Jane Austen runs amok....

Ever since Seth Graham-Smith turned the literary world on it's ear by introducing Zombies to Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride & Prejudice, the world of Recency hasn't been the same.

A Reader's Respite sheepishly admits that a copy of PP&Z resides peacefully on our Amazonian Devil Device (that's a Kindle, for those not in-the-know).  Unread, as yet, but nonetheless it is there, waiting for us to publish a critical comparison of the original versus the 2009 Graham-Smith edition.  We sure you're on the edge of your seat waiting for that.

But meanwhile, back at the ranch, we're being inundated with even more horror-ific Austen tales:

Gee, it's a prequel to PP&Z.  Imagine that.

Of course there were mummies in Mansfield Park....how did we miss that the first time we read this?

Okay, that cover art is just plain creepy, no two-ways about it.

Emma and werewolves.  Hmmmm.

For those who are still mourning the loss of Jane, don't worry, she's not dead.  She's a vampire.

The list is veritably endless, but if you'd like to see a couple more you can go here.

Lest you think that the world of Austen has been completely exhausted, A Reader's Respite found a little something in a Baltimore bookstore today:

Yes, baby, that's right....Jane also solves cozy mysteries.  As a matter of fact, Jane has been solving cozy mysteries far longer than she's been demon-hunting.  Author Stephanie Barron - who, by the by, says on her website that she channels Jane Austen herself to write this series of mysteries - has churned out no less than nine mysteries over the past fifteen years or so in which Jane plays the Regency Sleuth.

Who knew?

And, probably needless to say, who do you think bought a copy today?  Three guesses and the first two don't count.

We'll report back shortly on this one......

A homerun for Sourcebooks

A Reader's Respite is fairly certain you've all heard about the U.S. release of Elizabeth Chadwick's renowned historical fiction novels, The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion.  Blogland has been all a-twitter over these novels...and for good reason.

Back in September, Sourcebooks Landmark took the laudable step of releasing Chadwick's story of William Marshall, aptly titled The Greatest Knight, to an enthralled U.S. audience (an act for which historical fiction lovers will be forever grateful....thank you, Sourcebooks!).  Marshall, as the title announces, was arguably the greatest knight of his medieval times and Chadwick masterfully brought him to life, to the delight of countless swooning women everywhere.

Now March has brought us the U.S. release of The Scarlet Lion, sequel to The Greatest Knight, which illuminates the later half of Marshall's incredible life....from his marriage which brought him an Earldom and to his deft political maneuvering during the reign of touchy King John.

So what's all the fuss about?  Well, if you read a lot of historical fiction, then you'll know that there are frequently two types of historical fiction novels:

1. those on the lighter side, what author Hilary Mantel calls "chick-lit with wimples", and
2. those on the more serious side that are often weighed down with authentic detail

Author Elizabeth Chadwick does the impossible....she bridges the gap between the two far ends of the historical fiction spectrum.  Few authors can engage readers with such impeccable detail and still move the plot along at such a perfect pace and bring characters and events to life before your eyes.  She engages all types of historical fiction readers, no matter what side of the proverbial fence they sit on.

A prolific writer, award-winning Chadwick has written a plethora of medieval novels that have thrilled fans in the U.K. for years, while us poor American fans had to make furtive trips to Canada in order to smuggle in copies.  Thanks to Sourcebooks, we no longer have to hide.  Not only have they released both novels about Will Marshall, but they will also release the fabulous love story of Roger and Ida Bigod, previously titled The Time of Singing (to be titled For the King's Favor here in the U.S.).

To read these books is to be transported to a different place and time....a reading experience you won't soon forget.  Careful readers of Chadwick's novels are rewarded with small overlaps....characters and scenes from one book will briefly appear in other novels, making it a very rewarding read indeed.

If you've never braved a historical fiction book, these are the books that A Reader's Respite would choose for you.  In fact, we want so badly to introduce someone out there to good historical fiction that we are giving away the all three books.  If you're interested in a fabulous introduction to historical fiction, leave us a comment and on April 15, we'll draw a random winner....so remember to check back and see if you won!  (International entrants always welcome)




FTC Disclaimer:  Where did all of these books come from?  Frankly, we don't remember because A Reader's Respite has multiple copies of all of these books.  Some came from Sourcebooks, some came from bookstores in Canada and the U.K.  Can the FTC arrest us for a faulty memory?  Stay tuned to find out....

A Spring Cleaning Winner.....

Many thanks go out to our random winner of The Jewel of Medina....

Allie, of A Literary Odyssey fame!

Thanks, Allie, for helping us out with our Spring Cleaning this year!  Zap us your mailing address!

What do your books say about you?

It's been said that the books on your bookshelves reveal who you really are.  If that's the case, what do faux books say about a person?

A Reader's Respite recently went on a Google-hunt for faux books (don't ask why...too much time on our hands) and as it turns out, this is a very big business indeed.   

Of course, anyone with a few shelves to fill can purchase books by the yard.  We're assuming that a person who actually buys books in this manner has no intention of actually reading them.  But we still find ourselves asking *why*?  Is it an effort to appear well-read?  More intelligent or thoughtful?  Or just because books make beautiful decor?

At first we thought is was just for decor, but we abandoned that theory when we discovered that books by the yard can actually be purchased by subject.  Want to impress your date who thinks you're a lawyer?  At Strand Bookstore in New York City, you can actually rent intelligent-looking law books for the low price of $35 per linear foot for one entire week.

At Apartment Therapy, you can even purchase books by the yard sorted by color, thereby complementing your fake-library's decor.  Thank goodness because who knows what calamity may befall if our books don't match the new sofa set.

For those who prefer the more casual look of mass market paperbacks, Faux Books offers the following:

 Using paperbacks as faux books rescues interesting ,unusual, humorous and thought provoking book spines from destruction prior to out of print books being recycled. The spines are guillotined from the books and selected to provide a run of books to your required length. We permanently attach them to a thin backing board of matt black MDF which can then be fitted to your door or shelves in one simple application.

The spines are guillotined?  That's just wrong.

None of these fake book options are cheap, mind you.  It cost quite a pretty penny to purchase faux books, which leads us to wonder why someone wouldn't just head out to their local used bookstore and purchase some of the real thing.

But if cheap is what you're looking for, one could always resort to the tried and true paint and a paintbrush:

Or if you aren't artistically inclined, there's always wallpaper that gives a similar effect:

Of course, for those of us who are absolutely obsessed with books (reading them, that is), we could always shout our obsession to the world with a book-themed kitchen (ouch, there's those guillotined spines again):

Or better yet, let the neighborhood know where to drop off their leftover books:

And while you'll never see A Reader's Respite utilizing faux books (we have too many of the real ones for that), we will admit to coveting the secret book door...our birthday is in April:

Be Careful What You Wish For....

Recently A Reader's Respite was lamenting the use of modern vernacular in historical fiction novels. There's not much that will ruin a novel quicker than a 16th-century character using 21st-century language.

But exactly how authentic should the language be? After all, the Old English commonly spoken all the way up to the 13th-century would have completely unintelligible to English speakers of today:

a portion of Beowulf in Old English

So most historical fiction authors tend to use the modern English language, albeit guarding very careful against modern vernacular.  And to be fair, English wasn't even spoken by the nobility in England until around the 1300s -- they spoke Anglo-Norman.

Where is all this leading?  A Reader's Respite recently discovered that too much authenticity in historical fiction dialog can distract from a story just as much as not enough when we picked up a copy of The Conqueror to read for The Classics Circuit's latest tour spotlighting author Georgette Heyer.

Now it should be noted at this point that A Reader's Respite had never actually read a Heyer novel prior to this book.  We've certainly noticed that her novels (and apparently the woman was as prolific as Jean Plaidy....wow) have a huge fan base and that's usually naught for not.  Besides, the novel is about William the Conqueror, one of our favorite historical figures...what's not to love?

So it was that we sat down shivering with anticipation (okay, maybe not shivering, but you get the idea) and began to read.  Hmmmm, thunk we.  This use of dialog was....ummmm....different:

'Trechery, by God!' FizOsbern cried.


'Very like,' said William. 'We will try our strength against these bold chevaliers.'

Roger de Montgomeri blurted out: 'Beau sire, they outnumber us five to one.'

A challenging look was directed at him, 'Ha, do you fear them?' asked the Duke. 'Who follows me?'

'If you must go, beau sire, be sure we all follow you,' growled De Gournay. 'But, before God, it is madness!'

'If we do not scatter this rabble, trust me never!' said William, and led them over the wooded ground at the gallop.

The Conqueror, by Georgette Heyer. Page 85.

What say you?

We say that it took us *forever* to get through this book.  The plot was fabulous and the characters were fascinating, but their dialog slowed us down to a snail's pace just to understand what they were saying.

Zounds!  Forsooth!

To be completely fair, quite a few Heyer fans warned A Reader's Respite that The Conqueror might not be the best introduction to this beloved author.  But did we listen?  Noooooooo.  Boy, did that ever come back to bite us in the butt.


So here's the moral of the story:

1. Always listen to your bloggy friends
2. Be careful  what you wish for, you just might get it

And here are our questions for the day:

1. How do you like your historical fiction dialog to read?  Authentic or no?
2. What Heyer book should A Reader's Respite read?

FTC Disclaimer:  We bought it at a used bookstore, so back off!




Who's up for giving this one a try?  Anyone?  If you're feeling brave, leave us a comment and on April 3rd, we'll draw one random winner, so be sure to check back then.  (International entrants always welcome!)

A Satisfying Conclusion to a Superb Trilogy

As we've mentioned before, A Reader's Respite normally doesn't much care for Arthurian literature.  All those funky chicks popping out of lakes waving swords around, wizards zapping spells on people willy-nilly and running around looking for a holy drinking cup just doesn't do it for us.

All of that changed when we discovered Helen Hollick's The Pendragon's Banner Trilogy.  Here we found an author who told the story of Arthur without all the fantasy-magic-mumbo-jumbo.  Here was a woman who endeavored to write Arthur as a real historical figure and succeeded brilliantly.

This month, Sourcebooks is re-releasing the third and final installment of The Pendragon's Banner Trilogy, this one entitled Shadow of the King and we're pleased to report that this finale does complete justice to the previous two novels, The Kingmaking and Pendragon's Banner.

Grounded in a gritty realism, Hollick imagines Arthur as a ruthless King of Britain during the Dark Ages.  He's got more faults than Microsoft's Windows XP, yet Hollick still manages to mold him into an endearing, masculine hero.

Now for all of you die-hard Arthurian fans out there, don't despair....there are still plenty of characters you will be familiar with.  Gwenhwyfar is still Arthur's wife, for example, but don't expect a delicate flower because Hollick's Gwen kicks butt.  Similarly, Morgause is still around and even Merlin makes an appearance in the earlier books.

And while keeping track of the various English, British and Saxon factions that populated England in the Dark Ages was challenging at times, the end result was one of the most satisfying reads A Reader's Respite has enjoyed in quite some time.

If you haven't given these books a try yet, we would heartily recommend them, whether you are an Arthurian fan or not.  It's a transport back in time that will take your breath away.






FTC Disclosure....straight from the publicity department at Sourcebooks.  Thank goodness, or we may have missed out on a rollicking good read!

The Believers Winner!

Congratulations to this week's random winner:

Rachel W!

And thanks to everyone who entered this week.  Another book will be up for grabs soon, so stay tuned....

Parenting and Reading 101

A Reader's Respite isn't buying the old excuse "I have young kids, I don't have time to read!" anymore.  As we see it, if you have kids between the ages of 2 and 10, you've got all the time in the world to read books.

Our secret?

That's right, baby, it's called Time Out.  If we really crack down on infractions, Big Kid spends a good 60% of his day in Time Out, leaving us a good 3 or 4 hours to read.

Why just the other day, there was so much Time Out going on around here that we managed to kill a 550-page-chunkster.

And if your kids are over the age of 10, they should be moody and lock themselves in their room all day.  That leaves even more time to read.

See?  Once you learn the little tricks, this parenting thing is cake.

Spring Cleaning Continued....

In the continuing saga of bookshelves far too overloaded, A Reader's Respite is offering Debra Dean's The Madonnas of Leningrad.

The cover tells us that it was a "National Bestseller" and "An unforgettable tale of love, survival, and the power of imagination." We wouldn't know because we've never actually read the thing.  We do know that it's about WWII.  Oh, and Russia.  Yep, WWII and Russia.  But it looks good, doesn't it?

Part of our book addict recovery process is to admit that we will *never* get around to reading it and, therefore, to let the book go.

If you're interested in saving A Reader's Respite from our addiction (and thereby feeding your own), leave a comment and we'll draw a random winner on April 1st. Be sure to check back and see if you won (international peeps always welcome!).





Dear FTC Man:

We cannot remember how this book came to be in our library. We suspect it broke in our home in the middle of the night and became a squatter on our shelf.  Maybe you can fine it?

Our Fruitless Quest for Grace O'Malley

For the past few years, A Reader's Respite has been on what is turning out to be a fruitless quest for a good historical fiction novel about Grace O'Malley.

Who is this Grace O'Malley we speak of?

Why, the infamous Irish pirate, of course.  Her real name was Grainne Ni Mhaille which has (thankfully) been Anglicized to Grace O'Malley.  Born sometime around 1530, Grace was the daughter of a successful and wealthy Irish sea merchant who inherited her father's fleet of ships and promptly took to the seas becoming quite famous for her seamanship and pirating along Ireland's west coast.  She harassed English and Irish alike and eventually history even records a meeting between Grace and England's Elizabeth I where both women made promises to each other that they would eventually break.

Fertile ground for a historical novel, wouldn't you say?

Our quest for some good historical fiction began back in 2008 when we found a copy of Alan Gold's novel, The Pirate Queen.  Ugh.  You can read the review on that disaster, but be sure to put on your flame-retardant undies first....it's a scorcher.  Bad dialog, inconsistencies and questionable characters abounded in that scary book and it was enough to put us off the trail of Grace O'Malley for a good two years.

But in the spirit of never-say-die, A Reader's Respite recently gathered our courage and purchased a copy of Robin Maxwell's novel about Grace, this one entitled The Wild Irish.  We thought the premise was promising:  Maxwell chose to focus on the meeting that took place between Elizabeth I and Grace, allowing Grace to tell her own story.

Despite our misgivings about Grace's story being told in first person narrative, we were game to give it a try.  Things were going quite well until we reached page thirty five, where Elizabeth is given the following line:

"The earls of Leicester and Warwick were my beloved Fric and Frac."

Huh?

What the heck are two ice skaters from the 1930's doing in Queen Elizabeth I's dialog?

That's right, Fric and Frac were a Swedish ice skating comic team that gained enormous popularity when they came to the U.S. in the 1930s.  We're not kidding.

So due to this unfortunate gaffe on page thirty five the remainder of this novel pretty much fell flat for us.  We just couldn't let go of that Fric and Frac thing.  Grace telling her life story to Elizabeth takes up the first half of the novel, while the second half focuses more on the Earl of Essex and his fall from Liz's grace during his unfortunate stay in Ireland.  Because Grace can't tell Essex's story, the POV abruptly changes to third person, where it remains until the author invents a second meeting, many years later, between Liz and Grace (history records no such meeting, by the by), whereupon the narrative swings back to first person again.

We got a tad dizzy from it all, truth to be told.

But A Reader's Respite will not let this latest disaster deter us in our quest.  We're going to find a good book about Grace O'Malley if it kills us.  And at the rate we're going, it just might.

Spring Cleaning

A Reader's Respite has decided it's time for Spring Cleaning.  Of the bookshelves, that is.  We can tell it's *that* time because our bookshelves are becoming Double-Booked.  You know what we're talking about....it looks like this:

We've started to stack books in front of our stacks of books and this is disturbing.  As a matter of fact, books are beginning to migrate all around the house (we suspect they do this whilst we are sleeping).  They end up here:

And here:

And here:

And even up here:

We're embarrassed to say that it's getting a tad out of hand.

So over the next couple of months, we're going to be giving some of these books away.  Yes, we could just box them up and tote them down to Goodwill, but we thought we'd give you all first dibs.

We'll start this Spring Cleaning business with The Jewel of Medina, by Sherry Jones.  Remember the stink this book caused a couple of years ago in the Muslim community?  Big fuss for such a small book.  But if you missed reading this one the first time around, here's your chance.

Leave us a comment telling us you want it and on March 29th, we'll pick a random winner.  That's all there is to it.  You don't have to "follow" us or subscribe to us or even give us a compliment.  We're pretty easy going that way.  Just remember to check back here on March 29th to see if you've won!  (International peeps always welcome!)

Where's our Kleenex?

Damn, where did we put our Kleenex?

A Reader's Respite is starting to worry that we're going soft in our old age.  We recently acquired a copy of George Bishop's new novel A Letter to My Daughter and damned if we didn't puddle up.  This short (only 126 pages) novel packs a pretty big punch.

Written as one long letter from a mother to her runaway teenage daughter, the big mystery here is how a man managed to so completely capture the mystical mother/daughter bond.  Bishop is both subtle and insightful throughout and whether you are a mother, a daughter, or both, even the most cynical reader will see parts of themselves reflected on the pages.  It's beautiful writing.  The ending was a trifle too trite for A Reader's Respite's taste, but we're willing to forgive just this one time.


Now where did we put the Kleenex?






To the FTC Henchman who has been stalking us:  This particular book came from the Amazon Vine Program.  You wanna piece of them?  The giant Amazon machinery eats FTC enforcers for lunch.

A Lit Winner!

And our random winner this week?

Sandy from You've Gotta Read This!

Zap us the ol' mailing address, Sandy and we'll get this in the mail to you.  Enjoy!