Sunday Salon: April Reading Reflections

After missing Sunday Salon last week because I was away, I didn't yet get around to sharing my April reads, so that is what I am going to do this week.

Here's what I read during April:


A Trifle Dead by Livia Day 4/5
Private Practice by Samanthe Beck 4/5
Tuscan Rose by Belinda Alexandra 3/5
1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham 4/5
Thank You for Riding by Meg Maguire 4/5
Ticket Home by Serena Bell 3.5/5
Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper by India Grey 4/5
From the Kitchen of Half Truths by Maria Goodin 4/5
Marital Bitch by J C Emery 2.5/5
Daughter of the Sky by Michelle Diener 4.5/5
Venetia by Georgette Heyer 4.5/5 (audiobook - relisten)
Stealing Picasso by Anson Cameron 2/5
The Chevalier by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 4.5/5
The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen 4/5
The Clover House by Henriette Laziridis Power 4/5
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan 4.5/5 (audiobook)
Thrown by a Curve by Jaci Burton 4/5
Giving Chase by Lauren Dane 3/5
Saved by the Bride by Fiona Lowe 4/5
Real Men Don't Break Hearts by Coleen Kwan 4/5
Real Men Don't Quit by Coleen Kwan 4/5
Just One Taste by Louisa Edwards 4/5
The Chocolate Rose by Laura Florand 4/5
Turning up the Heat by Laura Florand 4/5
Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich 3/5
The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty 4/5

Challenge Update

Australian Women Writers Challenge - A Trifle Dead, Tuscan Rose, Daughter of the Sky, Saved by the Bride, Real Men Don't Break Hearts, Real Men Don't Quit, The Hypnotist's Love Story

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge - Tuscan Rose, Daughter of the Sky

Aussie Author Challenge - Stealing Picasso 

What's in a Name Challenge - Turning Up the Heat

Once Upon a Time - 1001 Nights of Snowfall, From the Kitchen of Half Truths

Currently Reading

Seduction by M J Rose, Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto and listening to Paper Towns by John Green.

Up Next

Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany

Sunday Salon: March Reading Reflections

If you were to ask me how my reading month was going to be half way through the month and I would have suggested that it was going to be a pretty average month, but in the end it turned out to be a pretty good month. Not only did I get tor read quite a few books, but there was also some pretty amazing reads in there, in particular I wanted to spotlight Easy by Tammara Webber which I gave a rare 5/5 grade to.

Here's what I read:

Sydney Harbor Hospital: Lily's Scandal by Marion Lennox 4/5
Motorcycle Man by Kristen Ashley 4.5/5
Aussie Rules by Jill Shalvis 4/5
Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear 4/5
A Winter's Tale by Trisha Ashley 4/5
Starlight by Carrie Lofty 4/5
The Turncoat by Donna Thorland 4/5
Hope's Road by Margareta Osborn 4/5
The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long 4/5
Just One Day by Gayle Forman 4.5/5
Big Boy by Ruthie Knox 4.5/5
Lush by Lauren Dane 4/5
Easy by Tammara Webber 5/5
Paper Chains by Nicola Moriarty 4.5/5
The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth 4.5/5
The Secret of Everything by Barbara O'Neal 4.5/5
The Chalice by Nancy Bilyeau 4.5/5
Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison 2.5/5
Back on Track by Donna Cummings 3.5/5
Tight Quarters by Samantha Hunter 4/


Challenge Update

Australian Women Writers Challenge - Sydney Harbor Hospital: Lily's Scandal by Marion Lennox, Paper Chains by Nicola Moriarty, The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth, Hope's Road by Margareta Osborn

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth

Once Upon a Time VII: The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth

Currently Reading

Stealing Picasso by Anson Cameron and The Chevalier by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Up Next

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

From the Kitchen of Half Truths by Maria Goodin

After a few weeks off, I am back for Weekend Cooking. I actually had a book that I intended to review last weekend but I got a bit obsessed by something else so now that book will be up for next weekend....or at least that is the plan anyway!

When this book was first released on Netgalley I requested it straight away because I knew that it would be a perfect read for Weekend Cooking. When the invite to participate in the publisher organised blog tour came, I jumped at that opportunity as well because it would give me that additional impetus to actually read and review the book, and here we are! It worked!

Everything that Meg May knows about herself comes from the stories that she has been told for years by her mother. She knows that her father was a French pastry chef who died soon after her conception after an unfortunate pastry making accident, that she was caught in a frying pan when she was born, that she was so small that she was left on the window sill to ripen, that the scar on her head came from a crab's pincer that was accidentally left in a crab cake.

The other thing she knows is that most of what her mother, Valerie, tells her is not true. She learnt this the hard way when she was a young girl and was ostracised by other children due to some of the stories that she repeated at school. Now Meg is as far from being like her mother as she can be. Whereas Valerie lives in a dream world where making toad in the hole is difficult because the toads won't stay put, or where runner beans run, Meg is a scientist. She wants everything to be backed up by solid data and proof and has no time for whimsical stories. Fortunately her scientist boyfriend Mark is also everything solid, sensible and logical. Of course, to the reader, he is also rigid and boring. After all, this is a man who thinks that Meg's top priority should be to question her mother, and so he buys her a book called TALK! saying "It's by some guy who used to be in the Special Air Services. It's all about interrogation techniques."

When Meg learns that her mother is terminally ill, she knows that it is her responsibility to come home and look after her. It may also be her last chance to find out once and for all who she is, if only she can get her mother to give her some facts. Valerie is, however, in denial, at least to Meg, and is determined to make the most of the time she has with her daughter and wanting to share her recipes with her daughter.

She apparently decided, during her short period of bed rest, that the time has come for me to learn her recipes, and she's on a military-style mission to teach me.

"I could put off teaching you for another year, and then another year, but what's the point?" she said yesterday. "I don't want to wait until I'm an old lady to teach you." I came down this morning to find the work surfaces packed with ingredients and a schedule of what we will be cooking over the coming week stuck to the refrigerator. She has literally crammed the next seven days full of cooking lessons. I'm not sure I understand the schedule correctly, but she doesn't seem to have left us any time to eat or sleep.

"I'm really tired. Can we have a rest?"

"We can rest once we have made the maple-syrup-and-pecan muffins."

"But I don't need to know all this stuff," I say wearily.

"Cooking is not a matter of need, Meg. It's a matter of desire, of passion. You don't just cook because you have to: you cook for the pure joy of it. Now, have you sliced the potatoes?" "But maybe we could just cook one thing a day." "That's not going to teach you anything.. There are so many lovely recipes I want you to learn. We have so many to cover."

"Couldn't you just write them down?"

"That's not the same! I need to show you personally. You need to know how to make the perfect passion fruit cheesecake and the sweetest grape-and-white-wine jelly. It's all in the mixing: it's all in the blending. How can I write that down? I can't. I need to pass it on properly. I need to show you myself!"

My mother is scaring me. She seems frantic, crazed, grabbing the celery and the knife from me and chopping at a hundred miles an hour, sending pieces of celery flying through the air and scattering across the worktop.

"You need to listen to me, Meg. You need to watch and learn." "But why do I?"

"Because you need to, that's why! You need to know how to do these things. You need to know all the things I have learned. You need to remember!"

She bangs the knife down on the chopping board, frustrated, suddenly looking close to tears.

"Remember what?" I ask.

She is breathing fast, her face flushed and full of distress. She stares at the tiny pieces of celery scattered across the chopping board as if she is trying to decipher some sort of patter. I gently touch her shoulder. "I will remember," I say softly. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, the tension slowly leaving her body. Then she turns to me, searching my face as if she doesn't understand what I have just said, as if she can't remember what just happened.

I carefully pick up the knife. "Tell me what to do next."

The opportunity for Meg to find out more about who she really is comes when she finds an old flyer for a band that includes an address. Suddenly Meg is afraid of what it might be that she will find out if she starts asking questions, but encouraged (or more precisely bulldozed) into it by Mark, she does. And she doesn't necessarily like what she finds out.

As well as being full of foodie moments, this book also addresses the power of story to help people cope with terrible events in their life, and to explain life in general. One of the key components in the story that helps with this is the gardener, Ewan. When Meg first meets Ewan, she assumes that he is something of a lazy man who is taking advantage of her mother, but she comes to learn that just because he doesn't meet her own definition of being successful, what he does know is how to be true to himself. At first Meg is dismissive of him and completely uninterested as he starts to tell her some of the Greek legends, for example the one about Pandora and her box, and eventually she begins to see how these myths have helped humankind explain life for hundreds of years.

This was a very enjoyable read. I loved the stories of the food coming to life (so much fun), and the way that the food that Valerie made drew the people around her both to her and to each other in due course.

There were elements that were a bit more problematic. Mark, for example, was pretty much a one dimensional character, and the romance was a little bit obvious but it was still a very pleasant and easy to read book!

It is interesting to note that this is a book that has several titles. It was originally published in the UK under the title Nutmeg. In Australia, it is called The Storyteller's Daughter and in the US, which is the version I read, From the Kitchen of Half Truth. Of those titles, I that the Australian title is the most representative of the book, but possibly the least imaginative of the titles.

In the synopsis of the American version (shown below), this book is compared to Chocolat by Joanne Harris and School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. While I can see how you might compare the three books, this one is not quite magical realism which I have seen in Chocolat, and yet it is far more whimsical than Erica Bauermeister's books. Another author that might be an apt comparison is Sara Addison-Allen. What this book does have in common with those two books is the idea of the power of food to bring people together and to ignite the senses.

Rating 4/5

Synopsis

Infused with the delicious warmth of Chocolat and captivating feeling of School of Essential Ingredients, FROM THE KITCHEN OF HALF TRUTH is the warm, tender story of Meg, who can’t convince her cooking-obsessed, fairy-tale loving mother to reveal a thing about their past, even as sickness threatens to hide those secrets forever. Driven to spend one last summer with her mother, Meg must face a choice between what’s real and what we make real, exploring the power of the stories we tell ourselves in order to create the lives we want.

Tour Details

Check out the other stops on the tour below:

April 1 – Luxury Reading
April 2 – Laura’s Reviews
April 4 – A Bookish Affair
April 5 – Mrs. Condit Reads Books
April 6 – Adventures of an Intrepid Reader
April 8 – Cocktails and Books
April 9 – Library of Clean Reads
April 10 - Broken Teepee
April 11 – Dew on the Kudzu
April 12 – Raging Bibliomania
April 15 - Daystarz
April 16 – Chick Lit Plus
April 17 – Peeking Between the Pages
April 22 – Books and Needlepoint
April 23 – Write Meg
April 26 – Bookmagnet

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.

Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham

Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall is part of the Fables series that I have been reading for a year or so. The difference with this book is that you can read it either as an introduction to the series or you can read it part way through the series. Kelly's guide to the series recommends reading it between volumes 8 and 9 of the Fables books which is exactly where I am reading it.

The main concept of this whole volume is pretty simple - Snow White is sent as an ambassador to a powerful Sultan. Due to some cultural misunderstandings (not the least of which is the acceptability of sending a woman as an ambassador) and quite a few delays, Snow finally gets her chance to speak with the Sultan. He is, however, a man who has been betrayed by women before and so to protect himself from betrayal he marries a new woman each night and then has her killed before daybreak. Little does Snow know before she goes to him, her number is up. However, we know that Snow is quite a resourceful woman, and she begins telling him different stories and manages to catch his interest so that he wants her to keep coming back night after night.

Really, this set up is pretty much only a frame for the real business which is the chance for readers to get to see the earlier stories of many of the Fables characters that we are now familiar with. For example, the first and longest story in the book, is Snow White's own story - not so much the whole wicked queen and poison apple business - but what happened after she married her Prince Charming, with particular note on what happened with the dwarves after. These were definitely not your Disney style dwarves! (Sneezy, Dopey etc would have been safe in this telling. Can't say the same for these dwarves necessarily).

One of the other stories that is told to the Sultan is that of the Frog Prince. A beautiful princess kisses a frog and a handsome prince appears. They are married and very happy together, raising a thriving family with many children. The fact that the prince reverts to his frog form on occasion is only a small problem, until his home is invaded and his wife and children are killed and he is unable to do anything to stop it. This was only a short story compared to some of the others, but it was quite graphic (as in sexually violent). And yet, it was also the story that gave me my biggest a-ha moment as it kind of explains why the character in the previous books in the series firstly likes to eat flies, and secondly is the way he is, which is that he kind of exists in a perpetual state of shell-shock.

Another of the origins we got to explore was that of Bigby. Who would have thought he was the runt of the litter! We get to see how determined Bigby is, fighting his way up from awwww...Bigby as a cub to ewwww...Bigby as a malevolent killer. You can see much of these early lessons in the man who is one of my favourite Fables characters.

We also got to find out about the witch and how she came to be in the new world, about how it was that Old King Cole became the mayor of Fabletown and why it became necessary to create the farm which is what started the tensions that led to him being ousted as mayor in the later books in the series. I think from a purely aesthetic perspective, the witch's story and how she came to meet Snow and Ruby Red was my favourite.

While I enjoyed the stories, particularly the whole back to the beginning vibe, there were a couple of things that bothered me this time.

Snow is telling the stories to the sultan with a view of keeping him from marrying her and then killing her before daybreak, and this apparently goes on for 1001 nights. That therefore means a different story every night and I think that this idea of different stories was part of the reason why each story had different illustrators. However, to me, the different stories didn't feel cohesive, because each of the stories felt really, really different from the others in terms of the artistic style, the dominant colour palettes etc. Now this happens to a degree with a normal Fables collection but usually there is one overarching story that is continuing the main Fables storyline, as well as a couple of other stories, with the main thread feeling pretty much cohesive from one edition to the next.

The other thing that happened at the very end where Scheherazade is next to be in turn to go to the Sultan after Snow White has survived for 1001 nights, and Snow White tells her the secret of her survival - it kind of felt as though it was undercutting the whole Scheherazade story as an individual tale.

On to the next Fables book then!

Rating 4/5

Synopsis

Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall is set in the early days of Fabletown, long before the FABLES series began!

Traveling to Arabia as an Ambassador from the exiled FABLES community, Snow White is captured by the local sultan who wants to marry her (and then kill her). But clever Snow attempts to charm the sultan instead by playing Scheherazade, telling him fantastic stories for a total of 1,001 nights, saving her very skin in the process.

Running the gamut from unexpected horror to dark intrigue to mercurial coming-of-age, FABLES:1,001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL reveals the secret histories of familiar FABLES characters through a series of compelling and visually illustrative tales. Writer Bill Willingham is joined by an impressive array of artists from comic book industry legends to the amazing young painters of the next wave.

FABLES:1,001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL is both a welcome entry point to the critically acclaimed series and an essential part of Willingham's enchanting and imaginative Fables mythos.

Other contributors to this edition include Esao Andrews, Brian Bolland, John Bolton, Mark Buckingham, James Jean, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Derek Kirk Kim, Tara McPherson, Jill Thompson, Charles Vess, Mark Wheatley)

This book counts for the Once Upon a Time challenge.

Sunday Salon: Ramblings

I am not sure if you have noticed or not but it has been kind of quiet around here recently. While I have still been reading up a storm, the idea of sitting down to collect my thoughts and write about a book hasn't been that appealing. Yep....I'm in a reviewing slump. The only thing that gets me to sit down and actually write something is where I have committed to post a review on a particular date, usually for a blog tour. I have even dropped off Weekend Cooking for the last few weeks because I was so uninspired. Of course, it doesn't help that even the baking I have been doing hasn't exactly turned out well either! I did have a book to write about yesterday for Weekend Cooking, but then I saw something shiny and got distracted so it didn't happen. I have posts scheduled for the next two weeks now so it could well be that I don't ever actually write about that book! We'll see!

Of course, getting obsessed with something new isn't going to help motivate me to write reviews! Today, after hearing about them for a long time, I started watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. My intention was just to watch a few episodes. Do you think that 40 can still be quantified as a few or have I crossed the line into many, many episodes now? I can't wait to watch more! So much fun! I have no idea why I didn't start watching them earlier!

I am also way behind on blog hopping but I did notice a few posts the other day announcing that it was time for Once Upon a Time again, being hosted by Carl from Stainless Steel Droppings for the seventh time.

This year I am going to undertake the Journey level of participation.

This is really as simple as the name implies. It means you are participating, but not committing yourself to any specific number of books. By signing up for The Journey you are agreeing to read at least one book within one of the four categories during March 21st to June 21st period. Just one book. If you choose to read more, fantastic! If not, then we have still had the pleasure of your company during this three month reading journey and hopefully you have read a great book, met some interesting people, and enjoyed the various activities that occur during the challenge. It has always been of utmost importance to me that the challenges that I host be all about experiencing enjoyable literature and sharing it with others. I want you to participate. Hence, The Journey.

In a way it kinds of feels as though I am cheating just a little bit on this one because the book that I finished the day that the challenge started is one that met the criteria, and I did have that in mind at the time I was reading it so technically, I could have finished the challenge already. Of course, see my opening paragraph to find out the likelihood of a review being written is.

Other books that I might reading for the challenge that are sitting on my shelves include:

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham
Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller
Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik

I am sure that there are others on my shelves that might make the grade too!

In other news I am still going strong on the #estellagram front and so far haven't missed a prompt for the month of March! Normally I drop off after a few days from these photo a day challenges so I am quite happy with that achievement. Some time this week I will probably do a post with the photos that I haven't yet shown here. I do have to laugh at myself though because for yesterday's prompt I did something a teensy bit embarrassing. I am not sure if anyone has noticed because no one has said anything, but I am going to out myself anyway.

Yesterday's prompt was e-reader, so I put my e-reader on top of a book and took a photo of the both of them saying something along the lines of I am happy to read either paper books or using my e-reader, and didn't think much more about it! After I had received a few likes, I had another look at the picture and I realised that the page I was showing on the e-reader was of....ummm...sexy times in the steamy romance I was reading and not the Tudor set historical mystery that I had thought it was! Whoops! But it is there now so I am not going to take it down! Note to self....make sure you take a look at what you are taking photos of.

So that's it for my rambly Sunday Salon post this week! There will be at least a couple of reviews this week because they are scheduled. We'll see what else happens shall we!

Currently Reading

The Chalice by Nancy Bilyeau and listening to Tuscan Rose by Belinda Alexandra

Up Next

Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison