I finished my goal of 50 books this year not to shabby since I started so behind the ball. I did not get all the reviews written mostly because the books I finished the year out with for the challenge were ones I have already read and I just could only type so many Reviews. Bad of me I know.
But the new year commeth and I shall set my goal for a reasonable 50 again and start the reviews once more.
Happy new year fellow book Lovers.
At her friend Ivy’s behest, Lady Emily Ashton reluctantly agrees to attend a party at the sprawling English country estate of a man she finds odious. But the despised Lord Fortescue is not to be her greatest problem. Kristiana von Lange, an Austrian countess once linked romantically with Emily’s fiancÉ, the debonair Colin Hargreaves, is a guest also. And a tedious evening turns deadly when their host is found murdered, and his protÉgÉ, Robert Brandon—Ivy’s husband—is arrested for the crime.Determined to right a terrible wrong, Emily embarks on a quest that will lead her from London’s glittering ballrooms to Vienna’s sordid backstreets—and into a game of wits with a notorious anarchist. But putting Colin in deadly peril may be the price for exonerating Robert—forcing the intrepid Emily to bargain with her nemesis, the Countess von Lange, for the life of her fiancÉ.
You are so young. You may wonder what an old man like me could teach? I wonder as well. I certainly don’t claim to know all the answers. I’m barely figuring out the questions….Life has a strange way of repeating itself and I want my experience to help you. I want to make a difference. My hope is that you’ll consider my words and remember my heart.
Harry Whitney is dying. And in the process, he’s losing his mind. Afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, he knows his “good” time is dwindling. Wishing to be remembered as more than an ailing old man, Harry realizes the greatest gift he can pass on is the wisdom of his years, the jumbled mix of experiences and emotions that add up to a life. And so he compiles a book of his poems for his favorite granddaughter, Emily, in the hope that his words might somehow heal the tenuous relationships in a family that is falling apart.
But Harry’s poems contain much more than meets the eye….As Emily and her family discover, intricate messages are hidden in them, clues and riddles that lead to an extraordinary cache of letters, and even a promise of hidden gold. Are they the ramblings of a man losing touch with reality? Or has Harry given them a gift more valuable than any of them could have guessed? As Harry’s secrets are uncovered one by one, his family learns about romance, compassion, and hope — and together they set out to search for something priceless, a shining prize to treasure forever. They may grow closer in spirit or be torn apart by greed…but their lives will be undeniably altered by Harry’s words in his letters for Emily.
The letters are written by a Grandfather with Alzheimers (ostensibly) to his granddaughter. Grandpa Harry wants to leave letters and poems behind so that people can know him for the man he was in life, and not the man he was as his mind and conduct were claimed by disease.
There are additional story lines relating to his relationships with his wife, his children, and between his children and their families, but I was most struck by two things: his desperation to be remembered with fondness, and not as the crazy crank he anticipated becoming; and the fact that his disease process was exacerbated by a lifelong battle with depression.
I was touched by the story, even when I felt that the ending was perhaps a little idealized for a society that exalts the easy divorce.
Once an aristocrat in the heady days of pre-revolutionary France, now Lestat is a rockstar in the demonic, shimmering 1980s. He rushes through the centuries in search of others like him, seeking answers to the mystery of his terrifying exsitence. His story, the second volume in Anne Rice’s best-selling Vampire Chronicles, is mesmerizing, passionate, and thrilling.I’m going to just put this out there: Lestat is among the most fascinating minds I’ve ever been inside in literature. He just is. I understand that this is an erotic horror novel but that doesn’t diminish the truth of that statement. This book holds up to the test of time. I re-read it , and found out that I had not had a silly teenage fancy about it.
Lestat is just one of those… well the main review says Faustian, and I’m going to have to agree. His journey through sensuality, spirtuality, violence and meaning is one of the most fascinating I’ve ever read. It comes to a culmination in “Memnoch the Devil,” I feel, but this is where it begins. Lestat is a thoroughgoing bastard with lines like “I can’t help that I’m a gorgeous fiend. It’s just a card a drew,” and “I don’t like myself, you know. I love myself, and I’m committed to myself to my dying day, but I don’t like myself.” You can’t help but want to know more about him. Mythical, poetic, grand, larger than life. He just sucks you up into his story. I defy anyone to read this and not end up caring for this mind deeply. It’s just so beautiful. I think his journey through the chronicles is very much Odysseus-like. Except that he does not know where his home is, and he rejects the very idea of it. But that’s what he’s searching for all the same.
Perhaps I got attached to these at a young age, so I have a different perspective. But I think you can appreciate his passion, and the beauty with which it is expressed until a far older age than that.
The time is now.
We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks, as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead. . .
He speaks quietly, plainly, even gently . . . carrying us back to the night when he departed human existence as heir–young, romantic, cultivated–to a great Louisiana plantation, and was inducted by the radiant and sinister Lestat into the other, the “endless,” life . . . learning first to sustain himself on the blood of cocks and rats caught in the raffish streets of New Orleans, then on the blood of human beings . . . to the years when, moving away from his final human ties under the tutelage of the hated yet necessary Lestat, he gradually embraces the habits, hungers, feelings of vampirism: the detachment, the hardened will, the “superior” sensual pleasures.
He carries us back to the crucial moment in a dark New Orleans street when he finds the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her, struggling against the last residue of human feeling within him . . .
We see how Claudia in turn is made a vampire–all her passion and intelligence trapped forever in the body of a small child–and how they arrive at their passionate and dangerous alliance, their French Quarter life of opulence: delicate Grecian statues, Chinese vases, crystal chandeliers, a butler, a maid, a stone nymph in the hidden garden court . . . night curving into night with their vampire senses heightened to the beauty of the world, thirsting for the beauty of death–a constant stream of vulnerable strangers awaiting them below . . .
We see them joined against the envious, dangerous Lestat, embarking on a perilous search across Europe for others like themselves, desperate to discover the world they belong to, the ways of survival, to know what they are and why, where they came from, what their future can be . . .
We follow them across Austria and Transylvania, encountering their kind in forms beyond their wildest imagining . . . to Paris, where footsteps behind them, in exact rhythm with their own, steer them to the doors of the Théâtre des Vampires–the beautiful, lewd, and febrile mime theatre whose posters of penny-dreadful vampires at once mask and reveal the horror within . . . to their meeting with the eerily magnetic Armand, who brings them, at last, into intimacy with a whole brilliant and decadent society of vampires, an intimacy that becomes sudden terror when they are compelled to confront what they have feared and fled . . .
Interview with the Vampire” is a truly remarkable book and this is by far not the first time I have read it, but the first time I review it. Without claiming to be a fantasy know-it-all, I’d like to say that the characters in this book are probably some of the most well-developed fantasy creatures out there. Each one has their own doubts, fears, hopes, and a whole system of values. They might not always act as expected from them, but then again, do they have to be perfect, all-knowing, wise and so very distant from humans every single time? What Anne Rice has created is not only a work of fiction, but also a study of psychology.
I have never read a book which goes so deeply into vampire nature, telling us a whole new story of insecurity, where dark thoughts battle with the constant fascination by the world; where the need to be together with somebody of your own kind overcomes all obstacles, even your own hatred; where the struggle for knowledge fights for its existence with the fear that there might be nothing to know; where cold comfort meets change. And all this is so stylish, so dark and dangerous, that nobody dares to think these vampires are funny or stupid.
Isn’t it paradoxical that the book’s approach to fantastic creatures is so logical, yet so rarely used in modern-day fantasy literature? After all, some of them have been humans before their transformation, right? Why does no one pay attention to their struggle after becoming vampires for example? Where does the presumption that they suddenly become encyclopedias come from?! I’m not saying the human psychological approach towards them doesn’t exist, such a thing I cannot claim, but it still is an uncommon concept. Perhaps it’s harder to think before writing, to analyze the options and get to know your own characters, to predict their every move. All too often, modern-day authors just find in fantasy an easy way to escape all logic and write whatever comes out from under their fingers. That is why, I fear, literature teachers will always retain their negative attitude towards fantasy. Which is a shame.
A former blood slave, the vampire Zsadist still bears the scars from a past filled with suffering and humiliation. Renowned for his unquenchable fury and sinister deeds, he is a savage feared by humans and vampires alike. Anger is his only companion, and terror is his only passion—until he rescues a beautiful aristocrat from the evil Lessening Society.
Bella is instantly entranced by the seething power Zsadist possesses. But even as their desire for one another begins to overtake them both, Zsadist’s thirst for vengeance against Bella’s tormentors drives him to the brink of madness. Now, Bella must help her lover overcome the wounds of his tortured past, and find a future with her
Janey Wilcox is an M.A.W. (that’s Model/Actress/Whatever to the uninitiated). The problem with Janey, the protagonist of Candace Bushnell’s first novel, Trading Up, is not the M or the A part. It’s the W. Here is a rare alphabetical anomaly: In Janey’s case, W stands for “prostitute.” Oh, Janey never crosses the line into actual hookerdom, but she does sleep with extremely wealthy men in the hopes they’ll improve her status, her financial situation, or her lifestyle. When we first met Janey in Bushnell’s novella collection 4 Blondes, she was up to her usual tricks (so to speak)–scamming a guy for a Hamptons vacation rental. At the opening of Trading Up, her fortunes have improved. She’s now the star of a Victoria’s Secret ad campaign, and as such she’s found access to undreamed-of echelons of New York society. She makes friends with Mimi Kilroy, a senator’s daughter “at the very top of the social heap in New York.” She gets invited to all the best parties. And she finally finds a wealthy man who will actually marry her: Seldon Rose, a powerful entertainment industry executive. Of course, Janey’s social ambitions are not stoppered by her marriage to Seldon, and the clash between her expectations (more parties!) and his (normal life) send Janey into a tailspin that leads to heartbreak. Bushnell is clearly trying to channel Edith Wharton (The Custom of the Country is even invoked by Janey as a screenplay idea), but ends up sounding a lot more like a cross between Tama Janowitz and Judith Krantz. This is a novel about shopping and sex, and while it’s fizzy enough, it’s not Cristal. –Claire DedererOn the positive side, Candace Bushnell obviously knows the Manhattan social scene well and at times you feel that the descriptions are depressingly accurate. I say depressing because it comes across as being such a shallow and superficial world that I am happy to be well removed from it. It’s kind of fun to guess at the inspiration behind some of the characters – Gwyneth Paltrow, Rupert Everett, Anna Wintour, Aerin Lauder…
I continued with this book hoping it would get better. It didn’t. It’s not the worst book that I’ve read, but I still wouldn’t recommend it.
Within the brotherhood, Rhage is the vampire with the strongest appetites. He’s the best fighter, the quickest to act on his impulses, and the most voracious lover-for inside him burns ferocious curse cast by the Scribe Virgin. Owned by this dark side, Rhage fears the time when his inner dragon is unleashed, making him a danger to everyone around him.
Mary Luce, a survivor of many hardships is unwittingly thrown into the vampire world and reliant to Rhage’s protection. With a life-threatening curse of her own, Mary is not looking for love. She lost her faith in miracles years ago. But when Rhage’s intense animal attraction turns into something more emotional, he knows that he must make Mary his alone. And while their enemies close in, Mary fights desperately to gain life eternal with the one she loves.
The second book in the series of the Black Dagger Brotherhood and I have to say the series is getting better. While I really get bored with the chapters are partial chapters on the lessers and the omega I think it may be just because I get so into the stories that the Brothers are having and do not want to be interrupted with that stuff.
Rhage was my favorite from the first book, I was eager and curious to know more about him and how he got his curse. The book did not disappoint in teaching us what happened, and how he handled his monster. That on first look Rhage is not what he appears to be. The love story of Rhage and Mary is sweet, touching and truly a joy to read. Two people with a lot of baggage learning that they do not have to carry it alone.
Sandi Gelles-Cole imagines the life the screen legend and enduring cultural icon might have led — from the opening scene (below) to her 85th birthday on June 1, 2011. DRAMA QUEEN June 1, 2011 They say only the good die young and I guess it s true because I m still here. Today is my eighty fifth birthday. During these years I have lived three lives: Before Marilyn, Being Marilyn and After. I created Marilyn Monroe and then men molded her: studios, agents, and husbands. Ever since the night I did not die, I have tried to leave her behind, but wherever I went, the creature followed. I tried to run. I tried changing my name, my country of residence, my hair color, body type, career and sexual preference. I went to college for coursework in Humanities and studied Russian Literature. But there was no escaping her. The character I created became my own personal monster and devoured me in the 50s, and even after she died I could no more be someone else than I could grow a penis, change my skin color, or stop being a movie star. My so-called death scene is always described the same: My housekeeper, Eunice Murray, finds my wasted, naked body tangled in a sheet, wet from secretions better left unexplained. I am face down with one hand hanging over the telephone. This detail is discussed often; am I answering a call or making one and if I am calling, then whom? But it did not happen that way. I cheated death. . .
I am a huge Marilyn Monroe fan, I always have bee and found what happened to her to be tragic, as so many early deaths can be. This book is an interesting and diffrent look into the what might have happened.
It is of course fictionilized as alternative history but if you have always wondered well what if, maybe they didn’t this is a great read it takes a look at the what if’s behind one of hollywoods most famous deaths. I reccomend it, a quik and fun read.
