Scarlet Feather by Meave Binchy

My book club pick for the month was Scarlet Feather by Meave Binchy, so I have spent the last couple days reading it and we will meet tonight to discuss it.

It was a decent book.  Set in Dublin as many of her books are, it followed the life of Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather as they went through a year of setting up a new Catering business.

The characters were believable, the events were realistic.  I loved the reality that is showed and the difficulties being in business present.  It was interesting to watch them do damage control and to smooth ruffled feathers.  I really liked how strong a feminine Character they made Cathy and how real Tom was.

It did highlight the homeless issue of Dublin as well as clearly showed a view that in some cases where children enter foster care, they are not better with their biological parents and should be kept with their foster parents.

The book really transported you into the lives of these people and a lifestyle very different from the one you  may be useful.  I think any book that can make you feel as though you are currently living the characters life, is a well written book.

Clock Work Angel Finished - Next Scarlet Feather

Clockwork Angel has been completed, awhile ago actually it wasn't a very long read. 

It was a good little story about a showdowhunter who saves a shift changer and how they embark to find her brother and rescue him from the downworlder gambling debt hell...with of course some twists and turns along the way to keep it all ummm...interesting?

I enjoyed returning to the Shadowhunter world, but I can't say I enjoyed this book.  It felt to me like the author was stretching to make a prequel.  You recognized last names of what must surely be ancestors to the charactors in the Mortal Instruments series, but the whole story was a wee bit...well...lame.

They made Tessa a shape shifter, but it was like a tiny little sub plot acting like a major plot point.  One of my favorite things in the Mortal instruments series was the romantic/sexual tension but that was missing in Clockwork.  It instead felt like it was trying to set up a love triangle between the three charactors that failed badly.  Yes it was a Victorian time piece and not a modern day time piece where the youngsters are less reserved about showing affection to put it kindly, but I have read Victorian romance novels that are still steamy and oozing with tension, while staying within the boundaries of propriety.

I hate how elitist the Shadowhunters are.  Everything is underneath them in the world...the demons, the lycanthorpes, the warlocks, fairies, vampires, and of course the mundanes.  They are better than everything and the rest is an inconvenience to them.  I'm glad this was pointed out at one point in the book.

"All your talk about Downworlders and how you don't hate them. That's all nothing, isn't it?  Just words.  You don't mean them.  And as for mundanes, have you ever that maybe you'd be better at protecting them if you didn't despise them all so much?"

I also didn't appreciate how the plot centered around the wiping out of the Shadowhunters.  We know from reading the Mortal Instruments that the Shadowhunters survive and win...it really wasn't a good way to build up suspence.  

Overall it was a nice way to spend the evening, and I will read the next one, Clockwork Prince to further follow their adventures.

Clockwork Angel by Cassadra Clare.

This is the book that I have currently picked up and started into.  I started off the year with reading the Mortal instruments series.  City of Ashes, Bity of Bones and City of Glass.

I recieved the Mortal Instruments series as a birthday gift from my sister for Christmas 2009.  It took a year for the to reach the top of my reading pile but I am glad they did.  They are a little younger a level then I would normally read, but I do like to read YA books quite often as well.  I loved the Twilight series and the first two books of Eragon, these seemed like a good pick up as well.

The stories revolve around a group of beings that are descended from Angels called Shadowhunters.  They are there to keep the downworlders in line...the demons, the vampires, the faeries, and werewolves amoung others.  The first three books took place in modern day times and Clockwork Angel takes place in London in the reign of Queen Victoria.  The book is declared a prequel to the Mortal instruments series.

I mentioned in the first blog entry, that when I enter a book I am loath to let the world I have entered go.  Reading this book is definitely what I mean.  I picked it up in the store because it existed and I wanted to know even more about the world of shadowhunters than the first three books told me.  I will do this even when I did not particularily like the first couple books, but I will keep reading to find out what happens next. 

I should be finished this book in a day or two and i will let you know how I like it!

Jaye Reads

While at a book club meeting a couple weeks ago, one of the members pulled out a book.  This shouldn't be surprising, as we were at a book club meeting and in the basement of a library.  It wasn't a reading book though.  It was a directory.  In this directory, she didn't keep track of people's names and numbers, she kept track of books and authors.  This tiny 90 year old lady wrote down every book that she read.

I was intrigued by this idea.  I tend to read in any moment of the day that I don't have anything else to do.  Whether that is lounging in the hot tub, sitting in a car while my husband drives or slowly waking up and getting ready to take on the day.  I wind down with reading.  I escape the pressures of house keeping, work and parenting by pulling out a book and letting myself be whisked away into another time and place...another story.  It's a distraction for me transporting from the here and now and into a reality that's different.

I get so involved with reading that I often follow up a book with reading about that book.  I look online for other peoples reviews, I watch the movie if it's available, I research events or things that stand out for me in the story.  I like to delve deeper and grasp on to a little bit more of the story before I let it go.

I love talking about what I've read.  I sometimes will do this with the husband, boring him with plots and frustrations or pleasures that I have taken out of the book.  He isn't a reader though and I like to mull things over with other readers, which is why I love my book club.  Even if I don't like the book they have picked, I perservere through it until I reach the end, Just so I can tell them how much I liked or disliked it and why!

So I figured this blog can serve a two-fold for me.  It can be an outlit where I can discuss what I have read, and my further inquiries into the books.  A chance to hold onto the story just a little bit longer...  It can also be a directory for me.  I can look back and see the books I have read over the course of a year or two and keep track of the ones I have liked or disliked, of authors I have liked or not.  I am a rereader and will often go back to an old book like picking up the phone and calling an old friend.

So here I go...