2013 reading, books 79-81

79) Donner Dinner Party, by Nathan Hale.

Miss Fraser and I are having a contest this summer to see who can read the most books from June 1 - Labor Day weekend. The winner gets an Amazon gift card. (Of course I'm not actually trying to beat my 9-year-old. I am trying to make sure she reads instead of spending the entire summer watching TV and playing video games by making the contest as close as possible.) Anyway, my husband, in his role as arbiter of the contest, has decreed that she gets to count this book toward her summer reading tally, but I don't, since it's a middle grade graphic novel. I read it as soon as Miss Fraser finished it anyway because these irreverent takes on famous incidents in American history are just so fun. Of course, any book about the Donner Party is going to be awfully grim in spots. Hale's snarky take actually pulled far fewer punches than the earnest novelization of the same events I read back when I was 9 or 10.

If you've got a middle grade child, I can't recommend the Hazardous Tales series highly enough. My daughter, though smart and geeky, isn't particularly interested in history, but she eats them up. I just wish there was a similar series on European history so I could get her interested in the stuff I write!

(The author really is named Nathan Hale, and the historical Nathan Hale narrates the series--he sees into his future through a Scheherezade plot device wherein as he's about to be hanged he's "taken up into history" and is therefore able to tell stories from America's future to delay his execution. You can read all about it at the series blog, and have I mentioned how awesome these are? Don't have your own middle-grade child? Get the series for your friends' kids, for your nieces and nephews, or to donate to your local library. Or just read them yourself.)

80) Borodino 1812, by Philip Haythornthwaite.

A detailed account of the Battle of Borodino framed by a brief summary of Napoleon's Russian campaign as a whole. I learned little I didn't already know, since I've been reading detailed accounts of the campaign, but I expect I'll refer to this book a lot once I settle into writing my manuscript that's set in Moscow and on the retreat for the sake of the maps, timelines, illustrations, and summary bios of important people on both sides.

81) From Father to Son, by Janice Kay Johnson.

A 2013 Rita finalist in Long Contemporary Series. See more detailed comments in yesterday's post.

Susanna Reads the Ritas - Inspirational Romance

An Heiress at Heart, by Jennifer Delamere

I'm still working my way through one nominee from each category in the 2013 Ritas, and this was my choice for the inspirational category. It's also a Victorian-set historical romance, something of a riff on The Return of Martin Guerre, about a heroine who discovers her half-sister, whom she resembles closely, in Australia. When the sister is dying, she begs Lizzie to go home to England and assume her identity to make amends to the family she ran away from. Lizzie does so, never expecting to fall in love with her sister's brother-in-law, who would be forbidden to marry her under 19th century British law if she was really who she claimed to be. But it's not like revealing her deception and her true identity as an illegitimate offshoot of her sister's family with a shady past in her own right is going to endear her to her ersatz brother-in-law or anyone else...

I enjoyed the book, though my inner historical nitpicker is constrained to point out that it has some linguistic anachronisms and Americanisms, and in a couple of places the titles and forms of address are off--basically, if a man is John Biscuit, the Earl of Crumpet, he's Lord Crumpet, never Lord Biscuit. The heroine meeting her half-sister in Australia was a large coincidence, but being able to pass as her made sense given their blood relationship and the fact no one in England had seen the dead sister in ten years. I'm not generally a fan of inspirational romances, since the evangelical market they're targeted toward has a different worldview than my Episcopalian mainline Protestant self. That said, I was comfortable reading this book because the inspirational aspects were handled with a light touch--the hero was a vicar until both his older brothers died, leaving him a barony, and we see his faith and desire to help others in the name of God, which the heroine comes to share. But it's more a book that holds conservative Christian views than pushes them, if you know what I mean.

2013 Reading, Books 58-60

58) The Fall of the House of Dixie, by Bruce Levine.

An excellent history of the Civil War focusing not on military strategy and tactics, but on how the conflict ultimately hastened the end of slavery even though that wasn't the Union's initial goal. I'd heard it before, but it still amazes me that so many people on both sides were surprised that blacks made as good soldiers as whites, fighting with just the courage and tenacity you'd expect of men fighting for their own and their families' freedom, and that black children given the opportunity to learn picked up reading and writing just as quickly as white children.

59) Defiant, by Pamela Clare.

For my personal 2013 Rita reading challenge, blogged about here.

60) The Ides of April, by Lindsey Davis.

Isn't that a gorgeous cover?

First in a new series of mysteries set in Ancient Rome, this book is linked to the Davis's Falco series, but it takes place about a dozen years after the last one, and we never actually see Falco and Helena. The sleuth is their adopted daughter, Flavia Albia, an independent young widow who's taken up her father's old profession and lives on her own. Falco and Helena are evidently doing fine, and Albia drops in to visit regularly--it's just that all those meeting are told rather than shown. Hopefully that won't be the case throughout the series, though I can understand wanting to establish Albia as an interesting character in her own right.

The book got off to rather a slow start, and I might not have stuck with it were it not for my long-standing love for the Falco series. But about 40% in, the story took off and I started caring about Albia for her own sake. I guessed the whodunnit fairly quickly, not to mention the love interest, though there was a sort of mini-mystery about the latter I must confess to being totally oblivious to until it was spelled out for me. In any case, I'm looking forward to book two next year.

Susanna Reads the Ritas - Historical Romance

First of all, I have to say that I am not a big fan of this cover. It's not that it's badly done--it's just that somehow the combination of the orange color and the shirtless hero crossed the line from nicely eye-catching too just too much, at least for my tastes. (Though, now that I look at the covers for all the finalists in this category, orange is obviously In this year. And while I like a nice, muted burnt orange as much as the next person on clothing or dishes--I have an orange t-shirt I wear all the time, and I saw some lovely rustic-looking orange plates at Pottery Barn the other day--I'm not so crazy about it on books for some reason, especially as the dominant color.)

Anyway, this book is part of my challenge to read one finalist per month from each category of the 2013 Rita awards, in this case Best Historical Romance--i.e. my own home genre. I chose Defiant because I've heard good things about Pamela Clare but hadn't gotten around to trying her books yet.

I enjoyed it, though I probably would've liked it better if I hadn't been coming in on the last book of a trilogy--if I'd read the older brothers' stories, I probably would've been happy to see them again, but as it was I was all, "Yeah, yeah, I know, your brothers are awesome and went through great trials to win their true loves. I get it." I also found myself wondering if the brothers only made Y-sperm somehow, since by the end of the story they have four or five sons between them with nary a daughter in sight. I know, I know, it's a trope, though one I like to defy out of pure contrariness--in the five books I've sold to date, I've given four of my heroes firstborn daughters, just 'cuz.

But I shouldn't focus on nitpicks in a book I liked so much. The writing is excellent, descriptive and smooth without being too lush, the characters are appealing, and the plot gripping and well-paced. I especially appreciated the unusual and richly developed setting--what is now upstate New York during the French and Indian Wars. I can definitely see myself reading more of Clare's work in the future.

Susanna reads the Ritas: Contemporary Single Title

In the challenge I set myself to read at least one finalist from each category of the 2013 Ritas, The Way Back Home, by Barbara Freethy, was my Contemporary Single Title Romance choice. And while it was a nice story, sweetly romantic and well-paced, it didn't succeed in overcoming my aversion to small-town contemporary romances. It's funny, I'm fine with small town or rural settings in other countries or in historicals, but an American small-town contemporary romance is almost guaranteed to have me snarling at some point in the story.

I fully admit it's not the books, it's me. I grew up in a small town. I left when I was 18. I live in Seattle. Not in the metropolitan area, not in the suburbs, within the city limits. I love my city and my life, and I loved spending my college years and early 20's in the very different but equally awesome city of Philadelphia. Don't get me wrong, I love my hometown too. I just can't imagine living there again. And I think because the urban vs. rural divide has become so politically and culturally fraught in the past decade or two, it's hard for me to relate to a story that's not just about a small town, but how awesome it is to live in one compared to a city. I literally had to put this book down mid-scene and walk away from it for hours after a character talked about how much better he felt about having his son in a small town school than their old home in San Francisco, because city schools are just so much rougher. The Seattle public school system is far from perfect, but Miss Fraser is having a MUCH better experience than I did in my small-town school growing up. As for behavioral issues...well, let's just say kids are just as likely to get into fights, get stupid drunk at parties, get pregnant, etc. in a small town as in a city. I'd be just as terrified thinking how I'm only four years away from having a teenager no matter where I lived. Nothing else in the book got me huffily indignant, but living in a small town just isn't my fantasy.

So...yeah. Small town contemporary American romances and I remain non-mixy things. I think this would be a lovely book for people not carrying that particular chip on their shoulder, though. (With the caveat that I winced a bit every time the hero was referred to as an ex-Marine, because I've always been told that former Marine is the preferred term for an honorably discharged member of that branch of the service. Also, I don't know what the publisher was thinking with that cover image. The story is set on a river in Northern California, and the heroine's family runs a white-water rafting business. Would it really have been that hard to find an image with some, you know, rugged hills, a fast-moving river, and some Western-looking trees? I may not want to LIVE in rural Northern California, but it's an incredibly beautiful place. I know, accuracy in romance cover images is a lost cause, but seems like it'd be easier with contemporaries.)

Susanna reads the Ritas: Best First Book

A few weeks ago Romance Writers of America announced the 2013 finalists for the Rita awards. I judged four entries this year, and thought two of them so strong that I was disappointed not to see them among the finalists. And I was a bit dismayed to discover I hadn't read ANY of the books that made the cut.

I figured that as a romance author, I should educate myself about what a jury of my author peers has judged the best the genre had to offer in 2012. I'm not going to read ALL the finalists. I counted 81 on the list, and I'm just too busy between the day job and my own writing commitments to take that on. In a typical year I finish about 100-125 books, not counting re-reads, and I'd like to leave a certain amount of room for books chosen just because they sound cool or intriguing or are the latest release by a beloved author, you know?

So I'm going to read one book per category, one category per month. There are 11 categories, so I should finish up just in time to see how many of the 2014 finalists I've read...

Since alphabetical is good an order as any, I started with the finalists for Best First Book and chose Ghost Planet, by Sharon Lynn Fisher. I enjoyed it, though the romance is better developed than the science fiction premise. It's not that I'm asking for plausible science, per se--I was happy with the premise that a newly discovered barren world was spontaneously generating an Earthlike environment, even down to Earth life forms that hadn't been imported there, and intrigued that it went as far as providing each human with a "ghost"--a corporeal revenant of some dead person from their past. It's the kind of premise I'd expect for, say, a Star Trek: Next Gen episode, and I loved Next Gen. No, my only problem was that after setting up such a cool premise, the second half of the book is almost all romance and action plot, when I would've liked a little more exploration of the wonder of seeing a fresh, unpolluted Earth springing to life and more exploration of the philosophical issues and long-term implications of the ghosts. E.g. if a ghost is killed, it comes back, at least if its human host still lives--what are the limitations of that? Will they age normally and die natural deaths? Will the planet be swamped by colonists hoping to get their dead children/lovers/etc., and how will that shape the society? Can the ghosts visit Earth? If they do, will they still regenerate if killed? At least at this point there's no sequel in the works, so the loose ends that bugged me won't be tied anytime soon. That said, I do think this is an excellent debut, and I can definitely see myself reading more books by Fisher.

Next month, Contemporary Single Title.