My Reading, Reviewing & Rating Policy

Despite having my blog for six months now, I never included what my policy on reading, reviewing and rating is. I now decided that it’s about time I did that so all my readers, any authors and publishers and all audience interested in my blog can have a point of reference.

READING
Even though I do not generally limit myself to one genre only, there are certain books I prefer reading. If you are a publisher and would like me to review books published by your company, please consider the following so there are no mishaps and the risk of a negative review is significantly reduced.

Genres I prefer:
1. Historical Fiction, apart from the early 20th century including WWI & WWII.
2. Horror Fiction
3. Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, apart from legal thrillers.
4. Fantasy Fiction
5. Classics
6. Memoirs

Genres I tend to read less often:
1. Chick Lit
2. Romance Fiction
3. Young Adult
4. Non-Fiction
5. Biographies/Autobiographies
6. Urban Fantasy

Genres I definitely will not read:
1. Cookbooks
2. Art & Craft books
3. Diet/Weight loss books
4. Business books

There are many genres I did not mention, only the most important to point out. If you would like me to review a book published by your company, please contact me first with a description. If I receive books without prior notice and if I do not like them, I will post a negative review (if needed) without a courtesy of notifying a publisher who did not have the courtesy to give me a choice first.
Last but not least, simply because a writer is well known and his/her books are bestsellers, it does not guarantee my positive review. Rarely am I influenced by opinions of others and I consider myself nonconformist, therefore it may happen that I dislike books appreciated by the majority and enjoy books that others don’t.

REVIEWING
Because I try to request books written only in the genre I prefer, I mostly like the books I read/review. Sometimes it does happen that I am either completely dismayed by a book or dislike parts of it. If I review books purchased by me, I post reviews in all honesty (negative or positive) as I do not feel obligated otherwise. If I review ARC’s, galleys and review copies sent to me by publishers, I remain honest in my posts, however, I give publishers the courtesy of choosing whether they want a negative review up on my blog or not. This particular part concerns only the books that in my opinion should never be published and I have nothing positive to say about them. I always post reviews of books which did not satisfy my intellectual tastes but may still be considered good reads for someone with different preferences and I can find positive sides to it. As far as the timeline goes, I need 2-3 months from the time I receive a review copy to read/review it. I love reading, I enjoy blogging and I appreciate the opportunity to work side by side with publishers and authors towards their success. Most importantly, reading and blogging, while treated very seriously and with utmost respect, are my enjoyable leisurely activities. I do not want it to become a job I dread with deadlines I can’t possibly meet. If you require a book to be read/reviewed immediately or within days of having received it, I am not your best choice.

RATING
This issue has been quite controversial of late. That’s why I decided to mention what my policy on it is. I do not rate books on my blog. I try to make my reviews clear enough for my readers to know what my feelings about a book are. It is my hope that my reviews are never vague and do not confound potential readers and my blog’s visitors. With that in mind, I believe that to give a rating on top of a review is redundant.

With sincere regards to all,
Lilly

BEA '09 - blessings and disappointments

Let me start with two huge, personal disappointments connected to my BEA experience. I planned on going to BEA two days in a row, Friday and Saturday. As it turned out, I only managed to go on Friday. Here’s why: being a mom of a ten-year-old, I always have to plan things around her. All the moms reading it will understand the mundane reality. This was mine. I could not take her with me and I also could not very well leave her with just anybody. Due to the nature of my profession (I am a translator who works from home, on the computer most of the time) I have never had the need for a stable, full-time babysitter. Today, it has come to bite me in the bum-bum. On Friday it was a little easier since she was at school and my mom agreed to stay with her afterwards. Today (Saturday) was supposed to be my daughter’s weekend with her father. You know what’s coming next. We both got stood up. I admit that my naiveté got the better of me as I really should have known better counting on an extremely unreliable and thoughtless person. There was a reason for our divorce after all.

Because my plans for today are ruined, I am very sad and disappointed. The biggest disappointment is that I will not get to meet all the wonderful bloggers I was so looking forward to meet. The BEA is a huge and very overwhelming event, especially for people like me, who find crowded spaces overpowering and stress inducing. Therefore it took me some time to find myself there, then to go to significant places and meet interesting writers and publisher and by the time it was over, it was too late for me to go and proactively search for the bloggers even though I tried to be on the lookout throughout the whole day. I simply had in mind that the whole Saturday would be dedicated to meeting with the girls and spending some time with them. As it turned out, I am not there. C’est La Vie!

Now, enough with the ramblings of the unquiet mind. I am still very happy and feel blessed that I was able to make it to BEA at all. Thankfully, I live close enough to New York City to just jump on the train and be there within an hour. It wasn’t awfully expensive and time consuming. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even dream of coming. I also met and got a chance to chat with some fantastic writers and publishers whom I will be spotlighting individually in the near future. They were very nice and approachable people, and it was a great pleasure to meet them. I have met with three publishers (well, I visited more than that) which are not as yet very well known but it is my great hope that they will be soon as the products they offer seem wonderful and deserve more notice. Over the next few weeks I will be posting reviews of the books, hopefully interviews with the authors and introductions to the new magazine and book publishers.

That’s that for now. I am sure that by the time you read all the posts about BEA ’09 you’ll get slightly sick of it, therefore I don’t intend on boring you to death in this first post.

Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer

It’s no secret by now that I am a fan of Georgette Heyer, considering that I read, reviewed and enjoyed three books of hers in the past 20-something days. The previous ones were all mysteries set in the times contemporary to Heyer. I had a slight anxiety therefore when I started reading Cousin Kate which even though still a mystery, it’s also a historical fiction, romance and Gothic mystery. It turned out I needn’t have worried.

Kate Malvern is considered at 25 on the brink of old age by the Regency standards. Her prospects for the future are looking worse and worse by the minute. With no parents, no dowry to speak of and no real prospects for substantial income, Kate has only one person to turn to: her nurse Sarah Nidd. But Sarah has her own family and household to care for and as much as she loves Kate, it’s only a matter of time when Kate will become a nuisance and yet another mouth to feed. With the appearance of Kate’s aunt Minerva, the estranged half-sister of Kate’s father, it looks like the deliverance from all worries has finally arrived. Kate is overwhelmed by the kindness bestowed upon her by Minerva and wishes with all her heart to repay it any way she can. When taken to Staplewood, Minerva’s family estate, Kate discovers soon enough that what she’s expected to do in return for Minerva’s benevolent treatment may be more horrifying than she could ever imagine. The household has the gloomy atmosphere with uncle Timothy living in a separate wing, the moody and often unpredictable cousin Torquil living in another part and Minerva ruling the house with an iron fist. Soon, Kate finds herself entrapped in Staplewood with only one person, cousin Phillip willing to help.

Cousin Kate is a completely different novel from the ones I’ve read but also the same talent Heyer’s for writing with style, humor and cleverness shines through. Kate is a very likable character, she’s independent, she knows what she wants, how to say what she wants and most importantly, how to stand up for herself and say no. I suspect she got it from her nurse Sarah, which I think I liked the most, even though she only appears at the beginning and end of the book. Talk about a no-nonsense woman. I like to imagine that Georgette Heyer used some of her own characteristics when creating Sarah. Also, I was happy to see that despite writing in a different genre, Heyer didn’t lose any of her wittiness, humor and a knack for truly bringing to life all her characters. There was one other new element introduced: mental illness. That just added more fun for me because I enjoy reading books with at least one person who suffers from some kind of mental impediment. Heyer never names what the illness is, but it really doesn’t matter because a name is not necessary when the portrayal is so excellent. Cousin Kate was simply another great performance by this wonderful writer and it only makes me elated to know that there are plenty more of her books to read.

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Special Thanks to Danielle J. from Sourcebooks for sending me a copy of this book.

Book Info

Title: Cousin Kate

Author: Georgette Heyer

Published in: 2009

By: Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

Weekly Geeks - Memorial Day

With Memorial Day in the U.S. this coming Monday (well, it already came and went), I thought it would be appropriate to focus on the military. Either share your favorite book on war or movie on war and why. Provide a clip from the movie if you'd like or a passage from the book that shows us why you it's your favorite book or movie. Or do both. OR choose your own military theme, for example, if you have a relative or friend in the military and you would like to send them a video or a message of thanks, do that on your blog. OR do all three. The book and movie also don't have to be "patriotic" necessarily. For example, one of my favorite fictional books on war is Johnny, Get Your Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

I have never read any war books (fiction or non-fiction) on wars following the WWII. I don’t know the precise reason for it but I prefer to read about events that are finished and done with and are left to judge by history itself. Don’t get me wrong though, I have tremendous respect for our military people, who in my eyes are true, selfless heroes willing to put their lives on the line for a person like myself, who they don’t know, never will know and will not get anything back (other than regard) from him/her. I in general am not a huge fan of any war books at all but the ones I did read have stuck in my memory ever since and I definitely recommend them to anyone.

1. The Children’s War by J.N. Stroyar

I read this book six years ago and I am still under its spell. It is an alternative history novel about the world in which the Nazis did win WWII and now rule every part of Europe. It was an amazing read and I didn’t want it to end. A great example of “What if” scenario which I am glad is only that, a scenario that never came to fruition.

Publishers synopsis:

Bad papers. That's how Peter's nightmare began. Living in contemporary Europe under Nazi domination -- more than fifty years after the truce among the North American Union, the Third Reich, and the Soviet Union -- Peter has struggled to make sense of the reign of terror that governs his world. Now, arrested for bearing a false identity, he is pulled full-force into a battle against Nazi oppression. The crusade for freedom that belonged to generations past is now Peter's legacy -- and his future depends not on running away, but on fighting back.
Escaping a Nazi prison camp and joining the Underground Home Army, Peter dedicates himself to breaking down the system that betrayed him. But by facing the evil at the heart of the Nazi political machine, Peter falls deeper into a web of intrigue and adventure that risks everything he holds dear -- in this life and for the sake of future generations.

2. Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas

This one is talking about events much, much older than WWII but nonetheless very bloody and cruel. I read this novel only once, in junior high (some eighteen years ago) but I remember having been absolutely mesmerized by it. Every time I read about a scene where a woman or a girl reads something with blushed cheeks and spark of excitement in her eyes, I see myself sitting in my room, right before Christmas Eve dinner not being able to tear myself away from Queen Margot despite the nagging of my mom and my dad that it was time to leave the house. The murder of Hugenots is described in such a visual manner that, being a teenager, I was at once appalled and fascinated.

Publisher’s synopsis:

Alexandre Dumas' novel Queen Margot, centers on the beautiful, proud, and willful Marguerite Valois, whose mother Catherine de Medici arranged Marguerite's marriage to the Huguenot leader Henry of Navarre in 1572. It is a marriage that pleases no one except the Queen Mother. Marguerite's brothers, who nicknamed her Margot and prize her with a love that borders on incest, are outraged. Just six days after the wedding French Catholics slaughter over 30,000 Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Day. Both pawn and participant in this epic struggle, Margot is torn between family honor, her Huguenot lover, and her apostate husband she can no longer respect.

There it is, not strictly ballistic literature but exciting and one that conveys the brutalities of any war excellently.

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

Do you have books that as soon as you finished reading them, you were sorry the story ended? Or maybe you would read the story slower than usual, savoring every phrase and paragraph as one would savor a favorite piece of candy, because you didn’t want to part with it too soon? I hope you do and you would because I think that such books are the grand reward for reading altogether. And My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier was such a book for me.

It is a typical gothic mystery but at its best. A distant cousin Rachel bewitches Mr. Ambrose Ashley during one of his winter stays in Italy. Ambrose leaves his beloved estate in Cornwall every year in winter due to health problems, leaving his cousin, Philip Ashley, to look after the household. Ambrose raised Philip from infancy and it is no wonder that a twenty-four-year old boy loves Ambrose as his father and mother both. It is further no wonder that Philip is shocked and jealous of the mysterious cousin Rachel who he thinks stole Ambrose from him. The quick marriage ends as abruptly and unpredictably as it started. Mr. Ashley dies suddenly in Italy without ever having returned to Cornwall with his new bride. And now, cousin Rachel appears at the doorsteps of the Ashley’s estate leaving Philip with no choice but to make her welcome as the widow of Mr. Ambrose Ashley. Philip’s attitude towards her and the amount of trust he is willing to place in her will ultimately decide whether she is a woman of virtue but a victim of unfortunate circumstances or a conniving person with evil purposes.

As you can tell from my opening paragraph, I genuinely enjoyed My Cousin Rachel. It is one of the classics that I know I will be returning to time and again. The language was poetic and captured my attention right at the beginning. Mind you, I am not a fan of poetry, but when such flawless tone and manner of writing as we find in classic poems is engaged in a novel, I instantly fall in love with it. That is the case with du Maurier. There aren’t, after all, many novels out there from which I want to commit to memory passages found in the first ten pages. One such quote jumped at me right when I started reading My Cousin Rachel. It’s short but beautiful and strangely reflective of my own character:

“Disliking our fellow men, we craved attention; but shyness kept impulse dormant until the heart was touched.”(p.6)

That’s only a small taste of what Ms. du Maurier could do but it portrays perfectly, in my opinion, how there really is no need for elaborate descriptions of character, to capture the essence. And here goes my next point. Du Maurier’s writing in My Cousin Rachel, as in her other books, is an exquisite example of the golden rule for authors to show and not tell. While the descriptions of Cornwall’s natural landscape are rich but never boring, I could probably count on my fingers the times that any adjectives were used to describe the characters in the novel. And I came to know them like my own family or at least next door neighbors. Not once were I confused or frustrated by such a thing as lack of depth and trust me, I don’t think that the word “one-dimensional” ever existed in du Maurier’s dictionary. I think you get my feelings about My Cousin Rachel by now. I enjoyed it so much that I already wish I could read it again for the first time.

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Special Thanks to Danielle J. from Sourcebooks for sending me a copy of this book.
Don’t forget to enter my “Happy Birthday Daphne!” giveaway, if you haven’t already! It ends on May 31st.

Book Info
Title: My Cousin Rachel
Author: Daphne du Maurier
Published in: 2009
By: Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.