This Organic Life by Joan Dye Gussow

This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader by Joan Dye Gussow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is part memoir, part essay collection with the central topic of growing food and local-based agriculture. It was published in 2001, so written likely in the late 1990’s so it was written as the local food movement was beginning to pick up steam (at least I think so). The initial chapters of the book follow Joan and her husband Alan as they build the house in Piermont, NY where they plan to live the last part of their life. The latter part of the book is a little less cohesive but loosely details her first few years living and gardening in her new space and it also becomes more treatise on the importance of farmers and of eating locally.

Gussow has an engaging writing style and this is mostly a personal story – of what growing her own food means to her. She does deal with some of the larger issues in America’s agricultural system but she primarily touches on this through stories and slips it in here or there without getting too pedantic or instructional. She emphasizes again and again how eating locally/growing one’s own food not only makes ecological sense but is just more delicious and I realized that over the past few years, as I’ve grown some of my own food, I’ve embraced this fact unconsciously. I’ve never been a big fan of tomatoes until the past few years. I thought it was just my tastes changing but it has coincided very closely with me growing my own tomatoes and I really think I’ve started liking them because I now know what a real tomato tastes like! She emphasizes the superiority of this straight-from-the-garden produce with a smattering of really delicious looking recipes.

In the end this book is kind of all over the place and sometimes Gussow can get a little holier than thou. Despite this the book makes a strong point and makes it in a pretty enjoyable manner.


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Lady Fortescue Steps Out by Marion Chesney

Lady Fortescue Steps Out: Being the First Vol. of the Poor Relation by Marion Chesney
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Downloaded from Audible. Narrated by Davina Porter.

Elderly widow Lady Fortescue is a poor relation in regency England - one of the genteel poor who are prohibited from any useful employment or of even speaking of their plight. After a particularly stinging humiliation and the chance encounter with a similarly poor colonel, Lady Fortescue decides she has had enough of being respectable but impoverished. She invites the colonel to move in her big but barren home and pool their small resources. This idea grows and other poor relations are invited to join them and eventually they decide to turn the house into a hotel.

Marion Chesney is a pen name for M.C. Beaton. Though the subject matter and setting is quite different from her other series (Hamish MacBeth, Agatha Raisin), the writing style is still very recognizable as Beaton's. And that for me diminished my pleasure in the book. The subject matter of her books always attracts me and I always end the book puzzled and dissatisfied. She has this very direct and blunt way of moving the story along which doesn't allow her characters to live. The result is that I find myself frustrated with or just disengaged with the characters because their behavior seems to come out of nowhere. If I'm rambling on it's because I have a hard time putting my finger on what exactly keeps me from loving Beaton's books.

Despite these frustrations I have with this author's writing style, this book had an interesting idea and a different view of Regency Era England. The approach is with a rather critical modern eye that in a more serious book could have been a poignant look at the cage of social convention that kept the so-called "poor relations" from improving their situation. But this is meant to be a very light and farcical book and it doesn't stray from that intention. It's a very quick read (the audio was just over 4 hours) and the narrator is quite good.

Final verdict is that it would probably quite enjoyable for folks who don't have my Beaton hang-up and are looking for something breezy and regency England.

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Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen

Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Downloaded from Audible.com. Narrated by Katherine Kellgren.

A very light satirical mystery set in 1930’s England. Georgie is 21, a Duke’s sister and 34th in line to the throne. Despite some intimacy with royalty, her family is dead broke so she escapes from a drafty estate in Scotland to London where she hopes to earn a living and avoid being forced to marry minor European royalty. Inevitably she finds herself embroiled in a couple of mysteries that she must of course solve to save herself and her family from disgrace or worse. Along the way, she gets support from her party girl school chum Belinda, gets swoony over a rakish Irish lad named Darcy O’Mara, and interacts with both the posh and less respectable halves of her family.

The story takes a while to take off but mostly because the characters and background are being established in a basically entertaining way. The book is meant to be light fare and amusing and it delivers on both counts in a competent way. All the characters are established types (Darcy = Irish rogue, Belinda = the party girl with a heart of gold, Georgie’s Granddad = the wise, practical but slyly noble cockney, Binky = the witless, oblivious aristocrat, etc… etc…) with very little depth but are essentially likeable. Georgie herself is rather bland but is made perhaps a little more interesting by her mix of modern and traditional values.

The narrator of this audio edition was quite good, handling all the accents pretty well and doing female and male, old and young voices pretty effortlessly. She does a plummy British accent very well and does especially well with the character who pronounces his Rs like Ws.

It was an enjoyable light read that didn’t make a huge impression. It could have been cleverer and funnier and less clichéd but it still managed to keep me interested all the way through. I will likely read the next in the series but am not dying to run out and read it now.


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Hexed by Kevin Hearne

Hexed by Kevin Hearne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The second in the Iron Druid Series featuring Atticus O’Sullivan a 2000+ year old Druid living in modern day Tempe, AZ. This book picks up very shortly after the end of book one. A magical power vacuum has opened up in Atticus’ part of Tempe after the destruction of half of the local coven. As a result, a fearsome and demon-spawning coven of witches is looking to take over. Atticus is forced to help the remaining members of the resident coven drive these invaders out along with some other magical threats in the area such as a fallen angel and a group of Bacchants. His anonymity has also been officially blown thanks to the events of book one.

I enjoyed this one a bit more than the first. I may have just entered into the rhythm of Kevin Hearne’s storytelling but I think the writing was a bit more natural. I found this book a good bit funnier - the humor in the first book seemed forced at times. The character of Atticus also seemed more even and consistent.

The one problem I am still having with these books is fairly minor though I am about to explain at a length disproportionate to its magnitude.  The books seem to be pretty geared for the geeky fanboy.  There's a lot of mentions of star wars, Lord of The Rings, Joss Whedon etc... but Atticus also seems to be surrounded by drop dead gorgeous ladies (and goddesses) most of whom can't wait to rip his clothes off.  Not very compelling for this lady reader/geeky fangirl?  The biggest sticking point I can't seem to get past is Granuaile because I feel like she's such a wasted opportunity for geek-girl worthy but still geek-boy friendly romance.  Granuaile is smart, cool headed, and independent which is all great but she's also meant to be smoking hot, a bartender and she and Atticus' relationship from the beginning is flirty.  He frequently goes drooly over her especially when she answers her apartment door in a skimpy nightie.  So yeah, geek boy wish fulfillment.  And as I mentioned in my review of book one, that's totally legitimate but it keeps me, as a woman who enjoys a little romance, from really being sucked in by the story.  I would have preferred Granuaile to be a ugly duckling sort of beauty - i.e. attractive but less ostentatiously so, who comes in contact with Atticus as a customer in his shop who he takes no special notice of until she comes to him for help with the "witch living in her head" problem.  She asks to be taken on as an apprentice and he notices she's smart so he takes her on.  The attraction would then build slowly as he got to know her more.  I'd also like it if she wasn't quite so competent.  And I'd be cool with her having a big crush on him from the very beginning.  I know this is a common trope and all pretty cliched but there's a reason these tropes are perpetuated - people dig them.  Anyway, if we had that kind of tertiary, slowly building romance building I wouldn't be able to put these down.  As is I can't really enjoy their relationship and there is nothing else in the books dragging me along in anticipation. 

Anyway, sorry for that rather esoteric rant.  I'm guessing the perception of a romance deficit is an issue special to me:)  Overall, this book's a rollicking adventure that never slows down. You will definitely need to read book one first as the storyline presented here is a direct continuation.


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Water is useful when starting onions...Duh

This is to remind myself what a difference properly moistened starting mix makes.  These were both planted 2 weeks ago with roughly the same seeding rate.  The one on the right which looks sparse and has a few seedlings still just coming up was the first one I planted and I hadn't quite moistened the starting mix enough evidenced by the fact that the when watered the water pools on the top and takes a while to soak in.  I realized this before planting the second one and did a little more moistening for it and the water soaks in immediately.  I didn't realize it would make as much of a difference as it clearly did.

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I did not expect when I opened House of Mirth that I was embarking on a classical tragedy, complete with a misguided heroine, an easily swayed hero, a wicked witch, a good bit of wrong time, wrong place, and a whole lot of poor judgment, all placed in a corrupt setting. Change the language a bit and it could easily be taken for a Shakespearean or ancient Greek play.

It is the story of 2 years in the life of Lily Bart darling of the social elite in turn of the century New York. Lily is a complicated character. She is vain, selfish, snobbish and ornamental but she’s also smart and has this strong and somewhat incongruous sense of nobility. She knows that in order to get the beautiful and luxurious life she believes she needs she must marry well. But despite being beautiful and charming and having marriage as her main aim, she is 29 and can’t quite seem to bring herself to the point of consummation. She is convinced she cannot live without luxury but she also seems to be inwardly conflicted about living an inauthentic life. Her characterization is incredibly deft – she is frustrating but remains sympathetic throughout. And while there are a couple of people in particular who figure in Lily’s downfall, the rotten-to- the-core society and Lily herself seem equally culpable.

Edith Wharton is an incredible writer – the type of writer that produces turns of phrases and paragraphs that you want to commit to memory. This skill is on full display in House of Mirth. It’s a good story, good character study and a pretty incisive social commentary.My one complaint is that it felt a bit overlong. The last quarter of the book drags a little.

Highly recommend but don't expect a happy or quick ending.


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Simply Love by Mary Balogh

Anne Jewell is the unwed mother of a 9 year old boy who, against the odds, has carved out a respectable life for herself teaching at a girl’s school in Bath.  Anne’s problem is that though she has many dear friends and a son she loves she is really very lonely.  

Sydnam Butler was horribly disfigured in the wars but against all odds has carved out a useful and productive life for himself as Steward on a Great Estate in Wales.  Sydnam’s problem however is that he’s lonely.  Hmmmm… are these two tortured souls meant to be together in a happily ever after?

This is the second Mary Balogh book I’ve read and I think it has convinced me that she is not the regency romance writer for me.  Sadly, our brief courtship is likely at an end.  I give her props in this book for tackling an unlikely hero and for bringing these two damaged folks together in a rather prosaic, i.e. not Grand, romance.  They have issues to deal with and she allows them to struggle with them…sort of.  But that’s pretty much where my admiration ends. 

That isn’t to say that Mary Balogh isn’t worth reading and I know a LOT of romance readers like her very much.  I think she is one of the more well-liked regency romance writers.  But as I’ve discovered somewhat recently about myself, I don’t like romances that take themselves too seriously and from a sample size of two, my impression is that Balogh writes very earnest romances.  Not my cup of tea. 

My unhappiness with this particular book may also have been related to listening to it.  I didn’t like the narrator’s voice (Rosalyn Landor) or way of speaking at all.  She’s obviously a gifted voice artist but the way she read Anne made her sound breathy and dreamy and her men, especially Sydnam sounded stuffy and too formal.  Balogh’s dialogue was incredibly flowery and showy which emphasized the too formal reading.  Anne shows a handful of seashells to Sydnam saying “Have you ever seen anything more exquisite?” 

Another big complaint was that it felt like Balogh was writing for the lowest common denominator.  She repeats herself over and over and over as if she doesn’t believe the reader will remember that Anne is an unwed mother and this is BAD.  Again the listening may have emphasized this and perhaps it wouldn’t be as noticeable in reading.  The point is, she writes like she must spoon feed her audience and fill in all the blanks for them.  I would have preferred a little less hand holding.

And perhaps the final blow was that the above flaws added together to really ruin the hero and heroine for me.  For all their “exciting” back story, I thought they could not be more colorless or boring.  I cared enough that I wanted to see how they would eventually come together and overcome the obstacles but if the cds had been stolen midway through I wouldn’t have tried tracking down the book or another copy. 

I want to emphasize that my major problem with the book is that it just wasn’t my cup of tea.  A lot of people love Mary Balogh and I’d be interested in hearing some recommendations from any of her fans.  I unfortunately can’t remember the one other of her books I’ve read, I just remember not liking it very much.  But perhaps I’ve just happened onto two of the duds?  Two is a very small sample size but I don’t really want to experiment any further unless someone has some recommendations?