Top Ten Tuesday: Author names - Jane who?

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. 

This week theme  Books I Can’t Believe I’ve Never Read but I feel like I did a variation on that not too long ago. I have had this post half written in draft for weeks so I decided to go with this theme instead. I do see myself doing variations on this theme on occasion in the future too!

Have you ever noticed how many authors there are with the same first names. There are a proliferation of books who are written by people named Susan (however it is spelt) or Elizabeth or Jane or Kate or Victoria. Today, I am focussing on the name Jane! So here are ten books written by author's whose first name is Jane.

Jane Austen - Hand's up if this was the first Jane you thought of when I said what my theme was this week!

Jane Harper - I am a long way behind on Jane Harper's books but I do like their Australian setting.

Jane Lovering - A recent favourite author. I have read a number of her books over the last few years.

Jane Tara - I read this book club a couple of years ago.

Jane Harrison - This book tells of the arrival of British settlers from the point of view of the Indigenous people who witnessed, and then suffered because of it

Jane Yolen - A while ago I was reading a lot of fairytale retellings and this was a good one!

Jane Sanderson - I liked this book because it was set in both Adelaide and Sheffield which are both places I have listed 

Jane Harris - I don't know why I haven't read more by this author.

Jane Smiley - I liked this book but I didn't love the abridged audio.

Jane Yang - This is one that is on my Kindle.to read.

Do you have any other authors named Jane that immediately come to mind?

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Degrees of Separation

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books You’d be a Fool Not to Read (Happy April Fool’s Day! In honor of this silly holiday, share the books you think people must read for whatever reason. They could be your favorites, books you deem classics, books that you learned something important from, books you wish you’d read sooner, etc. You could even narrow it down to a specific genre and share the must-reads for that genre. Get creative!)

I am not really feeling this as a topic so I have decided to be a fool in a different way. Every month, I participate in a meme called Six Degrees of Separation. It is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best. The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links.

You can choose to make the links between books in any way that you like. It could be from a word in the title, part of the authors name, a cover that reminds you of another book, the subject of the book. It really is just a big game of association. In order to start things off, I am going to choose to use the last book I mentioned in last week's Top Ten Tuesday post and see where that takes me using 10 books instead of the normal 7!

So how does this make me foolish? Because I am doing the wrong meme!

My starting point is White Mulberry by Rosa Kwon Easton as it was the last book that I mentioned in last week's Top Ten Tuesday post. 

One of the main characters names in Daughters of Tuscany by Siobhan Daiko is Rosa which connects nicely to the author's name for the previous book. (my review)

I am choosing to use the fact that the main setting for Still Life by Sarah Winman is Florence which is  the capital city of Tuscany This book is almost a love letter to the city.

From there I am choosing to use the word Life from the title and choose Life After Life by Kate Atkinson 

Another Kate whose writing I enjoy is Kate Forsyth who writes phenomenal fairy tale retellings wrapped up in historical fiction. Normally I would pick Bitter Greens but this time I am going with The Beast's Garden which is set against the backdrop of WWII.

Next I am choosing Briar Rose by Jane Yolen. This is another fairytale retelling I enjoyed, once again set during WWII. There are even some similar motifs on the cover of both of these books. (my review)

Using the word Rose and the WWII setting as the links I am choosing The Rose Code by Kate Quinn, which is about the codebreakers working at Bletchley during WWII. 

Still focusing on WWII settings, and the work of codebreakers, this time Australian women who were based in Brisbane, I have chosen The Codebreakers by Alli Sinclair

I hadn't really intended to have so many WWII connections, but here is another one. My main link though is that both authors have the same first name. I have therefore chose At the Foot of the Cherry Tree by Alli Parker as my next link.  

And finally, I am using the word tree as my link to Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak . (my review)

So there we have it! 10 books linked by various different means taking us from a Korean woman living in Japan in the lead up to WWII to a book where the Cypriot characters are living in London following years of conflict on their island. I inadvertently ended up with quite a few WWII books, as well as several books with roses on the cover!

I would mention that there are lots of option with every level of this there are multiple different ways you could go. For example, I saw Sarah Winman at Melbourne Writers Festival a few years ago now, so I could have picked any other author who I have seen at MWF as my next choice and the chain would have ended up looking very different, and everyone's chains are always unique. Do you think you would have fun doing this exercise?

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen

Ever since she was a child, Rebecca has been enchanted by her grandmother Gemma’s stories about Briar Rose. But a promise Rebecca makes to her dying grandmother will lead her on a remarkable journey to uncover the truth of Gemma’s astonishing claim: I am Briar Rose. A journey that will lead her to unspeakable brutality and horror. But also to redemption and hope.

I added this book to the my TBR list when it was reviewed by Rhinoa last year. I am pretty sure that I have also seen it around the place, and talked to a few other people about it as well. This is a Young Adult book, a story about trying to find your identity as well as a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale but instead of the Disney version that we are so familiar with these days, this tale is set in the context of the Holocaust. It was originally published as part of Terry Windling's Fairy Tale series and I have to say that if this is an example of how good that particular series is then I will be reading more of them.

The main character is Rebecca, a young journalist who has always loved listening to her grandmother Gemma's telling of the story of Briar Rose - a version of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. Shortly before her death, Gemma askes Becca to never forget her story and this plea is reiterated when Gemma repeats over and over "I am Briar Rose" on her deathbed. The difficult thing about never forgetting Gemma's story is that no one really knows exactly who Gemma is, what her real name is, or how it was that she came to be in America.

Not long after her grandmother's death, the family finds a wooden box that they have never seen before, and inside there are a few photos and some newspaper clippings that seem to provide some clues as to those unanswered questions. Rebecca is determined to put the pieces together and so she embarks on a journey much more haunting than she could ever have imagined, and meeting new people who can provide some kind of background to her grandmothers life. She is aided in her research by her boss. If there is one weakness with this book it is in this relationship, particularly with the ending. Perhaps this was an effort to echo a fairy tale type relationship but this is one aspect that didn't work for me.

Despite the fact that it is a relatively short book, and there is a sparsity to the writing, there is depth, there is historical detail. In short, there is a really fascinating story that is well worth reading.

It was interesting that Yolen chose to use the Chelmno extermination camp as her main prison camp setting, especially seeing as there were so few people who made it out of that camp, but perhaps that is part of the reason for doing so - the pure horror of the camp cannot be avoided when you read anything about it.

I read this book for both the War Through the Generations Challenge and Bang Bang Reading Challenge and highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in WWII fiction.

Rating 4.5/5

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