Thursday, July 26, 2012

Love's Tender Fury by Jennifer Wilde

All you adults can take your Fifty Shades of Grey and shove it! If I'm going to read smut, it has to be historical smut, like the stuff I was reading when I was in junior high! I'm on vacation this week and the resort office has an excellent selection of reading material--Nora Roberts, Clive Cussler, John Rutherford, and classic 70s romance like the one I selected.

Marietta is just a good girl trying to make it in the world as a governess. When she is framed by the Lord of the House because she doesn't want him to rape her, she is sold into indentured servitude and shipped to the Carolinas. Bought by the highest bidder, Derek, she becomes a plantation mistress, but is sold quickly when she helps two slaves escape. She moves onto Natchez and New Orleans with Jeff and sets up a gambling house. She's quite the sophisticated lady in New Orleans, but when Jeff dies without marrying her, she is left with nothing but some jewels to sell. She can't make it as a seamstress in Natchez and marries the rich German who owns everything around Natchez. But he harbors secrets and he turns against Marietta when she helps her sister-in-law escape from the clutches of her evil brother. Luckily, Derek still loves Marietta though, and saves the day.

Ahhhh, romance! These are the books I was raised on and now I know why my perception of romance is completely skewed! Marietta is raped, sold, bought, used, objectified, and beaten, but I had to keep reading. This is one old romance book that is worth it--I loved the history of the West that was included.


Saturday, July 14, 2012

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake, Read by Orlagh Cassidy

I would like to think that I would be like Frankie in this novel if I lived in the 1940s. Frankie is an American radio reporter and she wants to travel to England during the bombings in the 1940s to report the news back to America. She does, and she's good at it. She pulls at the heartstrings of the Americans, and tries her best to get them involved in the war, even though we were trying to ignore the Germans. Frankie travels the trains in France and interviews hundreds of Jews--all escaping from their homes and trying to get as far away as possible. Meanwhile, America is ignoring the problem.

There are other subplots involved in this novel, but Frankie's is what spoke to me. There isn't much battle in this book--just the people who were bombed and people fleeing their homes. Yet it speaks powerfully about the horrors of war. I really felt like I was in an English bomb shelter at times, and the fear in the French trains was easily felt by the reader. I actually could have done without the postmistress--give me more Frankie!

Monday, July 9, 2012

Why I haven't been posting much lately....

So some of you know that I'm serving on the Printz award commitee. This means that I'm pretty much only blogging about the adult books and audiobooks that I listen to. Sorry for the small number of posts this year, but just wait until the end of January 2013, when I'll have hundreds of posts from this year's readings! :)