Tuesday Teasers: Birds of a Feather, by Jacqueline Winspear

Posted on February 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


From page 120 of Jacqueline Winspear’s Birds of a Feather:

She was anxious to interview the housekeeper and be on her way back to Chelstone, to plan the next part of her visit to Kent. She was abundantly aware that the initial meeting with Joseph Waite had taken place almost a week ago, and she was not yet certain she had located her client’s daughter.

This is a fine portrayal of Maisie: a bit anxious and all business! Hopefully there’s some fun in her future, too.

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Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

Posted on February 7, 2011 by pagesofjulia

This weekend I devoted myself to the second Maisie Dobbs novel. (See my notes on the first one here.) I am participating in the Maisie Dobbs Read-Along, although I’m doing a terrible job because I’m so LATE on each book. 😦 I am observing that I will continue to be LATE for at least the second and third books. Perhaps I will catch up on book four…

I am currently nearly finished with Birds of a Feather. We got to know Maisie in the first book: we learn her history as a young girl who loses her mother and goes to work as a servant; gets “discovered” for her intellect and tutored by her lifelong friend and mentor Maurice; goes to college; volunteers to nurse in the Great War; meets the love of her life and suffers tragedy. We learn of her relationships with her father, mentor Maurice, and patroness, if you will, the Lady Rowan. We also meet Billy Beale, who she hires as her assistant. In the second book, then, there is much less background to be covered, although it is sufficiently reviewed that a reader starting with book 2 will be just fine. Really, the review was a bit heavy-handed for me so recently after book 1, but I appreciate a series that can be begun in the middle, so I’ll be patient.

Maisie and Billy have undertaken another case, and operate as a team this time around, whereas in book 1, Billy took on an assistant’s role only late, and informally. Strangely, I don’t find the explain-it-to-the-assistant device to be natural or useful; I liked it better when Maisie just thought things to herself. These are lovely stories, and I love the time and place evoked so beautifully, and I like Maisie herself – plucky, smart, and caring, and with a satisfyingly complex backstory, relationships, and personal hang-ups. She’s very human. But I find myself frustrated, fairly often, with the way Winspear communicates some of her points; things tend to feel a bit forced. I think I want her to show more, and tell less. I still enjoy the books, but I am developing a hang-up. I guess I’m not explaining it perfectly, though, and will see if I can find a concrete example for you as I continue.

At any rate, there is much to like about the book. Billy is a wonderful addition, to the story as well as to Maisie’s life, and I really appreciate the way Winspear addresses substance abuse in the 1930’s. Maisie’s relationship with her father is another realistic device that I feel is well-done, like her problem with visiting Simon in book 1. The men in Maisie’s life in this book add a bit of fun that I hope we’ll continue; if I have a problem with Maisie, it’s definitely the lack of fun! A touch of romance along with mystery, history, evocative sense of place, and relationship dynamics makes for an enjoyable read, if it can just be done naturally.

I’m satisfied to continue reading Maisie Dobbs and discussing with the Book Club Girl. Maybe I’ll catch up one of these days… I expect to give you my end-of-book report tomorrow, and then I’ll venture over to the discussion to participate. For now, I’m avoiding plot spoilers.

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Persuader by Lee Child

Posted on February 4, 2011 by pagesofjulia

It’s an interesting world here in Houston these days. We are having completely abnormal weather: three nights in a row of hard freezes are just about unheard of. Our pipes froze the first night (we have learned some things since then) and yesterday afternoon, and today, businesses have closed, people have been sent home from work (or told not to come), and there has been some minor panicking over road conditions. The panic may have been a little over the top but then again, we have significant ice on the roads and many of us (many! including me) don’t know WHAT to do with that; there have been quite a few car accidents and apparently one traffic fatality. I think staying home sounds stellar, if possible. I am at work today. Ah well.

All of this did conspire to cancel all my plans and back-up plans last night, so I settled in instead to finish my latest Lee Child/Jack Reacher novel, Persuader. It was great! Just what I’m looking for from him, again. Usually Reacher has to be convinced to take up whatever cause is in question, but not this time. When the book opens he has recognized a sinister face from his past, and he’s already determined to involve himself in whatever this man may have going. We meet some unusually friendly, likeable, cooperative federal agents (usually he butts heads with these folks) and he heads into an elaborate set-up. It’s good juicy action that engages from the first page. And unlike my last Reacher read, it ends satisfyingly. Reacher finds the holy grail, makes a love connection and disentangles from it in the same breath, gets a new set of clothes, and walks into the sunset. Or the sunrise; he likes to leave his destination up in the air, after all.

This was just the kind of quick, adrenaline-packed, comforting couch read I was looking for. Ah, what a delicious night at home with the Husband and the two dogs. Today I’m straight into the next read, Birds of a Feather, in an attempt to catch up with the Maisie Dobbs Read-Along. Soon, though, I intend to get into some classics for the Classics Challenge; I have some set aside. What a lovely world!

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book beginnings on Friday: Birds of a Feather

Posted on February 4, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. (You might also consider visiting the original post where you can link to your own book beginning.)

I finished Lee Child’s Persuader last night (great fun, yay!) and will post about it shortly. So this morning, while waiting for road conditions to improve (yes we get a bit wussy in Houston when the whole world ices over and it stays below freezing for days. we get wussy because this NEVER HAPPENS and so we don’t know what to do when it does), I got to start a new book!

Unfortunately I’m behind in the Maisie Dobbs Read-Along, but I picked up book 3 along with book 2, so maybe I can catch up. Today’s book beginning comes from book 2, Birds of a Feather, by Jacqueline Winspear.

“Maisie Dobbs shuffled the papers on her desk into a neat pile and placed them in a plain manila folder. She took up green marble-patterned W.H. Smith fountain pen and inscribed the cover with the name of her new clients: Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Johnson, who were concerned that their son’s fiancee might have misled them regarding her past.”

Did you find the missing word? I did, and I found it jarring, especially RIGHT at the beginning like this. What a shame! Professionally published books should NOT include typos, but in the first two sentences… it troubles me. If anyone were going to catch a typo you’d think they could catch the one in the second sentence of the book!

Aside from this, it’s a perfectly nice beginning. We have some detail to hint to us about Maisie’s organizational habits, and a fairly strong hint as to her line of work. I am interested in revisiting her. What will she encounter this time? Are the typos just beginning?

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Challenge Update: Classics

Posted on February 3, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Continuing in the theme of challenge updates, we have a slow-starter here, for me at least. Good thing I only signed up for a bachelor’s degree in this Classics Challenge; I’m feeling rather ho-hum and not too proud of it.

The idea, as designed by Stiletto Storytime, is expressed with some purposeful vagueness: we get to decide what a classic is! The bachelor’s level comes out to 10 books in a whole year. I can do this! I just haven’t started yet.

I do have a few ideas in mind… I have The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera set aside… and I keep wanting to reread The Count of Monte Cristo. But I don’t think a reread should count; do you? Ah dear. Which brings me to my question for this post – please do comment and let me know! What is a classic? How does one choose? How old does it have to be to be a classic? Can we judge a 2010 book as being a “classic” already? It can be fiction or non, right? The challenger answers thusly: “A classic to me is a book that has in some way become bigger than itself. It’s become part of culture, society or the bigger picture. It’s the book you know about even if you have not read it. It’s the book you feel like you should have read.” …which I think pretty clearly allows nonfiction, but hasn’t settled my question of publication date at all. I don’t really have a book in mind that I’m questioning, but I’ll definitely ask you if I come up with a specific question. 🙂

I think I’m still (still!) suffering from laziness-in-books, after finishing graduate school 14 months ago now. I’m so entertained by fluffy genre fiction (Child! Connelly! Burke! ok he’s less fluffy, a bit), and have trouble getting into heavier books. Does a classic have to be heavy? I did recently sit down and devour Pride and Prejudice in one sitting, yum. (another reread.) Wish me luck in this one… this might be my most challenging challenge, so I’m glad I took it on! Will let you know how it goes.

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Challenge Update: What’s in a Name?

Posted on February 2, 2011 by pagesofjulia

With the beginning of a new month, I believe I’ll go with challenge updates as a theme. On Monday we talked about the Where Are You Reading? challenge. Today let’s talk about the What’s in a Name challenge.

There are six title “types” that must be fulfilled by the end of the year:

1. A book with a number in the title: First to Die, Seven Up, Thirteen Reasons Why
2. A book with jewelry or a gem in the title: Diamond Ruby, Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Opal Deception
3. A book with a size in the title: Wide Sargasso Sea, Small Wars, Little Bee
4. A book with travel or movement in the title: Dead Witch Walking, Crawling with Zombies, Time Traveler’s Wife
5. A book with evil in the title: Bad Marie, Fallen, Wicked Lovely
6. A book with a life stage in the title: No Country for Old Men, Brideshead Revisited, Bog Child

…and, ahem, I’m one third of the way there, and it’s only February! 61 Hours fulfills #1, and Running Blind will fulfill #4. Great fun! Like the Where Are You Reading? challenge, I’m just going about my usual reading business and seeing how it comes out. So far Jack Reacher is winning this one out, hm, interesting. He’s such a traveler, I knew he’d help me out in the Where Are You Reading? challenge, and he is, but he’s also leading this one so far. Jack Reacher wins. 🙂 Happy reading!

Edit: I also read The Time Traveler’s Wife recently, so let’s go ahead and call it halfway done! 🙂

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Teaser Tuesdays: Persuader by Lee Child

Posted on February 1, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Duffy wanted me to move into the hotel and offered to have somebody drive me back to my Boston hotel for my luggage. I told her I didn’t have any luggage and she looked at me sideways but didn’t say anything.

From page 38 of Lee Child’s Persuader. Standard Reacher behavior – and I love that there’s a “she” already. Reacher doesn’t consummate his flings the way Connelly’s character Bosch tends to, but there’s always an attractive (and generally also very tough) woman around. I’m looking forward to the ease of reading a fast-paced Reacher thriller for the next few days!

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finishing Mr. Playboy

Posted on February 1, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Two and a half weeks! Can you believe it? I can’t remember the last time it took me this long to read a book that I was consistently reading and enjoying and staying interested in. It was long! at almost 500 pages. But it was worth my time. Thanks for being patient with me; now we’ll go back to reading shorter books faster!

Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, by Steven Watts, was worth all of my two and a half weeks. I learned a lot about Hefner, and the magazine, and the institution (or empire!) that is Playboy Entertainment, Incorporated. I also learned a lot about our nation’s history and cultural changes. I ended up feeling that Watts did treat Hefner sympathetically; he seems to respect Hefner’s place in our history, as a leader of a number of changes we’ve undergone. The conclusion of the books seems to me to be that Hefner was a good guy at heart, who bumbled into some mistakes, but wanted the best for his family, his company, and his country; he had some serious flaws (self-centeredness for sure, and a tendency towards a double standard betwixt the genders) but also learned and grew as a person.

I feel pretty well convinced that he is not a sexist. He put women on equal standing consistently, and before the country did. But of course his relationship with feminism and women’s rights has always been complicated. There are different ways to interpret the beautiful nudes he favors. Are women empowered by being able to show themselves as fully sexual beings, and make their own livings and their own lives? Or does he objectify them? (The argument presented by some “equity feminists” in this book, which I think Watts is sympathetic to, is that men view women as sexual objects, as women view men as sexual objects; the key is not to think that anyone is ONLY a sexual object. It’s a part of all of our identities. It’s an interesting argument.)

I can’t say that Watts gave an entirely fair and objective portrait, but I think that he did criticize Hefner, and share the critics’ arguments. I finished with more or less the same impression of the man that I started with: he’s done a lot of good, some questionable, but largely good, and he’s awfully interesting, complicated, contradictory, and controversial. (and bizarre, and fantastical…) But now I have a much better understanding of my opinion. I think I agree with Watts in the end.

At any rate I found it a fascinating read, and it’s much bigger than the tale of a playboy. It is, in part, also the story of the sexual revolution, consumerism, post-war American culture, the religious right movement of the Reagan decade, gender politics, big business, censorship and free speech, AND a playboy. Hefner’s larger than himself; he really sort of IS the magazine and the company, and saw himself that way from the moment he conceptualized it.

After finishing this book I picked up the January issue of Playboy magazine to finish reading a few articles. The one on the Mexican drug cartels and widespread violence we’re hearing about in the news was pretty disturbing; it’s hard to know, amidst all the news hype, how scared to be, but the Husband and I have been wanting to vacation down south again, and I think we’re going elsewhere, just to be safe. The fiction this month was a short crime story by Walter Mosley, which was a treat. (I see that Playboy is continuing to find quality fiction, something that Watts taught me has been a priority since the beginning.) And finally, I read “The Demise of the Hollywood Tough Guy”, about old movies and the roles we don’t see any more. I think it’s a good magazine, even though the naked women are not my cup of tea. There, I’m on record.

Off to begin something new! Perhaps you’ll get a Teaser Tuesday post this afternoon.

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where do you get your books?

Posted on February 1, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Today’s subject is independent booksellers.

I found an interesting article in yesterday’s issue of Shelf Awareness. For your sake I’m giving you the whole article here since there’s no direct link, although you can find it along with other news at the link above. So first, from Shelf Awareness:

“Local independent booksellers are still fighting the good fight–and winning” was the headline for a Pioneer Press feature on Minneapolis-St. Paul area booksellers, noting: “Strong indie bookstores contributed to the Twin Cities’ rankings in Central Connecticut State University’s list of most literate cities. The annual study included six criteria, one of which was the number of bookstores per capita. Minneapolis came in third; St. Paul was seventh.”

Among the secrets to indie success cited were “hiring knowledgeable staff, selling books off-site, making available books that are hard to find in chain stores and working to become part of their communities,” the Pioneer Press wrote.

“A good local bookstore is like a good local bar, where everybody knows your name,” said Sue Zumberge, manager of Common Good Books.

The increasing importance and popularity of shop local movements was another critical factor mentioned by several booksellers.

“People are recognizing the limits of shopping online, where you have to know what you’re looking for,” said Hans Weyandt, co-owner of Micawbers Books. “My favorite thing, which happens in our store on a regular basis, is when a customer says, ‘I had no idea this book existed.’ That’s why you need a knowledgeable staff.”

Birchbark Books manager Susan White added, “This buy local-spend local trend has been building for several years, and we are benefiting from it. Customers who think about where they want dollars to go purposely come to us, even though it’s out of the way for some.”

The e-book sales option for indies is gaining national attention with the debut of the Google eBookstore. Michele Cromer-Poire, co-owner of the Red Balloon Bookshop said, “We’ve been selling e-books a long time, and with publicity surrounding the Google website, we are hoping things pick up. We want our customers to have options and understand they can get e-books from us at prices competitive with big retailers. But e-books are only a part of the mix. I don’t think picture books are ever going to go away.”

Jay Peterson, manager at Magers & Quinn Booksellers, envisions two models of independent bookstores surviving: “One model is like Birchbark and Micawbers–small, strong stores that do a great job of picking books for their neighbors and the neighbors are supportive. Our model is the other–a mix of new, used, rare and bargain books that covers a lot of price points and a lot of breadth.”

I really appreciated the bookseller’s reference to the larger buying-local movement. I think of “localism” as applying to fresh food, like produce, because from a nutritional standpoint your food will be fresher and more suited to your climate if you buy locally; but of course the larger issue is economic and political. Supporting local and/or small businesses is an admirable cause, and I subscribe to the concept, but I could certainly do a better job, in practice, of supporting my local Whatever-It-Is. (By the way, shameless plug, for a local Houston bike shop I recommend Bikesport.) And in the world of BOOKS this makes at least as much sense as, well, anything else I can think of. I’m a little bit perturbed at e-readers… I’m rather a Luddite, very late to email and cell phones but here I am with this blog and this website, don’t get me started… and I DO see the advantages, really I do. But I am adamant that the printed book is NOT dead, nor should it be, nor am I even that worried. There are just too many times a person needs a BOOK.

But where are we getting our books these days? I stay aware of this issue mostly thanks to Shelf Awareness, which as I’ve said before covers bookselling more than it does libraries, and often beyond my level of interest; but this little article really drew me. Your local book store is important! Again as mentioned by some of the booksellers interviewed, one way in which your LBS (that’s local book store in this case, although I’m more accustomed to it being local bike shop) is important, is in having rare or used books. (I shop for books almost exclusively at Half Price Books.) But the other way in which the LBS is indispensable is in personal relationships: knowing you, knowing your tastes, making recommendations. (Another crossover concept from the local bike shop.)

I want this to be a personal appeal: go shop at your local book store! But I would be a little bit of a hypocrite, you know why? I don’t shop for books much. I don’t think I’ve bought a book in ANY book store for a year! (Maybe once or twice.) I work in a library, which provides a seemingly infinite tempting array of more than I could ever read; and when I need something specific I don’t have, there’s the larger Houston Public Library system, just ready and waiting to serve me. For free. (That is if the budget cuts don’t get them. Don’t get me started.) So really, I don’t buy much from anybody. :-/

Where do you get your books?

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Challenge Update: Where Are You Reading?

Posted on January 31, 2011 by pagesofjulia

All right! One month down! Whew.

Remember the Where Are You Reading? Challenge? It’s being hosted by Sheila over at Book Journey. I’ve accepted her challenge to read a book set in each of the 50 United States, in this year of 2011. (Bonus points for foreign locations.) In a way it’s a fairly easy challenge, because every book I read counts, so in theory I don’t have to read to the challenge; but then again, I probably will have to do just that, as the year closes and I’m short on Wyoming, or what have you. As far as reading 50+ books in a year, I think I can do that safely. But ask me again in December! We shall see!

It’s been fun so far. In the past month, I’ve read 8 books, representing 4 states, and one foreign location. So, my first observation is, I’m reading in the same places repeatedly! How fun to make a point of traveling the country. Thanks Sheila for the inspiration. (She’s doing a monthly check-in, so January is wrapped up here.) So far I’ve been to Houston, Chicago twice, small-town South Dakota (Bolton is a fictional place from what I can tell – or too small to be on the maps?), and Garrison, NY, followed by three trips to London. Next I think I’m headed to Maine with Reacher, oh boy!

Below you can see my map where I’m keeping track of where I read with bright green pins. I like green. 🙂

Hang in there and you’ll see me keep on traveling around the world. Thanks for the challenge, Sheila!

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