Month: October 2011

Jacob T Marley

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

I love Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I particularly enjoy stories that re-interpret the classic tale just a bit, and Jacob T. Marley by R. William Bennett provides yet another delightful twist.

We all know Ebenezer Scrooge’s tale. His name has become a byword for miserliness due to the genius of Charles Dickens’ storytelling. But A Christmas Carol is the tale of Scrooge’s redemption. Ebenezer becomes a better man because Jacob Marley has spent his afterlife repenting of his sins. Jacob Marley has chosen to give his partner Ebenezer the opportunity to repent in life, while it might still do him, and the world, some good. Why did Jacob Marley send the Spirits to visit Ebenezer Scrooge that Christmas Eve? Just who was Jacob Marley?

Although Scrooge refers to Marley as “a good man of business”, Marley couldn’t have been born in his counting-house! He must have started out in the usual way, whether he had a family, or was an orphan, but he couldn’t have been hatched from an egg. A Christmas Carol isn’t quite that much of a fantasy.

Unlike Ebenezer Scrooge, who was mostly abandoned at boarding school, in this telling of Marley’s story, young Jacob comes from a loving but middle-class home with good parents and several siblings. Marley’s downfall is pride. His pride in his mathematical skill causes him to abandon anything that does not further his ambition and his need to be the best. He leaves his family behind: continuing his relationships with his parents and siblings wastes time he might spend on business.

One afternoon, angry at the delay caused by a funeral procession, he meets a young man who is just like himself. They have common cause in their irritation at the funeral, but different reasons behind that irritation. The deceased is Ebenezer’s sister, Fan. Ebenezer is angry that Fan died because she did not reveal her difficulties to him. He could have prevented her death if she had humbled  herself. It is her fault she is dead. Marley is angry at the delay. While they wait for the traffic to untangle itself, Marley offers Scrooge an interview at his counting-house.

Marley completes Scrooge’s transformation into the miserly man of business that we meet in Dickens’ masterwork. As we all know. Marley did not do Scrooge any favors. By the time Marley dies, there is no humanity left in Scrooge, he might as well be a walking account book. But as Marley lays on his deathbed and watches Scrooge, Marley recovers his humanity, at least enough to realize what he has done. He begins to atone. When he dies, he is given a chance to work towards his own redemption by trying to convince the spirits to give Scrooge a chance at his–before it’s too late.

Escape Rating: A+: I finished this in one sitting. I sat down for lunch and got lost in the book. The language evokes the classic without going over the top about it. And it retells just enough of the original to refresh the memory without seeming repetitious. We know the story. A little familiarity is good. Too much would be boring. This is just right.

I still have very fond memories of the first version of A Christmas Carol I ever saw — the Mr. Magoo cartoon version.  I can still remember him singing, “I’m all alone in the world” at the boarding school. The cartoon encapsulated the story; love, loss, redemption, and does it well.

It was time for Jacob Marley’s redemption. Well done.

October is NetGalley month

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blogging> NetGalley

Net Galley should be labeled an addictive substance for readers. I’m totally serious. A friend used to say that McDonald’s put something into their fries to make them so totally addictive that you can’t even get out of the drive-thru before you start eating them. Net Galley is like that. But with books.

I’ve been using Net Galley since June. See, it even sounds like an addiction!

And now I’m just a little scared. I’ve reviewed 43 books since June. 43! And I have 27 lined up. Except I’ve finished just finished two books and need to get the reviews written.

What is Net Galley? Really? It’s a service where publishers post the electronic galleys of their books for reviewers to pick up for reviewing. It has got to be saving some trees. It’s possibly also contributing to the US Postal Service’s deficit, but that’s a different post. It is easy to “shop” Net Galley for new books I might want to read, then send a request to the publisher. Anywhere from a minute to a month later, I get a response that the galley is available. After a quick download to my iPad, I have a new book to read. All I have to do in return is “sing for my supper”, so to speak. In exchange for the free book, I post my honest review of what I’ve read.

So far, 43 times.

And for those librarians out there, Net Galley publishers love librarians. Posting the review on your library’s website absolutely counts as posting the review.

I’m not just a big Net Galley fan, I’m also a fan of those Booklist and Library Journal webinars on what’s upcoming in this or that. This summer, I went through the Booklist archive of YA webinars, all at once. A whole year’s worth. And do you know what I found? You guessed it. Net Galley! A year ago, all the publishers had print galleys. Six months ago, half had print galleys, and half were on Net Galley. By the time I got to the new webinars, all the publishers were on Net Galley. Net Galley is clearly where it’s at.

So this post is my official declaration that I am participating in Net Galley Month. As far as I am concerned, every month is Net Galley Month. They’re the book blogger’s best friend.

A Midwinter Fantasy

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> B Reviews> book reviews> C Reviews

A Midwinter Fantasy is a collection of three novellas that take place at, of course, Midwinter. In all three of the stories, it is the festival of giving, but because all of the stories are fantasy romances, the holiday celebrated is not always or not exactly Christmas.

The first story in the collection is A Christmas Carroll by Leanna Renee Hieber, and the story is set in the same storyline as her Strangely Beautiful series. In fact, the action of this Christmas tale takes place directly after the events of The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker.

Not being familiar with the previous tale, I felt like I had been dropped into the middle of a story, only because I had been. Once I caught up, things got a lot more interesting.

The title of the story is a play on both Dickens’ classic and the name of one of the characters. The author’s world is a close parallel to our Victorian era, except that the Victorian fascination with spiritualism represents concern about a real, and sometimes dangerous threat. But the spirits of Hieber’s “Whisper-World”, can also help the living, just as Marley’s Ghost arranges in Dickens’ famous Christmas Carol.

The “Carroll” in Hieber’s story is Michael Carroll, and the spirits help both him and Rebecca Thompson to discover not the true meaning of Christmas, but the true meanings of both friendship and love in this wrap-up of her series.

Although enough of Michael and Rebecca’s story was told in flashbacks for me to empathize with them, I would have enjoyed this more if I had read the entire series. But I enjoyed it enough, and I was intrigued enough, that I plan on going back and reading everything!

The Worth of a Sylph by L.J. McDonald is the second piece in the book. Lily Blackwell is an elderly woman who raises orphans in a remote house in Sylph Valley. She is also the human Master of a Battle Sylph named Mace. Mastery can be an equitable, loving arrangement, and in this case it is, although it is not always so. Sylphs provide the different types of magic that keep the Valley heated, the crops irrigated, provide water for washing, and protection, among other things. Linking to a master provides a Sylph with nourishment, including emotional sustenance, and a way of remaining in the world.

When the last of Lily’s orphans runs away, out of the Valley, she tasks Mace with retrieving the boy, no matter where he has gone. She also charges him with finding himself a new master before she dies, one that she can approve of. On Mace’s quest, he finds, not just the boy he was sent for, but a woman he can truly love and spend a life with, and not just one son, but two.

The story takes place during the Winter Festival, which is supposed to be celebrated with family. There is a message in the story that the family you create with love can be much stronger that the one you are born to.

Although Worth of a Sylph is also a part of a continuing series that begins with The Battle Sylph, it was much less obvious about it. I was able to jump right into the story and be involved with the characters right away. The story was complete in and of itself.

Last, but not least, the final story in this anthology is The Crystal Crib, by Helen Scott Taylor. I said not least, because the story deals with some larger than life figures, the Norse gods. Odin is the bad guy, having kept a father from his daughter for over 2,000 years, and enslaving his sons for the same length of time, all for crimes that other people committed.  Odin is someone who really knows how to hold a grudge!

Sonja thinks she has come to Iceland to convince the owner of “Santa’s Magical Wonderland” to allow her Aunt’s travel company to arrange tours to his resort. Little does she know that the owner of the resort is Vidar, the son of Odin, and, is also the “Guardian Angel” who has been protecting her all of her life. And, that her life has been considerably longer than the scant decades she remembers.

Her unexpected presence in Odin’s backyard forces a confrontation among the gods, monsters and angels who have protected her for her entire existence, and brings surprising dangers and rewards to everyone in her path.  This was a story about love truly conquering all.

This story is set in the same universe as Taylor’s The Magic Knot, but it reads as a stand-alone. I read it as someone playing tricks on Odin, which, considering the story, and considering other stories about Odin, seemed perfectly fair to me. However, this was also the least satisfying of the three stories. I wanted a lot more explanation for a 2,000 year old grudge than I got. And the heroine took the fact that she had been in suspended animation for those same two millennia a bit too much in stride, especially factoring in that her lover had been watching over her the entire time! Oh, and she might not die, ever. There was a bit too much fantasy in this fantasy.

Out of three stories, I vote Sylph very satisfying and complete, Carroll good and intriguing enough to make me want more, and Crystal not satisfying enough to make me go back for a return visit to the author’s world. YMMV.

Escape Ratings:  Christmas Carroll B+, Worth of a Sylph, A and, The Crystal Crib, C. 

 

A Post of Bloggers

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blogging> conferences

We seriously need a collective noun for a group of bloggers.  Maybe it should be a post of bloggers? Or a specialty application, a shelf of book bloggers? After all, there’s a term for every other type of conglomeration–a gaggle of geese, an exhaltation of larks, a parliament of owls, an unkindness of ravens. I’ve even seen “a hush of librarians” proposed. That’s  evocative but seriously inaccurate.

This morning at the New England Library Association Conference, four noted YA book bloggers presented an awesome panel, and there certainly was no hush in the room, or anywhere at the NELA Conference. But about those book bloggers…

First of all, I found two terrific new book blogs that I hadn’t heard of before. I say two, because two were already on my list of daily “must reads”.

And one of those two “must reads” was the reason I was willing to attend a panel, any panel, at 8:30 am. I can be bright, or I can be early. I can’t be both at once. But I have read Leila Roy’s Bookshelves of Doom since I found her blog while researching for my YA “creature-feature” table talk for South Carolina, and I just couldn’t miss the opportunity to hear her in person. Her speaker’s “voice” is just as witty as her writing, But it was her reasons for starting her blog that resonated with me as a fellow blogger. The desire to share knowledge, the need to talk about books. The craving to remain part of the book community.

Jennifer Rummel’s “voice”, and her blog, were new to me, but now that I know about her, I’ll be keeping track of her blog, too. Not just because I liked what she had to say about books and reading, but also because her advice about keeping up with her blog was practical and helpful. All those thoughts about sitting in front of a keyboard 4, 5 or 6 days a week are daunting. I’ve been wondering about whether or not to participate in some of the blogging memes, and if so, which and how many. Hearing another librarian blogger discuss the subject, and say how valuable they are, provided a lot of insight. It was good to hear another blogger’s thoughts. And her site at YABookNerd is cool.

Andrea Graham’s blog, 4YA, is more about services to people who serve youth, than it is about books. But it contains some very neat links. And I’m fascinated with the way she markets her services. She also showed us all a really cool site. Pinterest, which is an online pinboard. It doesn’t necessarily have anything whatever to do with libraries, but it looks like a whole lot of fun. And we all need more fun.

Last, but not least, was Josie Leavitt, one of the bloggers at ShelfTalker at Publishers Weekly. I read all the blogs at PW, so I did know about ShelfTalker. Josie’s take on blogging was slightly different, since she blogs from a bookstore rather than a library. She doesn’t so much review books as talk about bookselling in general and the industry as a whole. So not an individual book about angels and werewolves being good or bad, but a teen coming into the store saying, “if I read one more book about an angel and a werewolf I’m going to puke,” or words to that effect.

Josie left all of us with some great advice, something all bloggers should keep in mind. “Never blog when you’ve been drinking.”

Definitely words to blog by.