Dirty Historical Fiction

Did you know that there is an entire sub-genre out there labeled Historical Erotica?  That's right, folks, an entire genre of dirty historical fiction.  A Reader's Respite had no idea.  But it's true.  And browsing the descriptions, as it turns out, can be a major time suck (get your minds out of the gutter, you dirty birds).....

Maid Marian, Robin Hood, and  Eleanor of Aquitaine get a little frisky in Colette Gales erotic novel, Bound by Honor.  Hey, even Harriet Klausner gave this one 5 stars....it's got to be good.

The Russian Revolution is spiced up with a little S&M in Natasha Rostova's novel, Captivation.  Who doesn't like a little sex with their revolution?

Ah, the hedonism of Ancient Rome.  Those slave girls were just asking for it, weren't they?  Slave Girls of Rome, by author Don Winslow, tells us all about it in lurid detail.

Alan Savage tells us all about the naughty side of Queen Joanna I of Naples in his novel, Queen of the Night.  We always suspected Joanna was a naughty girl.

Happy sexy reading.....

We're Speechless....

Okay, not literally (when have you ever known A Reader's Respite to be without something to say?).  But still, if we were going to be speechless, it would be over this:

This is what artist Airan Kang managed to create with just some books and a few LED lights.  Think the still-photo is cool?  Check out the video (those LED lights are shifters)....




Airan Kang from Jun Lee on Vimeo.




This makes us very happy.

Book Bundles

A Reader's Respite is always smitten with books that, while not necessarily a series, tend to enhance each other....

Louisa May Alcott's classic novel was first published in two volumes, the first in 1868 and the second, originally titled Good Wives, the following year.  It wasn't until 1880 that both volumes were combined under the title Little Women.

Geraldine Brooks won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize with her parallel novel to Little Women, called March.  The novel follows the absent Mr. March as he struggles to return home from the Civil War to his family.

In April of this year, Kelly O'Connor McNees made her literary debut with The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, a well-received historical fiction novel that imagines Alcott's mysterious love life.


We think this trio is rather cozy, don't you?

Tana French just keeps getting better....

Title: Faithful Place
Author:  Tana French
Genre:  Suspense
ISBN:  978-0670021871
416 pages
Source:  Amazon Purchase
Grade:  A+


If A Reader's Respite had to name one author who just keeps improving and improving with each book, it would have to be Tana French.  And her newest release, Faithful Place, just proves our claim.  Once again, French takes us to Dublin where undercover cop Frank Mackey finds himself drawn back to his childhood neighborhood (and slightly insane family) to solve the murder of his first teenage love, whose body has just been discovered after she went missing twenty-two years prior.

And once again, French shows the reader that it isn't the mystery that's important....it's the psychological characterizations that make the tale.  Without a doubt, this is her best effort to date.


Her first novel, In the Woods, debuted in 2007 to critical acclaim (it won an Edgar Award that year).  Reviews of the novel from readers weren't as impressive as the critics, though.  Many readers didn't care for the ambiguous ending of the suspense novel about the Dublin Murder Squad, although most would agree that French's writing was almost magical.  Her lyrical writing, sharp and witty dialog, and intense characterizations put the reader smack in the middle of Dublin, making her one of those rare authors who could transport a reader out of time and place.

In 2008 French followed up with The Likeness, another novel about the Dublin Murder Squad, this time focusing on a secondary character who appeared in the first novel.  This time, French nailed it.  A stunning ending wrapped up a novel with near-perfect psychological insight and again, she places the reader right in the time and place she created.

Unlike The Likeness, which almost required the reader to have been familiar with her first novel, Faithful Place requires no such previous reading.  Although Frank Mackey does appear as a secondary character in The Likeness, no other information from that book is needed to get full enjoyment out of Faithful Place.  Mackey is masterfully drawn...just the right amount of cynacism one needs from an undercover agent, mixed with irreverance for the rules and a good dose smart-ass.

A Reader's Respite might be just a little bit in love with Frank Mackey.

The mystery of who killed Rosie is not paramount, so don't expect a big twist at the end.  What's important here are the psychological foundations of relationships....relationships with family, with lovers, and with our children.  French is at the top of her game here.

If you haven't read a Tana French novel yet, it comes with our highest recommendation.  Don't feel like you have to go back to the beginning, though.....just pick up a copy of Faithful Place and savor it. 

Then come back here and join the Frank Mackey fan club.

A Tour of Bookstores and a Recipe....

A Reader's Respite was tasked this week with finding the appropriate punishment for Mr. RR, who forced us to put down our book for two days and help clean out the garage, an odious task we thoroughly loathe.  What punishment did we finally decide upon?  We decided to drag the poor mister with us while we took a full day to tour the fabulous independent bookstores of Seattle.

A Reader's Respite thought you might be interested in following along, since this is a preview of the tour we would take any of you on the next time you visit Seattle and give us a shout out....

We started the day off right by ditching the car and hopping on a convenient ferry which took us to downtown Seattle.  It's a great form of transportation:  they are fairly reliable and rarely sink to the bottom.

Our first stop was an independent used bookstore down in the basement of Pike's Place Market, called BLMF Literary Saloon.  The awesomeness of this store cannot be conveyed in words.

What does BLMF stand for?  Well, there's an interesting story behind that:  the owner was, like most of us, a collector of books.  Lots of books.  One day, a relative stopped by his crammed-full-of-books apartment and noted that he had, *ahem,* "Books like a mother f____."

True story.  The bookstore then had a name.

There are at least a couple of thousand used books in this little store, but they are smartly organized and there is a huge selection with darned fair prices.

Our next stop was still down in the bowels of Pike's Place Market, a little shop called Lionheart Books, which sells new books.  This is the place you go for salespeople with personality.....they will sing to you about papercuts and happily "overcharge" you by $600....it really is a fun place.

Still in the Market, we headed over to Lamplight Books, which offers plenty of used and new books at decent prices.  It doesn't have the selection that BLMF Literary Saloon, nor the personality of Lionheart Books, but they do have a lot of rare classics that are fun to look at and drool over.

Our next stop in the Market area was across the street to the famous Left Bank Books, a book lover's paradise for all things anarchy.  (This is Seattle:  we are all tree-hugging commies up here).  Even if you don't appreciate the subject, there are a plethora of great history books to be found inside.

It was about this time that Mr. RR started complaining that he was hungry, so being in a generous mood, we allowed a break for lunch at Pigalle, a small restaurant overlooking the water that is consistently voted in the top ten restaurants in Seattle.  Mr. RR scarfed down a big bowl of bouillabaisse and two Bloody Mary's while we read a book (he needed fortification).

Then it was off for a mile long hike up to Capitol Hill where Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle's largest independent bookstore resides.  It was nirvana, folks.  Truly.  We made Mr. RR schlepp all the books we bought here around for the remainder of the day.  He needed the exercise after all that bouillabaisse.

Mr. RR thought it prudent to point out that it was indeed Happy Hour throughout the city, so of course we headed over to The Alexis Hotel, where the bar is aptly named The Bookstore (the hotel's restaurant is called The Library, by the by).  It was here that we indulged in a Chocolate Martini.

Conveniently attached to the hotel is Arundel's Book Store, one of our favorites because it has so much obscure historical fiction for sale.  Pricey, but worth it.  Plus, we love the spiral staircase that leads to the second floor of books.

So there's your tour of Seattle book stores.  Next time your up in the Pacific Northwest, give us a call and A Reader's Respite will be happy to take you on the tour.  Mr. RR will gladly remain at home.

Chocolate Martini

2 ounces vodka (the good stuff, don't be cheap)

1/2 ounce Creme de Cacao

Chocolate poweder or shavings for garnish

A Literary Edu-ma-cation

They say that education is wasted on the young.  While A Reader's Respite gladly leaves freshman calculus to the young, we do miss literature classes.  But did you know that a number of universities offer free lit courses online for anyone to partake?

Here's a few of our favorites....

LitLovers offers short (30 minute) courses on how to read literature....everything from plots to characters to setting.  There are ten courses to choose from, each of them fun, easy and no-pressure.

For the brave and bold amongst you, Columbia University offers a free 2-hour seminar on James Joyce's Ulysses, exploring and explaining the use of different narratives in this most frustrating of novels.

MIT has several open courses free for the taking....

• 
  
  Reading Fiction: Dysfunctional Families
• 
  
  Shakespeare
• 
  
  Literary Studies: The Legacy of England
• 
  
  Major English Novels
• 
  
  Victorian Literature and Culture
• Interpreting Poetry
• Arthurian Literature and Celtic Colonization
• American Women Authors

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

The Acquisitions Department

Date: July 7, 2010

Prepared by: Acquisitions Department for A Reader's Respite
Subject: Weekly Acquisitions Report

It's been a hectic week for our Acquisitions Department.  Our blog secretary is more than a little peeved at the influx of books and got all dressed up in his Aragorn warrior costume to better convey his displeasure with the amount of work, what with all the categorizing and shelving required.  We suspect he'll get over it in time and in the interim we requested he take the horse back to the barn, please.
 
 
Here's what has gotten his tail-feathers all ruffled.....
 
 

 
 
The Sixth Surrender, by Hana Samek Norton.  Another Eleanor of Aquitaine-ish novel, this came zipping in from the Amazon Vine Program so that A Reader's Respite could participate in a Buddy Read over at Historical Fiction Online.
 
 

 

Hood, by Stephen R. Lawhead.  Recommended by 2 Kids and Tired Book Reviews, this re-telling of the Robin Hood legend was purchased at Barnes & Noble.
 
 

 

Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey.  It's been years since A Reader's Respite has partaken of Anne McCaffrey's classic Dragonriders of Pern books.  We wish we still had our childhood copies, but although our dear mumsy has managed to preserve every relic of our childhood (including - we suspect but can't prove -  our first bowel movement), she now claims ignorance in the book department.  She's probably lying and just doesn't want to go down to the basement.  Whatever.  But since At Home With Books has been posting reviews of this series, we needed to re-read these books.  Dragonflight is the first in the series and we purchased this from Barnes & Noble.

 

 

 

My Name is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare, by Jess Winfield.  Admittedly, we purchased this one for the title alone.

 

 

 
Belong to Me, by Marisa de los Santos.  Highly, highly recommended by You've Gotta Read This!, we're grateful that Sandy warned us that this is a prequel to Love Walked In.  Whew.  Disaster narrowly averted. 
 
 

 
My Lobotomy: A Memoir, by Charles Flemming.  This one came recommended on some podcast we were listening to a couple months back.  Wish we could remember which one, but our brain is like a sieve these days.  The author was forced to undergo a lobotomy at the age of 12 (!) and this is his story.  Another purchase from good ol' B&N.
 
 
 

 
Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow.  Holy. Mother. of. God.....this 800+ page book arrived in the mail (all 25 pounds of it....kidding...not really) so that we could participate in a blog tour this fall.  A Reader's Respite doesn't normally participate in tour thingys, but made an exception for this because Chernow is simply the best of the best when it comes to American history biographies. 
 
 

 

A Knight in Shining Armor, by Jude Deveraux.  A Reader's Respite hasn't picked up a romance book since our freshman year in college when we went a little crazy reading all the stuff our aforementioned mumsy never allowed us to read when we lived at home.  It wasn't long before we discovered that living in a sorority house afforded us the adventure of living our own romance novel (*ahem*).  The less that's said about that, the better.  The Lit Connection reviewed this book last week and we got such a kick out of the review that we ordered this one from BookMooch.

 

 

 

 

Foreign Influence, by Brad Thor.  Continuing our quest to discover what makes popular mass-market fiction so darned, well, popular with the mass market.  This is a thriller.  We have no idea what it's about.  But Atria Books sent this along and we'll report back to you.

 

 

 

Antony and Cleopatra, by Colleen McCullough.  We purchased this one from B&N in order to round out our collection of McCullough's Masters of Rome Series (this is book seven).  Our obsessive/compulsive book disorder prevents us from even starting in on this series until we have all of them nicely lined up on the shelf.  (We understand the logical question here would be, "But what if you read the first one and don't like it?"   Doesn't matter, folks.  A Reader's Respite must have the entire series before we start reading.  Take it up with our shrink.)

 

 

 

 

 

In which our imagination kicks into overdrive...

Title:  We Need to Talk About Kevin

Author:  Lionel Shriver

Genre:  Literary Fiction (Contemporary)

ISBN:  978-0-06-112429-7

Book Source:  Purchased Copy

Grade:  A-

You should know right off the bat that A Reader's Respite has an overactive imagination.  No one can create a mountain out of a molehill like we can.  And while we feel that everyone should be proud of their unique abilities, this is probably not a trait we should encourage in ourselves.

For example, we recently picked up a copy of Lionel Shriver's novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, an epistolary novel featuring personal letters from the mother of a teenage school shooter.  Yep, you read that right.  Gutsy topic.

This is our first Shriver novel and we admit that she hit one out of the ball park here.  The novel is Eva's recollection of her now-imprisoned son's upbringing....a soul-searching of where (if at all) Eva and her husband, Franklin, went wrong parenting this troubled teen whose explosive act of violence is mind-boggling.

Now here's where A Reader's Respite's imagination went awry:  as Eva recounts  her son's upbringing, Shriver's writing is so completely engrossing that we couldn't help but compare Kevin's every developmental milestone with our own erstwhile four year old (aka, Big Kid). 

As our imagination drew more and more parallels with Kevin as a youngster, we began giving Big Kid the evil eye every time he spilled his milk at lunchtime or tore the leg off his sister's Barbie.  By page 200, we were thinking:  Holy crap, we're living with Chucky.  For reals.

By page 300, we were perusing the Yellow Pages for child interventions and military schools.  Shriver had us entirely convinced that we have been harboring a miniature psychopath under our very roof.

Okay, okay....so by the end of the novel, A Reader's Respite finally figured out that Shriver is presenting the possibility that parents can do all of the right things and tragedy might still strike.  (Big Kid was finally allowed out of Time Out and heaved a tremendous sigh of relief at this point.)  But she leaves her themes open for interpretation -- making this novel the supreme Book Club choice -- and allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about Eve and Franklin's parenting styles.

Aside from drawing the reader into serious moral and ethical quagmires, Shriver keeps the narrative moving along at an intense pace, despite her tendency to get a little fancy with her vocabulary choices (did someone get a shiny, new thesaurus for Christmas that year?).

Add to that a absolutely shocking twist at the end (we swear, we never saw it coming!) and you have a novel most deserving of the Orange Prize....which it indeed won in 2005. 

We Need to Talk About Kevin was Shriver's first literary best-seller (her previous seven novels went virtually unnoticed).  It's interesting to note that she claims it was rejected by thirty publishers before word-of-mouth reviews sent her to the best-seller list. 

If you're a parent, this book invokes endless thought and discussion, especially when you learn that Shriver herself is NOT a parent.  How accurately can an author delve into the parenting psyche without having experienced it themselves?  You decide.  Read the book.

(Oh, and feel free to call us if you need Military School recommendations afterwards.)

*******

Many, many thanks go out to Linus's Blanket and Farm Lane Books for their accolades and recommendations of Shriver's work!

Keep Hydrated this Summer

For the past couple of weeks, A Reader's Respite has been slacking with our Weekend Cooking with Beth Fish Reads.

Owing largely to an unfortunate incident involving a Q-Tip, a punctured eardrum and an subsequent swollen jaw, we were punished by our doctor with orders for a strict liquid diet and more pills than you can count.  So you'll forgive us our lack of participation in any event that involves glorious, mouth-watering, SOLID food.

We have, however, spent the past two weeks in the pursuit of anything liquid that tastes good.  We've decided to share our favorite with you here today.

We start with a glass of cooled coffee.  A Reader's Respite likes to save what is leftover from our morning pot and stick it in the fridge till it's cooled off enough to work with.

Next, grab yourself some chocolate syrup.  Hershey's will do, but if you want to be Mr./Ms. Fancy Pants, you can get yourself the good stuff.  Drizzle some in the glass and mix well.  How much?  Depends on how mocha you like your mocha.  A Reader's Respite tends to get a tad carried away with this step.

Add ice till the glass is about two-thirds full.  Grab some half-and-half (and we mean real half-and-half...don't you dare ruin this drink with your skim milk) and add a few tablespoons.

It's usually at this point in the process that A Reader's Respite stops for a while to admire the swirls that the half-and-half makes and sing all three verses of Carly Simon's You're So Vain ("clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee") and daydream a bit about a young Warren Beatty.  But as we mentioned, we're on a LOT of pills here.  That may have something to do with it.




  But on with the drink....no mocha would be complete without a topper.
 

 And if you'd like to know exactly how A Reader's Respite managed to become the only person in recorded medical history confined to a liquid diet who actually gained weight, the answer would be GARNISH.
 
 
 Chase it with pain meds - better living through pharmaceuticals, we always say - and you have a recipe for a divine summer beverage. 
 
 Now where did we put our book?