September 2014 | That's a Wrap!

It's the end of September. Time to wake up Billie Joe! As much as I really hate to see summer go, there are so many awesome things about fall. One of my favorite things about fall is reading! It's the best reading time of the year. I'm looking forward to everything this season is going to bring.

In the mean time, these are the books I managed to read in the month leading up to fall:

Wool Omnibus (Silo, #1) by Hugh Howey
The Deep by Nick Cutter
Welcome to Dead House (Goosebumps, #1) by R.L. Stine
Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple, #1) by Agatha Christie
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Fairyland, #2) by Catherynne M. Valente
The Neon Rain (Dave Robicheaux, #1) by James Lee Burke

In case you missed it, these are the reviews I posted in September:

Book Review | The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
Book Review | Wool by Hugh Howey
Book Review | Earthly Things by Julian Vaughn
(Banned) Book Review | The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

It was a great month, but I do see some glaring issues (like a distinct lack of non-fiction).

Do you have big plans for October? October is the best month for ALL THE THINGS! I'm looking forward to everyone's October reads. Make them spooky guys! As always, I will be hunting down some anthologies to read through October.

Did you post a wrap up for September? Be sure to leave me a link!

September 29 | Currently Reading

Last week was a really slow reading week. My kids had so much make-up work on top of their regular assignments after they returned to school from being sick. Our entire week was about homework, homework, homework.

If you missed my banned books week review of The Great Gatsby, you can find that here. I also posted the books that made it on to my wishlist.

I'm just about finished up with The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke. It's a really great read, but not one that I felt I needed to rush back to reading each day.

I'm not sure what I'm going to read this week. I'm probably going to read Gone Girl since the movie is going to be released this week, and I've somehow managed to keep from being spoiled so far. I'm afraid that won't last long once the movie is out.

Have you read Gone Girl yet? Do have plans to watch the movie? I have a pretty solid rule that I can't watch an adaptation unless I've read it first. I miss out on a lot of movies.

I'd love to hear what you're reading this week. Be sure to let me know in the comments or leave me a link!

---

This post is being shared as part of Book Journey's It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

On My Wishlist {4}

I must be in an unusual mood this week. The majority of my wishlist additions were historical fiction. That's quite unlike me, but these books sound amazing so there you have it.

White Doves At Morning by James Lee Burke

Prepare yourself for the longest book description EVER.

For years, critics have acclaimed the power of James Lee Burke's writing, the luminosity of his prose, the psychological complexity of his characters, the richness of his landscapes. Over the course of twenty novels and one collection of short stories, he has developed a loyal and dedicated following among both critics and general readers. His thrillers, featuring either Louisiana cop Dave Robicheaux or Billy Bob Holland, a hardened Texas-based lawyer, have consistently appeared on national bestseller lists, making Burke one of America's most celebrated authors of crime fiction.

Now, in a startling and brilliantly successful departure, Burke has written a historical novel -- an epic story of love, hate, and survival set against the tumultuous background of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

At the center of the novel are James Lee Burke's own ancestors, Robert Perry, who comes from a slave-owning family of wealth and privilege, and Willie Burke, born of Irish immigrants, a poor boy who is as irreverent as he is brave and decent. Despite their personal and political conflicts with the issues of the time, both men join the Confederate Army, choosing to face ordeal by fire, yet determined not to back down in their commitment to their moral beliefs, to their friends, and to the abolitionist woman with whom both have become infatuated.

One of the most compelling characters in the story, and the catalyst for much of its drama, is Flower Jamison, a beautiful young black slave befriended, at great risk to himself, by Willie and owned by -- and fathered by, although he will not admit it -- Ira Jamison. Owner of Angola Plantation, Ira Jamison is a true son of the Old South and also a ruthless businessman, who, after the war, returns to the plantation and re-energizes it by transforming it into a penal colony, which houses prisoners he rents out as laborers to replace the slaves who have been emancipated.

Against all local law and customs, Flower learns from Willie to read and write, and receives the help and protection of Abigail Dowling, a Massachusetts abolitionist who had come south several years prior to help fight yellow fever and never left, and who has attracted the eye of both Willie and Robert Perry. These love affairs are not only fraught with danger, but compromised by the great and grim events of the Civil War and its aftermath.

As in all of Burke's writings, White Doves at Morning is full of wonderful, colorful, unforgettable villains. Some, like Clay Hatcher, are pure "white trash" (considered the lowest of the low, they were despised by the white ruling class and feared by former slaves). From their ranks came the most notorious of the vigilante groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White League and the Knights of the White Camellia. Most villainous of all, though, are the petty and mean-minded Todd McCain, owner of New Iberia's hardware store, and the diabolically evil Rufus Atkins, former overseer of Angola Plantation and the man Jamison has placed in charge of his convict labor crews.

Rounding out this unforgettable cast of characters are Carrie LaRose, madam of New Iberia's house of ill repute, and her ship's-captain brother Jean-Jacques LaRose, Cajuns who assist Flower and Abigail in their struggle to help the blacks of the town.

With battle scenes at Shiloh and in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that no reader will ever forget, and set in a time of upheaval that affected all men and all women at all levels of society, White Doves at Morning is an epic worthy of America's most tragic conflict, as well as a book of substance, importance, and genuine originality, one that will undoubtedly come to be regarded as a masterpiece of historical fiction.

I was discussing my current James Lee Burke read (The Neon Rain) with Anita on twitter, and she mentioned wanting to read White Doves at Morning. I'm a complete Burke newbie, so I looked it up and it sounds like a really engrossing read.

It reminds me of McCammon's departure into historical fiction when he began the Matthew Corbett series.

---

The Broken Road (Frayed Empire, #1) by Teresa Frohock

The world of Lehbet is under siege. The threads that divide Lehbet from the mirror world of Heled are fraying, opening the way for an invasion by an alien enemy that feeds on human flesh.

Travys, the youngest of the queen’s twin sons, was born mute. He is a prince of the Chanteuse, nobles who channel their magic through their voices. Their purpose is to monitor the threads and close the paths between the worlds, but the Chanteuse have given themselves over to decadence. They disregard their responsibilities to the people they protect—all but Travys, who fears he’ll fail to wake the Chanteuse to Heled’s threat in time to prevent the destruction of Lehbet.

Within the palace, intrigue creates illusions of love where there is none, and when Travys’ own brother turns against him, he is forced to flee all that he has known and enter the mirror world of Heled where the enemy has already won. In Heled, he must find his true voice and close the threads, or lose everyone that he loves.

I have no excuses for not having read Teresa Frohock. I've read enough essays written by her online to know she is right up my alley. The Broken Road is her new novella that blends fantasy and horror, and it's certainly something I should be reading.

---

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth

Are all historical book descriptions this long?!

An utterly captivating reinvention of the Rapunzel fairytale weaved together with the scandalous life of one of the tale's first tellers, Charlotte-Rose de la Force.

Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. She is comforted by an old nun, Sœur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens...

Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1512 and still inspiring him at the time of his death, sixty-four years later. Called La Strega Bella, Selena is at the centre of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition, retaining her youth and beauty by the blood of young red-haired girls.

After Margherita's father steals a handful of parsley, wintercress and rapunzel from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off unless he and his wife give away their little red-haired girl. And so, when she turns seven, Margherita is locked away in a tower, her hair woven together with the locks of all the girls before her, growing to womanhood under the shadow of La Strega Bella, and dreaming of being rescued...

Three women, three lives, three stories, braided together to create a compelling story of desire, obsession, black magic and the redemptive power of love.

More historical fiction! This is not something that would have normally interested me, but my Goodreads friend Jenna had some amazing things to say about it. I couldn't pass it up.

---

Are any of these books on your wishlist? Have you read them? I'd love to hear your thoughts and/or recommendations.

(Banned) Book Review | The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

In honor of Banned Books Week, I'm taking part in Book Journey's Banned Book Week Celebration.

For my Banned Books Week selection I decided to read a classic that has been on my to-read list forever: The Great Gatsby.

Book Description

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.

Who knew reading about wealthy people having affairs and throwing lavish parties could be so boring?

I feel so guilty that I chose to read The Great Gatsby in honor of Banned Books Week. I want to stand up and shout "How could you want to keep this masterpiece from our youth?" but instead I'm quietly asking "Do we still make our children suffer through this?"

Jay Gatsby - the GREAT GATSBY - has more money than sense I suppose. He lives in a mansion and throws lavish parties, but Gatsby himself doesn't even care about those parties. All Gatsby really cares about is reuniting with his past love. In my opinion, she's not even worth the trouble, but their relationship is symbolic of Gatsby's success so he has to have her back. I do better as a reader when I care about the characters. In this case, I couldn't care less who Daisy chose, I just wanted her to choose somebody already.

I decided to read The Great Gatsby this year because I kind of always assumed I'd love it. It's F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece and a highly acclaimed work of American literature. It's not a horrible book, but it's not exceptional either.

If it's on your list of classics to read one day, go ahead and read it. I don't want to stop you from joining the club. Even though I was kind of bored out of my gourd, I'm happy to have my membership card.

4/10: Not My Thing

Have you read The Great Gatsby? I'm sure my opinion is in the minority! Did you love it? Are you reading anything special for Banned Books Week?

September 22 | Currently Reading

Being the second week in a row with sick kids, I didn't manage to get any reviews posted last week. I did still have a great reading week, though. I finished reading Agatha Christie's Murder at the Vicarage. It was another fun read. I also read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby which I did not enjoy. I will have a review out for that tomorrow. The last book I read was The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There. I love that series.

Now I'm currently reading The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke.

My exciting news this week is I started a blog to discuss what I'm reading with my kids! This means I will probably not be posting Storybook Sunday posts here on Book Den anymore. You can find all of those posts over at Book Den Kids.

I hope you guys have a great and healthy week!

I'd love to hear what you're reading this week. Be sure to let me know in the comments or leave me a link!

---

This post is being shared as part of Book Journey's It's Monday! What Are You Reading?