The Introverted Reader

Author Michael Hervey: Saturdays in the South and Giveaway!

2012-02-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

Please welcome author Michael Hervey to the blog today! His first novel, Soundkeeper, is currently available for Kindle. It will be available as a nook- and iBook by the end of March, and in paperback by the end of April.

“They went back outside and Silas locked up the office. Persimmon clouds with cinnamon edges seemed reluctant to surrender to the twilight. The beauty of the sunset was too sensational to rush past, even as hungry and tired as he was. While Hall loitered on the dock, he wondered if the display was a salute from God, a final tribute to someone who cherished His creation and looked after it so well.”

We don’t always get to choose where we live. Careers, family, and dozens of other factors come into play when we choose where we will spend our lives. As a writer, however, I am not limited by such practical constraints. The characters I bring to life are free to live and play wherever I want them to, perhaps in places I wouldn’t mind living.

My home is in the Piedmont of North Carolina, in beautiful green and rolling countryside a short drive from the coast. But in Soundkeeper, my characters get to breathe in the heavy smell of the salt marsh every day and experience sunsets each evening that are more entertaining than anything man will ever create.

Is it a good thing for an author to be jealous of their characters? I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, where Soundkeeper is set, but I’ve always dreamed of living there. A place where I know the tides better than the TV schedule, and seclusion and adventure await beyond my dock. Flip-flops and khaki shorts would be my new uniform, and everyone at the bait shop would greet me by my first name and ask me what was biting.

When I read, I want to be diverted from reality by the story. When I write, I want my characters to entertain me. When I am writing well I just follow wherever they lead me, and try to accurately describe what they experience. It is no surprise to me that I have followed them to a place I love.

What started out as an ordinary day for Soundkeeper Gale Pickens takes a dreadful turn when she stops a barge that is polluting the pristine waters off the coast of Charleston. Beaten and left for dead, one of the polluters kidnaps her and she cannot bear to think about her captor’s intentions.

Hall McCormick, a reluctant Refuge Enforcement Officer, is learning the ropes in his new job, which he hopes is only temporary while he waits for the marine biologist job he really wants. He is sad that the beautiful young environmentalist he dated briefly has mysteriously disappeared. While pursuing poachers and keeping the shoreline safe for all animals, he finds kills of marine life, due to someone dumping toxic chemicals into Port Royal Sound.

After Gale’s boat is found deserted and drifting to sea, will anyone keep searching for her? Will the criminal polluters be caught in time to save Gale’s life? Will Hall learn to appreciate his job as much as being a scientist? As he races against time, Hall needs to find Gale’s would-be killer before it’s too late.

Soundkeeper is a taut new thriller in the vein of C.J. Box and Nevada Barr. Filled with accurate details of the fascinating world of the South Carolina coast, this is a perfect mystery for a day at the beach.

Michael Hervey has been a police officer for over twenty-seven years and was the former outdoors editor for the Stanly News and Press. He lives with his family in the Piedmont of North Carolina and enjoys all manner of outdoor recreation in his spare time. Banks, the family’s chocolate lab, says that any resemblance between him and Belker is completely coincidental. Fool's Gold, the sequel to Soundkeeper, has already been written and edited.
Find Michael on his website and his blog.

Michael has kindly agreed to give two lucky readers a copy of his book! It is in Kindle format, but if you don't own one you can read it on your computer or phone using one of these free Kindle apps. Just comment below to enter! Thank you, Michael!

Readers, where would you live if personal and/or work ties were no consideration? My choice changes daily. I'm happy where I am. But some days, when I'm feeling particularly brave, I think I'd like to try European living, like Rome or Lucca (two places I've been). Other days, I think I'd like to be in the absolute middle of nowhere up in the Rockies--in the summertime. I barely tolerate snow, and then only because I have to. Speaking of snow, when it's cold and snowy, I daydream about life in the Pacific, like Hawaii or Fiji.

I'm still looking for authors of Southern Literature to participate in this feature. Please click the button for details if you're interested!

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

Friday Flashback Review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

2012-02-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

Joe Kavalier is a Jew living in Prague just as the Nazis are taking control of the city in the late 1930's. With the aid of his escape artist teacher, Joe smuggles himself out of the country and all the way to New York City. Joe is just what his cousin, Sam Clay, has been looking for. Sam is a New York boy with a love of comic books and a huge imagination. Unfortunately, his artistry doesn't live up to his stories. Joe immediately gets a feel for the comic book form and the two form the comic book duo, Kavalier and Clay. Through the medium of the comic book, Joe takes on the Nazis years before America gets into the war. He also saves up money to try to bring the rest of his family to safety. Despite his best intentions, Joe lives his life while trying to fight the bureaucratic forces of Germany and America to bring his family to safety.

I was a little torn about the rating for this one. It was four stars right up until America finally entered the war (about 2/3 of the way through). After that, I just didn't care anymore. I can't explain why without giving anything away. So three stars it is.

I liked the characters of Sam and Joe. They were well-developed and believable. I don't know much about comic books, but I liked the chapters that gave the setup for their more popular comic book heroes. I read in the praise for the book that it's supposed to be funny. I must have not gotten those parts. There were a few parts that amused me, but mostly I found the book to be quietly heart-breaking.

Reviewed August 31, 2008

Read an excerpt.

Find author Michael Chabon on his website.

Buy The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books

Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote on GoodReads. Thanks to Angieville and her Retro Friday Reviews for the inspiration and encouragement!

I think this one will stick with me for a while, but overall, I was just disappointed at the end.
I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

Review: Room by Emma Donoghue

2012-02-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

Five-year-old Jack has lived his entire life inside Room with his Ma. At night, Old Nick comes to visit while Jack sleeps in Wardrobe. Jack's life is strictly regimented. Breakfast, Lunch, Phys Ed, TV, and Screaming are at certain times throughout the day. In his world, there's himself, Ma, and Room and that's pretty much it. Old Nick is sort of real, but everything else is just TV. Other kids, grass, fancy toys, dads, everything.

Shortly after his fifth birthday, Ma starts telling Jack stories about Outside. He thinks they're only stories like "Jack and the Beanstalk" at first, but when Ma insists that they're true, he first gets upset and then tries his best to believe her. He just can't conceive of the outside world. When Ma tells him that they have to try to escape from Room, he falls apart on her.

Wow. This was tough. Emotionally, I mean. It's written from Jack's point of view, and while he's an extremely intelligent little boy, he is still only five. But realizing how small his world is, and how he and Ma came to be inside Room was nerve-wracking and exhausting. Realizing that the game that Jack calls "Screaming" is Ma's desperate way to try to draw attention to themselves and their prison is heart-breaking.

Speaking of that, I thought the author did a very good job of letting Jack tell what he innocently sees while letting her adult readers figure out the darker meaning of what he doesn't understand. There's the Screaming thing, and there's the way he says something like, "Old Nick always goes to bed and then creaks it. I count it. Tonight it's 217 times." Jack doesn't understand, but readers know exactly what's happening to Ma. I'm glad that it wasn't spelled out any more clearly. This was hard enough to take. It would have been almost unbearable from Ma's point of view.

Toward the end, Ma and Jack both started irritating me a little bit. I completely understood where they were coming from, but their reactions just rubbed me the wrong way.

I listened to this book and Michal Friedman did a fantastic job as Jack. She sounded like a five-year-old little boy to me. I actually went looking for more information to find out if the narrator really was a child. Ma did a good job too. I do wish there had been two male narrators. It was hard to hear Old Nick's voice coming from another character.

There was one time when I did wish I had a physical copy of the book so I could flip ahead and see what happened. I never flip ahead, but the tension was getting excruciating! I sat in the parking lot at the gym for half an hour listening to this book at one point because it was practically impossible for me to turn it off at that part.

I hate to mention this, but it bothered me, so here goes. Jack is still breast-feeding, which I can understand in an abstract kind of way, but I really did not need to hear him saying, "I had the left. It was creamy." Really? And not once, but many, many times. I know I should just let Ma put me in my place when she says, "Out of this whole terrible story, that's the disturbing part?" and move on, but I can't. No, it wasn't disturbing, but it was distracting and, I thought, unnecessary.

I do recommend this on audio or in print if you think you can handle it. It's not graphic in any way, but it will still push buttons for some people. I'm so glad I got to see the world through Jack's eyes though. He makes you appreciate things that you take for granted every day.

Read an excerpt.

Find author Emma Donoghue on her website, Twitter, and Facebook.

Buy Room at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

2012-02-19T22:00:00.000-05:00

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Posted:

Saturdays in the South featuring Melinda McGuire, author of Josephine: Red Dirt and Whiskey--her post will make you homesick for your younger days

Character Connection featuring everyone's favorite bad boy, Rhett Butler

Meeting the Authors: Joshilyn Jackson--always a delight!

Review: The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad

Review: The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany

Read:

Ice by Sarah Beth Durst

Room by Emma Donoghue, read by Michal Friedman et al.

Currently Reading:

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella, read by Rosalyn Landor

Up Next:

I don't really expect to finish any of these this week. If I do, it will probably be On Writing. Any suggestions for a good non-fiction book to pick up?

What are you reading this week?

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

Author Melinda McGuire: Saturdays in the South

2012-02-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

Please join me in welcoming Melinda McGuire, author of Josephine: Red Dirt and Whiskey, to the blog today! I have been so anxious to share her guest post with you! She made me "homesick," for lack of a better word, for my younger days and endless, hot Saturdays.

I’m not usually a person who lives in the realm of literal thinking, but when I ventured over to The Introverted Reader and saw the title “Saturdays in the South,” I immediately wanted to be a part of it because I love Saturdays in the South - truly, the real Saturdays.

Saturdays in the South are hot cups of steaming coffee and plates of pancakes with homemade maple syrup. Saturdays in the South are music in the morning, reading in the afternoons and **moon pie faces** and romance in the evenings.

Saturdays in the South are warm, clean sheets out of the dryer, the smell of chili or pinto beans simmering on the stove all day long and a cast iron skillet of cornbread baking in the oven. Saturdays in the South are seeing your plain old house made clean and new again from Pine Sol, baking soda and some elbow grease. Saturdays in the South are old country songs on the radio that you have to adjust your stereo antenna just the right way to pick up. Or, if you’re super lucky, scratchy vinyl records all morning long and singing along with Patsy, Willie, Waylon, Hank and Dolly.

Saturdays in the South are ironing clothes in the morning that you are going to wear out Saturday night and the smell of starch and steam. Saturdays in the South are trips to the beauty salon with your grandma so she can get her hair washed and curled and her nails painted Pale Blush Pink, but mainly so she can catch up on all the news that’s happened during the week. What you get from the Beauty Shop is going to be much more entertaining than what you get from the newspaper and most of the time more accurate too.

Saturdays in the South are hurry up and wait. Everything’s done, time to relax, pick up a book, rest until evening. Saturdays in the South are reading old friends in well-loved and well-worn books. Saturdays in the South are Faulkner short stories or chapters from Absalom, Absalom! that you’ll chew on and mull over for three or four days. Saturdays in the South are falling in love a bit more with Rhett Butler and for hoping against hope that Scarlett will love him this time before it’s too late. Saturdays in the South are visits with Scout and Jem and admiration that grows stronger each time for Atticus Finch. Saturdays in the South are for spending time with Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth and dreaming of fried green tomatoes. Saturdays in the South are following Captain Call and Augustus McCrae on the trail and thinking “if only” Blue Duck had taken a different path.

These Saturdays are the ones that color the memories of my youth - these glorious Saturdays that lasted forever. These are the days that I tap into when I am building my fictional southern worlds, the sounds, the tastes, the experiences. So, I was delighted to spend a Saturday in the South for this feature here at The Introverted Reader.

** For those of you who don’t know what moon pie faces are, when you are head over heels sweet on someone (this means that you are infatuated with them, to put it plainly), and you can’t take your eyes off of them, this is called making moon pie faces at each other. Moon Pies = two graham crackers with marshmallow cream sandwiched between them and coated in chocolate - round, like the full moon. You are staring at each other all the time, so your face looks like the full moon. **

Author Melinda McGuire is a native of Texas. She grew up traveling red dirt roads surrounded by pine trees. Her novels set in the fictional town of Hefner Falls transport readers to northeast Texas from the Civil War to the Great Depression.
Melinda also writes award-winning short stories.

Josephine: Red Dirt and Whiskey is Melinda’s debut novel. It is available through Amazon as both an eBook and paperback.

It's the Great Depression in rural northeast Texas, and not much has changed, except in the life of Josephine Killian. After losing her mother and her aunt, Josephine finds herself alone and independent.
Loneliness leads her to sacrifice her freedom for the bonds of marriage, and life becomes routine.
But, when a mysterious stranger, Ethan, appears, he draws out what Josephine fights to keep hidden. Ethan opens up doors to lust, secrecy and addiction that could lead to Josephine's self-destruction.
Will the people she knows from church, her neighbors in Hefner Falls, and her own desire to turn away from evil be enough to overcome the temptations Ethan offers?
Or, has Josephine gone too far to turn back?

You can also find Melinda’s short stories and academic writing guides on Amazon and Smashwords.
A free short story, "When I Met Crazy in the Morning," is available for all eBook formats.

To find out more about Melinda, follow her blog - MelindaMcGuireWrites.wordpress.com and find her on Twitter @melindamcguire.

Thank you so much, Melinda! This post was pretty much perfect from my point of view. Readers, if you're from the South, what do Saturdays mean to you? If you're not a Southerner, how do you spend your Saturdays? What do you think of Melinda's post?

I'm still looking for authors of Southern Literature to participate in this feature. Please click the button for details if you're interested!

Friday Flashback Review: The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany

2012-02-17T10:00:00.000-05:00

The twelve men making up the parliament of Erl go to their ruler one day and ask for a magic lord. The ruler agrees to grant their request and sends his son to steal and marry the King of Elfland's daughter. But of course finding her and keeping her can't be that easy.

In the introduction to this edition, Neil Gaiman compares Lord Dunsany's writing to the King James Bible. I honestly wouldn't have thought of that, but the description is perfect. The language is beautiful, but, for me, dense and a little hard to wade through. I kept thinking of those old fairy tale books by Andrew Lang, like The Orange Fairy Book. As I remember it, those books had very little dialog and just describe the story happening. That's how this was. I also mentally compared it to a beautiful, old silent movie. You're watching this beautiful story unfold, but there's no dialog. I guess I like a lot of dialog.

As I read the book, I kept thinking of a phrase my yoga teacher uses: "like you're moving through honey." That's the pace at which this book moves: like you're moving through honey. I normally tear through books so I never quite got my mind slowed down enough to fully enjoy and understand this book. When I did manage it, for a couple of paragraphs at a time, I could see what all the fuss is about. But the rest of the time, I just wished we could get on with the story. That is, if I didn't fall asleep first.

By the end, Lirazel had gotten on my nerves. She wanted to have her cake and eat it too. Who doesn't, really? But asking her father to use his last all-powerful rune to give it to her just seemed whiny and self-absorbed to me. She was a very passive character generally, so I never cared for her much to begin with. The witch was much more interesting. I would have liked more about her.

If you like beautiful, slow-moving language, you'll probably like this one. If you're like me and like your stories to move along at a pretty fast pace, you'll probably want to take a pass.

Reviewed September 5, 2008

Buy The King of Elfland's Daughter at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books

Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote on GoodReads. Thanks to Angieville and her Retro Friday Reviews for the inspiration and encouragement!

Meeting the Authors: Joshilyn Jackson

2012-02-15T10:00:00.001-05:00

I went to Malaprop's Bookstore on Sunday afternoon to see Joshilyn Jackson speak about her new book, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. I've seen Joshilyn speak multiple times, but I always love hearing what she has to say. She is hilarious, and she knows how to keep a crowd entertained.

I am most definitely paraphrasing Joshilyn's words. My apologies to everyone if I get anything wrong.

She primarily talked about the inspiration for her characters and setting in A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. When she was touring for her first book, gods in Alabama, she visited Bay Books in Mississippi. She said "I'm from the Gulf Coast of Florida, where the landscape is just so pristine and perfect, it hurts to look at it. Then I visited the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, and that was something entirely different. I couldn't help looking at this fecund landscape thinking that anything buried here is not going to stay buried. It is going to burst out in new growth in unexpected ways. Being me, I thought about burying a body."

Oh, and about fecund. She says that one of her assistants(?) has a drinking game where everyone has to do a shot whenever Joshilyn says the word while talking about A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. Good thing Malaprop's doesn't serve shots or we would all have been calling cabs!

She also talked about where she gets the ideas for her characters from. She said, "If you ever see me sitting near you in a restaurant, reading my book, I can promise you that I'm not reading. I'm listening to every word you say. My favorite places to eavesdrop are airport bars. You overhear just enough as people walk by that you just have to fill in the gaps with your own story. And people are always upset in airports, so they're talking loudly enough that you can hear them. I got the idea for Big (a character in A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty) in an airport. I could see a woman "of a certain age" as we say in the South, walking toward me, and I couldn't wait to hear what she was talking about. She was striding angrily along in her cruel shoes (you know the ones--the ones that are oh-so-beautiful but they hurt your feet so badly), with her perfect hair and her perfect clothes, and this perfect wide Botoxed forehead. Her forehead made it into the book on another character. Anyway, she was talking on her cell phone and it was obvious that she was upset. As she walked by me, all I heard was, 'She promised me that she wouldn't do it anymore, but I know that she was doing it right then, on the phone with me!' Well, the nicest thing I could think of was smoking, but I had a lot of fun from there. Anyway, that woman became Big, a grandmother at 45 who doesn't want to be called Meemaw yet. She has a daughter who is 30, Liza. And Liza has a daughter, Mosey, who is just turning 15. You can guess that there is a lot of helicopter parenting going on about now, trying to make sure that Mosey makes it through to 16 un-pregnant. I wanted to write a bit of a love story, but surprisingly, the love story was Big's. You would think the 15-year-old would be discovering young love, but she has bigger things to worry about. Big is only 45 but she's lost most of her youth to raising her daughter and then her granddaughter. I wanted her to have another chance at life."

Joshilyn says that her inspiration comes from the darkest Southern Gothic tradition. She likes to write very character-driven fiction in this vein and then tie it to a more commercially-viable vehicle. She said that gods in Alabama was her murder mystery, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming was her ghost story, Between, Georgia was her love story, and Backseat Saints was her thriller. She said, "I didn't know what I was getting into with Backseat Saints. I wrote it like this [making an uphill, roller-coaster motion with her hands] and then I got to the top and I was all 'Oh, crap, what have I done?!?' [with a swooping downward motion of her hands]. I was ready for a break after that book. I decided that I was going to write my funny book that's funny. And that's what I did. I started writing A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty from the points of view of Big and Mosey, and it was so funny! It was the easiest book I'd ever written. I kept reading parts to my editor and my writing group, and they agreed that it was my funny book that's funny. And then. Lydia Netzer was the one who came to me. (Her book comes out this fall by the way. It's called Shine, Shine, Shine, and you have to read it because it will pick you up as you read it and set you back down a different person.) Anyway, she came to me, and said, 'Joshilyn, this book, well...'

'Yes,' I said, 'it's my funny book that's funny.'

'Yes,' she said, 'it's funny, but it's not your book.'

'Well, I'm pretty sure it is.'

'No, bunny, it's not. It doesn't have a heart, and that's just not your book. Liza wants to tell her story so bad, and you're so determined not to let her tell it that you've gone and given her an early stroke. But you have to let her talk, or it will never be your book.'

I told her that she sucks, but I knew she was right. So I had to think about it for a while, then I came back to Lydia. 'How do I give a non-verbal stroke victim a voice?'

'Bunny, that is so not my problem.'

I told her again that she sucked, but I went back over the 80% of the book that I'd already written and wove Liza's voice into it and the result is that now I have a book that I am proud to have written."

She read a couple of excerpts for us, one from Big's point of view and one from Mosey's point of view. I'll excerpt Big's part here.

My daughter, Liza, put her heart in a silver box and buried it under the willow tree in our backyard. Or as close to under that tree as she could anyway. The thick web of roots shunted her off to the side, to the place where the willow's long fingers trailed down. They swept back and forth across the troubled earth, helping Liza smooth away the dig marks.

It was foolish. There's no way to hide things underground in Mississippi. Our rich, wet soil turns every winter burial into a spring planting. Over the years Liza's heart, small and cold and broken as it was, grew into a host of secrets that could ruin us all and cost us Mosey, Liza's own little girl. I can't blame Liza, though. She was young and hurt, and she did the best she could

And after all, I'm the damn fool who went and dug it up.

She then read Mosey's part, which was hilarious, and talked a little about some plot points. Then she left us with a great big ol' cliffhanger: If Liza buried her own baby under the willow tree 15 years ago, where did Mosey come from? Then she laughed, and gave a big butter-won't-melt-in-my-mouth grin, and said, "See, I told you earlier that Mosey has bigger things to worry about than young love."

Find Joshilyn Jackson on her website, her blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

Check out her tour schedule. Go see her if she's coming your way!

Listen to Joshilyn reading an excerpt of A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. She reads her own audiobooks, and I bet she is fantastic.

When a long-hidden grave is unearthed in the backyard, headstrong young Mosey Slocumb is determined to investigate. What she learns could cost her family everything…

Every fifteen years, trouble comes after the Slocumb women. Now, as their youngest turns fifteen, a whole new kind of commotion is chasing all three generations. Mosey’s desperate to know who used their yard as a make-shift cemetery, and why. The oldest, forty-five year old Ginny, fights to protect Mosey from the truth, a fight that could cost Ginny the love of her life. Between them is Liza, silenced by a stroke, with the answers trapped inside her. To survive Liza’s secrets and Mosey’s insistent adventures, Ginny must learn to trust the love that braids the strands of their past—and stop at nothing to defend their future.

Review: The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad

2012-02-15T10:00:00.000-05:00

After following the Northern Alliance troops around Afghanistan and reporting on the fall of the Taliban, journalist Åsne Seierstad finds herself in Kabul. She stumbles upon a bookshop and goes in. She and the proprietor, Sultan, hit it off at first and she is invited to spend a little time with his family. She thinks she has found an enlightened Afghan man and asks him for permission to live in his house for a while and write about everyday life in an Afghan household. She finds out that some of his politics and beliefs are more liberal than one would expect, but he still very much rules his family with iron authority.

There was one chapter that I loved, "Billowing, Fluttering, Winding." Seierstad sets out to make the reader experience life inside the burka, and I felt that she pulled it off very well. I felt closed in and like I had blinders on. I felt like I had to physically turn my head to see anything around me. I felt lost in a sea of mostly-anonymous burkas. The only way to differentiate between other women was by the bits of their shoes that were peeking out. When the narrator loses track of the other women she's with, I realized how hard it was going to be to find them. It was beautifully, effectively done, and it's worth reading for that chapter alone.

I like that the author included a list of the 16 decrees that the Taliban broadcast when they took power. Some of them weren't really all that surprising, but others left me shaking my head in puzzlement. "Prohibition against the washing of clothes by river embankments." What? Are they afraid that women are going to have a "wet burka" contest or something? I don't understand that one. And then there's a chilling appeal to women at the end. I won't quote it here, but it's basically about how "Oh, we're making these rules for your own safety. But if you break them, you and the head of your household will be severely punished, and you're going to hell in a hand basket."

I hope I don't sound callous when I say this, but I started off horrified by all the stories that were being shared, but eventually I became desensitized. It's hard to feel bad for the man who is translating and putting himself in harm's way to try to feed his family, when family members literally killed a woman who had brought them "shame" pages earlier, for something that Westerners would only gossip about until the next juicy tidbit came along.

There are a lot of heart-breaking stories in here. I felt very bad for Sultan's youngest sister, Leila, and her subservient role in the family. She is basically a slave but it's obvious that she's an intelligent young woman who wants more out of life.

It's shocking to me that this is actually a middle-class family. It's mentioned that Sultan is a cheapskate, but there are something like 13 family members living in a 2 or 3 room apartment. It sounds fairly squalid.

The translation by Ingrid Christopherson is well-done. I pretty much forgot that I was even reading a translation, so that's a good sign.

I "enjoyed" reading about life in Afghanistan, but it left me feeling a bit hopeless as well. Maybe things have gotten better since this was published in 2002, but somehow I doubt it. From an outsider's point of view, the whole society is fundamentally broken, and it won't get fixed until those living on the inside want to change. There's not really any sign of that in this book.

Pick this up if you want to experience life in a culture that feels very different from our own, and gain a little understanding of a country that is so often cast in the role of "the enemy" on television.

Read an excerpt.

Read for the following reading challenges:

Dewey Decimal

Books in Translation

Off the Shelf

Buy The Bookseller of Kabul at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books

Character Connection: Rhett Butler

2012-02-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

So, since it's Valentine's Day and all, it's time to feature a character crush. This time, it's Rhett Butler. I know, how predictable can I be, right? But there's a reason that so many women love this man.

Rhett. From the first time he appears on the page, I think my eye was drawn to him as often as Scarlett's was. He is handsome and physically powerful, but he has a commanding presence as well. He seems to dominate the room easily when he wants to, but he's capable of sitting back and observing and blending in until he blinds someone with a pithy, sarcastic remark.

"As she chattered and laughed and cast quick glances into the house and the yard, her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a mingled feeling of feminine pleasure that she had attracted a man and an embarrassed sensation that her dress was too low in the bosom. He looked quite old, at least thirty-five. He was a tall man and powerfully built. Scarlett thought she had never seen a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility. When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache. He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate's appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished. There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath. She felt that she should be insulted by such a look and was annoyed with herself because she did not feel insulted. She did not know who he could be, but there was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face. It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips, the high forehead and the wide-set eyes."

The man is intelligent too. Maybe not book-smart in the way of Ashley Wilkes, but street-smart. He knows exactly which way the wind is blowing during the Civil War and he doesn't hesitate to make his fortune from it. At first you think he's a traitorous rogue, and he is, but he also has some good reasons for his actions.

He's not afraid to speak his mind either. In a gathering of Southern men who have been drinking and are now clamoring for war, he speaks up and tells them exactly why the South will lose. Holy cow, he's either insanely self-confident or he has a death wish, and Rhett loves life too much to want to leave it early.

He goes around doing exactly what he wants without worrying what "everyone" will think. If he wants to dance with Scarlett, he dances with her, even if she is supposed to be in deep mourning. He thinks it's a ridiculous rule, so he overlooks it. He doesn't care that his neighbors think he's a turncoat for dealing with the Yankees. He never believed in the Glorious Cause, so he has no intention of going hungry for it. If he can make money off them, he's going to do it.

He is drawn to genuine goodness though, almost in spite of himself. He deeply admires Melanie Wilkes, a woman with a frail frame and an enormous heart. He frequently calls her one of the truly great women he knows. He loves children, and is surprisingly good with them.

Scarlett scandalizes Atlanta society by working outside the home, and thriving in that environment. I don't think we ever really know what Rhett thinks of it, but I think he admires her for it, at least a little bit. He's not hypocritical enough to judge a woman harshly for trying to make sure food is on the table when he's doing the same thing on a larger scale. I like him for being man enough not to be threatened by her.

And then there's the way he treats Scarlett. Hmmm. This is where I'm going to have to be careful about spoilers. I loved him at first for standing up to her. He is apparently the first person to get the better of her in a verbal duel in her whole life. And over all the years they know each other, she never once wins. He doesn't let her pretty face stop him from saying what he thinks. He teases her mercilessly when she needs teasing, and she frequently does. But then there are hints of what Rhett is capable of doing for a woman he loves and who treats him right. He would move the Earth for her.

I don't think that Rhett is a man that I would ever feel particularly comfortable around, but as long as he's inside the pages of a book and his barbs are pointed at Scarlett, I feel pretty safe admiring him from a distance.

Winner of The Gendarme!

2012-02-12T22:31:00.000-05:00

glitter-graphics.com

The winner of my signed ARC of The Gendarme by Mark Mustian is

Beverly
from
The Wormhole!

Congratulations, Beverly! Thanks to all who entered!

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

2012-02-12T22:16:00.000-05:00

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Posted:

Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, read by Jim Dale

Review: Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

A link to my interview at It's All in the Details

Review: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Guest Post from Taylor M. Polites, author of The Rebel Wife

Read:

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell--Woo hoo! I feel like I have ruined my eyes reading this tiny font, but I'm done! I loved it!

Currently Reading:

Ice by Sarah Beth Durst

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

Room by Emma Donoghue, read by Michal Friedman et al.

Up Next:

Now that I've finished Gone With the Wind, I need to choose a non-fiction title for my before-bed read. I had started reading GWTW everywhere just to try to finish it. I'm leaning toward On Writing by Stephen King. Some friends and I just started a book club, and our first choice is Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. I'm excited to read it, but it's another chunkster, so I'll have to start on it soon. I'll probably finish Room in the next day or two, so I need a new audio as well. Any suggestions? I think I need something fluffy after Room!

What are you reading this week?

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

Author Taylor M. Polites: Saturdays in the South

2012-02-11T10:00:00.000-05:00

Please welcome Taylor M. Polites, author of The Rebel Wife, which was just released on Tuesday!

The 1819 Weeden House (Weeden House Museum Hunstville, Alabama)

Maria Howard Weeden
(Wikimedia Commons)

One piece of Huntsville, Alabama that I have always carried with me is the beautiful, antebellum Twickenham historic district, a neighborhood of broad streets lined with impressive brick homes in the Federal and Greek Revival styles that served as the model for the fictional town of Albion in The Rebel Wife. When I was fifteen, I volunteered at the Weeden House Museum in the heart of the district. I pulled weeds and did other work in the garden and got to spend time in and around the beautiful and severe 1819 Federal style house. High ceilings, a beautiful leaded-glass fanlight, reeded woodwork and wide pine floors make the house a very special place and worth a tour if you are in the area.

The Shoeshine Boy
(Burritt on the Mountain
Huntsville, Alabama)

The main focus of the house is to tell the story of Maria Howard Weeden. She was born in the house in 1846 and lived there until her death in 1905, never marrying. She developed great skill as a largely self-taught artist and achieved some renown for her sensitive portraits of the newly freed African-Americans who worked in the houses around her. She was known to hide behind hedges, spying on “Aunt Frances” next door to capture her most natural likeness. Another model, the shoeshine boy from the town square a few blocks away, went on to form his own theater troupe, the guide will tell you. The house has a large number of these beautiful watercolor portraits, reflecting a respect and sincerity not often seen in white artists’ depictions of black Americans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In addition, there are oil paintings and the invitations, name cards and other work Weeden used to support herself and her sister after the war. (Much more work is collected in the fascinating Burritt on the Mountain museum nearby.).

Aunt Judy
(Burritt on the Mountain
Huntsville, Alabama)

Being inside a physical space has a certain transcendence to it and the Weeden House is one the best. The last time I was there I got to hear the ghost stories, which give another layer of palpable history to a space. I have always loved house-museums. Any place I travel to, the first thing I want to visit is a house-museum. They give you a real sense of place and people. The South, happily, is full of amazing house-museums. It is one of my favorite ways to time travel!

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share on your blog!

Brimming with atmosphere and edgy suspense, The Rebel Wife presents a young widow trying to survive in the violent world of Reconstruction Alabama, where the old gentility masks a continuing war fueled by hatred, treachery, and still-powerful secrets.

Augusta Branson was born into antebellum Southern nobility during a time of wealth and prosperity, but now all that is gone, and she is left standing in the ashes of a broken civilization. When her scalawag husband dies suddenly of a mysterious blood plague, she must fend for herself and her young son. Slowly she begins to wake to the realities that surround her: her social standing is stained by her marriage; she is alone and unprotected in a community that is being destroyed by racial prejudice and violence; the fortune she thought she would inherit does not exist; and the deadly blood fever is spreading fast. Nothing is as she believed, everyone she knows is hiding something, and Augusta needs someone to trust. Somehow she must find the truth amid her own illusions about the past and the courage to cross the boundaries of hate, so strong, dangerous, and very close to home.

Using the Southern Gothic tradition to explode literary archetypes like the chivalrous Southern gentleman, the good mammy, and the defenseless Southern belle, The Rebel Wife shatters the myths that still cling to the antebellum South and creates an unforgettable heroine for our time.

You can find Taylor on his website, his blog, Twitter, and Facebook.

Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your memories with us! I have never thought of visiting house-museums as time-travelling, but I completely agree! Thank you for including the images! I do like the quiet dignity of the portraits.

Readers, do you have a favorite house-museum to recommend? I've enjoyed the Nathaniel Russell House in Charleston. What do you think of Miss Weeden's artwork?

I'm still looking for authors of Southern Literature to participate in this feature. Please click the button for details if you're interested!

Friday Flashback Review: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

2012-02-10T10:00:00.000-05:00

There's a lot going on in this book. Basically, Toru Okada has just quit his job in Tokyo and all kinds of strange people enter and leave his life while all kinds of strange things happen to him. To say more would give away some things.

I finished this book, put it down, and told my husband, "Don't ask me what I just read, because I couldn't tell you." The style of the book is very dreamy, and there are so many dreams and what-might-have-beens that I was never entirely sure what was really happening and what wasn't. Parts of it were a little graphic, both in terms of violence and sex. That didn't bother me too much, but I usually read books that have a more concrete story line. As someone else put it, you don't read this book, you float through it. I kept waiting for everything to come together and get explained, but that never happened.

I read this book for the Constant Reader book group on Goodreads. It's not a book I would have chosen on my own. Honestly, if I had chosen it on my own, I would have put it down, probably before I'd even finished 100 pages. I don't regret reading it because I feel like I was pulled outside of my box, and I really think I'll be chewing over a lot of the lingering questions for a long time. But I'm not planning on picking up more of this author's books either.

Reviewed September 22, 2008

Read an excerpt.

Find author Haruki Murakami on his website and Facebook.

Buy The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books

Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote on GoodReads. Thanks to Angieville and her Retro Friday Reviews for the inspiration and encouragement!

I've Been Interviewed!

2012-02-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

Jenny Q (the blogger behind Let Them Read Books) has started a new blog at It's All In the Details. On this blog, she shares advice with writers of historical fiction. She interviews bloggers who read historical fiction in her regular feature, Reviewer Spotlight. My interview was posted today! Jenny had some great questions, so head over to see what I had to say about historical fiction! Thanks for the opportunity, Jenny!

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

Review: Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

2012-02-08T10:00:00.000-05:00

After many years vacationing in Italy, Frances Mayes and her--husband? I don't think that's ever clarified--decide to buy a home in Tuscany. They search for a while, but nothing really calls to them. Then they stumble upon a home called Bramasole in the town of Cortona. It's a wreck, but they can't get it out of their heads. They go over and over all the reasons that they shouldn't buy it. And then they follow their hearts and move in and get to work.

First of all, I just need to say that this book has little in common with the movie except for the title. As she kept writing about "our house" and "our money," I kept looking back to see if I was missing something. She's buying the house with someone? And not just anyone, but a significant other? This was supposed to be about remodeling a house in Tuscany and romance with handsome Italians! What happened here?!?

Still, I enjoyed it, even more than the movie. So what if there aren't any romances with Italian men? I got to read beautiful descriptions that left me feeling as if I had just soaked in the heat of a Tuscan August, and left me feeling as if I really had been living life at a slower pace. Mayes is a very evocative writer and I was lost in the Tuscan countryside almost immediately. I didn't envy them the work they were doing, but I loved reading about the connection she was making with the house, the previous owners, and the roots she was growing. She refers often to the nonna that she imagines previously lived in the house, and wonders what she would think of the changes they are making and the food they are cooking. The nonna becomes something of a benevolent guardian, bestowing happiness and calm on all who enter.

The owners need that calm at times as they navigate the Italian method of renovating. Contractors they hire get sick, the replacement ones don't show up when they say they will, nothing is as easy as it seems, and fixing one problem seems to uncover ten more. Well, now that I think about it, that's probably a description of renovations the world over!

I enjoyed the pace of life that she fell into living in Tuscany. They strolled into town and loved to watch the evening passagietta, or stroll, when everyone who possibly can is out "meeting and greeting" in the dreamy twilights. I loved the way that life in Tuscany still seems to be so connected to the seasons. Your meals are actually planned around what's in season in your area and if you didn't grow the produce yourself, you probably just bought it from a farmer who picked it early that morning or the day before.

There's a tiny part of me that is tempted to place this on my Southern lit shelf, because Mayes is a Georgia girl and she frequently compares her life growing up in the South to the life she is living in Tuscany. Both cultures seem to be a little resistant to change, there's a strong sense of history and connection to the land, families have known families forever (well, maybe not quite as long in the South, but you know what I mean). "Southerners have a gene, as yet undetected in the DNA spirals, that causes them to believe that place is fate. Where you are is who you are." The Italians she meets seem to have that same bit of DNA.

One of my favorite chapters is entitled "Turning Italian." I love the first part when she writes about Ed and how she's watched him slowly change as they live in Italy. Starting as a tea drinker, he's learned to love syrupy-sweet espresso. He's learned to love the land and constantly nourishes it. But my favorite bit is how he's taken to Italian driving. "Most travellers here feel that driving in Rome qualifies as an experience that can be added to one's vita, that everyday autostrada trips are examinations in courage and that the Amalfi coast drive is a definition of hell." We spent two weeks in Italy in 2008 and I still have not gotten over the experience. Now, if we vacation somewhere that we can't drive to, we learn to navigate the public transportation or we walk. My husband has been grounded. He took a little too well to the utter chaos of Italian driving. I have a story that I love to tell, but let's just say that trying to find our way back to the rental car garage in Florence left me a quivering, screeching mass of nerves, cussing my husband for all he was worth. I don't cuss my husband. We barely even fight. That's how bad it was. So I laughed as I read the author's experiences and tried not to have flashbacks of driving the wrong way down a stretch of road in Rome with a barricade on one side of us and buildings on the other. *Shudder* Luckily for my husband, that was the taxi driver. I might have been driven to bloodshed if I had known the driver at all. But then again, bloodshed would have required letting go of the "chicken stick" I left my fingerprints in.

I wasn't quite as thrilled that she wrote so much about food. I'm not a foodie; I'm probably one of the pickiest adult eaters you will ever meet. So her loving descriptions of how to prepare rabbit or veal or wild boar were lost on me. I did still read every word, mostly for the small personal observations she worked in. So props to the author for getting me to read recipes that don't involve sugar!

I recommend this to armchair travelers, and those who enjoy thoughtful, beautifully written memoirs.

Read an excerpt.

Find author Frances Mayes on her website.

Buy Under the Tuscan Sun at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books

Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

2012-02-07T23:39:00.000-05:00

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.”

Two rival magicians agree to bind their students to a challenge. Hector will teach his daughter, Celia, and Alexander will teach a student of his own choosing. When the students are older, they will face each other in a challenge. The rules are never quite clear. When the venue for the challenge is finally chosen, it turns out to be The Night Circus, a new circus done entirely in black and white and where only the best performers and spectacles in the world are to be found.

I think that maybe audio was not quite the right medium for me to approach this story. Don't get me wrong; I could listen to Jim Dale narrate all day, and he did a fantastic job with this. I think most of the appeal of the book is in the luscious descriptive language, and I personally can't appreciate that kind of thing quite as much in an audiobook.

My favorite parts were the introductions to each section, when a new tent is described. Those were very visual and very well done. I could see them in my imagination as I was driving along January-gray roads, and I was transported to a magical circus where anything is possible.

And while I enjoyed the plot, it just didn't feel like a whole lot actually happened. There was a lot of description and what action there was consisted of people muddling around trying to figure out what's going with the circus, when I as the reader already knew. That's not entirely fair, but that's how I started to feel.

There are two stories alternating between different times, and I just couldn't figure out how they fit together. It's obvious that they do, but it wasn't apparent how until the very end. So I'm driving along wondering what on earth this little dreamy kid from New England has to do with a magicians' challenge and a night circus. I don't mind alternating stories, but it drives me crazy when I can't fit things like that together.

I guessed the biggest part of how the book would end pretty early on, so I wasn't particularly worried as I came to the "climactic" ending. I did think one thing throughout the biggest part of the story, but then something was said and I knew something different was coming and exactly what it was.

The characters were a little more "miss" than "hit" for me. I never quite related to Celia and Marco. I somehow just didn't trust Marco for a very long time. There's no particular reason; I just didn't. Celia never really showed much personality. She's so afraid of letting go and breaking something that she was mostly boring. The only times she really got interesting were the few times she let go. The twins, Poppet and Widget, were by far the most interesting characters in the whole story. I enjoyed the way they played off each others' strengths and the love they have for the circus, the only home they've ever known. I did like Isobel as well. I don't want to say much about her, but I kind of wish that she'd had a bigger role. She had the potential to cause even more complications, and I think she could have made things very interesting.

I do love beautifully-written, visual books when I'm in the right mood for them, and I think I could have really enjoyed this if I'd been able to savor the words on the pages. I do still recommend it, just pick it up in the format that you're most comfortable with.

Read an excerpt.

Find author Erin Morgenstern on her website, her blog, Twitter, and Facebook.

Buy The Night Circus at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

2012-02-05T22:00:00.000-05:00

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

I didn't post last week because I still hadn't finished any books, but I did make some progress this week! Over the past two weeks I've

Giveaway:

Enter to win a signed ARC of The Gendarme by Mark T. Mustian (US only, I'm afraid)

Posted:

Review: Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Review: Elliot and the Goblin War by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Review: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Review: From a Whisper to a Scream by Charles de Lint

Review: The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel: Stuff We Didn't Actually Do, But Could Have, and May Yet by Jill Conner Browne with Karin Gillespie

Review: Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb

Read:

The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad, translated by Ingrid Christopherson

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, read by Jim Dale

Currently Reading:

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

Room by Emma Donoghue, read by Michal Friedman et al.

Up Next:

I don't really expect to finish anything this week, so I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

What are you reading this week?

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

CLOSED: Signed ARC Giveaway: The Gendarme by Mark Mustian

2012-02-05T19:29:00.000-05:00

This giveaway is now closed.

I was fortunate to receive an ARC of The Gendarme by Mark T. Mustian and then to have him sign it at the Decatur Book Festival in 2010. While I liked the book, I didn't love it, so I'm giving away my copy.

What would you do if the love of your life, and all your memories, were lost- only to reappear, but with such shocking revelations that you wish you had never remembered...

Emmett Conn is an old man, near the end of his life. A World War I veteran, he's been affected by memory loss since being injured during the war. To those around him, he's simply a confused man, fading in and out of senility. But what they don't know is that Emmett has been beset by memories, of events he and others have denied or purposely forgotten.

In Emmett's dreams he's a gendarme, escorting Armenians from Turkey. A young woman among them, Araxie, captivates and enthralls him. But then the trek ends, the war separates them. He is injured. Seven decades later, as his grasp on the boundaries between past and present begins to break down, Emmett sets out on a final journey, to find Araxie and beg her forgiveness.

Mark Mustian has written a remarkable novel about the power of memory-and the ability of people, individually and collectively, to forget. Depicting how love can transcend nationalities, politics, and religion, how racism creates divisions where none truly exist, and how the human spirit fights to survive even in the face of hopelessness, The Gendarme is a transcendent novel.

My 3-star review

My privacy policy.

I have to limit this one to the US only due to shipping costs. I apologize, international bloggers.

Winners will be chosen using random.org and will have 72 hours to respond before another winner is chosen. Contest ends at midnight EST Saturday, February 11, 2012. Just fill out the form below to enter!

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

Winner of At Home by Bill Bryson!

2012-02-05T15:35:00.000-05:00

The winner of my ARC of At Home by Bill Bryson is

Kate {The Parchment Girl}!

Congratulations, Kate! Thanks to everyone who entered!

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

Friday Flashback Review: Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb

2012-02-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

This is a story told from many points of view. First is Zebulon Vance, the real life Civil War governor of North Carolina. We follow him from his days as a hotel porter fresh off the farm until his rise to governor. Next is Malinda Blalock, a tough mountain woman who follows her husband to war and beyond. Then there's Rattler, a modern day man with a touch of the second sight who realizes that the Civil War re-enactors of the mountains are calling up uneasy spirits who are best left alone.

I enjoyed reading about my region's role in the Civil War. I'd heard somewhere that we were exceptionally torn apart during that conflict because we weren't wealthy landowners and so had no clear-cut reason to join either side. This book showed that.

The voices of the different narrators were done very well. They were each very distinct. The only negative I have to say about it is that Malinda's voice didn't ring entirely true. The author gave it a good try, but she didn't quite get the accent and the language right. Lee Smith does a much better job with our Appalachian dialect.

There was one other narrator in the book, but he had a very minor role. In fact, I'm not entirely sure why his parts were even included. He only had a few chapters, but I felt like they could have been cut out completely without really hurting the story.

I'll be a little devilish here and say that I also enjoyed the way McCrumb wrote about our transplants from Florida. They were sort of caricatures, and we don't really think they're all like that, but we do feel like some newcomers think us locals are barbarians who should just leave and let them enjoy their cliffside homes. A little brutally honest, perhaps, but there you go.

But overall, this was an interesting book. I wasn't riveted to the page, but I did enjoy it. Not enough to think about reading it again, but it was time well-spent.

Reviewed October 14, 2008

I don't even remember the Florida part! I should mention that my husband moved here from Florida. But when a non-local woman introduces an author born and raised in the area (not McCrumb) and says, "I've never actually met a local, as long as I've lived here," there is a problem; we aren't hard to find. True story.

Read an excerpt.

Find author Sharyn McCrumb on her website and Facebook.

Buy Ghost Riders at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books

Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote on GoodReads. Thanks to Angieville and her Retro Friday Reviews for the inspiration and encouragement!

Review: The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel: Stuff We Didn't Actually Do, But Could Have, and May Yet by Jill Conner Browne

2012-02-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

Jill Conner Browne writes a fictional account of how the Sweet Potato Queens came into being and how they truly became queens through some terrible decisions and heartbreak.

I absolutely loved the first section of this book. It was sheer perfection I tell you. It starts when the queens are in high school and haven't really figured out that they're queens yet. They are always being looked down upon by the high school beauty queen, a bitch if ever there was one. I was shrieking with laughter and doing a corny little fist pump all alone in my car by the time this section ended. "You tell her, Queens!" I was repeating the last few sentences of that chapter to anyone who would listen for days, complete with my best Southern drawl.

That was by far my favorite part. The Queens seem determined to make every mistake it is possible to make when it comes to love. There were still definitely some funny parts, but I had gotten so attached to these characters in that first chapter that I just wanted everything to go right for them. But I think Browne's ultimate message is that we are all Queens, no matter what horrendously bad decision we have made in our lives. We just need to pick ourselves back up, dust off our crowns, and start singing "Tiny Bubbles" again.

I am torn between recommending the print or audio versions. I listened to the audio, read by Browne herself, and had a blast listening to her. I am definitely a Southern girl, but up here in the Southern Appalachians, we have more of a twang, and Browne definitely has a drawl. I could listen to her talk all day, I swear. No matter the slight differences in accents, I think that Southerners all have a similar rhythm to our storytelling, so listening to her read this book just felt deeply right.

On the other hand, there were so many quotes I wanted to mark, but there was no way for me to do that! Maybe I'll check the print book out of the library and look for the best bits. One that I can sort of remember is something like, "She was letting that word fly. You know, the one we called the firetruck word back then because it began and ended with the same letters."

For a laugh-out-loud, ultimately feel-good book, go ahead and pick this up in whatever format tickles your fancy. It might not have quite lived up to the high expectations I had after the first section, but it is definitely a girl-power book, and we all need to read those every once in a while.

Read an excerpt.

Find author Jill Conner Browne on her website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Buy The Sweet Potato Queens' First Big-Ass Novel: Stuff We Didn't Actually Do, But Could Have, and May Yet at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books

Review: From a Whisper to a Scream by Charles de Lint

2012-01-31T10:00:00.000-05:00

A serial killer has been viciously murdering women in the Combat Zone, a seedy area of Newford. He makes a mistake when he kills a wealthy man's daughter, apparently mistaking her for one of the prostitutes he normally targets. There's a witness to this one too. He swears the killer stepped out of the side of a building and disappeared the same way.

Detective Thomas Morningstar has mostly left his Kickaha traditions behind on the rez. But something about these killers doesn't feel right, so he seeks help in the most unexpected of places.

And then there's Chelsea, a teen who's already experienced a lifetime of hurt. She's been told that her abusive father is dead, but she can still feel him out there. Searching for her. And she knows this time he won't stop until she's dead.

This is a re-read, and I wrote in my initial one-sentence summary, "This is too dark for me." I'm re-reading the Newford books in order, and it was time for this one. It's still too dark for me. I do like horror, but this is a little too real. The so-called "horror" element doesn't feel real, but the abuse is the true horror. It's nothing gratuitous, but it is more graphic than I would like. Being inside the mind of a pedophile left me feeling dirty and more than a little disturbed. It's hard for me to read that kind of thing at any time, but especially when it involves children.

I miss that none of the Newford regulars showed up in this book. Part of what I love about the Newford books is spotting some of my favorite characters and finding out how they're doing. I know that sounds crazy, but after multiple re-reads of my favorites across 20+ books and at least 15 years, they really are old friends.

There are still some of de Lint's trademarks present here though. His good characters genuinely care about other people and try to help where they can. They step out on faith and work through bizarre happenings the best way they know how. I like the way different...spiritual? yes, probably the best word...traditions come together for the common good. And there are the characters who don't let the crappy hand they were dealt in their early years hold them back forever.

Sitting here, really thinking about it, that is probably the point of the book. People live worse things than this every day. I guess de Lint wanted to write about that darkness and point out that where there is darkness, there is always light if we just look for it.

I would not recommend this as an introduction to de Lint, but fans should pick it up as long as they think they can handle it. It does get awfully disturbing in between these pages.

Read an excerpt.

Find author Charles de Lint on his website, Twitter, and Facebook.

Buy From a Whisper to a Scream at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books

CLOSED: ARC Giveaway: At Home by Bill Bryson

2012-01-30T10:00:00.001-05:00

This giveaway is now closed.

I was fortunate to receive an ARC of At Home by Bill Bryson, and while I enjoyed it, I didn't love it enough to keep it, so I'm giving it away to a lucky reader.

“Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

My 4 star review.

My privacy policy.

I have to limit this one to the US only. I apologize, international bloggers.

Winners will be chosen using random.org and will have 72 hours to respond before another winner is chosen. Contest ends at midnight EST Saturday, February 4, 2012. Just fill out the form below to enter!

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

Friday Flashback Review: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

2012-01-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

Chicago wins a bid to be the host of the World's Fair in 1892, the 400th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America. The city's top architects immediately swing into gear to make this a fair to remember. Paris had hosted a world's fair a few years earlier and everyone said that it couldn't be beaten. So of course Chicago feels like they have to "out-Eiffel Eiffel." At the same time, charming psychopath Dr. H.H. Holmes sets up a pharmacy/hotel/restaurant in the city. Women and children who enter his sphere are never heard from again. The Devil in the White City weaves these stories together.

I'm not a non-fiction reader, but I liked this book. It was interesting to see what Burnham, the lead architect for the fair, went through to get everything together on time. I also enjoyed reading about the odd bits of trivia associated with the fair. For example, did you know that the Pledge of Allegiance was written for the dedication of the fair? It was also fun to see how everyone who was anyone knew each other in a much smaller America back then. The book is full of names that I recognize and I'm not a history buff.

There were some things that I wasn't crazy about though. The serial killer stuff could have been better. It was never suspenseful. It was just, "Well, he made this girl fall in love with him, and then she disappeared, but they think they found her footprint on the inside of his crematorium." I know it's non-fiction and the author was trying to stick to facts, but I kind of like some sensationalism. It could have been played up more for my taste. The very end of the World's Fair started dragging for me. We had lost the thread of the serial killer and were focused entirely on the fair. I think the alternating chapters about the fair and Dr. Holmes helped keeped my interest. When that stopped, my interest flagged. But then it picked back up again when the focus shifted almost entirely to Dr. Holmes. And, finally, I would have liked more pictures. Maybe there weren't more available, but if there were, I would have liked to have seen them. I would prefer to see the picture showing me how big the main building of the fair was rather than just giving me raw numbers.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. I wouldn't mind reading more by this author.

Reviewed November 17, 2008

Read an excerpt.

Find author Erik Larson on his website, his blog, and Facebook.

Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote on GoodReads. Thanks to Angieville and her Retro Friday Reviews for the inspiration and encouragement!

Review: Elliot and the Goblin War by Jennifer A. Nielsen

2012-01-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

Elliot somehow finds himself appointed King of the Brownies (not the kind you eat--the kind that likes to clean your house as you sleep. I'd be happy with either of them in my house). He first came to the Brownies' attention after he saved one of them from some evil Goblins on Halloween night. That night, Elliot also started a war between the Brownies and the Goblins, so I guess it's only fair that he has to lead the Brownies. The problem is that the Brownies have no concept of how war should work. They just go about their business as usual, expecting to be eaten or scared to death by a Goblin at any minute. Well, Elliot might be young, but he knows that something has to change.

This was cute. It really was. My biggest problem was the frequent breaks for "Now, Reader, if you don't like to read about people being scared to death, you might want to stop reading right here. For serious. You've been warned. The last person who continued reading was eaten by a platypus." (Not an actual quote) It was kind of funny the first time or two, but it seemed like there was one of these in every chapter. Kids might like it, but I thought it got tedious.

Other than that, it was a fun little story. Elliott and the Brownies (sounds like a pop group from the '50's) got themselves into some tight spots, but it was amusing to see how the Goblins mostly managed to defeat themselves. I have to own up to a very juvenile sense of humor when it comes to smelly feet jokes and the like, so I actually thought it was pretty funny in parts.

I really liked that hidden inside this fun little story was a message about bullies and finding the strength to stand up for yourself. That doesn't mean fighting, but it does mean drawing the line. There's even a bit about forgiveness and second chances.

Recommended for the 9-12 year olds who can appreciate the humor.

Read an excerpt.

Find author Jennifer A. Nielsen on her website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Buy Elliot and the Goblin War at

Malaprop’s | Better World Books