best of 2015: year’s end

Posted on December 31, 2015 by pagesofjulia

My year-in-review post will be up tomorrow, of course, as usual. But first, as the year ends, I always like to review the very BEST books I read in the last year. As ever, these were not necessarily published in 2015 (although many were).

Those that received a rating of 10:

Those that received a rating of 9:

There were, as always, lots of 8’s. I won’t list them all here for fear of exhausting you, although a search on this page for “Rating: 8” should take you there, if you’re that interested. I need to note just a few here, though. Honorable mention goes to Paul Kingsnorth’s strange and singular debut novel, The Wake. I can’t stop thinking about Wallace Stegner’s The Big Rock Candy Mountain. And, cheers to Rick Bragg, whose name appears twice on the lists above.

What did YOU read this year that’s blown you away?

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Maximum Shelf author interview: Diane Les Becquets

Posted on December 30, 2015 by pagesofjulia

Following yesterday’s review of Breaking Wild, here’s Diane Les Becquets: The Wilderness Within.

Diane Les Becquets is from Nashville, Tenn., and holds degrees from Auburn University and the University of Southern Maine. She has taught writing workshops across the country, and is now a professor at Southern New Hampshire University. In addition, she has worked as a medical journalist, an archeology assistant, a marketing consultant, a sand and gravel dispatcher, a copywriter and a lifeguard. She is a competitive archer, and enjoys bicycling, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, backpacking, competing in sprint triathlons and hiking in the woods with her Labrador, Lacey. Before moving to New Hampshire she lived in a small ranching town in northwestern Colorado for almost 14 years, raising her three sons. Prior to Breaking Wild, Les Becquets published three young adult novels: The Stones of Mourning Creek, Love, Cajun Style and Season of Ice.

Where did the plot concept come from? Did it have to be set in northwestern Colorado?

photo: Nathaniel Boesch

photo: Nathaniel Boesch


I love this question because it triggers so many unforgettable moments from the years I lived in Colorado. The idea for the plot first came to me one evening when I was bow hunting alone. I had ventured into an area called Cyclone Pass, way off the grid, and was bugling back and forth with an elk, following him deeper and deeper into the terrain. The land was steep and littered with deadfall. But then the sky darkened; dusk had passed, and I knew it was too late to take a shot. However, what I also realized was that I was lost. I had gotten so caught up in the adrenaline rush of the hunt that I had failed to keep track of my bearings. The cloud cover was thick, the temperatures cold, and rain began to fall. I went for my headlamp in my backpack, but soon discovered that either the batteries were dead or the bulb had burned out. Not only did I not have a cell phone with me (not even sure I owned one at that time), this was an area where there was no cell signal. Four or five hours later, I found my way back to the trail, and eventually was at my truck. On the drive home that night, I began to imagine a story about a female bow hunter who goes missing. I thought about what that could mean about her life metaphorically. I was at an impasse in my own life, and oftentimes I had that sinking feeling of being lost, of feeling totally confused at which direction to take. I still have the note a friend wrote to me during that time: Within yourself you hold the compass. Together we will choose the direction. The geography of Breaking Wild is a metaphor for these women’s lives.

I chose northwestern Colorado for several reasons. First, this was an area I had called home for almost 14 years, where I had raised my three sons. The land and the people of this part of the state are very distinct from other areas. In many ways this is the last of the true West. It is an area I have tremendous fondness for. But also, geographically, this area is fascinating. It contains what archeologists and geologists refer to as the “edge effect,” where the Great Plains meets the High Desert and the Rocky Mountains. The result is dramatic, with rock formations and crevasses and magnificent storms and winds. Breaking Wild is situated in the Canyon Pintada District, terrain that is not only rich in geological formations, but also in Native American artifacts. There are over 300 archeological sites in this expanse of land. To be immersed in that kind of spiritual geography–very simply, there is nothing like it.

What makes for a compelling protagonist?

This is a difficult question, and I don’t think there is one answer. For me, the protagonists whom I am the most compelled by are those characters whom I care about. They become real to me, as do their stories. My life becomes larger because they are in it. Their lives, their stories, who they are, inspire me in both big and small ways. No longer does the protagonist exist simply as a persona on a page, but the reading experience becomes personal; it becomes a relationship. Once that relationship has been established, I’m going to become completely invested in what happens to her, especially when I know she has something at risk. Have you ever found yourself reading a book or watching a film and praying for the character, literally sending up a little prayer, and then catching yourself and saying, “Wait a minute. What am I doing? This isn’t real”? I am guilty of this quite often and that is an enormous compliment to the artist.

I love the way you switch between Amy Raye’s and Pru’s perspectives. Why is only one of these written in the first person?

This is a question I’ll have to answer in retrospect, as it wasn’t a conscious decision. I believe Pru would be the most similar to me, and perhaps that is why her story is told in first person. But in retrospect, I can also say that Pru is a cause-and-effect person, which makes a first-person account all that more accessible. I felt as if I could inhabit Pru and write what she saw and understood. Amy Raye is much more complicated. I wrote to understand her. I was the observer as I was writing her story.

Do you have a favorite of your two female leads?

Because I identify the most with Pru, because I felt as though I already knew her story before I wrote it, I think Amy Raye would have to be my favorite. She was the fresh, new character for me to get to know. She’s completely flawed and vulnerable and unlikable in so many ways, and yet I am the most compelled by her because I want to know why she is the way she is. I remember my dean once telling me, “We admire a perfect woman. We love an imperfect one.” Amy Raye is so completely imperfect, so completely risky, that I adore her.

How was writing for adults different from your young adult novels?

I never thought of myself as a young adult writer. I simply wrote the stories that came to me. However, I believe the age of each of the protagonists had to do with different situations in my life, places where I was stuck emotionally. The novels were a way for me to work through those places and emerge on new ground. I used to tell people I wrote Love, Cajun Style while I was going through my divorce because I couldn’t afford therapy at the time; I wanted to write something funny because I wanted to make myself laugh. I wanted to feel better. Breaking Wild was a completely different experience for me. I wrote the majority of the novel after emerging from a long space of grief after the death of my husband. It was with this novel that something broke free. The process became a way of being, imaginative and prayerful, rather than a means to work through something and get to someplace else.

What’s next?

I spent this past spring in Montana and Washington conducting physical research for my next novel. As with Breaking Wild, it will be a story of psychological intrigue and suspense. It is also a love story, told from the point of view of a shy, yet strong, female character–a conservationist working in the wilderness, who in her 30s falls in love for the first time. Once again, I find myself intoxicated with the experience. I have so many more stories to write. It is the freest I have ever felt.

This interview originally ran on December 9, 2015 as a Shelf Awareness special issue. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

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Maximum Shelf: Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets

Posted on December 29, 2015 by pagesofjulia

Maximum Shelf is the weekly Shelf Awareness feature focusing on an upcoming title we love and believe will be a great handselling opportunity for booksellers everywhere. The features are written by our editors and reviewers and the publisher has helped support the issue.

This review was published by Shelf Awareness on December 9, 2015.

breaking wildBreaking Wild is the first adult novel by Diane Les Becquets, author of highly praised young adult novels including Season of Ice and The Stones of Mourning Creek. Carefully crafted characters and measured pacing define this tale of two women’s parallel personal journeys in the wilderness of northwestern Colorado.

Amy Raye Latour is a wife and mother, an accomplished outdoorswoman and a strong personality. She is on a camping and hunting trip with two male friends. The men have brought down elk with rifles, but Amy Raye hunts with a compound bow; she needs to get away from her companions to find the stillness and quiet required to get close enough to her prey. So she sneaks away from camp on their last morning, with only a light pack. When she doesn’t show up again that night, her friends call local authorities.

Pru Hathaway lives in the nearby town of Rio Mesa with her teenaged son, Joseph, and her dog, Kona. Pru is an archeological law enforcement ranger with the Bureau of Land Management; Kona is certified for search-and-rescue, including avalanche conditions. The sheriff, Colm McCormac, is a friend; when he gets the call about Amy Raye, he turns to Pru.

The personalities of the two women shape the novel: they are both more complicated than they seem on first meeting, and while they are very different, both have concealed and storied pasts. One of Les Becquets’s triumphs is the tantalizingly paced release of new information: about Pru’s personal history, about Amy Raye’s troubles and the tangled web of her life, any strand of which may be implicated in her disappearance. Similarly meticulous is the build-up to Pru and Amy Raye’s expected meeting. This is the story of a chase: Pru and Kona pursue Amy Raye through the backwoods, tracking her movements through drifting snow and rugged terrain, hoping to find her before she succumbs to a mountain lion or the harsh winter conditions. As one party makes a move, the other makes a corresponding move, and the pressure increases. Breaking Wild is not only a masterpiece of characterization, but a feat of taut anticipation and suspense.

Somewhat relieving this tension are flashback interludes to Pru’s and Amy Raye’s respective histories, and the personal dramas of the present timeline. Pru’s son, Joseph, although not entirely untroubled, is a sweet young man; he wonders if Pru and the sheriff–himself an intriguing minor character–should date. Amy Raye’s marriage is not without its cracks, a situation perhaps symbolized by the description of her hunting in the early pages: her husband prefers to shoot with a camera, and has asked her not to keep guns in the house. Thus she uses the compound bow instead, and it is this choice that causes her to leave camp alone in the first place.

Three sections–entitled “Bear,” “Cougar” and “Deer”–further shape the book; chapters within those sections alternate between Pru’s first-person perspective and a third-person view of Amy Raye’s experiences. This format is telling. The natural landscape of northwestern Colorado is a pivotal feature, the backdrop that sets the stakes for a spectacle of life and death, informing every detail, every decision made. Both Pru and Amy Raye repeatedly note the temperature and humidity level, the wind strength and direction, in judging where, when and if to travel. When Pru first tells Kona to “go find,” on page 36 of more than 300, the reader knows that Amy Raye will not be so easily located. From then on, animal life and nature’s rhythms are increasingly crucial to Amy Raye’s subsistence. Is she hunting, or being hunted? She has gone into the wild seeking something undefined: “In that moment she felt everything–life, death, the tangy sweet smell of pine, the freshness of the rain. It was the immensity of those feelings that drove her mad at times.”

While the niceties of backwoods survival are fully developed, the drama of the natural world is less central to the story than the human dramas. The travels of Amy Raye and Pru give them room to grow, and to ask and answer questions of how to love; what a healthy relationship looks like; the nature of addiction; and the meaning and forms of family and community. Indeed, part of what Amy Raye has gone into the woods to find is a connection to her past; Pru found solace in the outdoors when she suffered a personal tragedy. So the two threads of the story–family and community, natural wilderness–intertwine, just as the lives of two women do.

Les Becquets portrays a credible and compelling cast of characters, especially the two strong women at its center. Breaking Wild is a rare novel in its mastery of both plot and character, with deliberate rhythm, thrilling suspense and a striking backdrop. Its breathless momentum carries through to a dramatic conclusion.

Rating: 7 arrows.

Come back tomorrow for my interview with Les Becquets.

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My Life With Berti Spranger by Eva Jana Siroka

Posted on December 28, 2015 by pagesofjulia

An intriguing plot and engaging story highlight this tale of love and art.

berti spranger

My Life with Berti Spranger, a novel by art historian and artist Eva Jana Siroka, stars an art collector who discovers a memoir by sixteenth-century erotic painter Bartholomaeus Spranger. This brings him into contact with a student of history, and Spranger’s titillating art and writing help to prompt the modern pair to romance. This intriguing plot concept is poorly served by disjointed writing, but the glimpses of Spranger’s life in the Flemish court are captivating.

…Click here to read the full review.

This review was published on December 3, 2015 by ForeWord Reviews.

5 hearts

My rating: 5 pieces of disjointed dialog.

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guest review: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, from Pops

Posted on December 25, 2015 by pagesofjulia

More than three years ago, I listened to the audio version of this book, and reviewed it here. At that time, Pops commented:

You make a most important point – that this is essential American history, of which most white Americans are sadly unaware. Jim Crow discouraged personal initiative and disrupted families & communities – a loss for the South. The challenge for black Americans to recreate their lives in “foreign” parts of the country, and the consequences for those regions, is an important part of our collective & continuing history.

He has now gotten around to reading The Warmth of Other Suns himself, and posted a longer comment to that original review. I thought it deserved its own post here so that more readers would have a chance at his thoughts.

warmth

I finally picked this one up, overcame the weighty intimidation of 600 pages and fully appreciated what Wilkerson created. I will simply add to your good observations.

Like you, I enjoyed her written voice and how she allows herself to be part of the story. Her own family story, and its part in her motivation for writing, is important and contributes to the warmth of her people stories. She writes with open sympathy, if not empathy, for the migrants, and full appreciation for the courage & fortitude revealed in their experiences; and I found that appropriate. Just one example, from her earliest pages describing the magnitude of the migrants’ decisions: “it was the first big step the nation’s servant class ever took without asking.”

I am struck by the breadth of her story, much attributable to how she weaves in anecdote & nuance in the course of her narrative. Whole books can be written of the wide ranging cultural contributions in literature, music, sports (maybe even “root doctors” in medicine?) – from the early stages of slavery forward, but released in a torrent once the migration began escaping Jim Crow. She mentions this in passing, but we learn more as she accumulates anecdotes & chapter heading quotes.

The racism implicit in mainstream history & sociology accounts is due full treatment elsewhere, but she obliquely makes the point well with examples of contemporary “professional” accounts, including some that are uncomfortably recent.

And I’m glad she also observes the way the migrants changed the cities, not just the reverse; this is not a Black History Month episode – it’s an essential part of American history that has been ignored and misunderstood at our loss. Her treatment of the Jim Crow regime is a good example, as she describes the deliberate way it was constructed, one little ordinance or ambiguous social convention at a time, enforced by law but often also arbitrarily, in the shadows, hidden under literal cloaks as well as cloaks of darkness. The not-knowing was part of the terror; her analogy to the spread of Nazism is worthy. She describes the terrible impact on individuals, both physical & mental; but also the deep & insidious cultural impacts, including the scars on a white culture so pitifully dependent on the master/slave mentality.

Hers is a wonderful contribution to our history, and will no doubt guide my further reading as it has yours.

Thoughtful as ever. Thanks, Pops. For those that missed it, this is an exhortation to go get Wilkerson’s excellent book today! (My final editorial addition: I really do recommend the audio version.)

Merry Christmas, y’all.

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The Merman by Carl-Johan Vallgren, trans. by Ellen Flynn

Posted on December 24, 2015 by pagesofjulia

In this grown-up fairy tale, a young women’s battles with poverty, violence and neglect are further complicated when a mystical creature enters her life.

merman

Carl-Johan Vallgren’s The Merman, translated from the Swedish by Ellen Flynn, concerns the realistic and heartbreaking circumstances of teenaged Nella and her little brother, Robert; at the same time, it is a dark fairy tale about a mythical creature from the deep and the possibility of resisting evil.

Nella and Robert’s parents are terribly incompetent, uncaring people, more focused on drinking and crime than their children’s welfare. Robert struggles with learning disabilities and is bullied at school; protecting him, getting him the glasses he needs, and his general well-being falls to his sister. Nella is hard-pressed to handle the responsibilities of the household, including cleaning up after her alcoholic mother, about whom she muses, “it was about as hard to judge her as it was to understand her.” This mature and nuanced observation is typical of a girl who, despite her own troubles, seems drawn to others who need her help, such as a disabled man who is one of her few friends.

When the neighborhood bullies begin to threaten Robert with violence, Nella turns to her only ally at school, a boy named Tommy. But contact with Tommy’s brothers presents a new difficulty. They have pulled a mystical being from the ocean, whose otherworldly nature and wordless communication will change everything Nella understands about her life. All at once, Nella struggles with the bullies’ extortion and Robert’s fear; their father is released from prison and brings criminals home with him to disrupt their fragile household; their mother threatens to leave; and the sea creature looks to Nella for help. A burdened but strong and compassionate young woman, she will learn and grow through these tests, and wins the reader’s heart by the time her story reaches the final, hard decisions.

Nella is a compelling protagonist, reminiscent of Roald Dahl’s Matilda in her miserable circumstances, but with a harder, more adult edge. Robert’s suffering is almost unbearable, but sadly realistic. In Ellen Flynn’s translation of Vallgren’s tale, dialogue can be a bit stiff and formal, especially in the children’s cases, but overall she establishes a tone appropriate to the balance of reality and mysticism in Nella’s story, and the stark ugliness of her life. Vallgren evokes his fantasy element with wonder and detail; The Merman is a singular story. Fans of adult fairy tales and bleak realism will be haunted and enthralled by this novel of human tragedies, and the mystery of what lies beyond.

This review originally ran in the November 5, 2015 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 cartons of cigarettes.

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still grasping for a definition of “classics”: a list

Posted on December 23, 2015 by pagesofjulia

I get an excellent email, five days per week, from A.Word.A.Day. Occasionally there is an ad, and I think I’ve seen this one before, but was just recently interested enough to click through. “Listen to the 100 Greatest Books of All Time,” it cries! Well, you know my question: what on earth are the 100 greatest books of all time?? (I’ve wondered before.) I always have to refer back to that BBC list. I think it’s fun to look at what rates, and how it changes. Of course we shall never all agree. But listing books we love is an inherent pleasure, I think. As I’ve done before, I’ve marked up this list:

Bold = I’ve read it
Underlined = I’ve started the book, but never finished
neither = I haven’t picked it up.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Frank Baum
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
Macbeth, William Shakespeare
The Odyssey, Homer
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter
The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe
The Princess and the Pea, Hans Christian Andersen
White Fang, Jack London
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Paradise Lost, John Milton
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs
Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
Daisy Miller, Henry James
The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry
Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Beowulf, unknown
The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, Beatrix Potter
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy
Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
The Masque of Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe
The Indiscreet Letter, Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
Adrift in New York, Horatio Alger, Jr.
Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery
King Lear, William Shakespeare
The Ransom of Red Chief, O. Henry
The Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
The Pit and the Pendulum, Edgar Allan Poe
The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
A Prisoner of Morro, Upton Sinclair
Euthyphro, Plato
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, Hugh Lofting
The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain
The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling
A Haunted House, Virginia Woolf
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare
The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
The Emperor’s New Clothes, Hans Christian Andersen
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche
A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift
The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
Othello, William Shakespeare
The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Common Sense, Thomas Paine
Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare
The Man Who Would be King, Rudyard Kipling
The Purloined Letter, Edgar Allan Poe
Candide, Voltaire
Politics, Aristotle
In Defense of Women, H.L. Mencken
McTeague, Frank Norris
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Lew Wallace
The Apology of Socrates, Plato
A Letter Concerning Toleration, John Locke
A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen
The Five White Mice, Stephen Crane
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
O Pioneers!, Willa Cather
The Idyl of Red Gulch, Bret Harte
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane

I’m surprised to see the blocks of books I have or haven’t read showing up together, rather than sort of equally dispersed down the list. I wonder what ordered these selections and what that means.

It quickly becomes clear that this list employs a heavy cultural bias toward the usual Dead White Guys (hat tip to an excellent blog by that name). Of 100 books, only 12 are by women (11 different women, with Beatrix Potter’s delightful anthropomorphizing children’s books represented twice). At a glance, I’m pretty sure that none of these authors are living. And overwhelmingly Western: Twain, Dickens, Shakespeare, Poe, Crane, Kipling and Stevenson all recur; Sun Tzu is the only non-Western name of the bunch. Plenty of Greeks, no Romans. Only one Fitzgerald (but no Gatsby!), and no Hemingway: and yes, you know I’m biased, but really I think few of the anointed minds who rate “great literature” – academics, professors, professional writers and reviewers – would leave Hemingway off a list of Greats. He’s not for everyone, but I think his talent and achievements are relatively inarguable. He won both a Pulitzer and a Nobel. Actually, that would be another interesting way to look at this list: to cross-check it with prizewinners. Hm.

I’m not overwhelmed by the originality or diversity of this list.

You’ll notice I took the liberty of linking to my reviews, where I’ve written them. These are relatively few, I think because I read many “classics” in school, which is to say pre-blog. There is also a large overlap between this list and the Great Illustrated Classics I remember as a kid (and yes, I gave myself credit for a few I know only from that format [very few], just as an indication of my familiarity with the story). They were my introduction to many classics: Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in 80 Days, Oliver Twist, Treasure Island, Frankenstein, The Call of the Wild, White Fang, Gulliver’s Travels, The Invisible Man (Wells, not Ellison), The Swiss Family Robinson. Some of these I would later read in their unabridged versions, but some, not. I treasured those books. I don’t know what happened to them.

I researched this series later, as a professional librarian, and was dismayed at their reputation. It left me wondering what misconceptions I have, what I missed. Of course the very definition of abridgment is missing things, but these are said to be especially extreme. Here I am with my whole experience of Oliver Twist defined by those illustrations I can still see clearly in my mind: the orphan as interpreted by Great Illustrated Classics had lovely, long eyelashes. On the other hand, I happily read many of the same stories in their full and unabridged versions later on. And I recommend doing so.

The “100 best books of all time” list appears to have been compiled with Dead White Guys in mind, and by more or less the same folks who chose the Great Illustrated Classics. These, at least, are unabridged. And, hey, they’ve got a point: at $99, this is indeed a hell of a deal for all these books pre-loaded onto a player for you. But just don’t forget to survey some women and writers of color and those born in the last 100 years or so, too. There is always my list in progress if you need some tips.

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Worlds Between by Carl Nordgren

Posted on December 22, 2015 by pagesofjulia

An engaging and sympathetic tale of families and cultures, and the choices that shape them.

worlds between

Carl Nordgren’s Worlds Between is the second in the River of Lakes series, which began with The 53rd Parallel. With dual settings in Ontario and Ireland and a diverse cast of characters, this moving story charts divided loyalties and dangers from all directions.

…Click here to read the full review.

This review was published on November 27, 2015 by ForeWord Reviews.

IMG_4538

My rating: 7 colors in refracted light.

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The Darling by Lorraine M. López

Posted on December 21, 2015 by pagesofjulia

A complex and disarming young woman follows her heart, lust, and taste for adventure in an unusual route to maturity and self-actualization.

darling

Lorraine M. López’s The Darling is a coming-of-age story in the time-honored tradition, a tribute to literary giants, and a fresh perspective on life and love. Its heroine challenges assumptions, and after a winding and bumpy journey, evokes a spirit of celebration.

…Click here to read the full review.

This review was published on November 27, 2015 by ForeWord Reviews.

IMG_4538

My rating: 7 items of marginalia.

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Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us by Paul Koudounaris

Posted on December 18, 2015 by pagesofjulia

Photographs of memento mori from around the world illustrate rich relationships with death.

memento mori

Paul Koudounaris (The Empire of Death) presents phenomenal photographs and a fascinating survey of death across cultures and history with Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us. His text is concise but effective, allowing his photography to take the lead. Images are gorgeously rendered in large format and across full spreads. They feature ossuaries, charnel houses and intricate, artistic arrangements of bones, mummies and decorated skeletons from various cultures.

Koudounaris portrays the Torajans of Indonesia, who place their dead in caves, and after the coffins disintegrate, arrange the bones decoratively; the Aymara Indians of Bolivia, who keep treasured skulls in their homes and ask them for advice; and the elaborate, even decadent, Catholic ossuaries created in response to Protestant reforms. Buddhists gilded certain mummies; Rwandans set up memorial vaults. Wrapped in a blue satin cover, with more than 500 illustrations, Memento Mori offers a striking tribute to many ways of remembering and honoring death and the dead.

This review originally ran in the November 27, 2015 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 7 perspectives.

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