Two Different Reads: Tahoe Blowup by Todd Borg and What Maisie Knew by Henry James

What I've been reading: a thriller and a novel of manners and psychology.

Tahoe Blowup (Owen McKenna #2) by Todd Borg, published September 1, 2001 by Thriller Press. A thriller set in Tahoe - from it I learned a lot about preventing and causing forest fires, besides arson, and the controversy over controlled or non controlled burning. I also learned about rescue dogs, the anthropomorphic qualities attributed to them that may not be so anthropomorphic after all. Dogs do have emotions similar to ours. A good thriller, the second in the series, the books only get better as they progress. There are now about 12 or so.

What Maisie Knew by Henry James, a free ebook on Kindle. I recently witnessed a divorce case and the effects on children, so this novel about a young girl being used as a pawn between two disagreeing parents was particularly interesting to me. Daisy is bandied back and forth not only by her separated and then divorced parents but later on by her stepparents as well. She comes out of it okay, had to pretend sometimes to be more obtuse then she really was, and in the process learns a lot just by observing the behavior of the adults around her. James is a master in the psychological novel. I discovered him later in life (after college, that is) and am a great fan of his.

What books have you finished this week?

Book Beginning: AMHERST by William Nicholson

The Friday 56: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginnings at Rose City Reader.

Amherst by William Nicholson, bo be published February 10, 2015 by Simon and Schuster.

Book beginning:

The screen is black. The sound of a pen nib scratching on paper, the sound amplified, echoing in the dark room A soft light flickers, revealing ink tracking over paper. Follow the forming letters to read: 

I've none to tell me to but thee 

The area of light expands. A small maplewood desk, on which the paper lies. A hand holding the pen.

My hand, my pen, my words. My gift of love, ungiven. 

page 56:

"It's so like you to want to build a graveyard," his wife said to him. "Why are we to be always thinking about death?"

Book description:... a novel about two love affairs set in Amherst—one in the present, one in the past, and both presided over by Emily Dickinson.

Alice Dickinson, a young advertising executive in London, decides to take time off work to research her idea for a screenplay: the true story of the scandalous, adulterous love affair that took place between a young, Amherst college faculty wife, Mabel Loomis Todd, and the college’s treasurer, Austin Dickinson, in the 1880s. Austin, twenty-four years Mabel’s senior and married, was the brother of the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, whose house provided the setting for Austin and Mabel’s trysts.

Alice travels to Amherst, staying in the house of Nick Crocker, a married English academic in his fifties. As Alice researches Austin and Mabel’s story and Emily’s role in their affair, she embarks on her own affair with Nick, an affair that, of course, they both know echoes the affair that she’s writing about in her screenplay.

Interspersed with Alice’s complicated love story is the story of Austin and Mabel, historically accurate and meticulously recreated from their voluminous letters and diaries. Using the poems of Emily Dickinson throughout, Amherst is an exploration of the nature of passionate love, its delusions, and its glories. This novel is playful and scholarly, sexy and smart, and reminds us that the games we play when we fall in love have not changed that much over the years.

What do you think? Is this a novel for you, as a reader?

Book Review: Hausfrau byJill Alexander Essbaum

Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum will be released March 17, 2015 by Random House. I consider it general or women's fiction and rated it 2.5/5.

I enjoyed reading the first half of this novel about Anna, the American homemaker married to a Swiss and living near Zurich, becoming a hausfrau or German housewife. I could sympathize with Anna at the beginning for feeling isolated in a country with a different language and customs and a husband who becomes mostly unfeeling, unaware.

In the second half of the book, Anna becomes less sympathetic, acting irrationally, spinning out of control in spite of going regularly to see a psychoanalyst. I didn't feel she was a tragic figure, though the author tried to make her one. She seemed just a confused and contradictory personality.

The ending was unsettling as I found it disappointing and the overall character development not quite believable.

I'd love to hear comments from others who have read the book.

I received a review galley of this book from the publisher. 

Sunday Salon: Historical Fiction and Mystery

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also visit It's Monday: What Are You Reading hosted by Book Journey, and Mailbox Monday.

Two uncorrected proofs arrived from Harper Collins which I am looking forward to reading.

John the Pupil

John the Pupil by David Flusfeder is to be released March 3, 2015. 

It's described as "a medieval road movie, recounting the journey taken from Oxford to Viterbo in 1267 by John and his two companions, at the behest of the friar and magus Roger Bacon, carrying a secret burden to His Holiness Clement IV. The holy trio are tried by thieves on the road and tempted by all sorts of sins – and by the sheer hell and heaven of medieval life. ‘John the Pupil’ reveals a world very different and all too like the one we live in now."

A Dangerous Place

A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear will be released March 17, 2015.

Spring 1937: Maisie Dobbs returns in a story of political intrigue and personal tragedy: a brutal murder in the British garrison town of Gilbraltar leads the investigator into a web of lies, deceit and danger.

Am on the last few pages of a book from my own collection, bought at a library sale:

The Art Thief

The Art Thief by Noah Charney was published September 18 2007 by Atria Books.

It's about three simultaneous art thefts - a Caravaggio altarpiece from a church in Italy, a 20th century modern masterpiece from a vault in Paris, and another modernist painting just purchased for over six million pounds from an art gallery in London.

The book is worthy of a reader who is a chess master, as the plot is a challenge to follow and to keep all the pieces in mind. Math, figures, and art history, art forgery and events are put together in a complex pattern. Nevertheless, I had a good time trying to follow along. And the humor lightens it up here and there.

Next, I have to decide - read one of my library finds or one of my own books?
   

Virtual Poetry Circle: TERMINUS by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Join Savvy Verse and Wit's Virtual Poetry Circle, every Saturday. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. 

Here's my choice this week -

 Terminus BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

It is time to be old,

To take in sail:—

The god of bounds,

Who sets to seas a shore,

Came to me in his fatal rounds,

And said: “No more!

No farther shoot

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.

Fancy departs: no more invent;

Contract thy firmament

To compass of a tent.

There’s not enough for this and that,

Make thy option which of two;

Economize the failing river,

Not the less revere the Giver,

Leave the many and hold the few.

Timely wise accept the terms,

Soften the fall with wary foot;

A little while

Still plan and smile,

And,—fault of novel germs,—

Mature the unfallen fruit.

Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,

Bad husbands of their fires,

Who, when they gave thee breath,

Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark as once,

The Baresark marrow to thy bones,

But left a legacy of ebbing veins,

Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,—

Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,

Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.”

 As the bird trims her to the gale,

I trim myself to the storm of time,

I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:

“Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near,

And every wave is charmed.”

from The Poetry Foundation

This poem, which I found today, expresses how I felt on walking out of my place of employment after umpteen years, announcing my retirement and the death of my mother, on the same day.

How well said, for all those who wondered Why? Why would you do that? The first six lines expressed my sentiments. It was time to go and "mature the unfallen fruit."

Waiting on Wednesday: An Historical Novel and a Psychological Thriller

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine to introduce new books that we are waiting to be released.

Here are two to wait on, to be published February 10, 2015 by Simon and Schuster and Touchstone.

Amherst by William Nicholson is described as : a novel about two love affairs set in Amherst—one in the present, one in the past, and both presided over by Emily Dickinson. Sounds interesting, right?

Crazy Love You by Lisa Unger is about a childhood relationship that becomes dangerous for one of them when they become adults. The psychological thriller is described: Darkness has a way of creeping up when Ian is with Priss. Even when they were kids, playing in the woods of their small Upstate New York town, he could feel it.

What new books are you waiting to be published? 

First Chapter: Enter Pale Death by Barbara Cleverly

First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted weekly by Bibliophile by the Sea. Share the first paragraph of your current read.

My current read is a book from the library by an historical mystery novelist whose books I've enjoyed before.This one doesn't disappoint either.

Published December 2, 2014 by Soho Crime.

First paragraph:

Prologue

England, April 1933 

"Gingerbread? You're sure it was gingerbread she asked for, Gracie?" 

The odd request was the very last thing a housekeeper wanted to hear at this moment. Mrs. Bolton stood in the center of the heaving kitchen overseeing her troops with a discipline firm enough to have impressed the Duke of Wellington himself. But, ever alert, the Iron Duke would, like her, have had his attention snagged by an unexpected detail. 

Book description: One morning before dawn in the stables of her country estate, Lady Truelove meets a violent death in an encounter with a dangerous horse. Classified as “death by misadventure,” this appears a gruesome accident. But Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands suspects foul play

Would you continue reading?