Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

I just finished this collection, and can see where all the hype came from.  It definitely deserves every award and accolade it has received.  As much as I enjoyed Unaccustomed Earth, Interpreter of Maladies is a lot better.  I actually cried while reading “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar.” 

If you have not yet read Interpreter of Maladies, then I urge you to visit your local library as soon as possible to check out this literary gem.

Rating:  5 out of 5 stars.

Magic Is Extra Elements

I’ve been playing around with some extra elements to go with my Magic Is kit, including some butterflies to keep the dragonflies company.

The elements:

• 3 butterflies
• 2 stained glass butterflies
• 1 diamond accent
• 1 pearl accent
• 1 diamond
• 1 pearl
• 1 wordart

The stained glass butterflies were created using Tephra’s tutorial.

Download Link:  Magic Is Extra Elements.

Enjoy!

Magic Is

Today felt wonderful.  It was in the low 90s, true, but there was very little humidity.  Only about 25%.  Of course, we’ll be getting it back in a couple of days.  But, hey, it’s great while it lasts.

You have to appreciate irony, or it’ll drive you insane.  What’s ironic?  Yesterday, July 1, a low pressure center moved off the African coast into the tropical Atlantic.  If this low develops, it will be called Bertha.  Y’all, on July 1, 1996, a tropical wave moved off the coast of Africa and hit us in eastern North Carolina on July 12.  It’s name was Bertha, and it was a Category 2 hurricane.  Talk about deja vu.  I remember that Bertha particularly well because it blew the steeple off of the church across the street from our house.

Anyway, I have a new kit ready for y’all to download.  Magic Is was inspired by my nephew’s Magic:  The Gathering cards.  He and his best friend, Nick, play all the time.  I don’t pretend to know what they’re talking about, but at least they’re having fun.

Magic Is contains:

• 5 papers
• 1 parchment mat
• 1 rain layer
• 1 mist layer
• 1 snow layer
• 2 dragonflies
• 2 bent photo frames (first time I’ve attempted these)
• 1 regular frame
• 1 alpha (Upper and Lowercase letters, no numbers)
• 4 magelights
• 7 definition cards (magic, charm, spell, imagine, believe, enchant, and 1 blank)
• 1 wordart

The font used for the alpha is Marigold Wild by Nancy Lorenz.  You can download it and Stonehenge (the other font used in the definitions) from dafont.com.  I’m not sure, but I may have also used Elven Common Speak, which was also created by Nancy Lorenz and can be download at dafont.com.

Download Link:  Magic Is

Enjoy!

Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer

I was surprised by how dry this book is.  Some of the information is really interesting.  Like marriage customs, how women supported themselves in the absence of their husbands.  Now, the presentation was rather boring.  Several times, I’d find myself flipping through pages thinking:  “how much longer until the end of the chapter”.   

This book was less about Ann Hathaway Shakespeare, and more about the plight of women in early modern England (the interesting part) and a mild rant against the misogynistic “bardolatry” culture of Shakespearean scholarship.

If you must read this, check it out at the library, don’t buy it.  the only reason it scored so high is due to content, not presentation, that would have been a mere 2. 

Rating:  3.5 out of 5 stars

Let’s Go To the Movies

Hi, y’all. 

Sometimes, I think the local weather people could go on vacation for just about the entire summer, leaving a recording to be played during broadcasts:  Hazy, Hot, and Humid.  Highs in the upper 80s to low 90s, lows in the 70s, with a chance of an afternoon shower or thunderstorm.  This describes the weather for most days between late June and early September, with the exception of an occasional squall line or tropical system.

So, anyway, instead of sweating in the hot sauna that is my yard, I’ve been playing around with a small scrap (tag) kit. 

Let’s Go To the Movies contains:

• 6 papers
• 2 frames
• 1 bottle cap
• 1 alpha (A through Z only)
• 4 stars
• 1 gold star accent
• 1 popcorn box
• 1 director’s clapboard
• 2 tickets
• 1 wordart
• 9 pieces of popcorn (the Jasc tube that came with PSP in png format)

The bottle cap was created using Melissa’s tutorial at Sentimental Style.  Movie Times was the font used to create the alpha, you can download it here, from SearchFreeFonts, as well as Movieboard, which was used to make the clapboard.

Download Link:  Let’s Go To the Movies

Enjoy!

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

I really liked this collection, and have already reserved Interpreter of Maladies at the library. 

At the end of a story, I’d turn the page looking for more, and, only then, would I remember that they were only short stories.  They were all so sad, though. 

My favorites were “Hell-Heaven” and “Going Ashore”.  I didn’t really like “A Choice of Accommodations”.

Rating:  4.25 out of 5 stars

Blue Smoke and Murder by Elizabeth Lowell

I was hooked at the beginning.  Always a good sign, especially when what you’re reading is supposed to be romantic suspense.  I say supposed to be because most of the time you get either romance or suspense, rarely do you get both.  This is one of Lowell’s gifts.

That said, around Chapter 12, I began to feel a definite sense of a deja vu.  I felt like Blue Smoke and Murder was channelling Die in Plain Sight, with shades of Moving Target and echoes of Innocent as Sin.  And, with all the shades and echoes, I started wondering why, with the possibility that these paintings were by a famous artist, and extremely valuable at that, Ms. Lowell went with St. Kilda Consulting rather than Rarities Unlimited.  I mean, protecting rare pieces of art and history, searching for provenance and authenticity, is what Rarities Unlimited does.

For those of you totally lost, Rarities Unlimited is a company from another series by Elizabeth Lowell, tied in, loosely, with both St. Kilda and the Donovans.

Jill Breck, our heroine, was excellently done, but I thought that the character of the hero, Zach, was underdeveloped.  Not enough back story.

I liked this book, although we get more suspense than romance.  However, I would have liked a little more originality.  No channelling or echoing, please. 

Rating:  3.75 out of 5 stars

Fearless by Diana Palmer

I did not like this book at all, though, admittedly, it’s an improvement over Ms. Palmer’s last two offerings, Winter Roses and Iron Cowboy.

In Fearless, we get the story of Rodrigo Ramirez, current DEA agent and former mercenary.  As we learned in previous novels, Rodrigo has gone undercover in a drug cartel in Jacobsville, Texas.  Unbeknown to him, an ADA, Gloryanne Barnes, has been sent to Jacobsville for her protection from the same cartel . . . under the same roof as Rodrigo. 

It sounds interesting, doesn’t it?  But it isn’t.

Gloryanne has to use a cane due to a hip injury sustained in childhood when her mother hit her with a baseball bat, and has a congenital heart defect.  In many ways, I felt like I was re-reading Lawman, in which Grace also has heart problems.

Rodrigo, who I liked well enough in previous books, comes off like a snob, always complaining to his former partner (and former love interest), Sarina, that Glory is an uneducated, unsophisticated cripple with whom he’s embarrassed to be seen (remember, their both incognito/undercover).  Many’s the time when I felt like whacking him with the baseball bat!

Fearless is, overall, a cardboard novel with a recycled plot and a hero who thinks he’s sophisticated but who really needs to get off his high horse.  Glory is okay, but the only truly good thing I have to say about Fearless is that it made me look forward to Rick Marquez’s story even more.

Rating:  2.5 out of 5 stars

The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho

At first, I didn’t like this book very much.  I thought it was very good, but, for some, inexplicable reason, I simply didn’t care for it very much.  But, then, at some point, a subtle change began to occur.  Subtle because I can’t tell you at which point in the story my opinion changed.  I know I didn’t become concious of the change until the epilogue.  Nevertheless, I am aware that the metamorphosis of feeling began before then.

The Witch of Portobello is a book that makes you think, encouraging very deep thoughts at that.  I know I do not have the courage to think as deeply as Athena, although my own religious beliefs do not conform to any of the standard molds. 

I very much loved this book, though to say I enjoyed it would not, technically, be the truth (if that made any sense), and I recommend it without reservation.

Next will be either Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri or Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer.  Quite possibly both.

Rating:  4.75 out of 5 stars

Reading and Reincarnation

Here’s an interesting discussion going on at BookCrazy.

Does anybody who is drawn to a particular topic in history think that maybe they lived a previous live in that time?

I’d never really thought about this before, but it does kind of beg the question, doesn’t it?  Even if you don’t believe in reincarnation, it’s still an interesting, and entertaining, possibility.  A little extra food for thought, spice for the imagination.

I’ve always been fascinated by Tudor England.  When I was eleven years old, or so, I picked up my sister’s copy of Elizabeth Jenkins’s Elizabeth the Great, and was immediately caught up in the period.  I’ve read everything Tudor I could get my hands on since then, but especially things about Anne Boleyn and her daughter.  Was I, perhaps, a Boleyn relative or servant contemporary with Elizabeth?

The Late Bronze Age of antiquity also interests me, the Hittites and the possibility of a Trojan War, especially.  Also, sub-Roman Britain, the time of Ambrosius, Vortigern, and the real Arthur.   Tied in with that, is the Year of Yellow Snow and the Plague of Justinian.  I’m also fascinated with the first Americans, with a focus on pre-Clovis people, and on the theorized relationship between Clovis and Solutrean.

Did I, in distant millennia, butcher mammoth in a new land as the ice retreated, live in Hittite Troy, survive in Arthur’s Britain during the turbulent years of plague and cold, and curry favor in the glittering Tudor court?  Who knows?  But it’s fun to speculate and imagine.

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Margot - You have to join the group to read the discussion.  I get lots of reading suggestions there.