Catherine De Medici

I was over at a friend’s place a few months ago and raided her study. I came out with a handful of non-fiction titles but alas this is the only one I’ve read (I may try to squeeze in one more over the next two weeks). I read nonfiction much slower than I read fiction which is really fine but occasionally annoying. It was nice to dig into a pretty hardcore history book. It sort of brought me back to my student days but in my student days I never would have read the whole thing but just whatever part of it the prof assigned and/or whatever parts the index told I had to read for a term paper.

I know very little about Catherine de Medici so Leoni Frieda’s biography was all new to me. But my friend, who is well read in European history, said that it was good so I went with it. From what I gather other history books frequently vilify Catherine because of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre whereas Frieda’s did not. Frieda acknowledged Catherine’s role in it but argued that Catherine had little control over the events and how they spiraled out of control.

Catherine had a interesting and rarely easy life. Her childhood was not pleasant and she spent chunks of it as a prisoner. Her marriage negotiations were a power struggle (something her children faced as well). Her husband was in love with another woman although he did respect Catherine. After his death she struggled to hold the country together for her children through numerous religious wars. She outlived almost all over her children.

I was amused to read a few online reviews of the book that said it “wasn’t entertaining” and “didn’t read like a historical novel”. I found that for a history, while a bit slow in the beginning, it actually wasn’t too bad. Not as engaging as Antonia Fraser but not so dry that I was falling asleep after five pages. It was a good serious read.

Decisions Decisions

Since moving = packing I have some decisions to make. Like what books NOT to pack. I’ve made this decision slightly easier than normal due to having already packed all the hardcover books. So it’s just the paperbacks left. But even within those I have some great choices.

I have some unread Georgette Heyer’s. I could finally try to tackle Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell. I have some YA that hasn’t been read yet. Some good non-fiction titles like The End of Food, Women of the Raj, Shake Hands with the Devil, The Mystery of Olga Checkov... I have 14 Viragos (that I need to blog about at some point…). I have some Penguin Classics.

Things to take into consideration include the fact that I’ll be making several trips between Ottawa and Montreal over the next couple of weeks. That’s over 2 hours in the car each way. I’m also going to the cottage for a weekend which means almost endless reading time (cottage time is eating, reading and sleeping time). And I need books around so that I can procrastinate when I should be packing.

Of course, I also actually have to pack too which, unfortunately, cuts into potential reading time.

The last time I moved I ended up buying a mass market paperback from a corner store because I had run out of things to read.

Decisions. Decisions.

How I Live Now - Audiobook

Yes, another one. I’ve been on an audiobook binge.

First of all - Wow! Not quite what I expected. What was I expecting? Something closer to Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life As I Know It.

Second of all - Has Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now been challenged/banned anywhere? Because I can totally see some people not liking the Daisy/Edmond thing one itty-bitty bit. Or the anorexia stuff either. (Hmm just checked some Amazon review and yep and yep on both those counts…)

Third of all - potentially triggery due to violence, eating issues and incestuous relationships.

Taking all of the above into context - I absolutely completely get how How I Live Now won the 2005 Printz award. Daisy’s voice is both typical of a teen and completely not. It’s raw and real.

Daisy lived in Manhattan at a time somewhere, but not too far, in our future, before being sent to England to stay with her aunt and cousins. The world is either in a war or on the tip of a war - no one is exactly certain, least of all Daisy. She doesn’t care too much either. She’s too concerned with her evil stepmother and punishing herself and her family by not eating. But then once she’s in England everything changes. The war happens. Love happens. Horrible things happen. And the novel is the story of how she survived it and how it brought her to how she lives now.

While Daisy was an interesting character Piper completely stole the show. Piper is one of the best characters that I’ve seen in a novel in a very long time. Sweet, shy, innocent but at the same time completely other-worldly and resilient. She’s a truly great character.

I’ve skimmed through some reviews and there were some issues with the punctuation - or lack there of - in dialogue. This completely does not come through at all in the audio version. The audiobook was really well narrated.

I’m curious about Rosoff’s other novels (this was her first) but I have a feeling they are the type of novels that it’s best to space out a bit. And that you shouldn’t expect anything too “typical” from her because she’s not afraid to go to places people stay clear of.

(And Cat - you were right in your comment on Stephanie’s post - this is not a you book at all.)

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Spotted - first review of Paper Towns (that I’ve seen).

Me = jealous. I wanty!

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac - Audiobook

The first thing that you must know about Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is that you shouldn’t expect it to be like Gabrielle Zevin’s other book, Elsewhere. Well…not really. Ok, kinda. But mostly not really.

The similarities between the two lie in that they both have young female protagonists who find themselves dealing with things that no one really wants to deal with and along the way the also find themselves learning a lot about life and themselves and how to be good people and how to love. How’s that for a run-on sentence?

After taking a dive down the school steps Naomi has lost about 4 years of her memory. She knows her name and her parent’s names but she thinks it is about four years earlier than it actually is. She doesn’t remember her best friend, her boyfriend or that her parents aren’t together any more. She’s retained her math and science knowledge but has lost all of her French and can’t remember any of the books that she’s read over the years. She doesn’t remember that she loves playing tennis (which is how she met her boyfriend Ace) or that she loves yearbook (which is how she met her best friend Will). She doesn’t remember who are the people at school that she likes and who she doesn’t or why. She doesn’t know who any of her friends are.  So Naomi plunges forward the best she can, trying to hold onto a past that she doesn’t remember. She tackles life, love and teenage angst all at once.

I really, really enjoyed Elsewhere and I wanted to like this one just as much. But I couldn’t. Mainly because I HATED Will. HATED him. Normally he’s the type of quirky character that I’d find entertaining - and maybe I still would have if I had read this book instead of listening to it. I honestly don’t know if it was the narrator’s Will voice (over all the narrator, Caitlin Greer was pretty good) or just the character himself but I really did not like Will. At all. And even though Will isn’t the main character and goes away for chunks of time he really killed my enjoyment of the book.

All that aside, it’s a really interesting twist on the coming of age story. Would you be the same you that you are now if you had lost the formative years between 12 and 16? Would you still love the same things that you loved at 16 (and when we are 16 we do tend to love things with unequaled passion) if you woke up one day and didn’t remember that you love it? Would you find yourself pulled toward the same people you did before? Or would you latch on to someone who is just as fragile as you are but in different ways?

Really interesting premise. If only I hadn’t hated Will so much. sigh.

Garden Spells

I had seen a number of people blog about Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen and I was pretty curious about it. First of all, it has a great cover. And both the description and the title indicated there was something vaguely magical about it.

Claire is a Waverly. And in Bascom that means that people stay away because everyone knows that Waverly’s aren’t quite normal. But for Claire Bascom has a stability for her that she craved for the early years of her life. It meant family and and a home even if it was just her that lived there and she was too scared to let anyone in. But then her sister Sydney comes back to town after having fled from it, and from the Waverly name, right after high school. But she didn’t come back alone - she came back with her daughter Bay.

Each Waverly has a special talent - some call it magic. For Claire it comes with food. Bay just knows where things belong. Claire’s aunt Evanelle must give people things even though she doesn’t know what they are for. And Sydney? Sydney is still looking for hers. And then there is the Waverly garden with it’s special flowers - and its mischievous apple tree.

I started this book before bed and then didn’t put it down until I had finished it. By times it reminded me of that Sandra Bullock movie, Practical Magic (minus killing the boyfriend and without a law enforcement officer as a love interest). But it has the same “the family is considered outsiders” kind of thing. It was at times serious, other times touching, and yet other times amusing.

It was, simply, a fun little book. And I’m looking forward to getting my hands on Allen’s newest novel, The Sugar Queen, which is not a sequel (I originally thought it was…).

I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have to Kill You

A couple of weeks ago I had to take a bus to Ottawa. While I used to be able to read on the bus without any issues I seem to have lost much of that talent (sometimes it’s still ok…but mostly not). Thank goodness for audiobooks. Listening to music the whole way tends to drive me a bit batty. I’d read a few reviews of Ally Carter’s I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have to Kill You back when it first came out a couple of years ago. Since it was available I figured why not?

Cami goes to a school that takes “gifted and talented” to a new level. She attends the very prestigious Gallagher Academy but why the school is prestigious depends on who you ask. If you ask the local townspeople they will tell you that the school is full of snotty rich girls. If you ask someone in the CIA/FBI/etc they will tell you it’s an elite all-girl spy training school. Which it is. And Cami is a Gallagher legacy. Her mother is not only an alumni, she’s also the school’s headmistress. And her father was a spy too…but he went off on a mission once and never came back.

Overall though Cami’s life is pretty good. She’s a sidewalk artist - the spies that blend into the crowd. Her codename is Cameleon.  She’s very good a blending in, at being the person that people don’t see. But then when on a mission someone does see her - more specifically a boy sees her. A boy that shows her a different part of life, the type of life that she’s only seen on tv and movies. Of course, he doesn’t know that she’s a Gallagher or a spy. And she’s going to do everything she can to keep it that way.

It’s predictable and it has the normal teenage girl cliches. But the spy school thing was a nice twist. A fun twist too. I kind of would like to go to Gallagher Academy. I’ll be checking out the sequel to this one, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy at some point.

While I like Cami I almost wish that the series was going to be told through all of her friends as well - one book for Cami, one book for Becks (the first and only student from the UK), one from Liz (the brilliant bookworm) and one from Macy (a spoiled little rich girl). But there’s enough unanswered questions about Cami (and her family) to leave lots of interesting things to explore in a sequel. Apparently the author would like to write about 6 books so I’m guessing the questions about Cami’s dad are going to come out very slowly (all I can say it that it better not be a “Patricia Cornwall death faked for their own protection and then put into the Witness Protection Program” kind of thing because that would make me really angry).

Reading spots

I’m thinking that here (chaise is not ours and is not staying):

and here:

will be seeing some reading action.

Apartment hunting

So…on a scale of 1 to 10 how bad is it that as we are apartment hunting right after the “what does it include?” and “do they allow cats?” my next question to the boy is “where’s the library?”

Ok, sometimes I throw in a question about public transit.

Edit: And the answer is…1.7 kilometers or 1 mile! Yes! We have a place to live. Signing the lease tomorrow. *Happy Dance*

French By Heart

I have a bit of a thing for books about people who go live in other countries. I’m not sure why except that it seems like such a brave thing to do. Especially if it’s a country where you don’t speak the language. I’d be inclined to say that this might have something to do with my having picked up and moved to a French province when I was 18 except, as I quickly discovered, in Montreal one really doesn’t need to speak French assuming one isn’t looking for a job. (I do remember naively thinking that I wouldn’t have to take French classes because I’d learn French by living here - hahahahahahahahaha!)

French by Heart is the story of the Ramsey family, an American family who move to France because of a job. Their kids end up going to a French school while the parents fumble their way through their new French lives. The first few months were, as one would imagine, overwhelming. Slowly they start to get into a groove with their new lives. They meet people, they make friends - often ones they don’t expect to make.

It was amusing and there moments where anyone who has spent time in another country understands where you just want to hide under a rug along with the author, Rebecca Ramsey. It’s funny how the little things can mess us up the most. Like when she goes to the bank and has trouble with the doors with the buttons and then one door has to be closed before you can open the other. I ran into that on my vacation this year at a jewelery store in Rome (in the end it all worked out and Kit-Cat got a pretty (albeit late) birthday prezzie.