"Sympathy butters no parsnips"

As the leaves start to fall on this side of the pond, fans of this show begin counting down the days until January. 

While you're waiting, you might as well read…

Atonement by Ian McEwan after multiple readings never disappoints.  Briony, age 13, misinterprets a brief scene she witnesses in the library and changes lives in ways even the impending war cannot.

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton shifts between 1924 and 1999. When a modern filmmaker decides to make a movie about the Hartford sisters, she finds a primary source in former housemaid Grace Bradley. As Grace thinks back to her years in service, she remembers not the glamour of the times, but the craftily concealed deceit.  

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton opens in 1913 with a four-year-old wandering aboard a ship bound for Australia. The little girl grows up with her adopted family and decade after decade discovers another part of her mysterious past. When she dies, she bestows an English cottage to her grieving granddaughter. Tracing her grandmother’s steps back to England, she fits the pieces together for the reader.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters looks at a once stately household now fallen into disrepair. The Ayres family is befriended by a lonely country doctor. He soon discovers that their ailments are hauntingly difficult to diagnose.

Discretion is Key

From The West Wing to The Newsroom, I’m always a sucker for catching a glimpse into seeing how the sausage is made. Enter three books that offer the reader all the gristle he or she can stand.

Oh! You Pretty Things by Shanna Mahin centers around Jess Dunne, a Hollywood native. After aging out of the barista scene, she begins working as a personal assistant for a finicky composer.  Jess’ big break comes when she lands a job as a cook for a fickle young actress. Her breakdown comes, as all Hollywood stories must, when her mother takes over her apartment and refuses to let her leave her past behind her.

The Divorce Papers by Susan Reiger delves into the correspondence of Sophie Diehl as she works to dissolve her client’s marriage. Court decisions, personal letters, emails, and office memos offer the ins and outs of betrayals, negotiations, entanglements, and, ultimately, settlements.

The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza follows Imogen Tate as she returns to work at Glossy magazine after a bout with cancer. In her absence, a young upstart named Eve has been transforming the glossy pages of high fashion into a thinly-veiled catalog. Technologically impaired, Imogen manages a steep learning curve and Instagrams her way to the rescue of the magazine, and its staff, from Eve’s manic clutches.   

Poignant is the new quirky

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper

“I keep your photo in the pocket on the side without the gun. For balance.” 

Irma Voth by Miriam Toews

“The director said he's got a haunted soul and a natural sweetness.” 

Based on the author’s experiences making this movie, says Wikipedia.hmmm

The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein

“You know what happens to me? Goodbye, ladies. Hello, my grandmother. Superfine.”

Lost and Found by Brooke Davis

“It seems strange to want to find yourself. Wouldn’t you want to find somebody else? Aren’t you the one thing you can be sure of?”

How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O’Connor

“Half of me was thinking, Georgina, don't do this. Stealing a dog is just plain wrong. The other half of me was thinking, Georgina, you're in a bad fix and you got to do whatever it takes to get yourself out of it.”

The movie version is a must.

With a Twist

Life has served up an exhausting series of plot twists lately. But of course it is only a twist if the right (wrong?) person is telling the story. Even after years of reading, unreliable narrators still catch me by surprise. My most recent surprises ensue.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

“Mirren, she is sugar, curiosity, and rain,” says narrator Cadence about the cousin she sees once a year at her family’s summer enclave.  In the course of describing those hallowed summers on the Sinclair private island, Cadence reveals she is recovering from a traumatic event from summer fifteen. As pieces begin fitting back together, the reader realizes nothing is as it seems. And that description of Mirren? More apt than she knew.

Language Arts by Stephanie Kallos

Charles Marlow tells us the story of his future. When he was in elementary school, a newspaper interviewed his (at the time) newfangled Language Arts class about their thoughts on the future. When the newspaper decides to do a follow-up feature, Marlow must confront his memories of that life-changing year. Along the way, he introduces us to a cast of characters who are more closely linked than they first appear. Besides devising the clever plot twist of the books finale, Kallos’ language also makes this book a worthy read: “Why not that swallow singing or what callow rejoicing or that sorrow abating?”

"like holding a butterfly"

I hesitate to call Rainbow Rowell’s novels delightful…but delight is what I feel when I’m about to read, am reading, or have just finished reading one of her books. Go. Read.

Attachments

“Every woman wants a man who'll fall in love with her soul as well as her body.”

Eleanor and Park

“You can be Han Solo," he said, kissing her throat. "And I'll be Boba Fett. I'll cross the sky for you.”

Fangirl

“Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and mildly socially retarded, I'm a complete disaster.”

Landline

“Neal didn't take Georgie's breath away. Maybe the opposite. But that was okay--that was really good, actually, to be near someone who filled your lungs with air.”

Carry On

Coming October 6^th...

See?

“Well....there's been a murder and we're out of soup.”

Searching for summer reading lists for the kids, I came across the Sasquatch Award.

From this list my ten-year-old and six-year-old discovered:

• The puzzling world of Winston Breen in The Puzzler’s Mansion by Eric Berlin 
• Greek Mythology. After reading Have a Hot Time, Hades! by Kate McMullan, my daughter wanted me to request ALL the books in this series from the library. Meanwhile my son started looking at this book and realized Pandora is more than an Internet radio station. 
• What it might be like to live on an Indian Reservation in 1960s Oregon in Something to Hold by Katherine Schlick Noe 
• Their mother can do a pretty decent Southern Accent when reading Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage