The Puzzle King. The novel falls slightly short of being a true family saga, but it does encompass the life of one man from birth to death.


Simon Phelps was sent to America in 1892 at the tender age of nine. Alone and homesick, Simon pulls himself up by his bootstraps, acquires an education, marries Flora and becomes a millionaire businessman in his lifetime. But he never stops searching for the family he left behind.

As Europe is swept up in the tide of Hitler and his Nazis, Simon and Flora are desperate to save their families from the impending war and atrocities.

They say that truth is stranger than fiction and although this is a novel, it is indeed rooted in fact. The lengths to which Simon and Flora went to rescue Jews from Hitler's Germany make for a compelling read and a important history lesson. Add this book to your list of WWII reading material....you won't be disappointed.



Oh....to Anna and Serena....we're hoping you'll run the challenge again in 2010. Despite our "challenge bitching" we'll be back for more!






Sound interesting? Leave us a comment saying so and you'll be entered to win a copy of Carter's The Puzzle King. International entrants are always welcome. Be sure you check back on December 10th to see if you won!

In the spirit of Turkey Day.....

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Holiday here in the U.S. This is a very, very big tradition in this country. It's the holiday where Americans ostensibly take the time to reflect upon our good fortune and all the things we are thankful for.

In reality, this is the holiday where we stuff ourselves with every piece of food in the icebox and then sit around groaning in agony whilst watching that silly American "football" on the television and marking the official entrance of the over-commercialized, month-of-ridiculous-excess called the Christmas season.



A Reader's Respite shamefully participated in yesterday's shameful exhibition, which included an embarrassingly over-sized turkey, ham and every trimming imaginable. It also included the obligatory trip to the Urgent Care facility for a second degree burn (me) and a bruised tailbone (big kid....don't ask).



To combat the inevitable guilt that accompanyies the day-after-Thanksgiving-oh-my-god-that-scale-can-NOT-be-right, we turned to the hysterical book about our love-hate relationship with food written by Leslie Landis, entitled (appropriately) The Art of Overeating.



Leslie encourages us to indulge in overeating, not to feel guilty about it and points out all of the good we do for society by indulging in that extra piece - or two - of cake.

Overeating is a noble and unselfish act. As you put away gargantuan amounts of food, those sharing the meal with you will be so put off by your example that they will order less, eat less and pass on dessert. You are improving their well being, so the reality is that your overeating is a wonderful, caring sacrifice.

Leslie Lasndis, MFT

Clearly, this lady knows what she's talking about. She provides everything from the finer points of child-rearing (bribe them with candy) to the most efficient way of cleaning up (lick everyone's plate clean).

And if you're worried about those extra holiday pounds, don't.....Leslie's book will have you laughing so hard that the pounds will melt away. In a nutshell, this book would make a fabulous gift for any gal you know who suffers from holiday-food-guilt syndrome.




Now....it's time for leftover ham for breakfast.

Winner of a Classic

Our random winner this week is.....

Julie from Booking Mama!

Zap us your mailing address Julie and Happy Thanksgiving!

Random Notes from the Troposphere

It recently occurred to A Reader's Respite that we rarely - if ever - share any of the backstory behind our reading adventures. Yes, we post book reviews and book giveaways, but those are just the end-results of our reading adventures, not the path we took to get there.

Oh sure, we could participate in a weekly meme (there certainly are many worthy ones out there), but A Reader's Respite is commitment phobic. And besides, we're pretty sure you're not remotely interested in what books various publishers sent us this last week.....and if you are, you'll find out about them when a review is posted.

So why "Notes from the Troposphere"? Well that's where we seem to spend most of our time, in that space that encompasses the 8 miles or so above the earth. Now most folks assume that if an airline pilot is in the air, we're working. Wrong. Of the 1000+ hours we spend in the air each year, a goodly portion of that is spent getting to and from our home base city.

You see, if we actually packed up and moved each time our airlines opened or closed a base or simply just shuffle crew members around between bases for what seems like the perverted fun of it, all of our income would go to real estate agents. So after enough years spent in commercial aviation, a crewmember learns to buy a home somewhere (anywhere!) and then simply commute via airplane to work. See, all those free flight passes certainly look glamorous now, don't they?




That said, A Reader's Respite happens to live in the Seattle area. But the vast majority of our trips for work begin and end in Houston. Do the math here and you'll see why we get a lot of reading done. 4+ hours each way to and from work adds up to a LOT of spare time to read.

Anyhoo, now that that is 'splained, onward and upward (bad pun) with reading adventures......


With a couple of unexpected free hours today, we ended up at a used bookstore in Houston and picked up more books than we intended (we have a hard time remembering that the suitcase is only so big).



Sandy over at You've Gotta Read This! was re-reading Judy Blume's Forever this week. In that spirit, we found a few old copies of Blume novels at the bookstore today and saw a copy of one we'd never read, called Wifey. Admittedly, the back cover led to a raised eyebrow:

WIFEY
is tired of chicken on Wednesdays
and sex on Saturdays.
This morning the mysterious motorcycle flasher
revealed himself to
WIFEY
and brought her frustrations into rigid focus!
WIFEY
sees her wildest fantasies talking flight, and
WIFEY
has an itchy - and uncontrollable -
urge to catch up with them!

Somehow we don't think the use of the word rigid was accidental. *Ahem* What the hell, it was $2.00. ( Stop judging us!)



Speaking of recommendations, we remembered that Jackie at Farm Lane Books Blog suggested that we give Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale a try since we've proven ourselves to be unable to actually finish any Atwood book. Never-say-die, that's our reading motto. We'll let you know how this one works out for us.



Since we broke our Booker Curse last week, we've been feeling bold. So bold, as a matter of fact, that we finally succumbed to the gorgeous cover of Booker-winning author A.S. Byatt's newest novel, The Children's Book. Just drink in the gorgeousness of that cover.

Gorgeous cover or no, this 688-page whopper is giving us a run for our money (thirty bucks worth in the St. Louis airport, to be precise). In a nutshell, the story is set at the turn of last century through World War I and is purported to be a family saga centered around a matriarch who writes children's books.

We've made it to chapter fourteen and are admittedly flagging here. Publisher's Weekly claims that "Buried in here somewhere is a fine novel" and frankly, that's all that's kept us going.

How do you all make it through a novel that you know you should read, but isn't exactly a page-turner? Our latest strategy is to religiously read two chapters every night, but we're open to other suggestions.

Oh, and speaking of buying books in airport bookshops....last week we left our current read on the airplane (Mildred Pierce by James Cain....and we got the book back eventually, thanks to a very vigilant flightcrew, but we're seriously digressing here...sorry) and found ourselves scrambling for something - anything - to read on the what would end up being a six-hour flight home that night.

So we grabbed a The Alexandria Link, a Steve Barry novel, quick as a bunny, and paid with a Border's gift card from last Christmas floating around in the bottom of our purse (can you believe it still had a balance on it? we can't either....). It wasn't until we were safely ensconced in seat 16A on Alaska Airlines flight 15 from Boston to Seattle that we discovered the damned book is part of a series.

Evidently, Barry has been writing these books about one central character by the name of Cotton Malone. And The Alexandria Link is NOT the first of the Cotton Malone books.

Damn.It.

We tried to overpower our Series OCD, really, we did. We kept telling ourselves that even though previous Cotton Malone adventures had taken place, each book can be considered a stand-alone. Yeah, well by page twenty there had been no less than a dozen references to some other big adventure Cotton had just completed in the PREVIOUS book. There was absolutely no way we were going to overcome our OCD.

Soooooo....if anyone out there knows which damned Berry book is the first in the Cotton Malone series, could you let us know, please???

Muchos-thank-yous.

FOUR Winners!

Thanks to the fabulous generosity of publisher Simon & Schuster we have FOUR winners to announce today......

Veens over at Giving Reading a Chance!
Beth of Beth Fish Reads!
Crystal of My Reading Room!
Spirit Phoenix who blogs at The Fire Deep Within!

Okay, y'all....zap A Reader's Respite your mailing address so we can get these out to you on the next slow boat to China!

The Booker Curse...broken at last

What is the Booker Curse, you ask? It is the evil curse that someone placed on A Reader's Respite that has prevented us from ever being able to actually finish (let alone enjoy) any book written by an author who has been the recipient of the The Man Booker Prize.

We hear audible gasps from you. But it's true.

Margaret Atwood? Never been able to get past page 100 of The Blind Assassin. Michael Ondaatje? Made it to page 72 of The English Patient and then we slipped into a coma. Kazuo Ishiguro? Page 30 of The Remains of the Day.

See what we mean? It's a curse.

So of course we were dubious when we flipped open to page 1 of Barry Unsworth's latest novel, Land of Marvels.

You see, Unsworth was the recipient of the Booker Prize back in 1992 for a book called Sacred Hunger (we made it to page 14 of that one before it was tossed back on the shelf), and that didn't bode well for our ability to get through this book.



To our surprise and delight, we were hooked by page 10 and thoroughly enjoyed the remainder of this fabulous novel. Curse? What curse?

Land of Marvels is a taut little novel set in 1914 Mesopotamia, a time when the threat of war looms in Europe and everyone is descending upon the Middle East hoping for a piece of the pie as the Ottoman Empire slowly dies off.

In the middle of this political time-bomb are the archaeologists, ones like British-born Somerville, scrambling to uncover priceless treasures of the past before the encroaching Germans put the kibosh to all foreign academic expeditions.

But Somerville may find that the devil to fear lies within his own camp. His beautiful and haughty wife Patricia is looking for greener pastures while his Arab servant has his own agendas. Add to the mix an American geologist who is not who he appears to be and you have an explosive mix. A treasure of immeasurable value has been discovered in the desert sands and the Germans are bearing down.....we're telling you, this stuff is good writing.

Mesopotamia....present day Iraq

We're so pleased that the Curse appears to have been broken. So pleased, as a matter of fact, that it's time to move on to Booker Prize winning author A.S. Byatt's newest release and then the 2009 winner, Wolf Hall. It's like a whole new book world has been opened.




Interested? We thought you might be. Leave a comment here if you'd like to read Land of Marvels and on December 5th, we'll draw a random winner (international peeps welcome!).

A Mystery Winner!

Congratulations Marjorie!

You've won a copy of Charles Todd's A Duty to the Dead. Send us your mailing address and A Reader's Respite will happily throw this one in the mail for you!

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum

One of the few mass-market authors that A Reader's Respite truly enjoys is Michael Crichton and we truly mourned his passing last year.

When we learned that an entire finished manuscript was found after his death, we were overjoyed when we learned that Harper would publish it this fall (November 24) with the title Pirate Latitudes. Crichton was, by anyone's standards, a very talented man. A medical doctor who turned to writing, he gave us bestselling novels such as Jurassic Park and wrote television hits like ER.

We miss him.

And we gobbled up Pirate Latitudes faster than a pirate downs a bottle of rum.

Crichton didn't write too much historical fiction. His only other foray into the genre was The First Great Train Robbery, written in 1975. An outstanding novel, by the by.

We wish he'd written more in the genre. Pirate Latitudes is a rollicking romp through the 17th century Caribbean, where Spain and England were battling it out for control and pirates reigned supreme. A Reader's Respite couldn't put it down.


We loved the swashbuckling Captain Hunter as he and his ragtag band of privateers roamed about Port Royal, Jamaica and then set off to steal a fortune in Spanish gold from the impregnable fortress on the island of Matanceros.

Battles at sea, hurricanes, and betrayal combine for a first-rate historical fiction romp through a lawless time and locale. The characters are beguiling and the plot is tight....Crichton was at the top of his game here.

*sigh*

We only wish he had written more.


There was, also found amongst his belongings, another partially finished manuscript found. It's our understanding that Harper's intends to employ a ghost writer to finish the novel and then publish it in the spring under Crichton's name.

Which means, for all intents and purposes, that Pirate Latitudes truly is his last novel. And look soon for the movie version....we understand this one will be a Spielberg film. Woo hoo!

An Artsy-Fartsy Winner!

And our random, off-the-wall winner of Polsky's I Sold Andy Warhol (too soon) is......

DB!

Zap us your mailing address, DB, and we'll get this one out to you!

The saga ends here....at least for us it does

If you've been reading this blog for any significant amount of time, you'll be familiar with A Reader's Respite's hateful relationship with Anna Godbersen's The Luxe Series.

We've only kept buying the books because of our overwhelming guilt that came with publishing such scathing reviews. We were pretty sure that Godbersen would forgive just about anything if enough money was pouring in (we know we would).

Well, the vicious cycle ends here with the third book in the series, Envy. Yes, we are aware there is a fourth book, but it's only available in hardcover right now and our guilt isn't $25 worth of guilt, thankyouverymuch.



Now you'd think that by book three, the teenagers-having-soap-opera-sex thing would be long past. They should be all grown up and able to have consensual promiscuous sex judgement free, right? Wrong.

You see, the time lapse between Book One and Book Three is only one short year. And in that one year, we've seen the belles of 1899 New York society run amok with no supervision, scheming and sleeping with boys right under their parent's noses.

But by the time we get to the Book Three, Envy, the chief protagonist is sixteen (now seventeen) year old Diana. Not only was Diana sleeping with her older sister's fiance in previous books, but in this latest installment we find her copulating with random men in hallways of New York's finest homes, whilst a big ol' ball is going on in the next room.

Again, folks, this is the year 1900. *sigh*

It's clear that Godbersen has no intention with messing with this tried-and-true method of teenagers-embroiled-in-sex-and-scandal masquerading as Young Adult Historical Fiction. Why meddle with success, right?

Read it if you must, if only because it's a good lesson to be AWARE of what your kids are reading. Then give your teen a copy of Penman's The Sunne in Splendour and introduce them to real historical fiction. They'll thank you for it later.





Well, happy holidays to all of you.....A Reader's Respite is happily giving away these first three books of The Luxe Series! Included is The Luxe, Rumors, and Envy. Just leave us a comment and on December 1st, we'll announce a random winner. :)

WTF Wednesday

Today's WTF Wednesday is all about impediments to reading. A Reader's Respite has discovered a few important barriers to reading a good book this morning.....


#1. Die-cast toy cars shoved down a toilet causing it to clog and overflow all over the bathroom. If you don't have small children this one shouldn't be a problem for you. If you do have small children, we would suggest locking them out of all bathrooms until they are 15.

do NOT allow anyone to give your child these satan-inspired pieces of metal they mislabel "toys"

oh sure, it looks clean now, but an hour ago this room looked like Armageddon struck

#2. Broom heads that insidiously unwind themselves as you're sweeping until they fall off into your nice little dirt pile, scattering it everywhere and causing you to start all over from scratch.

piece of cr*p

Our answer to this problem?

also works well on children if you don't mind fielding a few questions from Child Protective Services

#3. Laundry. Seriously, what goes on around this joint? Are people changing outfits 3 times each day just for kicks?

dirty clothes breed when you're not looking

All A Reader's Respite wanted to do today is curl up with a good book. WTF?

Green Books Campaign: Fly by Wire

This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 100 bloggers are reviewing 100 great books printed in an environmentally friendly way. Our goal is to encourage publishers to get greener and readers to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books. This campaign is organized by Eco-Libris, a a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

**********

A Reader's Respite often feels torn on the environmental issue.

On the one hand, we live in Seattle and as such we religiously recycle, reuse and are constantly looking for different ways to minimize our impact on this poor, abused planet of ours.

On the other hand, our day job requires us to get into a big ol' jet airplane and pollute the planet in a major way.

our carbon footprint ain't exactly small, folks

But while we may not be able to control how much pollution our jet engines spew into the environment or whether or not the recycle peeps manage to actually pick up our carefully placed recycle bin this week, we can make an effort to buy environmentally-friendly books.



The book we chose for this project was Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, and the "Miracle" on the Hudson, by William Langewiesche.

It's a very technical look at the water landing in the Hudson river and it's intended audience, as evidenced the the technical jargon present, is pilots and other aviation/engineering industry folks.

So we won't bore you with the technical details here. Trust us, your eyes would glaze over and you'd slip into a coma right on the spot, although for it's intended audience the book is well-written, at times humorous and always informative..

We will say, however, that the book was printed on FSC Certified Paper.

For those of you now saying "huh?" allow us to elaborate for you:

FSC stands for Forest Stewardship Council. These peeps are a non-profit organization that is dedicated to the conservation of forests. FSC certified paper originates from FSC certified wood sources. This means that the wood (or pulp) that goes into the paper comes from companies that have the FSC stamp of approval. These companies utilize sustainable foresting practices which is an important part of saving our planet.

Many publishers note when their books are printed on FSC certified paper. Take a look and see if the book you are currently reading is "green."

Although most of us may not be able to run out and buy the newest, electric, environmentally-friendly car on the market or live in an area where recycling your waste is easy and affordable, we can make a conscious effort to buy green books. It's a small step, yes, but A Reader's Respite suspects we live in a world where every little bit counts.

Back to Business.....

Have you heard about Lauren Grodstein's new novel, A Friend of the Family?



A Reader's Respite just finished reading it and what a riveting novel it is, too. This is one of those psychologically taut novels -- not what we'd call a thriller, by any means -- that keeps you on the edge of your seat just having to read "one more page."

Pete Dizinoff is a successful husband, father and doctor in suburban New Jersey. All of Pete's hopes and dreams are pinned on his teenage son, Alec. But when Alec finds himself entangled with the wild-child daughter of Pete's best friend, just how far will Pete go to ensure his son's future?

Okay, so this book would make a great book club read...lots of grist for the mill, so to speak. Grodstein writes a tight plot which closely examines the fluidity of our morals and values, as well as the consequences of our actions. Bad things do indeed happen to good people in this novel.

There is enough tension to keep you turning the pages. And the ending? It's, ummmmm, good. Not great, but good. We admittedly were a tad disappointed that the ending wasn't as high of quality as the rest of the novel. Quite frankly, that is why this will be a book we mention to our friends, as opposed to a book everyone is talking about.

But don't let this small criticism keep you from picking up the book. Mediocre ending or not, the book is worth your time.




It's your turn to read it! Leave us a comment if you're interested and we'll draw a random winner here on November 30th, so check back here then to see if you won. (International entrants welcome!)

Historical Fiction Heresy

So ask any historical fiction afficianado to give you a list of the best historical fiction novels ever written and dollars to doughnuts, Anya Seton's Katherine will make the top ten.


Originally published in 1954, Katherine is now considered a classic of the genre. It's a love story, really, about the 14th century Duke of Lancaster and his mistress (whom he later married), Katherine Swynford.

And can we let you in on a big, fat secret?

A Reader's Respite couldn't stand it.

Oh, the writing is beautiful. Technically speaking, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this novel. It's just that Katherine is presented as the most goody-goody Pollyanna we've ever met on paper. And it drove us nuts.

Seton's Katherine Swynford makes Haley Mills' Pollyanna look like a raging bitch

Here's a woman who cheats on her husband, has children out of wedlock, waits for her lover's wife to kick the bucket so she can marry him and legitimatize her children and yet, as Seton writes her, she can do no wrong.

We kept waiting for bluebirds to fly out of her butt.

And the point of all this ranting? Just because we didn't like it doesn't mean that budding historical fiction fanatics shouldn't read it. In fact, we think it's an unwritten rule somewhere that you must read this novel if you want to be admitted into the secret club.

So aren't you lucky that we happen to have an extra copy here in our hot little hands? If you'd like your own copy of this classic, leave us a comment saying so and on November 25th, check back here to see if you are our randomly chosen winner.

Easy peasy, right?

A little non-fiction for variety.....

As historical fiction fans, how much do you actually know about the time periods that serve as a background for many of your favorite novels?

If you're like us, there are some historical periods we are frightfully ignorant, which is fine if you were, say, a finance major in college. But not so okay us history majors.

So when we stumbled across David Howarth's 1066: The Year of the Conquest in an airport bookstore, we were intrigued enough to plunk down the cash (or in our case, the trusty Visa) and dive right in.



Our verdict? This little book (only 201 pages) is a must-read for the history buff. Howarth writes in a marvelously conversational style with none of the pompous, wordy, frustrating pseudo-prose that many historians adopt when writing historical non-fiction.

The result is a very readable, concise look at the Norman Conquest. The players, King Harold of England, William of Normandy, and Harald Hardrada of Norway, are each in their own manner empathetic while the Battle of Hastings is finally presented without all the mumbo-jumbo military strat-egery.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the Norman Conquest and dates from the 11th century

Howarth, who passed away in 1991, was a historian for the average lay person. He wrote several books, including one about Waterloo, each imminently accessible and illuminating to read.

If you'd like to understand the real history behind those fabulous historical novels we all devour, do yourself a favor and pick up a Howarth book. You can read it in an afternoon and walk away a tad bit more edu-ma-cated that when you started.