Here’s the dedication of the book:
For Colin Firth
You’re a really great guy, but I’m married,
so I think we should just be friends.
Austenland by Shannon Hale If you are an Austen fan, get this book and read it right now. I mean it. I have yet to read a Shannon Hale book that I didn’t like, but this is her first for adults, as well as her first (at least that I’ve read) realistic fiction. It falls squarely into the chick lit genre, as it features a single woman in search of contentment, with or without men. Jane, our heroine, is a graphic designer and very closeted Austen fan – so bad that she hides her BBC “Pride and Prejudice” dvds behind a plant pot. A great-aunt who found the buried dvds leaves Jane with an all-expenses-paid vacation to Austenland, where female guests live in manor houses in a life straight out of an Austen novel, complete with male actors playing eligible bachelors. It seems like the vacation of her dreams, something sure to cure her of her unhealthy Mr. Darcy obsession once and for all. But when Jane arrives, she’s not so sure. The clothes feel strange and she misses her forbidden cell phone, but most of all, what can she believe in a place where everyone is pretending to be something they’re not? And even if she’s just flirting, should she concentrate on the off-limits but very friendly gardener, or brooding and Darcy-like Mr. Nobley? It’s not clear, right up to the very end. Hale is Mormon, and I was very impressed at just how sexy a book with no sex in it could be. This is real treat.
Families by Susan Kuklin This beautiful nonfiction book is just the ticket for children curious about families. Kuklin interviews New York children ages 4 to 14 from a multitude of backgrounds and photographs their families. The children tell us in their own words what they don’t like but mostly like about their family and their siblings. The families are lots of different colors and mixed; different religions; with straight, gay, divorced and single parents, and adopted, only, and multiple siblinged children. The kids are charmingly passionate about their families, and the pictures (staged by the kids) tell a lot about the families. They’ve included meaningful pictures from family photo albums, too, of grandparents or parents when they were young. Each family is a double spread, with large pictures and a fair amount of text. This is the only thing I could consider a drawback – I am still on the lookout for something like this on a preschool level. With my non-English teacher viewpoint, I’d think a third or fourth grader could read it independently, and a couple years younger would enjoy it as a read-aloud. Still, for pictures of real families from the kids’ point of view, this is amazing.
The Secrets of Droon. Book 1: The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet. Book 2: Journey to the Volcano Palace. by Tony Abbott. Read by Oliver Wyman
A Kiss of Fate by Mary Jo Putney Great Britain, early 18th century. Gwynne Owens is a young member of the secret magical group called the Guardians, who use their magic to preserve the peace as much as possible. She herself doesn’t have any sign of power, but is a librarian and a serious student of Guardian lore. When the action begins to heat up, she is a young and wealthy widow, living with her much older Guardian sister-in-law. Then she meets Duncan Macrae, a powerful Scottish weather mage. Their attraction is both powerful and frightening to Gwynne (nothing like a few lightening bolts to heat things up), and an early kiss leaves her with vivid visions of violent destruction. She wants to run the other way as fast as she can, but the Guardian Council senses that she will be crucial to balancing Duncan’s power during the gathering uprising in Scotland. After a hasty wedding, the pair is off on a short wedding tour on the way to the Macrae manor in the lowlands of Scotland. And now Gwynne’s power is awakened – truly high levels of seduction, charm, and persuasiveness, with some pretty good future reading to boot. Just quiet female powers, really, she thinks – will they be enough to keep Duncan from adding his power to the uprising and causing the rivers of blood in her visions? Though the Guardian premise seems promising to me, magic in Scotland during the ‘45 says Outlander to me. That series really sets the bar as far as combining adventure, romance and magic, even getting kudos for appealing to both genders, and this one can’t quite meet it. Kiss of Fate a fine book, a little heavier on the romance than the adventure, and a lot more sex than your average romance, due to the heroine’s special powers. It still has a scholarly and adventurous seductress, and a kilt-wearing man whose kisses cause storms. If these are up your alley, give it a try.
The Rumpelstiltskin Problem by Vivian VandeVelde Vande Velde is a well-known writer of fantasy and horror for the young, so this is a little out of her usual sphere. The problem with Rumpelstiltskin, she writes in the introduction, is that it just doesn’t make sense. For example, what father would lie to a king about his daughter’s abilities? What king would believe that an obviously poor girl had the ability to spin straw into gold? Why would anybody want to marry someone on a three day acquaintance, on every one of which she’s been threatened with death? In this collection, she sets out to make the familiar story make sense. She puts a different spin on each of half a dozen stories, so that in each one, a different character is to blame, and for different reasons. The language is contemporary, the stories funny, the concept fascinating. Enjoy!
Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll This is the easy cheese cookbook that was mentioned in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (reviewed September 7). Carroll is obviously in love with milk in general and cheese in particular. She starts with a short history of cheese, outlines the cheese-making process, and goes over ingredients and equipment. We learn that there are three levels of milk pasteurization – regular, high heat, and ultra. Regular, which you can do at home with raw milk, kills your ordinary pathogens. High heat can’t be used for cheese. This isn’t labeled, either, so you just have to experiment. Finally, ultra pasteurizing, the results of which comes in tetra packs, destroys both the proteins and nutrients in creating a shelf-stable product. Her instructions are clear, if filled with cheesy puns. Soft cheeses can mostly be done fairly quickly, some needing overnight draining, but not a lot of hands-on labor. The equipment starts at a low-temperature thermometer and cheesecloth, both easily available. Citric acid is supposed to be in grocery stores seasonally, for tomato canning. Some of the soft cheeses also require a bacterial starter (like yeast for bread making) which would need to be bought on-line. Mostly, though, they look doable and yummy – I’d say weekend level, as opposed to weeknight or holiday weekend. The 30-minute mozzarella tried was truly fabulous. Hard cheeses, by contrast, look hard – more like a full day to weekend of work to start with, plus daily attention for a week or two, and a couple times a week for a couple months. They nearly all require the special starters, as well as cheese presses and mats. They still look delicious. After these recipes are some for other dairy products – buttermilks, yogurt, kefir, etc. There are also recipes for dishes in which to use your homemade dairy products, and profiles of small American cheese makers. If you can make bread or beer and like cheese, give this a try.
Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen Two estranged sisters forge a bond they never had as children in this new book of magical realism. Older sister Claire Waverly grew up living in her mother’s car, while Mom shoplifted a living and slept around. When her mother took her to the family home in North Carolina just before her younger sister’s birth, Claire vowed never to leave home. Sydney Waverly, however, followed in her mother’s footsteps, down to running back to Bascom with a young daughter in tow. The whole town knows that Claire has the Waverly touch – dishes cooked with the flowers from her garden will do strange things. But Sydney never thought she was a real Waverly. Claire learns to expand herself and Sydney finds her roots; they both find a little romance, as well, though that’s not the main point. I really enjoyed the relationships and the magic; the dialogue caught me the wrong way just a couple of times. The character names seemed like they were pulled right off our library storytelling roster, which was quite amusing. And for all these small flaws, this was one I ignored chores to read, a rare occurrence.
Porn for Women by the Cambridge Women’s Pornography Initiative. Photographs by Susan Anderson This little gift book was shown to me by my good friend M., who always recommends the best books. Apparently, the Cambridge Women’s Pornography Initiative did a survey to find out what really turns women on, and then sent their photographer out to photograph a few fine-looking men doing just those things. One man picks up a garbage bag, while the caption on the facing page reads*, “As long as I have two legs to walk on, you’ll never take out the trash.” Another holds out a piece of cake saying, “Eat it! I don’t like to see you so thin.” One man in bed lifts up the covers: “Is that the baby? I’ll go get her.” The Amazon entry is full of reviewers saying that this is either a joke or rampantly sexist. While it is both funny and sexy, I also think it’s fairly accurate. I’ve read of many studies showing that women find a man who will help with housework and be considerate of their partners a bigger turn-on than, well, sex with no foreplay, or porn designed for men. The result is a turn-on for (straight) women you could safely show a child. No, this shouldn’t be the fantasy that porn implies, and yes, women do enjoy real sex – but this is still awfully fun. And kudos to my love, and to the partners of so many of my friends, who embody the sexy ideals expressed in this book. 
The Scandal of the Season by Sophie Gee In 1711, a young Alexander Pope sets out for London against his father’s will. He hopes to make a name for himself as a poet; his father remembers all too keenly Catholics being burned in the streets and forced to live at least ten miles outside of the city. Meanwhile, his childhood friends Teresa and Martha Blount are also heading to London for the season, where Teresa hopes that their cousin Arabella, the acclaimed belle of the season, can introduce them to the best in society. The Jacobite rebellion is being plotted, some Catholics supporting a return to a Catholic reign, while others want only to blend in with society. Amid the political turbulence, Alexander watches as Arabella becomes enmeshed in a passionate affair, so shocking that it will become… the scandal of the season. This origin story for The Rape of the Lock is full of intrigues both social and political, and delightful for anyone who enjoyed books like Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.
alibrarymama 