Our Quiet Growing Time

Poppy almost has it all: she loves her job, she's about to marry a semi-famous scholar, and she's wearing the family heirloom mega-emerald engagement ring he gave her. In one afternoon, Poppy's life is nearly derailed: at a luncheon at a hotel, she loses the mega ring! The ring is officially missing and Poppy is officially in deep trouble. It only gets worse when she dashes outside to search for cell service (oh sorry, she's a Brit. I mean mobile (moe-bile) service) and she's mugged. Her attacker makes off with her phone, leaving her ring-less and mobile-less and despondent. But her luck quickly shifts when she discovers a high-tech discarded mobile in a wastebasket (British: a bin) in the hotel lobby. She scoops it out and claims it as hers... after all, disposed articles are public property, right? Turns out that the phone she's swiped is the phone of businessman Sam Roxton's former personal assistant. Confronted by the handsome Sam to return the phone,...

A diminutive, eccentric, brunette waitress at a shabby cafe in a tiny English town and a slick business executive who pursues extreme adventure on the arms of statuesque and shallow blondes aren't likely to cross paths. And if they ever did cross paths, they'd quickly un-cross them, because not only do Louisa Clark and Will Traynor have nothing in common, they live life by two totally different scripts. He's cultured and adventurous and snobby; she's flighty and unambitious and timid. And then Will, in the prime of his life, is injured in an accident, leaving him a quadriplegic and plotting the end of his life via assisted suicide. And Louisa loses her job at the cafe and is hired by Will's mom to be his companion, as a last-ditch effort to help her son see that life is indeed worth living. Me Before You is the story of two radically different people who come into each other's lives at just the right moment, to change each other's hearts forever. Lo...

Ancilla Trent is a governess and a spinster at the ripe old age of 26. Miss Trent has successfully suppressed any youthful romantic dreams she may have had and has instead made the education of her young ward her life's purpose. Never has she felt even the faintest stirring in her heart for any man... until she meets the Nonesuch. The Nonesuch, as he is called, is Sir Waldo Hawkridge, a confirmed bachelor, who is touted for his athletic achievements, wit, handsomeness, and his overall masculine perfection . Indeed, that is the very definition of a nonesuch : unrivaled, an ideal, a paragon. Despite her attempts at remaining aloof, and much to his own surprise, Miss Trent and the Nonesuch find themselves perfectly matched in intellect and humor, and find themselves in love. But in true Regency romance fashion, the road to happy-ever-after is hampered by social gaffes, trivial misunderstandings, and a tangled web of snooty meddling characters and their affairs. I've made an...

Englishman Stephen Wraysford is alone in the world. On a business trip to France, he stays with the family of the owner of a local textile mill and quickly becomes infatuated with his lovely and ethereal wife. Stephen and Isabelle begin a heated affair that marks Stephen's life forever, even to the bloody and muddied trenches of World War One. The book begins in 1910 with the adulterous affair between Stephen and Isabelle, but the majority of the book takes place in the trenches in France during the Great War. And this is NOT a love story, no matter what list this may be included on at Goodreads or what it might say in the blurb on the back cover. This is the story of war. Of the enduring toughness of the human spirit and of one man's quest to survive.  Birdsong was unlike any other book I've ever read. It was critically acclaimed when first published in 1993 and boasts many rabid fans, but here's the weird thing: the New York Times described it as "d...

Phoebe's life has fallen apart. She recently broke off her engagement and her best friend has died tragically young.  Nothing goes right for her until she takes refuge in the new boutique she has just opened that specializes in vintage clothing. It's a place where clothes--and memories--are cherished.  Phoebe can't explain why some dresses were meant for certain women or why a dress might choose its owner. But these things happen in Village Vintage. These clothes empower, heal, and restore. Because of her shop, Phoebe finally begins to repair her own life, ultimately finding peace with her past and embracing the hope of a future filled with love... and vintage clothes.  Admittedly, my style sense runs more along the lines of Old-Na-vy rather than Bal-en-ci-a-ga. (But isn't Balenciaga possibly the funnest word that could ever roll off of your tongue?) I'm not interested in fashion and I think that money is better spent on books and vacations than on high-end cl...

I am unequal to the task of summarizing over 9,000 pages of conflict into a concise paragraph to set up where The Scottish Prisoner fits in the whole of Gabaldon's massive canon of delicious tomes.  Let's just say: 1) read the Outlander series; and 2) the events in this latest Gabaldon take place during a gap in Voyager, and is in itself a continuation of Lord John Grey's story. This book has the exquisite double-whammy of featuring both Lord John and our favorite Highland warrior, the strapping Jamie Fraser (the Scottish prisoner of the title), who currently is serving his sentence as a traitor to the Crown as a groom at the estate of friends of Lord John. The last we saw Lord John and Jamie together (in the sequence in which this story fits) was in an uncomfortable scene in a stable in which an angry declaration of desire was made, a punch was thrown, a well-formed nose narrowly avoided smashing, and readers blushed in libraries and living rooms across the w...

James Bond is the man who comes to mind when you think about British spies. He's handsome and cocky. He's swaggering and dangerous and his prowess with the ladies is much-vaunted. I'd like to introduce you to another British agent... Granted he's short, chubby, and middle-aged, bespectacled and prone to muttering to himself. He's the kind of man who remembers his umbrella on clear days and leaves it at home on days when it's bound to pour. He's married to a young beauty--but she's as faithless as his umbrella, and he doesn't have the guts to leave her. This is George Smiley and the fate of British intelligence lies in his pudgy hands.  ...Because it's the height of the Cold War and there is a Soviet mole inside the British intelligence agency. Smiley is pulled from recent retirement to investigate and with a small but trusted team, he follows paper trails and conducts interviews to determine the identity of the double agent. I had a ro...

 In which The Librarian , LindszerWest, and RachelKiwi continue the reread of the gothic classic. The Librarian asks and I answer: 1. Women and illness. So often in this book women are called ill when in reality they're just really emotional. But then, sometimes there seem to be real symptoms of sickness such as the Lintons getting sick and dying from Cathy's fever... What's up with that? Just a viewpoint of weak women's constitutions of the time or is Bronte saying something more? Did you know that the words uterus and hysteria come from the same root? When a woman was called 'hysterical' it meant she was suffering from a 'woman's issue,' the source of her malady being her uterus (naturally!). So I think this view of women as 'ill' is just an example of the cultural and historical views toward women that existed centuries before and decades after the writing of WH . But if anyone deserves the mantle 'hysterica...

Book Club of Two presents Wuthering Heights. The Librarian and I decided to do a re-read of Emily Brontë's only novel for the month of November. The Journalist (LindszerWest)  decided to join us and has become an honorary member of Book Club of Two, swelling our numbers temporarily to three. The Librarian and I each posed three questions to the group about Chapters 1-8. Go here if you'd like to see the full reading schedule. It's not too late to join us on the moors! The Librarian Asks and I answer: In this section we see explanation for Heathcliff's personality...But what about Cathy? How was her mean girl attitude formed? Does the lack of explanation point toward Joseph's religious belief of women's innate wickedness? Or do you see circumstances that caused Cathy to be such a b*tch? Madame Librarian, I'm shocked. Such language! Truthfully, there is no other word for Cathy. It's the word that pops into my head everytime she a...

For the month of November, Madame Librarian and I will be rereading Wuthering Heights , an interesting and... weird gothic classic. You've probably already read it, or pretended to read it, but if you want to delve or re-delve into the wacky mind of Emily Bronte with us, please join in! The Librarian designed this awesome button for Wuthering Wednesday. (I don't know how she does it! But doesn't that button just capture the creepy haunting-ness of the English moors?) Jump over to The Librarian's blog today for a full introduction. Here's the reading schedule, if you care to take the plunge with us: November 9: Chapters 1-8 November 16: Chapters 9-17 November 23: Chapters 18-26 November 30: Chapters 27-34

Toto's "Africa" kept popping into my head while reading The Wild Rose and especially while reading Seamie and Willa’s story in The Winter Rose . I guess I thought of it because of the word Kilimanjaro , but actually, all the lyrics are kind of pertinent to Willa's story: It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you ( like blaming you for the amputation of my leg. It's over!) There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do ( no one can bring back what you took from me. Without my leg, I can't climb. Without climbing, I'm nothing. I want to die. ) I bless the rains down in Africa ( those were the good days with you, before I lost my leg. Which, by the way, was your fault ) Gonna take some time to do the things we never had ( we never had each other before, but now that I'm back in England after 8 years, lets be together, even though you're married to another) The wild dogs cry out in the night As they grow restles...

The Last Letter from Your Lover has a similar premise to a Sophie Kinsella novel I read earlier this year: Remember Me?. In both of these novels, a London woman wakes up from a terrible accident with amnesia to find that she is trapped in a loveless marriage, but harboring a secret lover on the side. At first, I was disgruntled by the obvious similarities, but then two things from my college classes came to mind. The first: that there are a defined number of plots into which all stories--movies, TV shows, or books—fall. These “universal plots” or “master stories” have been catalogued in number anywhere from 7 to 36. Thirty-six seems a bit too many. But I generally liked this list of 7, compiled by Christopher Booker: 1. Tragedy 2. Comedy 3. Overcoming the Monster 4. The Quest 5. Voyage and Return 6. Rebirth 7. Rags to Riches I’m having fun thinking of different books and movies an...

This is the story of an eccentric family that lives in a dilapidated castle in the English countryside in the 1930s. Written in journal entries by 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, the reader sees the castle and its inhabits through her [delightful!] point-of-view during a transformative year in her life. This is a classic coming-of-age story; Cassandra is faced with adversity and in her journey through it, gains maturity and achieves adulthood. As with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn , which I also read recently, I found the voice of Cassandra the "child" to be far more compelling than the voice of Cassandra the "adult." Cassandra is a very real and vital voice; I love her sense of the ridiculous. Francie from ATGIB and Cassandra both are two of the most delightful narrators I've ever encountered. They are funny, artless and honest. But for both of these books, my enjoyment decreased hugely after the loss of their childhoods. Maybe adults have forfeite...