City of Jasmine

The title: City of Jasmine
The author: Deanna Raybourn
Publication: Harlequin MIRA, 2014
Got it from: Hoopla Audiobooks

Anyone looking for a rip-roaring 1920s adventure in the style of Indiana Jones, Miss Fisher, or my beloved Amelia Peabody, would enjoy this one.  I listened to it on audiobook and quite liked the episodic derring-do of the main characters.

Evangeline Starke (no relation to Iron Man, I presume) is a famous aviatrix in 1920s London.  She's sort of widowed - her husband, Gabriel, left her five years earlier in Shanghai and then went down with the Lusitania.  Or is he dead?  Dun dun dun.  Evangeline has a newspaper photo that might prove otherwise.  So she's off with her eccentric Aunt Dove, a former Victorian adventuress, and their sidekick bird Arthur Wellesley, to Damascus where the picture was taken.  There's lots of exotic details about the city, the desert and the archeological site where Evie ends up. Of course, it wouldn't be a true Indiana Jones-type adventure without a sacred relic, secret identities, double-crosses, lots of guns being shot, evil villains and a plane chase.  And romance, naturally. 

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

The title: The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
The author: Sydney Padua
Publication: Pantheon, 2015
Got it from: The library

Ah, Ada Lovelace.  Daughter of Lord Byron, the original Queen of Steampunk, arguably the world's first computer programmer.  Is there anything she can't do?  Sydney Padua doesn't think so, as she sets out to prove in this graphic novel/alternate history/adventure/science and math lesson.  Yes, it's all over the place, as hard to pin down as Charles Babbage's never-finished Analytical Engine.  This graphic novel is really a series of vignettes of "what might have been" if the computer had actually been built and was used to solve crime and various economical woes.  Interspersed are a whole lot of background notes (seriously, at one point I was in the footnote of a footnote of a footnote).  Various Victorian personages drop in and out, including Queen Victoria (apparently the world's first fan of LOLCats), George Eliot and of course the Romantics. 

It's all a lot of silliness, of course, but oh my goodness is there a lot of math and science.  I encountered terms I haven't heard since school and didn't know I even remembered.  After reading detail after detail of how the Analytical Engine was designed, I think I may actually have a slight grasp of how computers work.  Don't worry, it's not all dry mathematics, there's actually some pretty great historical humour in here that Victorianists will appreciate.  I particularly love a scene where actual computers (people who did computations) try to wreck the machine Luddite-style and Babbage sits them down to tea to reason with them.  Both Babbage and Lovelace were fascinating characters who make excellent heroes this quirky and fun book.

Quick reviews: Sex, Pirates and Mr. Darcy

I didn't want to go into full reviews for any of these books so I'm introducing quick reviews!

The title: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists
The author: Gideon Defoe
Publication: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004
Got it from:  The library

Ridiculous is not too strong a word to describe this silliness.  A whopping 135 pages long (with comprehension exercise and words to know included), the joke of this whole book revolves around how absurd pirates are.  The Pirate Captain and his crew live in a strange 19th century/modern world hybrid where people are dispatched in various gruesome ways and their love of ham is a running joke. Sprinkled throughout are factual footnotes on historical personages appearing in the book - or, indeed, anything.  Most of the humour is groan-worthy bad, but there are some genuinely funny moments such as when The Pirate with a Scarf and Erasmus Darwin play a game of Animal, Vegetable or Mineral while meeting their doom strapped to the cogs of Big Ben.  Special note should be made of the fact that the chapter titles (Battling the Octopus!, etc), while appropriate to most pirate adventures, have absolutely nothing to do with the content of the respective chapter.  Teenage boys and pirate fanatics will love this, everyone else can skip to the cute Aardman movie released last year based on the book.

The title: Mr. Darcy's Guide to Courtship
The author:  Emily Brand
Publication: Old House, 2013
Got it from:  AG, B-day 2013

Speaking of foolishness, we have this book, written as if it had been dictated by a pre-Lizzie Mr. Darcy.  "The Secrets of Seduction from Jane Austen's Most Eligible Bachelor" reads like a one-note joke - he's a jerk!  Ha ha!  It stretches the limits of credulity to suppose that a man who could fall for Elizabeth Bennet would ever advise women to not be opinionated and lively.  But no matter how tongue in cheek this book is meant to be, there is simply no excuse for paragraphs like this: "Ladies, if you have failed to secure a husband by the age of thirty - at which point the bloom of youth will fade most desperately - admit defeat and harden yourself to the idea of not being worth looking at.  A single woman of nine and twenty ought not to expect to feel or inspire real affection again."  Here's some advice of my own: "Young women of six and twenty should not attempt to imitate the wit and genius of Jane Austen.  Wait a few more years until you have something better in you in than this unfunny, tiresome book."

   
The title: The Read Deal
The author: Debbi Rawlins
Publication: Harlequin, 2010
Got it from:  MC, B-day 2012

I enjoyed this book much, much more than I thought I would.  Emily Carter is hoping to break out of her stay-at-home rut so she signs up for a sightseeing adventure in New York City over Thanksgiving.  On an impulse, she buys a copy of Erotic New York and accidentally ends up leaving it behind in the cab she's sharing with a good-looking guy.  The guy turns out to be Nick Corrigan, a star baseball player.  I don't normally go in for sports-themed romance but this one worked for me as it takes place in the off-season.  It dealt a lot more with the realities of sports fame than the game itself.  What really worked for me is how darn likeable the characters were.  The romance was definitely pure fantasy, but the warm-and-fuzzy kind that felt so feel-good and satisfying.  And I love holiday getaway romance, especially the cold-weather kind.  Total thumbs up.

Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World

The title:  Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World
The author: Matthew Goodman
Publication: Ballantine Books, 2013
Got it from: The library

I was MIA in April because I was buried deep in five books I was book-talking for a library program (and all of you librarians know how nerve-wracking book talks are).  One of the books was Matthew Goodman's Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World.  

Now, I did read Jules Verne's book a few years ago, and I think Nellie Bly is pretty boss, so how did I not know that she once raced around the world?  If you don't know Nellie Bly, look her up - she was a scrappy female reporter in Gilded Age New York who did some pretty awesome things. (She also has her own mystery series, which will show up here in future reviews).  In 1889, she set out to beat the record set by the fictional Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days and circumnavigate the globe in 75 days.  Meanwhile, another reporter, Elizabeth Bisland (a literary critic who was none too pleased to be told she had to travel in a moment's notice) also set out to race against her, albeit in the opposite direction.

It was the perfect age to travel in.  Both of the ladies had rich newspaper companies paying their first-class fares the whole way around, and Britain was at the height of its empire.  They barely had to step foot off British soil, even though they stopped at ports around the world to change transportation.  Nellie Bly headed east, suffered horrible seasickness on the Atlantic, met Jules Verne in France, bought a monkey in Ceylon, and fended off would-be suitors who thought she was rich.  Elizabeth Bisland went west, encountered a hair-raising train trip through the Rockies, charmed everyone on board her Pacific steamer and fell in love with Japan.  Both women got a bit cranky (as you do when you're traveling at breakneck speed for over seventy days) but only one ultimately emerged triumphant, breaking the world record and becoming a national heroine. 

This book isn't a quick read.  There's a lot of dense text and tons and tons of historical detail that interrupts the narrative of the race itself.  If you don't mind that sort of thing and are curious about what the world looked like in the late 19th century (at least through the eyes of two kinda racist but good-hearted women), you'll love Eighty Days.

Honor Bound

The title:  Honor Bound
The authors: Mary Alice and John Downie
Publication: Oxford University Press Canada, 1971
Got it from: Hannelore's, 2009

The Loyalist immigration to Canada is the backdrop for this delightful 1970's children's book.  Miles and Patience Avery are persecuted for their family's loyalty to King George III in their home town of Philadelphia at the end of the Revolutionary War.  When their father returns from fighting, the family has to flee in the night.  The first part of the novel is a travel adventure as the Averys try to make it safely to the Canadian border.  Their journey is fraught with danger, including a run-in with a two-faced Rebel innkeeper.  Once safely in Cataraqui (now Kingston, Ontario) their troubles are not over.  A conceited and vengeful army captain tries to make life as difficult possible for them, and the spectre of their land's former owner, a notorious thief named Grimble, hangs over them.  There is a lot of description of the incredible hardships of early settler life, but there is also joy such as a pioneer Christmas celebration and when a local boy is taught to read.  And there is the continued search for the Averys' missing sister, Honor, from whom the book gets its name.

I have actually been interested in reading this book for a long time.  The first chapter was presented as a story in one of my elementary school readers.  (If you went to school in Canada in the 1980's and 90's, you might remember it).  For some reason, I was never able to find a copy until I stumbled across one at a used book store a few years ago - ironically, a discarded school library book.  The story is quick and enjoyable with lots of fascinating details about what life was like for the poor Loyalists who had to give up beloved homes to eke out a living in the wilderness.  Being told from the children's perspectives helped soften some of the harshness of their conditions, as kids are always able to make fun and play wherever they are.    Still, it wouldn't be the life for me, unless it's safely from my armchair.

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

The title: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
The authors: Lauren Willig
Publication: Penguin, 2005
Got it from: Library booksale, 2008


Happy Victoria Day, everyone! I've spent all weekend in the garden, so no surprises that I have flowers on the brain.  Naturally I also read The Secret History of the Pink Carnation.   It's based on the idea that the Scarlet Pimpernel was real, and that he later spawned a ring of British spies with flowers for their names.  The story follows Amy Balcourt, a young half-French girl who escaped from the terror and grew up wanting to avenge her father's death by joining the League of the Purple Gentian, a sort of spin-off spy of the Pimpernel's.  On her way to France Amy meets Richard Selwick, the Gentian's real-life alter ego who is pretending to be a dull archaeologist working for Napoleon.  Naturally, there is bickering and romance.  Overarching the whole story is the 21st century scholar, Eloise, who's studying the Pink Carnation and butts heads with the Gentian's descendant Colin Selwick.  (Of course there won't be any romance there.  Of course not).


Have I mentioned how much I love the whole superhero-in-disguise thing, where the woman is in love with the superhero but has a feud going with his true self?   Love, love, love it.  Way back when I was child, this was the premise of my favourite show of the time, Lois and Clark: The Adventures of Superman.  Also in Batman Forever, which everybody thinks is a crappy Batman but I disagree because it's all about how Chase Meridian falls for Batman but is all meh about Bruce Wayne (at least at first).  And of course, the origin of the whole trope, the Scarlet Pimpernel, as best embodied in the Anthony Andrews/Jane Seymour movie, which you absolutely must see.  I even love stories of highwaymen that invoke this trope, even though they're technically more bad guys than superheroes.


Which is to say that my love of superheroes/superspies kind of taints my reading of this story to err on the side of giddy joy.  The middle, where the action picks up, is particularly excellent.  Oh, it's silly good fun of course.  (And how jealous am I that the author was only twenty-six when she wrote this?  VERY JEALOUS.)  I figured out who the Pink Carnation was about twenty pages in, and there's not a ton of surprises.  But I just can't get tired of the "damnit I am a superhero and I can't fall in love with this annoying woman but I am so attracted to her" plot.  It's not gonna happen.

The Brendan Voyage

The title: The Brendan Voyage
The authors: Tim Severin
Publication: Arrow Books, 1978
Got it from: Attic Books, London, 2004

I was first came across the story of the Brendan Voyage in O.R. Melling's marvelous The Book of Dreams, in which Tim Severin and his crew appear as fictional characters.  Some years ago I stumbled across The Brendan Voyage in a used book store and thought it would be entertaining, although it has taken me years to get around to reading it.

In some ways it is a great follow-up to Simon Winchester's Atlantic.  This story is part history, part sea tale, part adventure and part mystery.  St. Brendan was a 6th century Irish monk who features in Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis (the voyage of St. Brendan the abbot).  For many years people thought his fantastical voyages to "promised lands" was the stuff of legend, but recent studies have shown that Brendan may in fact have visited real places, and maybe even North America, by island-hopping in the North Atlantic.  In the 1970's scholar Tim Severin set out to prove that the traditional Irish curraghs could have withstood the arduous journey.

I never would have thought I'd find boat-building fascinating, but I did.  Severin had to use his medieval detective skills and assemble a crack team of experts in traditional boat-building skills in order to make it happen.  Even in the 1970's, this proved difficult, as many of the traditional crafts were dying out.  The boat itself was constructed out of all-medieval materials, using wood for the frame with a leather covering.  The most astonishing thing about the boat was not the material, but the size.  It was barely 36' long, but had to comfortably stow five men and all their supplies. 

Amazingly, Tim and his crew discovered that not only did their medieval boat hold up, in a lot of cases the medieval material fared better than its modern counterpart.  Of course there were a lot of nail-biting moments, including several storms and a rather harrowing encounter with icebergs, but the little boat that could seemed to roll with the waves better than the bigger, modern boats.  Intriguingly, they discovered that many parts of Brendan's tale that people dismissed as myth could have been true - for example, the "island of fire" might be the volcanoes of Iceland and the monstrous beasts could have been whales (who, incidentally, showed little fear of the boat and swam beside it for much of the journey).  Even though Tim answered the question of whether Brendan could have reached North America, scholars are skeptical regarding whether he did.  The question remains an intriguing mystery.