The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
by Eva Rice

From Publishers’ Weekly:
An impulsive taxi ride with a stranger in 1950s London indelibly changes Penelope Wallace’s life in Rice’s sparkling debut. At 18, Penelope lives with her younger brother, Inigo, and her terribly glamorous, young widowed mother in a drafty, rundown, English estate house in the countryside. With the loss of the man of the house, financial pressures mount, threatening sheltered Penelope’s family manse—and what’s left of her family’s place in society. She finds a kindred spirit in the outspoken posh Londoner, Charlotte Ferris, who has a “great gift for circumnavigating normal behavior,” when they both reveal their passion for American singing sensation Johnnie Ray. After agreeing to accompany Charlotte’s aspiring magician cousin, Harry Delancy, to his former girlfriend’s engagement party to make her jealous, Penelope begins her journey through a world of smart parties, fashionable teas and simmering romance.

When I was thirteen in the late 1960s, I came upon a stack of my mother’s old records. They were 33s but they looked like 78s, so their “quaintness” immediately intrigued me. But more important than how they looked, was how they sounded: from them came the dulcet tones of a man of whom I had never heard–Johnnie Ray.

I loved listening to those records but despite my best efforts, my friends never came to share my enthusiasm for Johnnie. Even their parents gave me odd looks. So I was delighted to be able to share the thrill of Johnnie with the two young protaganists of The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Penelope and Charlotte, who eventually score front row seats for Johnnie’s London concert.

I greatly enjoyed this book–and not just for Mr. Ray’s high-jinks.

English society, with its class system, has long fascinated me. It was interesting to see how far removed from its center Penelope was, living a train ride outside of London. Despite the fact that her family no longer has any money, she’s accepted into this society on Harry’s arm because of her family home – Milton Magna, the albatross that shapes the future of Penelope, her brother and her mother.

Rice makes the contrast between the glittery parties and simple country life, between having money and having a name, between English and American class systems. She shows how American music and culture overtook England long before the “British Invasion” of America in the 1960s.

My mother’s older sister, Loretta, had married an American soldier…and had moved to the United States after the war….My mother liked to give the impression of being appalled by her sister’s willingness to embrace a country she considered deeply vulgar, but secretly she was envious as hell, and who could blame her? She and I were fascinated by stories of refrigerators in every kitchen, proper washing machines and spin dryers, drive-in movies and Coca-Cola. (My brother) Inigo (was) obsessed by the new wave of American music…

The only complaint I have is that, after making me salivate at the dresses on the cover of the book, there was very little detail about the party clothes. I’d really liked to have known more than just it was “sparkly mint green dress”!

But don’t let that minor problem stop you from reading this delightful novel. Four stars.

P.S. If you want to see & hear Johnnie Ray, there are some videos on YouTube under several misspellings of his name. Coincidentally, we just finished watching the 1954 movie There’s No Business Like Show Business (we found it at Zip.ca, Americans might try Blockbuster.com ) in which Ray has a couple of solo numbers.

Reading Challenges: The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets satisfies five of my reading challenges: the Typically British Reading Challenge, the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Chapters-Indigo link for Canadian readers:
Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller.

Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Eva Rice, Penelope Wallace, Inigo, Milton Magna, Charlotte Ferris, Marina Hamilton, Rocky Dakota, Johnnie Ray

Can you see them? I finally figured out how to enlarge the detail and now I can show you the animals in the field across the road.

We see deer there nearly every day. Every delivery person who comes comments on seeing them there. And I often see cars stopping just in front of our place and backing up a bit to get a better look.

They are such gorgeous creatures and I never tire of seeing them or admiring their beauty.

P.S. Do you mind that I cheated a bit and took this picture this morning?

The Body in the Belfry
by Katherine Hall Page

This is Book One of the Faith Fairchild series

This book is the beginning of a growing list of “Body in the _____” series. Its heroine is Faith Sibley, a native New Yorker who has started a gourmet catering service. She meets and falls in love with Tom Fairchild, a young minister who whisks her away from her beloved home town to a much different life in rural Massachusetts. Faith is trying her best to fit into the role of pastor’s wife in a small town where everyone’s family goes back several generations and where everyone knows everyone else’s business. While taking a walk with her baby son, Benjamin, Faith discovers a dead body in a belfry. The body is that of Cindy Shepherd a young, willful girl who had made plenty of enemies in their small town. The suspects include Cindy’s fiance, and several men with whom she had had affairs and was subsequently blackmailing. Faith’s curiosity and unofficial investigations eventually lead her and Benjamin into grave danger. (Karen Potts on Amazon.com

This is the first Katherine Hall Page work that I’ve read and, once again, I praise the web-site Fantastic Fiction where I can find out what series an author has written and the chronological order of the books in each; and our public library system which allows me to borrow from other library systems in our province – in this case, it was the Halifax Regional Library that lent me this book.

I recognize that The Body in the Belfry is not great literature. Maybe it’s not even great mystery. But I liked it.

I liked Faith Fairchild, whom various reviewers have called unlikable, a meddler and a snob. A snob she may be–especially about food and clothes–but she is not unlikable. And if she and her ilk didn’t meddle, how would we have the mystery?

Having left the city to live in the country seven years ago, I identified a little with Faith on that score. Faith has just moved and is in that difficult transition period that befalls all who make that move. Maybe she’ll mellow with time. If not, then her “snobbery” will continue to highlight the charming and not-so-charming idiosyncrasies of her fellow townspeople.

Despite the red herrings, the mystery wasn’t overly tight. I guessed the killer half-way through, although I had a harder time nailing the exact motive.

Despite the flaws, I really enjoyed this time with Faith and I’m quite sure I’ll read at least a couple more in the series (there are 18 now–it’s certainly a busy little town with a lot of dead bodies). Hall Page has a wicked sense of humor: for example, Faith reflects that her catering business Have Faith had initially been mistaken by some as “an escort service for the guilt ridden”, and perhaps as the series continues, the mysteries will be more polished.

I’m willing to give it a go. Three and one half stars out of five.

Reading Challenges: The Body in the Belfry satisfies four of my reading challenges: the First in a Series Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: The Body in the Belfry, Faith Fairchild mystery, Katherine Hall Page, Aleford, Fantastic Fiction

In addition to the challenges that must be completed in 2010, I’ve taken on some more ambitious projects that have no deadline and are ongoing.

These are:

The Amy Einhorn Perpetual Challenge, to read all books published under the Amy Einhorn imprint.

Amy Einhorn started Amy Einhorn Books with the goal of hitting that sweet-spot between literary and commercial. Over her 20+ year publishing career, she has worked in very literary houses and very commercial houses—but what she found is that she enjoys a mix of both—smart, intelligent writing coupled with a page-turning story. She intends her books to be just such.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett was the first book she published under this imprint. There’s a list of all of the titles published so far here. This, of course, will grow over time. The Challenge will keep up.

The Reagan Arthur Books Challenge: Reagan Arthur Books is a brand-new imprint from Little, Brown & Company. Currently, there are three books available, but another 16 are coming in the very near future! You can check them out here.

The hosts of this challenge noticed how many awesome books and authors were going to be published in the upcoming months, and found themselves wanting to read most (if not all) of them. From there, it was an obvious next step to create the Reagan Arthur Books Challenge!

The Pulitzer Project
The goal of the participants of this site is to read all 82 books that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Talk about a challenge!

The National Book Awards Project
This project is very flexible and can be accomplished in a number of ways:

1. Read all the winners of the National Book Award for fiction from 1950 to present.
2. Read all the winners and finalists of the National Book Award for fiction from 1950 to present.
3. Read the winners and finalists of the National Book Award for fiction of one year.
4. Read the winners of the National Book Award for fiction of one decade.
5. Read all the books that were winners or finalists by a single author (there are several authors who were finalists and/or won in multiple years).

The Orange Prize Project
The Orange Prize recognizes notable women writers. A panel of five women, all passionate readers and at the top of their respective professions, choose the winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction. Meanwhile, three women with a proven interest in new fiction, who work at a senior level in the book world, select the winner of the Orange Award for New Writers

This reading challenge is a long-term project in which the participants will read all books that have won or been short listed for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction AND the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers. There is no time limit.

The Newbery Project to read all books that have received the Newbery medal.

The John Newbery medal is awarded each year since 1922 for the most distinguished contribution to American children’s literature. There’s a complete list of the winners here.

Technorati Tags: Amy Eichorn, Reagan Arthur, imprints, pulitzer project, National book awards project, Orange Prize Project, The Newbery Projecy, reading challenge

Beside a Burning Sea
by John Shors

From Hilary Hatton at Booklist:
It’s the fall of 1942, and the U.S. hospital ship Benevolence is cruising the waters of the South Pacific when it is torpedoed by the Japanese. Only nine people survive, and they eventually wash up on an island: the captain Joshua, and his wife, Isabelle, a nurse; Isabelle’s sister Annie and a woman named Scarlet, both nurses; Ratu, a teenage Fijian stowaway; Jake, a black engineer; Nathan and Roger, two officers; and Akira, a wounded Japanese soldier.

Okay, first of all, let’s look at the survivors of this accident. One: the captain of the ship. The captain. Don’t they go down with their ships anymore? Two: three nurses. One just happens to be the captain’s wife. The captain’s wife, even though they were not together on the ship at the time of the torpedoing. What are the odds?

The next nurse just happens to be Annie, the captain’s wife’s sister. The captain’s wife’s s….you get the idea. )The third nurse is a “throwaway”: the character that can be killed off by the danger that stalks them all.)

While it is only a matter of time before Japanese naval forces reach the island, the more immediate danger is Roger, who is a ship’s officer, but also a spy for the Japanese. It’s Roger who tipped the Japanese that, unbeknownst to the captain, the hospital ship was carrying ammunition and other supplies of war.

Roger is drawn as a mentally unstable, sadistic, misogynistic, and overly proud man. No explanation is needed: after all, he’s the traitor.

The captain Joshua, the engineer Jake (the token black, who just happens to be the one who had befriended the ship’s stowaway – who also survived) and the other officer Nathan are, of course, kind, helpful, chivalrous, co-operative and generally nice guys. No explanation is needed: after all, they’re Americans.

Then there’s Akira, a wounded Japanese soldier who was on the ship because the rules of war were that hospitals treat all wounded, regardless of nationality. Because Akira’s Japanese, the author spends the entire book explaining and justifying how it is possible that he might be human; a decent and kind human who is in love with Annie. (And how Annie could possibly love him.)

The Japanese who land on the island are all wicked, wicked. The Americans who come and bomb and kill the Japanese are heroes. Are we twelve years old?

Beside a Burning Sea is a romance and, really, I shouldn’t have been venturing into this territory. I have no patience with such juvenile characterization and plot coincidences. The roster of survivors reminded me of a (quite bad) story that I wrote for a seventh grade English composition.

If that’s romance literature and you enjoy it, then have yourself a read. But this is nowhere near being literature. I know I sound like a book snob when I say that, but I find that as I get older and realize that my time to read is running out, I want to read solid fiction (and my snackies of cozy murder mysteries). If I’m going to read romance, at least let it be disguised in a half-decently written story (such as The Diplomat’s Wife.)

How about you? How important is the writing–the plot development, the characterization, the style, the objectivity of the author–to you, if you like the genre?

I borrowed Beside a Burning Sea from my public library.

Beside a Burning Sea satisfies six of my reading challenges: the What’s In a Name Challenge, the 10 Categories Challenge, the Historical Fiction Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: Beside a Burning Sea, John Shors, WWII hospital ship