First. It’s been a whopper of a week. We closed on our house on Monday, the 20th, and then spent the rest of the week prepping the house for our move on Saturday. Carpet people, vinyl/laminate people, cleaning (if you EVER sell a house, PLEASE clean it for the next owner. It SUCKS having to clean a house just to make it livable, and it’s still not done!), painting (the room was such a mess, M refused to move in until it was painted), packing, moving, hauling trash, and unpacking. Which gets us to today. Things are mostly unpacked. I’m happy to see our books, which have been in storage for the last four months. It makes me feel like I’m finally settled.

On top of all that, I tried to read Geraldine Brook’s March. I was excited about this one: she takes Mr. March from Little Women, imagines a backstory and fills in for the time that he’s missing in the book, until he gets ill and Marmee comes and gets him. Granted, I only got about 5 chapters in (it was a busy week), but I never could get into the book. It just didn’t feel right. I know, I didn’t exactly love Little Women. Still. I think it’s one of those books that everyone has their opinions about, and reactions to, and to… well, mess with the book is just wrong. Mr. March was too extreme in his views — too vegetairan, too abolitionist, too… too! — to make him the loving, caring, quiet father of the March girls. And Brooks tried to weave in the story line from Little Women, and it just didn’t fit with the wartime scenes, and the flashes of backstory that she gave him.

In the end, I put it down. It didn’t hold my interest, and at the end of some very long days it wasn’t what I wanted to be reading. Maybe someday I’ll try again. But probably not.

I was skeptical about this book. While I have enjoyed Geraldine Brooks’ writing in the past, I doubted that a book on the plague could be interesting. (Granted, I’d forgotten that I’d really enjoyed Doomsday Book, which is essentially a book about the plague.) Okay, so I was wrong to doubt. Year of Wonders is, while not an exquisite book, a very engaging one.

It follows Anna — a servant in the rector’s household in a fictional English mountain town (based on a real town, Eyam, in Derbyshire) — for a year, from the fall of 1665 to the fall of 1666, while her town battles the plague. Nothing new here, except that the rector — Mompellion — convinces the town to quarantine itself from the neighboring communities, thereby controlling the spread of the plague. And the book deals with the aftermath of that decision. There’s heartbreak (no mother of an infant should read the chapter where Anna’s baby dies. Much too hard.), there’s greed — both taking advantage of the ignorant and the weak; there’s anger; there’s more heartbreak. But in the end, there’s life and hope. Remarkable.

And Anna is an incredibly sympathetic main character. She’s strong, but she doubts. She does good by others, but not all the time. And she has desires, the biggest one being the will to live. Okay, I admit that she was probably more modern than the time period warrants, but for some reason this didn’t bother me. The ending — which was a bit abrupt — did bother me either. Perhaps because I’m lowering my historical fiction standards? Or maybe it was because the storytelling was so vivid that I didn’t let the little things nag at me like they sometimes do.

At any rate, it’s worth the read.

I think I picked this up from Guusje. She mentioned a while back (not going to find the post) that it was one of her favorite books. And, I have to say, it’s not a bad little bit of historical fiction. It’s one of those instances where I actually learned somthing from a fiction book. But, then, the amount of research that Anya Seton did to write this novel was admirable. (Okay, I’ll admit that I don’t have the book in front of me — it was due yesterday — so I’m going off the top of my head.) Reading Middle English, making sure even her minor characters were real people, having someone translate Latin. It made for a very authentic book. (We’ve talked about authentic books here before…)

The basic story: it’s the love story between John, Duke of Lancaster and Katherine Swynford. “Who?” you ask. It takes place in the mid- to late-14th-century, time of Chaucer (who shows up) and the black plague (which also shows up). John and Katherine have a 10 year affair, while John is married and after the death of Katherine’s husband, which results (in the long term) in children who become the parents of several kings of England. Not bad.

It held my interest and I enjoyed it for a long time. But… it’s a long book. And I’m short on time these days. Which adds up to me skimming the last 1/3. It all ends happily for John and Katherine, I’m happy to say. But I didn’t have the time to savor it. Or maybe I was just bored with all the plot twists and uprisings and courtly behavior. Whatever. Maybe I’ll come back to it someday.

I have given my opinion of Orson Scott Card before. And I’ve come to the following conculsions: 1) he just can’t let things end. Rachel and Leah is the third in a series, and there’s going to be a fourth (for the good reason that the story was just too much for one book). Still. He does tend to draw things out. 2) I really like the first book I read in one of his series (Rebekah this time; I read them out of order), but the more I read, the less I like them. Maybe because they’re often the same story retold? 3) Card can’t write ancient women. Just can’t. I don’t know what they’re supposed to “really” be like, but I really doubt they had conversations with their betrothed about bearing children (and how it’s akin to the preisthood). He takes modern women and dresses them up in sandals and calls is Biblical. I felt The Red Tent was more authentic. And I didn’t even really like that one.

The good points: I liked how he balanced the four women. That’s a hard task, one that he did manage to pull off (in spite of my complaints). In my opinion, he tilted the scales in favor of Leah and Zilpah, rather than Rachel, as expected. I liked Leah, in the end, more than Rachel (perhaps that’s what he was going for in order to explain the whole wedding deception thing?). She was more honest, more forthright, more interesting. Maybe that’ll change in the next book.

In the end, I don’t know how I really think about this book. Nothing seems to leap to mind. Which is sad. Because Card can be a vibrant, exciting writer. I guess not just about Biblical women. (Maybe it’s that whole men writing about women thing again…)

I feel like there should be some sort of exclamation point: Zorro! It’s not something you just casually say.

This book by Isabel Allende has made the rounds (well, a couple other people have read it): both Allison and Lisa have reviewed it. In fact, it was Allison’s review that sent me searching for the book. I figured it fit right in with my light and fluffy regiment. And, I was right.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book. To sum up: it’s the Zorro origin story. Deigo de la Vega, the son of a Spanish soldier (who becomes a wealthy landowner in California) and a Native Amerian. He grows up respecting both Spanish and tribal culture, yet sees the injustice in the way the Spanish treat the native populations. He’s educated in Barcelona, makes a couple of enemies, has to vacate quickly, makes a long voyage back to California, and once there, saves his father from prison. Whew. (All in a day’s work, right?)

I enjoyed the childhood of Diego de la Vega. There were strong female characters, Diego was an interesting person, and I liked his relationship with Bernardo. But… as he got older, it got less interesting. The whole escape from Barcelona was just forced, and long. I did like parts, but I found I had to force my way through chapters. And then it quickly wraps up in the end. Too much buildup, not enough pay off. Still, the ride was enjoyable, for the most part.

Lisa said that it wasn’t nearly as good as Allende’s other one, House of Spirits. I’ll see if I can find that one. Because Zorro wasn’t a bad book. I guess I just wanted something more.