Thursday Quotables: Burial Rites

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
(published 2013)

Now comes the darkening sky and a cold wind that passes right through you, as though you are not there, it passes through you as though it does not care whether you are alive or dead, for you will be gone and the wind will still be there, licking the grass flat upon the ground, not caring whether the soil is at a freeze or thaw, for it will freeze and thaw again, and soon your bones, now hot with blood and thick-juicy with marrow, will be dry and brittle and flake and freeze and thaw with the weight of the dirt upon you, and the last moisture of your body will be drawn up to the surface by the grass, and the wind will come and knock it down and push you back against the rocks, or it will scrape you up under its nails and take you out to sea in a wild screaming of snow.

This historical novel centering on a real-life murder in 19th century Iceland is atmospheric, chilling, and full of beautiful writing. My review will be along in the next few days!

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

23Apr2014

At A Glance: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Burial Rites

Synopsis:

In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnusdottir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men.

Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to her execution on the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson, his wife and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderess in their midst, the family avoids speaking with Agnes. Only Toti, the young assistant reverend appointed as Agnes’ spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her, as he attempts to salvage her soul. As the summer months fall away to winter and the hardships of rural life force the household to work side by side, Agnes’ ill-fated tale of longing and betrayal begins to emerge. And as the days to her execution draw closer, the question burns: did she or didn’t she?

Based on a true story, Burial Rites is a deeply moving novel about personal freedom: who we are seen to be versus who we believe ourselves to be, and the ways in which we will risk everything for love. In beautiful, cut-glass prose, Hannah Kent portrays Iceland’s formidable landscape, where every day is a battle for survival, and asks, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

My thoughts:

Burial Rites, by debut author Hannah Kent, received heaps of critical praise when it was released in 2013. I finally caught up to this unusual book in time for its paperback release this month, prompted by my commitment to a book group.

Burial Rites is based on real events in Iceland’s history, and provides a fascinating look into a little seen world. The landscape is bleak, harsh, and unforgiving, and the people who live there must deal with the elements and the isolation of their land. Even the families who are well enough off to have servants live in dirt-walled crofts heated by dung fires and peat; the cold is everywhere, and the indoors is consistently portrayed as smoky, dark, and generally unhealthy.

In this world, a woman on her own has no chance to change her life. When we meet Agnes, her death sentence has been declared, and all she can do is wait for it to be carried out. Escape is not an option; there’s no place to run to, and no way to survive in the wild. Agnes is feared and reviled, treated with utter contempt and placed into inhuman living conditions, until she is transferred into the care of a farm family for her last months. With no district jails, the burden and responsibility for housing prisoners falls on the local population, and Agnes moves in with a minor official’s family, where she sleeps in the same room with them and works alongside them. Over time, the family begins to view her as a person rather than as a fearsome murderess, and Agnes in turn opens up and finally reveals the truth about the night of the murders.

I started reading Burial Rites not knowing the outcome of the story, and it wasn’t until I was about 50 pages into it that I finally read the back flap and found out the historical facts of the matter. In a way, I’m sorry that I did; my mood while reading the book changed very much once I knew what would happen — but given that the synopsis above doesn’t give much away, I won’t go into details about it either.

The feel of life in 19th century Iceland really comes through in the writing, and we get a sense of the vastness of the empty landscapes, the far-removed farms, and the struggle to make ends meet that features in all of the characters’ lives. Agnes is an enigma when we first meet her, but as her story unfolds, we receive insights into her wants and fears, and it’s impossible not to feel our hearts break for her by the end of the book. The family dynamic is quite interesting, as a simple, hard-working family with two daughters is forced to live alongside a convicted criminal, and the author does an effective job of showing their feelings change from mistrust and dislike to sympathy and even affection.

I struggled a bit early on to get into the story as it unfolded slowly, and found the place and people names quite difficult to decipher and keep straight at first. Once I got into it, though, the story pulled me along, and I ultimately found Burial Rites to be both very interesting and very moving.

Part true-crime story, part psychological profile, Burial Rites is an intriguing story of a notorious woman trapped in a harsh world. I’d recommend Burial Rites for readers who enjoy historical fiction with everyday characters, unusual settings, and literary, descriptive writing.

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The details:

Title: Burial Rites
Author: Hannah Kent
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Publication date: 2013
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Purchased

23Apr2014

Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

There’s nothing like a Wednesday for thinking about the books we want to read! My Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday post is linking up with two fabulous book memes, Wishlist Wednesday (hosted by Pen to Paper) and Waiting on Wednesday (hosted by Breaking the Spine).

My pick this week confuses me. Read on to find out why!

The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit by Graham Joyce
(Release date: August 5, 2014)

Synopsis via Goodreads:

Critically acclaimed author Graham Joyce returns with a sexy, suspenseful,and slightly supernatural novel set 1976 England during the hottest summer in living memory, in a seaside resort where the past still haunts the present.

David, a college student, takes a summer job at a run-down family resort in a dying English resort town. This is against the wishes of his family…because it was at this resort where David’s biological father disappeared fifteen years earlier. But something undeniable has called David there.

A deeper otherworldliness lies beneath the surface of what we see. The characters have a suspicious edge to them…David is haunted by eerie visions of a mysterious man carrying a rope, walking hand-in-hand with a small child…and the resort is under siege by a plague of ladybugs. Something different is happening in this town.

When David gets embroiled in a fiercely torrid love triangle, the stakes turn more and more menacing. And through it all, David feels as though he is getting closer to the secrets of his own past.

This is a darkly magic and sexy book that has a strong suspense line running through it. It’s destined to continue to pull in a wider circle of readers for the exceptionally talented Graham Joyce.

Graham Joyce catapulted right onto my favorite authors list as soon as I read his incredibly haunting and atmospheric novel The Silent Land, which was published in 2010. More recently, I read Some Kind of Fairy Tale, which had some really unique and interesting elements, although it didn’t blow me away the way The Silent Land did.

The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit sounds like something that will definitely appeal to me, with its mix of nostalgia, suspense, and oddness.

So why am I confused? When I went back to Goodreads today to grab the image for the book, I found another book with a different title listed on the same page. As far as I can tell, the book was published in the UK in 2013 as The Year of the Ladybird — and is simply being given a new title for its US release this summer… but it took me a little bit to figure out that these are in fact the same book. Whatever they call it, though, I’m in!

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

22Apr2014

Blog Tour & Book Review: The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore

The Serpent of Venice: A Novel I’m thrilled to be participating in the blog tour for the brand-new Christopher Moore novel, The Serpent of Venice.

Christopher Moore writes about demons, sea monster, and vampires. Also about Jesus and Impressionist painters, talking fruitbats and humpback whales. In other words, this is an author who defies categorization, yet one thing is for sure: If you don’t fall on the floor laughing at least a few times reading any of his many novels, well… you’re probably doing it wrong!

Moore’s trademark humor is firmly in place in his newest novel, The Serpent of Venice, a follow-up to his 2009 novel Fool. Fool is a retelling of King Lear, with the king’s fool Pocket serving as main character and very clever (and occasionally obscene) narrator. In The Serpent of Venice, Moore returns to Shakespeare with the further adventures of Pocket, using as his framework not one but two Shakespearean plays, plus a little Edgar Allan Poe for good measure.

Loosely weaving together the plotlines of The Merchant of Venice and Othello (trust me, it works), with a bit of The Cask of Amontillado thrown in as well, The Serpent of Venice follows Pocket the Fool as he maneuvers his way through the devilish machinations of a host of scheming bad guys. He meets up with Shylock and his daughter Jessica, confronts the evil Iago, befriends the great general Othello and his wife Desdemona — and plays all sides against one another, with daring, wit, agility, and plenty of Christopher Moore’s trademark “heinous fuckery most foul”.

Remarkably, Moore weaves the source material into his outrageous new work almost seamlessly, so that for those who enjoy such things, it’s possible to take certain scenes and follow along paragraph by paragraph, and compare back to the same scene in the Shakespearean plays. Combining these works, modernizing the language as needed, adding in raucous humor and heaps of vulgarity — plus Marco Polo, a sea serpent, and a monkey named Jeff — may sound like a crazy mess, but in The Serpent of Venice, there’s a certain beauty to the wackiness, and it really holds together in a way that’s a wonder to behold.

Fans of the author will be gratified, as always, by his quirky, irreverent approach to language, not afraid to take some of the most honored works in the English canon and stand them on their ears:

“Thou mendacious fuckweasel,” said Emilia, almost spitting it, disgusted now rather than hysterical.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” said Iago.

“Methinks the lady protests just the right amount,” said Emilia. “Methinks the lady is just getting fucking started protesting.”

Even from the book’s very beginning, we get a dose of prime Moore in the introduction “The Stage” that lets us know what we’re in for:

Strangely, although most of the characters are Venetian, everybody speaks English, and with an English accent.

Unless otherwise described, assume conditions to be humid.

For me, one of the most amazing pieces of this book is the author’s afterward. After laughing my way through the book itself, it was fascinating to read about the author’s research, his careful study of the source material, the decisions he made about the setting and time periods, and the historical elements woven into the story. Without being too preachy or teachy, he manages to convey a ton of information in these few short pages, so that I walked away from The Serpent of Venice not just having laughed, but also having learned about Venetian history in the 13th century, racism and anti-Semitism in Shakespeare’s time… and what Christopher Moore really thinks about *ahem* being intimate with dragons.

Either Christopher Moore’s crazy approach to life and writing appeals to you or it doesn’t — and if it does, The Serpent of Venice is a treat. Fans will absolutely want to read The Serpent of Venice, and will not be disappointed. If you’ve never read anything by Christopher Moore — and you like to laugh and you’re not easily offended — I’d say give him a try! For Shakespeare with a twist, start with Fool and then read The Serpent of Venice… and if those appeal to your sense of offbeat humor, you’ll end up wanting to read everything else in the author’s catalog of funny, weird, and wonderful books.

About the Author:

Christopher Moore is the author of eleven novels, including the international bestsellers, Lamb, A Dirty Job and You Suck. His latest novel is Fool, a retelling of King Lear from the perspective of Pocket, the Fool.

Chris was born in Toledo, Ohio and grew up in Mansfield, Ohio. His father was a highway patrolman and his mother sold major appliances at a department store. He attended Ohio State University and Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. He moved to California when he was 19 years old and lived on the Central Coast until 2003, when he moved to Hawaii.

Before publishing his first novel, Practical Demonkeeping in 1992, he worked as a roofer, a grocery clerk, a hotel night auditor, and insurance broker, a waiter, a photographer, and a rock and roll DJ. Chris has drawn on all of these work experiences to create the characters in his books. When he’s not writing, Chris enjoys ocean kayaking, scuba diving, photography, and sumi-e ink painting. He divides his time between Hawaii and San Francisco.

Christopher Moore’s website: http://www.chrismoore.com/

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The details:

Title: The Serpent of Venice
Author: Christopher Moore
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication date: April 22, 2014
Length: 336 pages
Genre: Adult fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of TLC Book Tours

For further information, visit the author’s website or stop by TLC Book Tours to view other blog tour hosts.

21Apr2014

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Characters With Essential Survival Skills

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Top Ten Characters Who… (choose a characteristic and find ten characters who fit). So many options! Characters who make the best friends? Characters I’d like to invite for dinner? It’s so hard to narrow it down!

Going with my chosen theme, these are my picks for characters who you’d want by your side in a crisis — characters who have the skills it takes to survive!

1) Claire Fraser (Outlander series): You’ve got to hand it to Claire. She manages the transition from 20th century to 18th century without missing a beat, and adapts her modern-day physician skills to become a healer woman in her new home. Medicinal herbs, home-brewed penicillin, hand-made ether for surgical anesthetic — Claire can do it all!

2) Brianna Randall MacKenzie (Outlander series): Just as inventive as her mother Claire, although with a different focus. Bree is an excellent shot, can hunt for dinner any day of the week, and in her spare time figures out how to create a kiln and make water pipes from clay.

3) Darla Edmunds (Ashfall series): Darla, a super-talented teen, is the key to survival for her entire community. She invents Bikezilla (a hybrid bicycle/snowmobile that can be used to haul just about anything), bike-powered corn mills, wind-powered turbines, and central heating. When there’s no electricity and everyone is on the verge of starvation, Darla figures out how to feed, house, and warm hundreds of people at a time.

4) Lauren Olamina (Parable of the Sower): Lauren founds a religion, protects her people, creates a community, and keeps hope alive when the world seems to be falling to pieces. She also thinks ahead to the little things, like stocking up on ammo and plant seeds.

5) Tyrion Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire): Tyrion seems to always manage to survive, somehow, by using his wits and his tongue. Whether these will continue to work for him remains to be seen.

6) Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games): No explanation needed, right?

7) Yorick Brown (Y: The Last Man): After all males on the planet are wiped out in an instant, Yorick is literally the last man on Earth — and there are plenty of people who’d like to get rid of him too. He survives through goofiness, charm, and his ability to roll with the punches and not give up. Despite his slacker exterior, Yorick excels at forging alliances, and the biggest plus in his fight for survival is the excellent team he holds together.

8) Hig (The Dog Stars): Being a pilot is a matter of survival for Hig in this post-apocalyptic novel, in which viewing the surrounding terrain from the air and being able to spot danger before it arrives at his door is what’s kept him alive for so long.

9) Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit): Never underestimate the survival ability of a burglar! For a simple hobbit who never wanted to leave his own comfy home, Bilbo certainly has a talent for getting into and out of the unlikeliest of places. And clearly, being able to solve riddles when your life is on the line is no small ~~feet~~ feat.

10) Harry Dresden (The Dresden Files): Not only is Harry the only professional wizard in Chicago, he’s a man with the ability to face down any foe, human or otherwise, cast enchantments and spells, and even come back from the dead. Can’t beat that for a survival skill!

What character traits were on your mind this week? Share your links, and I’ll come check out your top 10!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider following Bookshelf Fantasies! And don’t forget to check out our regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday. Happy reading!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

21Apr2014

The Monday Agenda 4/21/2014

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Not a lofty, ambitious to-be-read list consisting of 100+ book titles. Just a simple plan for the upcoming week — what I’m reading now, what I plan to read next, and what I’m hoping to squeeze in among the nooks and crannies.

How did I do with last week’s agenda?

Another crazy week, with almost no reading time… frustrating! As a result, I barely made a dent in my intended reading pile for the week.

Far From You Burial Rites D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths

Far From You by Tess Sharpe: Done! My review is here.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent: I started this one much later than I’d wanted to, and so far have read about two-thirds. Beautifully written, but with a bleakness that makes it hard to sit through without getting up to look at the sunshine or smell the roses.

In the world of reading with my kiddo, we’re happily working our way through D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths, thanks to which we’re learning that Thor doesn’t really look like Chris Hemsworth and Loki isn’t really Thor’s brother. Crazy shenanigans! Lots of fun, too.

Fresh Catch:

So many goodies! This week was the Spring Book Sale sponsored by our local friends of the public library organization, and it was a blast. Thousands upon thousands of books for sale, all paperbacks only $2! Here’s what I picked up for myself:

Plus a few for my kiddo:

On top of which, I just happened to be ambling by the neighborhood used book store earlier this week — and stumbled across a copy of The Humans by Matt Haig, which I’d borrowed from the library last year and loved! What a lucky week for me!

What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?

The Here and Now She Is Not Invisible Savage Girl

First, I need to finish reading Burial Rites before my book group discusses it on Wednesday. After that, I’m really not sure what I’ll be in the mood for, but here’s what I’m thinking I’ll read… subject to my whims and fancies, of course:

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

She Is Not Invisible by Marcu Sedgwick

Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman

Random pop culture goodness:

I’m now caught up on the first two weeks of the new season of Mad Men. I’m not sure that I care that much any more, but for now, I’m still watching. I’m loving the new seasons of Game of Thrones and Orphan Black! Although I think I need a refresher on all the clones and what they were up to at the end of last season…

And also in the works:

The Outlander Book Club’s re-read of An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon continues! Coming up this week: Chapters 69 – 73 Want to join in? Contact me and I’ll provide all the details!

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

19Apr2014

Book Review: Far From You by Tess Sharpe

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Far From You by Tess Sharpe

Far From You

Nine months. Two weeks. Six days.

That’s how long recovering addict Sophie’s been drug-free. Four months ago her best friend, Mina, died in what everyone believes was a drug deal gone wrong – a deal they think Sophie set up. Only Sophie knows the truth. She and Mina shared a secret, but there was no drug deal. Mina was deliberately murdered.

Forced into rehab for an addiction she’d already beaten, Sophie’s finally out and on the trail of the killer – but can she track them down before they come for her?

You know how you sometimes start a book thinking you know exactly what to expect based on the blurbs and synopses… and then it turns out to be something else entirely? Far From You is one of those — and that’s not a bad thing at all.

Based on the promos I’d read, I was expecting a more or less straightforward teen murder mystery. Nope.

Because, yeah, there’s a murder. And yes, it’s a mystery. But no, that’s not really the point of this book at all.

Far From You starts with a bang — or really, with two bangs. Within the first couple of pages, we learn that Sophie Winters and her best friend were confronted by a masked gunman when they were 17, and while Sophie survived, Mina died at the crime scene, bloody and suffering. We also find out that three years earlier, the two girls were in a car crash while being driven by Mina’s big brother Trevor. Mina and Trev walked away with minor injuries, but Sophie was wrecked — twisted, broken, resuscitated after her heart stopped during surgery, and left with a body full of scars and never-ending pain.

From that powerful beginning, we follow Sophie’s narration as she recounts multiple timelines: her present-day struggles, her memories of the time after the car accident, and her memories of the events surrounding Mina’s murder. At the same time, we learn Sophie’s terrible truth: After the car crash, she became crushingly dependent on pain pills, and was finally forced into rehab at her cool aunt’s house after hitting rock bottom and lying to her family and friends for years. She returned home just weeks before the murder, clean and ready to move forward. But at the crime scene where Mina had been murdered and Sophie had been knocked over the head, the police found a bottle of pills in Sophie’s jacket, and absolutely no one would believe that she hadn’t relapsed.

Instead of mourning for her friend and helping the police investigate the murder, Sophie is shipped off to a rehabilitation center for three months — and the police label the crime a drug deal gone bad, and basically shut down the investigation.

The plot of Far From You really kicks in when Sophie is released from rehab, angry and devastated. Despite being clean for nine months, she’s considered an actively using addict by her parents and friends, and is seen as being to blame for Mina’s murder. Sophie acknowledges that she’s an addict and clings fiercely to her hard-won sobriety, despite the pain that continues to wrack her body — but she’s furious that no one will listen to her, and what’s worse, nothing is being done to catch Mina’s killer.

Sophie has to take matters into her own hands, with help from a small number of trusted friends including Trev, to find out what really happened the night Mina died and find some small measure of peace. But can she do this without endangering herself and everyone left in her life? Are some stones better left unturned?

Okay, that’s the action part of the plot. But where Far From You really excels and moves into unexpected territory is in its exploration of the friendship between Sophie and Mina, what secrets were kept and which questions were never answered, and how a person can survive when the center of her universe is ripped away from her.

Sophie and Mina had been best friends since they met in grade school, and over the years they developed a trust and love that had ups and downs, but never broke or fell apart. There’s much more to their relationship than either girl ever acknowledged, and Sophie only slowly opens up enough to start sharing the true depths of her loss with the people who still matter to her.

Beyond the murder mystery, Far From You is a deeply personal character study, and we come to know Sophie’s deepest fears and most painful emotions. She’s wrecked, truly, both from everything her body has endured and even more so from the trauma of Mina’s loss. She’s hurt by the mistrust of everyone around her, and frustrated at not being heard. She’s angry — oh so angry — that Mina has been taken from her, angry that nothing has been done about it, angry that she couldn’t stop it. And she suffers greatly as she comes to terms with who she is — an addict who doesn’t quite have her life together, who is holding onto being clean with everything she has, and still worries that it won’t be enough.

I feel that it would be a disservice to potential readers to go into more detail about the complicated, intertwined relationships and friendships in Far From You, as these are best discovered through reading the book. I’ll simply say that the emotional connections, the devotion and love between unexpected characters, can be heartbreaking as well as lovely to read.

As for the murder itself, I can’t say that I was surprised when the mystery was resolved. I’d guessed the killer’s identity and a had a vague idea of the motive, but hadn’t managed to put every detail in place — and that’s fine. I was engrossed in the investigation and compiling of clues, breathless as the tension and danger mounted, and intrigued by the unraveling of the murder and the events leading up to it.

Far From You is an intense and unusual young adult novel. If you need a happily ever after and a romance tied up in a pretty ribbon, this may not be the book for you. What I appreciated about the conclusion of Far From You is its refusal to graft a happy ending onto a tragic story. Sophie can and will move forward, but the bottom line is that Mina is gone, forever. It would be fake to leave Sophie with a sunny new beginning. She’s a wonderful character, flawed but powerful, but as we leave her, she still has a long way to go. There’s hope for her future, but she’ll have to work at it every day. And that, to me, is exactly the right kind of ending for this story.

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The details:

Title: Far From You
Author: Tess Sharpe
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Publication date: April 8, 2014
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Young adult
Source: Review copy courtesy of Disney-Hyperion via NetGalley

18Apr2014

Flashback Friday: Half Magic

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is a weekly tradition started here at Bookshelf Fantasies, focusing on showing some love for the older books in our lives and on our shelves. If you’d like to join in, just pick a book published at least five years ago, post your Flashback Friday pick on your blog, and let us all know about that special book from your reading past and why it matters to you. Don’t forget to link up!

It’s a childhood favorite for this week’s Flashback Friday!

Half Magic by Edward Eager
(published 1954)

Synopsis (Amazon):

Edward Eager has been delighting young readers for more than 40 years with stories that mix magic and reality. Half Magic, the most popular of his tales about four children who encounter magical coins, time-travel herb gardens, and other unlikely devices, is a warm, funny, original adventure. The “Half Magic” of the title refers to a coin that the children find. Through a comical series of coincidences, they discover that the coin is magic. Well, it’s not totally magic–it’s only (you guessed it) half magic. That means there’s a certain logic to the wishes one must make to generate a desired outcome. Imagine the results emerging from inaccurate efforts: “half” invisible, “half” rescued, “half” everything!

If this book doesn’t delight you, then you, my friend, have no appreciation for magic!

Too judgmental? Sorry…

Half Magic is an enchanting book, and one that stands the test of time pretty well too. I remembered it vaguely from eons ago (a.k.a, my childhood), then read it again with my daughter and then again with my son — and each time, the magic just shone through. Despite some old-fashioned word usage, the overall themes and ideas are crystal clear and utterly entertaining: Four children, having a rather boring summer, find a magical coin that grants wishes — except it only grants half wishes. When someone wishes they were home, they find themselves suddenly on the side of the road, halfway there. Wish not to be somewhere… and you may find yourself halfway invisible with people shrieking about seeing a ghost. On and on the adventure goes, as the kids figure out the trick: Wish for double of whatever you want, and when it’s divided in half, you’ll end up with what you really want… which is a lot harder and takes a lot more cleverness than you might think.

Edward Eager wrote seven books in his magic series, some more directly linked than others. I remember Knight’s Castle as being one of the most amazing reads of my childhood (and have only recently come up with a copy, so I’ll need to reread it pronto), and have read Magic By The Lake with my son (not as great as Half Magic, but still a really good time).

Have you read any Edward Eager books? Which were your favorites? And if you had a coin that granted half wishes, what would you wish for? (My wish? To have the time to read every book I own — twice!)

What flashback book is on your mind this week?

Note from your friendly Bookshelf Fantasies host: To join in the Flashback Friday fun:

Grab the Flashback Friday button
Post your own Flashback Friday entry on your blog (and mention Bookshelf Fantasies as the host of the meme, if you please!)
Leave your link in the comments below
Check out other FF posts… and discover some terrific hidden gems to add to your TBR piles!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

17Apr2014

Thursday Quotables: A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Posted in Outlander, Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

Source:

A Breath of Snow and Ashes (Outlander, #6)

A Breath of Snow and Ashes
Diana Gabaldon
2005

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
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15Apr2014

Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: Shifting Shadows

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

My most wished-for book this week is:

Shifting Shadows: Stories From The World of Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs
(Release date: September 2, 2014)

This one is strictly for the fans! If you love the Mercy Thompson series, then you’ll be as excited as I was this week to learn that a collection of Mercy stories will be released this fall — to include a mix of new and previously published stories.

Synopsis via Goodreads:

A collection of all-new and previously published short stories featuring Mercy Thompson, “one of the best heroines in the urban fantasy genre today” (Fiction Vixen Book Reviews), and the characters she calls friends…

Includes the new stories…
“Silver”
“Roses in Winter”
“Redemption”
“Hollow”

…and reader favorites
“Fairy Gifts”
“Gray”
“Alpha and Omega”
“Seeing Eye”
“The Star of David”
“In Red, with Pearls”

I’ve read some — but not all — of the already published stories, and can’t wait to catch up on the ones I’ve missed and read some new ones as well. The Mercy series is one of my favorites, and since there won’t be another new novel until 2015, I’m delighted to get a story collection to hold me over!

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

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