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Booklover Book Reviews

Thanks to the many people who entered our giveaway of 2 copies of THE DISCOVERY OF JEANNE BARET by Glynis Ridley,  kindly provided by the Crown Publishing Group.

The two randomly selected winners are…

Irene and Kimberly

Congratulations Irene and Kimberly, I am sure you will enjoy this great title as much as I did.

For those that were not lucky enough to win this time round, The Discovery of Jeanne Baret by Glynis Ridley is available in hardcopy and ebook from The Nile, Kobobooks, Amazon and Barnes & Noble etc.

Booklover Book Reviews

The Discovery of Jeanne Baret Synopsis

A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe

The year was 1765, King Louis XV had ordered the first French expedition around the world, appointing eminent botanist Philibert Commerson to seek out medicines, spices and other resources that could give the French an edge in the ever-accelerating race for empire. Desperate not to be left behind, twenty-six-year-old Jeanne Baret – Commerson’s peasant-born mistress, and a deeply knowledgeable plantswoman in her own right – disguised herself as a teenage boy and signed on as his assistant.

As the ship stopped at strange new lands, the secret lovers disembarked to collect and classify plants unknown to Western science, including the showy vine bougainvillea. But it wasn’t long before the crew members on the cramped ship began to suspect her true identity. With this incredible true tale of intrigue on the high seas, Glynis Ridley offers a forgotten heroine the chance to bloom at long last. (Amazon)

BOOK REVIEW

What really hits you when you start reading The Discovery of Jeanne Baret is the level of research that author Glynis Ridley has undertaken prior to putting pen to paper.

In this book Ridley presents for the reader what she believes took place in the life of this remarkable woman. Ridley refers to historical artifacts to support her position when available, but she does not let their absence stop her from telling a complete story of Baret’s life and of the lives of those she interacted with. Where there is little to no documented evidence she bridges the gap with deductive reasoning. At times she puts herself in the position of Jeanne and conveys her likely actions, thoughts and motivations.

It is Glynis Ridley’s conversation style that makes The Discovery of Jeanne Baret a compelling and fascinating read.

While I thoroughly enjoyed following the historian/researchers logic with full knowledge that some of what was presented as though it were fact was educated speculation verging on historical fiction, I do note some other reviewers considered this a weakness.

What cannot be questioned is Ridley’s ability to set an evocative scene.

As they skirted a guano-encrusted beach colony of tens of thousands of the birds, Baret, Commerson, and the prince likely crossed paths with one or more of the two-foot-high penguins running full tilt in its distinctive side-to-side gait as it headed back to its onshore nest. A more improbable grouping is hard to imagine, as these eighteenth-century travelers — a woman dressed as a man, a man pretending not to know that his assistant was a woman, and a second man dressed more richly than most women — stared down at a black-and-white bird under half their height that defied them to go any further. Between the austere color palette of the penguin and the brilliant velvet of the prince, the strait has perhaps never hosted a meeting of greater contrasts.

In The Discovery of Jeanne Baret Glynis Ridley does not glorify the acts of this woman or her fellow adventurers. She presents the unpleasant aspects of history in context but retains an objectivity that I respected.

BOOK RATING: The Story 4 / 5 ; The Writing 4 / 5

BOOK DETAILS: The Discovery of Jeanne Baret (Amazon); The Discovery of Jeanne Baret (Kobo ebooks); The Discovery of Jeanne Baret (The Nile – Australia)

Genre: Non-Fiction, Historical, Action-Adventure

Author Information: Check out Glynis Ridley’s Facebook page and read an interview with Glynis Ridley by Invisible Paris.

Other reviews of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: Firefly’s Book Blog ; Graham Storrs ; Leeswammes’ Blog

Another title by Glynis Ridley: Clara’s Grand Tour – Travels With A Rhinoceros In Eighteenth-Century Europe 

* I received this paperback copy from Crown Publishing, Random House for review purposes. My receiving this title at no cost did not impact my ability to express my honest opinions about it.

Booklover Book Reviews

As part of the Aussie Author Challenge 2012, each month I will be inviting an active challenge participant to guest post here at Booklover Book Reviews.

To kick off this guest blogging series, I am very pleased to welcome Tony from Tony’s Reading List. Tony is a long-standing supporter of this challenge and he has real knack for unearthing literary gems.

Tell us a bit about yourself Tony and the types of books you feature on your blog, Tony’s Reading List:

I’m an Englishman who has been living in Australia for almost a decade now, having previously lived in France, Germany and Japan, and I like to read and review literary fiction from around the world. My main areas of interest are Victorian literature, classic and contemporary Japanese literature, German literature in the original language and, probably the most recent addition, literary fiction by Australian writers.

What are the last 5 books by Australian authors you have read/reviewed?

That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
All That I Am by Anna Funder
The Fix by Nick Earls
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany

Which Australian author do you think deserves broader recognition and why?

One of my favourite Australian writers is Steven Carroll, creator of The Glenroy Trilogy, but I think he is actually fairly well-known, so instead I’ll opt for Arnold Zable. I’ve read a few of his books now, and I love his style of writing, more of a story-telling than a writing of a novel. He uses his works to give voices to other people, often the displaced and war-weary, creating tapestries of individual tales cunningly woven together by the gentle presence of the narrator.

I’d like to briefly highlight two of his books. Café Scheherazde is set in a café in St. Kilda (in Melbourne), and the stories here are of the Second World War and how the old men and women got from there to here. Zable is attempting here to record the oral history of a fading generation before it is lost forever.

Violin Lessons, his most recent work, is in a similar vein, but foregrounds the writer more, as the stories are those he has picked up throughout his life on his many travels. A blend of fact and fiction, some of the stories are told as they happened while others are a composite of several different occurrences. The culmination, and the highlight, of the book is the final section dedicated to Amal Basry and the SIEVX, a boat full of asylum seekers, which sank off the coast of Australia. It’s a book which everyone should read, especially in light of some of the political posturing we see on the subject…

The Aussie Author Challenge Soapbox is at your disposal…

I’ve read a fair few Australian books over the past couple of years. I’ve received a few from publishers, but the majority have come from my local library – I have bought almost none. Most Australians will know why, but I’ll spell it out for any overseas readers – books in Australia are simply too expensive.

There is a lot of debate, both as to whether this is true and as to why it is the case, but arguing about high overheads and the impact of GST thresholds is simply missing the point. For the average suburban Australian (who does not have access to a favourite indie – or second-hand bookshop), high prices simply mean that these books will not be bought. I am not prepared to pay $30 for a novel when I can buy wonderful books online from all over the world for a third of the price.

Some might say that this is selfish, and that I should be supporting local businesses; perhaps that’s true. It’s not going to change my buying behaviour though, and I’m sure that the majority of people will silently, if not openly, agree. Australia is no longer an isolated backwater, and consumers will go where their dollar stretches furthest, whether that’s at home or overseas.

The sad thing is that it is Australian writing – and culture – that will suffer. When a self-confessed bibliophile like myself spends a thousand dollars or so a year on books, all of it overseas, none of it on Australian books, you have to wonder what will become of Australian literature. Let’s face it, I’m far from being alone in being unwilling to subsidise an uncompetitive industry.

I don’t want to go into specifics as to solutions here (I don’t really know enough about the industry to be able to give any insightful suggestions), but it’s time for Australian publishers, and everyone else concerned with the industry, to come up with a plan for the future.

Otherwise, in ten years’ time, there won’t be an industry.

Thank you for sharing these less widely known titles with us Tony, and for your candour in raising an issue that I am sure all Australian booklovers tousle with at one time or another.

I certainly know that I am a big user of The Book Depository because it is hard to justify paying 2 or 3 times more for a book than I need to.

This is an issue people are often divided on – share your thoughts with us… and make sure you check out Tony’s Reading List when looking for your next literary gem.

Booklover Book Reviews

The Book of Lost Fragrances Book Description

A sweeping and suspenseful tale of secrets, intrigue, and lovers separated by time, all connected through the mystical qualities of a perfume created in the days of Cleopatra — and lost for 2,000 years. 
 
Jac L’Etoile has always been haunted by the past, her memories infused with the exotic scents that she grew up surrounded by as the heir to a storied French perfume company. In order to flee the pain of those remembrances — and of her mother’s suicide — she moved to America. Now, fourteen years later she and her brother have inherited the company along with it’s financial problems. But when Robbie hints at an earth-shattering discovery in the family archives and then suddenly goes missing–leaving a dead body in his wake — Jac is plunged into a world she thought she’d left behind.

Back in Paris to investigate her brother’s disappearance, Jac becomes haunted by the legend the House of L’Etoile has been espousing since 1799. Is there a scent that can unlock the mystery of reincarnation – or is it just another dream infused perfume?

The Book of Lost Fragrances fuses history, passion, and suspense, moving from Cleopatra’s Egypt and the terrors of revolutionary France to Tibet’s battle with China and the glamour of modern-day Paris. Jac’s quest for the ancient perfume someone is willing to kill for becomes the key to understanding her own troubled past. (Amazon)

My teaser:

He ignored Saurent’s warning that he was entering uncharted territory – that there could be booby traps, serpents coiled and waiting – and Abu’s admonitions about lurking spirits more dangerous than snakes. L’Etoile followed his nose into the darkness with just his single candle, pushing ahead of the general and everyone else, hungry for a more concentrated dose of the mysterious perfume.  (Page 19 )

What wonderfully mysterious and evocative prose…

I am lucky enough to be hosting the virtual blog tour of M J Rose’s latest novel, The Book of Lost Fragrances on the day it will be published, 13 March 2012.

Find out more about this title - The Book of Lost Fragrances by M J Rose.

Looking forward to reading your teasers!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. 

Booklover Book Reviews

The Eyre Affair Synopsis

There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where the Crimean war still rages, dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits and everyone is deeply disappointed by the ending of ‘Jane Eyre’. In this world there are no jet-liners or computers, but there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic, a great interest in all things literary – and a woman called Thursday Next.

In this utterly original and wonderfully funny first novel, Fforde has created a fiesty, loveable heroine and a plot of such richness and ingenuity that it will take your breath away. (TheNile)

BOOK REVIEW

It has took me far too long to get around to reading my first Jasper Fforde novel, the first in his Thursday Next Literary Detective Series. After having read all the rave reviews and The Eyre Affair being billed as ‘a book for booklovers’ I had high expectations. I was not disappointed.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde is wacky, zany and addictive – candy in a book.

What is so great about The Eyre Affair? Why has Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series achieved almost cult-like status?

- The wit, wordplay and satire on display as Jasper Fforde develops and then consistently deploys an alternate history in which appreciation of literature is high in the social conscience and something all the popular people are doing.

- The fact that time travel is common place and it is possible to travel ‘into a book’.

- A loveably loyal, flawed and feisty heroine named Thursday Next, a SpecOp-27 (Literary Detective Division of Special Operations) with a genetically flawed dodo as a pet.

I tried to call him (Tamworth) at the beginning of the third week but was put through to a trained denialist who flatly refused to admit that Tamworth or SO-5 even existed. I used the time to get up to date with some reading, filing, mending the car, and also – because of the new legislation – to register Pickwick as a pet rather than a wild dodo. I took him to the town hall where a veterinary inspector studied the once-extinct bird very carefully. Pickwick stared back forlornly, as he, in common with most pets, didn’t fancy the vet much.

‘Plock-plock’, said Pickwisk nervously as the inspector expertly clipped the large brass ring around his ankle.

‘No wings?’ asked the official curiously, staring at Pickwick’s slightly odd shape.

‘He’s a Version 1.2,’ I explained. ‘One of the first. They didn’t get the sequence complete until 1.7.’

‘Must be pretty old.’

‘Twelve years this October.’

I should note that a friend of mine had a much different reaction to Jasper Fforde’s writing than I did. She thought it was contrived – well, ‘contrived’ was not the actual word she used but that is the nicest way of conveying the feelings she expressed. So clearly The Eyre Affair is not to everyone’s tastes – but I found it simply delightful and extremely difficult to put down.

BOOK RATING: The Story 4.5 / 5 ; The Writing 4.5 / 5

BOOK DETAILS: The Eyre Affair (Amazon); The Eyre Affair (Kobo ebooks); The Eyre Affair (Audible); The Eyre Affair (The Nile – Australia)

Genre: Literature, Action-Adventure, Romance, Crime-Detective, Sci-Fi-Fantasy

Author Information: Jasper Fforde (born 1961) is a British novelist. Fforde’s first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001. Fforde is mainly known for hisThursday Next novels, although he has written several books in the loosely connected Nursery Crime series and begun two more independent series: The Last Dragonslayer and Shades of Grey. (Wikipedia)

- Check out Jasper Fforde’s unique website

Other reviews of The Eyre Affair: Roof Beam Reader ; Salon ; Adventures in Borkdom

Just some of the other titles by Jasper Fforde: Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, The Big Over Easy, Shades of Grey, One of Our Thursdays is Missing

Booklover Book Reviews

The Discovery of Jeanne Baret Book Description

A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe

The year was 1765, King Louis XV had ordered the first French expedition around the world, appointing eminent botanist Philibert Commerson to seek out medicines, spices and other resources that could give the French an edge in the ever-accelerating race for empire. Desperate not to be left behind, twenty-six-year-old Jeanne Baret – Commerson’s peasant-born mistress, and a deeply knowledgeable plantswoman in her own right – disguised herself as a teenage boy and signed on as his assistant. As the ship stopped at strange new lands, the secret lovers disembarked to collect and classify plants unknown to Western science, including the showy vine bougainvillea. But it wasn’t long before the crew members on the cramped ship began to suspect her true identity. With this incredible true tale of intrigue on the high seas, Glynis Ridley offers a forgotten heroine the chance to bloom at long last.

My teaser:

What hope could there be for a working-class woman to challenge a national hero? A woman who had hoped to deceive her shipmates for two or more years would readily invite the charge that she was a liar. Worse still for Baret, contemporary views about the proper sphere of female activity guaranteed that any display of her botanical knowledge in print would have branded her a whore.  (Page 8 )

I am finding this a fascinating read – it is clearly very well researched and the delivery is quite conversational.

Find out more about this title - The Discovery of Jeanne Baret by Glynis Ridley.

I currently have 2 paperback copies of this title to giveaway

** ENTER HERE **

Looking forward to reading your teasers!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. 

Booklover Book Reviews

Just spotted some great book deals from Australian retailers I wanted to share with my Aussie readers:

- This weekend The Nile are having a POPULAR PENGUIN promotion, with titles only $8.99 (free delivery in Australia) + you can get a further 10% discount by entering the code ‘PENGUIN’ at checkout.

- Dymocks are having a promotion for the Vintage Classics collection, you know the ones with those stylish covers. They are offering 2 for $20 (with $5 flat rate postage per order in Australia) and the range includes popular titles by Murakami, Austen, Bronte, Rushdie, Flanagan, Carey, Dickens, Tolstoy, Atwood, etc.

My international readers will probably be wondering why us Aussies get excited by book prices like these.

Answer: Books sold in Australia are generally 2 or 3 times this price.

And finally, a reminder for Aussie readers to mark the 24th February in your calendars.

That’s the date the TV adaptation of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher Mystery Series starts screening on the ABC. Watch the TV series trailer here - I’m loving it already!

Booklover Book Reviews

Thanks to the many people (100+) who entered our giveaway of a Jack Susko Mystery Prize Pack by Australian author Lenny Bartulin,  kindly provided by Scribe Publications.

The randomly selected winner is…

Hilde

Congratulations Hilde, I am sure you will enjoy the work of this great Australian author.

For those that were not lucky enough to win this time round, these titles by Lenny Bartulin are available in hardcopy and ebook from The Nile, Booktopia, Kobobooks and Amazon etc.

For another chance to win, checkout the next giveaway here at Booklover Book Reviews, 2 paperback copies of  The Discovery of Jeanne Baret by Glynis Ridley.

Booklover Book Reviews

I am pleased to announce another great international giveaway.

Thanks to the Crown Publishing Group I have two paperback copies of this fascinating book to giveaway.

NOW IN PAPERBACK FROM BROADWAY BOOKS

The untold, amazing true story of the first woman to sail around the world . . .

THE DISCOVERY OF JEANNE BARET

A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe 

By GLYNIS RIDLEY

Synopsis: The year was 1765, King Louis XV had ordered the first French expedition around the world, appointing eminent botanist Philibert Commerson to seek out medicines, spices and other resources that could give the French an edge in the ever-accelerating race for empire. Desperate not to be left behind, twenty-six-year-old Jeanne Baret – Commerson’s peasant-born mistress, and a deeply knowledgeable plantswoman in her own right – disguised herself as a teenage boy and signed on as his assistant. As the ship stopped at strange new lands, the secret lovers disembarked to collect and classify plants unknown to Western science, including the showy vine bougainvillea. But it wasn’t long before the crew members on the cramped ship began to suspect her true identity. With this incredible true tale of intrigue on the high seas, Glynis Ridley offers a forgotten heroine the chance to bloom at long last.

GLYNIS RIDLEY is a professor of English at the University of Louisville and a British citizen. Her previous book, Clara’s Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe, won the Institute of Historical Research (University of London) Prize.

The Discovery of Jeanne Baret is currently available from all good book retailers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobobooks, The Nile - Australia.

Giveaway Details:

The winners of this giveaway will be selected at random and entries are open internationally.

This giveaway will also be promoted on Twitter (@BLBookReviews).

There are ways to increase your chances of winning a copy of this book:

+2 entries, tweet about this giveaway (providing link to this post) or even easier retweet my giveaway announcement

+4 entries, provide a link to this giveaway entry post on your webpage

TIP: Do the above before filling in the below form, so you have the link/info required to qualify for the additional entries.

The 2 lucky winners will be announced on 20 February 2012 – good luck!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED – see who the lucky winners were here.

Booklover Book Reviews