New YA

While A Reader's Respite can't claim that John Stephens wrote an entirely original new Young Adult Fantasy/Adventure in The Emerald Atlas, we can tell you that originality aside, this was a rollicking good ride.

Time-travel, dwarfs, evil warloards, benevolent wizards, and one very pissy Russian countess all come together to present the adventure of a lifetime for three young orphaned siblings in this first-book-in-a-series.  Shades of Middle Earth and Narnia abound throughout the story, but one can forgive that in light of the well-rounded characters.  

Kate, Michael and Emma have been shuffled around various shabby orphanages for as long as they can remember and this latest one is the worst yet.  Oddly, they seem to be the only three children there.  And when they discover a strange book in a forgotten room, their adventure - and the mystery - begin.  Resourceful without being overly-precocious, the children start to piece together the mystery of their vanished parents and encounter a magical world that exists within our own, albeit hidden from view.

Geared towards a YA audience, none of the plot or dialog is simple or insipid which makes this a fun read for adults, as well.  And talk about a fast-moving plot....yowza....A Reader's Respite had to stop in our tracks several times and re-read a paragraph or two just to make sure we were keeping up.

But the best part of this novel?  The fully-developed and often quirky secondary characters that abound throughout the novel.  Stephens didn't skimp in this department and for this reader, it made all the difference between just another Lord of the Rings/Narnia/Harry Potter knockoff novel and a fresh, new voice.

At 400+ pages, this isn't a skimpy book.  But it was engrossing and fast-paced enough that we blew through it in about 48 hours.  Stephens has our attention.....where's the next installment?

The Weekend Edition: Rated R

For some strange reason, there has been an upsurge of mentions of Philippa Gregory's old Wideacre Series in and around blogland the past couple of weeks.  We're not sure why that is, but it revives old nightmares for A Reader's Respite.  This series of three novels (of which we only made it through one and half) might mark the very first instance we can recall of absolutely *hating* a book. 

Now you wouldn't think that a book lover such as ourselves would be unable to find any redeeming characteristic of any given book.  But it's true.  We thought the Wideacre series to be so depraved that it reflected horribly on the author....what on earth could she have been thinking?

And it's recently come to our attention that we weren't the only readers to have to grab a throw-up bowl to make it through one of these novels.....the following video blogs (part 1 and 2) were discovered on YouTube and are, quite possibly, the funniest book rants we've ever had the privilege of listening to.

WARNING:  These are rated R for language and content!  Do not -- we repeat -- do NOT be listening to these in the work place, in front of the kidlets or the in-laws, or in a public location where you'll get nasty looks.  For the love of books, plug in a headset, people!  (Then laugh yourself silly....)

A Tempest in a Teapot

Or rather, make that a tiger in a teapot.  For the past six months or so, mothers across the U.S. have been up in arms about Yale professor Amy Chua's memoir of motherhood.  You see, Amy is a Chinese-American who raised in the strictest of households and decided to continue that tradition with her own daughters.  Here's the game-plan she used:

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.

Now don't mistakenly believe that Amy believes this was the *right* way to raise her children.  After all, this is a memoir and that involves a lot of introspection.  But she does it with humor and humility making this one of the most fascinating (and laugh-out-loud funny) memoirs we've read in a long, long time.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother simply oozes controversy.  A lot of controversy.  But we've found that most of that stems from mothers judging other mothers.  Amy has been lauded as an example to parents everywhere, but she's also been accused of child abuse.  When taken as the memoir was intended, you'll get a glimpse into another parenting style....one that it's hard to argue with the results, but you question whether the results are worth it.

And when we get right down to it, who amongst us parental-types hasn't reflected whether or not we were furthering the best interests of our child?  A Reader's Respite refuses to judge, lest someone (say, for example, child protective services) come along and judge us.

Rarely does a book so controversial live up to all the hoopla.  If you're a parent, we'd call it a must-read.

Vacation: The Grand Finale

At last A Reader’s Respite reaches the grand finale of our three-part vacation saga.

Now for those of you who have ever flown trans-oceanic flights with children in tow (or if you’ve ever been stuck within a ten row radius of children on one of these flights), you’ll understand our reluctance to herd the kidlets on a long flight back to the States.

In fact, the idea was so abhorrent to us that we scrapped our plane tickets and turned our car south towards Southampton, England.  Because if you can’t bear the thought of an oceanic crossing in an airplane, your only other option is a boat.

That’s right.  The Queen Mary II was leaving Southampton for New York.  So we packed up our steamer trunks and herded the kidlets aboard for the seven day transatlantic crossing.  And believe us when we tell you: it was worth every penny.

The Cunard Line knows how to do this transatlantic thing right, yes-sir-ee.  Incredible dining (yes, you must gussy-up for dinner, but Mr. RR looks pretty darned good in black-tie), entertainment that included everything from Shakespeare productions to lecture series from astrophysicists and historians.

 

Easter Sunday was spent on board ship.  We thought Big Kid’s eyes were literally going to pop out of his head when he saw the desert table.

There’s an incredible planetarium on board and we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the fabulous library.  Oh gosh, the library.  At any given point during the crossing, at least 80% of the people you saw on the ship had a book or a Kindle in hand.  This was one very literary crowd.

The planetarium was fantabulous!

We would’ve slept in the library if they had let us.

They even had their very own book club that met each evening for discussion.  *Sigh*  It was just a little slice of heaven.  And how, you ask, did A Reader’s Respite manage to fit in time for reading?  Two words: British Nannies.  Oh yeah, baby, that’s right.  Fully certified, honest-to-goodness British nannies who convincingly acted like there was nothing in the world they would rather do than entertain your kidlets all day long.

The Grand Lobby.  Pretty, no?  Chairs were set up for a swanky art-auction that day.

So what did we read?  The mood of the ship called for thrillers.  So down to the library we tottered (we tottered until we found our sea legs in the 30 foot swells) and browsed until we found The Man from Beijing by the famous Swedish crime writer, Henning Mankell.

This was our first read of a Mankell book, despite his fame for writing the Kurt Wallander mystery series.  By and large we enjoyed the story that follows a Swedish judge, Birgitta Roslin, as she tracks down her own personal connection to a horrible massacre that occurs in a desolate, remote village in the northern country.  Her single-minded investigation leads her, improbably, to Beijing in an effort to track down the killer.  Colonialism and imperialism both figure strongly into this novel and if it’s an indication of how well Mankell normally writes, we can’t wait to finally read the Wallander series.

By the time we finished the Mankell novel, A Reader’s Respite had found our own cozy reading spot down on the second level of the ship:

Now it may not look like much at first glance, but consider the view:

So still in our mystery/thriller mood, we walked (as opposed to toddled) back to library and found another author we’ve been meaning to read….Karin Fossum.  Her novel The Water’s Edge was calling out to us from it’s glass-encased shelf.

In retrospect, we wish the cover of the novel had let us know that this novel is actually the 8th in Fossum’s Inspector Konrad Sejer Series, but in this case, what we didn’t know couldn’t hurt us.

We enjoyed this taut thriller in which young boys from a small town start turning up murdered.  Fossum knows her craft and now we suppose we’ll have to start the series from the beginning.

Now for those of you interested in the Titanic connection, the White Star Line no longer operates passenger ships.  in 1934, they merged with the Cunard Line which has taken over the White Star Service and their transatlantic route still follows the same path which the Titanic took that fateful night in 1912.

On our fourth night at sea at 11:58 pm, the Queen Mary II passed directly over the coordinates where the Titanic sank.  Even yours truly, possibly the most un-sentimental traveler, felt a little shiver that had nothing to do with the weather.  It was dark, it was cold and the thought of sinking out there in the middle of the North Atlantic was horrifying.

But eerie moments and good reading aside, it was with not a little sadness that we passed under the Brooklyn Bridge after not seeing land for seven days.  That’s the poetic way of saying they had to pry A Reader’s Respite off the ship with a crowbar.

So concludes our regaling of Vacation: 2011.  We now return to our normal programming…..

Vacation, Part Deux

A Reader’s Respite’s employer didn’t agree to our request for a vacation from our vacation which would explain the week that has passed since our last post.  Whew.  This working thing is hard.  But on to Part Deux of our vacation, which takes us to Salisbury, England….

If you ever find yourself wandering around in Salisbury and looking for a lovely place to store your suitcase (oh, and sleep), we’d highly recommend the Grasmere House.

This old Victorian manor is nestled up against the River Avon and if you snag a room on the south side, like we did, you get a lovely view of the river and the Salisbury Cathedral beyond.

And what would a good hotel be without a snug place to read a book?  A Reader’s Respite shamelessly snagged this little hut down on the river and promptly christened it our Reading Shack.

After a short walk to town to grab some books, we promptly installed ourselves inside the Reading Shack and passed the hours between the pages of our book and this view:

And what book passed the time for us in Salisbury?  We couldn’t resist picking up a copy of Anne O’Brien’s novel, Devil’s Consort: England’s Most Ruthless Queen.

 

The novel features that most famous of English queens: Eleanor of Aquitaine.  And we thought it looked particularly salacious.  But what really sold us was the seal on the cover of the book:

Yes, it really does announce that this book is “Better than Philippa Gregory.”  Granted, that isn’t too terribly difficult to achieve (ouch!), but it made us giggle enough to shell out the six pounds or so for the book.  Despite our initial impressions, the novel turned out to be quite detailed and well-written.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that O’Brien subscribed to one of our own personal beliefs: that Eleanor had a little fling with her uncle Raymond in Antioch whilst she layed over there – no pun intended - on her way to Jerusalem on Crusade.  Intrigued? Read the book.  It will be released here in the States next month under the title of Queen Defiant.

Next door to our hotel was a beautiful stone church.  You’ll think it’s creepy, but we have a thing for old graveyards…..

Just a short walk over the river leads you into town, but as seems to be common in England, the things you pass on your way into town so beautiful they distract you from your goal of actually reaching town.

A Reader’s Respite managed to ditch the family long enough to spend an entire morning at the Salisbury Cathedral.

Admittedly, we have a thing for cathedrals.  It drives Mr. RR and the kidlets nuts.  But there’s something so incredibly serene about them….

For those of you who recently enjoyed the release of Elizabeth Chadwick’s To Defy a King, you’ll recognize this fellow:

William Longespee, the illegitimate son of King Henry II, played a big role in Chadwick’s latest historical novel.  He was laid to rest in the Salisbury Cathedral in 1226, although how anyone could ever truly be at rest with thousands of tourists like us gawking at him, we’ll never understand.  His tomb was opened in 1791 and they found the corpse of a rat inside poor Willy’s skull.  The rat had traces of arsenic….we’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

If the Tudor era is more your thing, there’s also the tombs of Edward Seymour and his wife, the Lady Catherine Grey (sister to the infamous Jane).  It’s worth noting that Cate’s tomb lies above Eddie’s….if Cate didn’t wear the pants in the family in life, she certainly had the final word in death.

The final installment of Vacation: 2011 is soon to come (and no, you won’t have to wait an entire week again for this next one)…..

The Mysteries of Stonehenge Solved

Whew.  A Reader’s Respite has officially returned from vacation.  We now require a vacation from our vacation.  We’ll call it Secondary Vacation and submit our request at work forthwith. (We’ll be sure to let you know what the powers-that-be think of that.)

We’ve realized that for our purposes here, the saga-like vacation that A Reader’s Respite & Family embarked on some two weeks ago will have to be broken into multiple posts in order to encapsulate the entire experience.

Who put the driver’s seat on the wrong side?

After renting a car from Heathrow airport and spending the first hour figuring out this driving-on-the-oppposite-side-of-the-road thing (in a manual transmission, no less), we arrived in Wiltshire.  A big thank you to all the kind, understanding and non-gun-toting British drivers would not be out of place here.

There would be no rest for Mr. and Mrs. RR until Big Kid saw Stonehenge with his own two (tired) eyes.

Big Kid loved the audio tour…it really was fabulous

The verdict?  Clearly, Big Kid loved it which made the 24 hours with no sleep thing worth it.  Mr. RR had him convinced that aliens were really the only logical explanation for Stonehenge.

Little Kid, however, succumbed to the dreaded 8-hour time zone change and slept through the entire experience.  We suspect she’s going to be very angry about this someday.

Snarkiness aside, we were quite awed by the experience.  The sheer size of these stones which were put into place 3,800 years ago is awe-inspiring.  That England has managed to keep the site so serene (sheep were grazing for miles in each direction) is testament to the value they place on their history.

A big thank you to our dear friend Carey, The Tome Traveller, who recommended that we invest the time reading Edward Rutherford’s Sarum before we left on our trip.

Sarum, for those of you who haven’t tackled this monstrosity of a book, is a Michener-esque novel of Stonehenge and the surrounding area.  Beginning with the last ice-age, the novel follows the descendants of two families through England’s history ending around WWII.

While it’s the characters themselves that keep you reading this 900+ page (hardback) chunkster, the historical detail of the Salisbury Plain was fascinating and enhanced our visit to no end.

Of course no visit Stonehenge would be complete without a visit to the gift shop where we picked up (of course):

We hear it isn’t Cornwell’s best novel, but under the circumstances we thought it well worth a shot.

Who Says Soap Operas are Dead?

A Reader’s Respite recently read an article that paid homage to the dying era of television soap operas.  With the cancellation of long, long-running daytime soaps such as All My Children and Guiding Light, the article sounded the death knell for the age of soap operas. 
And while soap operas have never been a part of our television repertoire, we have fond memories of them.  Somehow, they seem connected with our mother, who we remember watching shows like General Hospital when we were just a wee lass.  For years we were convinced that Luke and Laura were some distant cousins of ours.

Now this was drama…..

But wait…are soaps really dead?
We think not.  A Reader’s Respite has recently become addicted to a relatively new soap opera that has hit the airwaves.  Severely addicted (truly, it’s becoming a problem).  And just because this soap opera is produced by PBS and cloaked in the disguise of Masterpiece Theater doesn’t make it any less of a soap opera.

Downton Abbey is our latest obsession.  We are mesmerized by this British period drama that is really nothing more than a lurid, tawdry soap opera about an aristocratic English Crawley  family and their equally fascinating servants. 

We *heart* Maggie Smith as the Dowager Duchess

With a stellar cast and clear cut good characters versus the baddies, what’s not to love?  There’s plotting, conniving, greed, lust, envy…..just about all the deadly sins make an appearance.  Not to mention the stunning setting and glorious period costume. 

Highclere Castle, the setting for Dowton Abbey

A Reader’s Respite hasn’t been so interested in television since the first season of Lost premiered (before the show lost us after season three….just sayin’).
Dowton Abbey premiered in 2010 to the very large British audience leading to it’s continuance in 2011.  So if you haven’t seen it, it’s not too late to catch up.

Doesn’t Mary just look like a bitch?

And if you’re an Amazon Prime member, it’s free.  (Even gooder, right?)
And now it’s time for us to go watch episode four….the Dowager Duchess is about to get her comeuppance…..