The Bookman's Tale

The Bookman's Tale:  A Novel of Obsession Charlie Lovett 4.5 / 5	Published 2013 First Sentence "Wales could be cold in February."
Publisher's Description: A mysterious portrait ignites an antiquarian bookseller’s search through time and the works of Shakespeare for his lost love. Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman’s Tale is a former bookseller’s sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature’s most tantalizing mysteries with echoes of Shadow of the Wind and A.S. Byatt's Possession. Hay-on-Wye, 1995. Peter Byerly isn’t sure what drew him into this particular bookshop. Nine months earlier, the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, had left him shattered. The young antiquarian bookseller relocated from North Carolina to the English countryside, hoping to rediscover the joy he once took in collecting and restoring rare books. But upon opening an eighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries, Peter is shocked when a portrait of Amanda tumbles out of its pages. Of course, it isn’t really her. The watercolor is clearly Victorian. Yet the resemblance is uncanny, and Peter becomes obsessed with learning the picture’s origins. As he follows the trail back first to the Victorian era and then to Shakespeare’s time, Peter communes with Amanda’s spirit, learns the truth about his own past, and discovers a book that might definitively prove Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of all his plays.
Dear Reader, Apparently, I have a thing for books about books.  I find I've been reading a LOT of them recently, and I've got a few more queued up, as well!  I don't know what it is - perhaps I just really enjoy the feeling of reading about something I love so much.  And seeing how much others love books, too.  The authors pour so much of themselves into these novels. This one was especially good: evidenced by the fact that I stayed up FAR too late on a school night (technically, a work night, but I do work at a university, so...) to finish it up.  While it was an intriguing story right from the get-go, the action really picked up towards the end, and I could not put it down without resolving the mystery.  I have to admit, the last bit of the book reminded me quite a bit of a Robert Langdon novel, which shouldn't be too much of a surprise, because I did just finish reading one.  Also, I have a very limited knowledge of adventure-mystery books (what genre are they, really?) and therefore, that's really one of the few "detective" stories to which I can relate this book - due to my own narrow experience, though, and perhaps not that it was truly Dan Brown-esque in nature. This story begins with that of a very recent widower named Peter, who is struggling to live again after the blow of losing his one true love, his college sweetheart.  Peter has social anxiety, and Amanda used to be his rock, the one who could make everything out in the world all right.  So his loss is manyfold: he must struggle not only to recover from losing Amanda, but also to return to the world at large, one that he would much prefer to hide from.  Peter is a rare book dealer, so luckily he can lose himself between the pages of an ancient text - usually.  However, he is startled from his quiet existence when he stumbles across an image of his dead wife...that was painted hundreds of years ago. Desperate to solve the mysery of the painting, Peter begins a hunt which brings him in contact with a special rare book, one which may hold the answer to whether Shakespeare actually wrote the many plays attributed to him (an academic argument that has had scholars taking sides for years).  As he delves deeper into the mystery, he begins to see how the book and painting tie together - and how they might both be very, very dangerous items to possess. Overall, a very interesting and engaging book.  The novel goes back and forth between Peter's present and the story of how he met Amanda, and the reader sees as the book progresses that many things which once seemed disparate are in fact woven closely together.  You won't want to stop reading until you figure out what the real story is! Yours, Arianna

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People of the Book

People of the Book Geraldine Brooks 4/5	Published 2008 First Sentence "I might as well say, right from the jump: it wasn't my usual kind of job."
Publisher's Description: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, the journey of a rare illuminated prayer book through centuries of war, destruction, theft, loss, and love.
Dear Reader, This book was just beautiful. I wasn’t sure what to expect from it (I hadn’t read any of the publisher’s blurb; this was another serendipitous library Overdrive discovery), but it surprised me in such a lovely way. I audiobooked it, and of course the first thing I noticed was the heavy Australian accent of the reader (Edwina Wren) - it was very enjoyable to listen to, I thought! And her later voices -- accents from Serbian to British to American -- were also very impressive, at least to my untrained ear. In any case, the book itself was this gorgeous narration which wove back and forth between Hannah’s (a book restorer) and the book itself’s story, intermingling like the rich plaits of a thick braid. Hannah has been hired to work on the Sarajevo Haggadah, which is a real book, and is truly surrounded in mystery and intrigue: both regarding its survival through the ages (through numerous Jewish persecutions) and its contents. However, it is important to remember that Brooks’ story is only a fiction she has crafted around the questions which the book raises. Still, she devises a very clever explanation of the book’s travels and experiences, and it is a joy to listen to her storytelling. Brooks knows her history, particularly that of Eastern Europe, and I found it fascinating to learn more about the histories of the people who lived in the area from the mid-fifteenth century all the way up to the present day. While keeping in mind it is a novel, it was still chock full of historically-specific details. Brooks’ characters truly came to life for me. One of the main surprises in the book is the truth about Hannah’s own past, which she discovers as she follows the trail of the book’s history through several countries. While I certainly didn’t see the twist coming, I also thought it interesting that the revelation didn’t change the way Hannah interacted with the book, or make her quest for the truth more dear. I thought it improbable that things didn’t change more significantly for her. One truly lovely thing about this book was how its point wasn’t simply to explain the Haggadah’s origins, but also to build bridges between nationalities, religions, and backgrounds of all sorts. I felt that the Haggadah’s story represented peacefulness and connection, both in its flashback stories as well as in Hannah’s present story. Books are, at their heart, about communicating between people, even if those two people live in a very different time and place. Thus, the novel did a great job of that, as did the religious tome within. This was truly another book for book-lovers. I’ve been devouring a lot of those recently; some recommended favorites are Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Robin Sloan) and A Novel Bookstore (Laurence Cossé). My most favorite part of the book, though, might have been the dedication: “For the librarians”! Hurray! Best, Arianna

The Club Dumas

The Club Dumas Arturo Pérez-Reverte 1993 3/5	First Sentence "The flash projected the outline of the hanged man onto the wall."
Publisher's Description: Lucas Corso, middle-aged, tired, and cynical, is a book detective, a mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found hanged, leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas's "The Three Musketeers, " Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. The task seems straightforward, but the unsuspecting Corso is soon drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious resemblance to those of Dumas's masterpiece. Aided by a mysterious beauty named for a Conan Doyle heroine, Corso travels from Madrid to Toledo to Paris in pursuit of a sinister and seemingly omniscient killer. Part mystery, part puzzle, part witty intertextual game, "The Club Dumas" is a wholly original intellectual thriller by the internationally bestselling author of "The Flanders Panel" and "The Seville Communion."
Dear Reader, This is definitely one of those books that only true bibliophiles will love. I couldn’t get into it myself much for the first section, even though it talked all about rare books and those who love them. I felt like, honestly, the story didn’t really pick up until like the last third of the novel, but you really did have to go through all of the earlier stuff in order to get anything out of the later happenings. You just wish you had known that at the time you had to slog through some of the early material…. However, I did, all-in-all, like the book and how it circled around a lost-to-history book which examined the nature of the devil and centered around nine engravings. I also really loved the Dumas connection, although I’d highly recommend to anyone who was planning to read this book that they ought to read or re-read at least The Three Musketeers (if not others of Dumas’ work, as well) before diving into this adventure, because SO much of the action and content revolves around at least the 3Ms. I am certain I missed many of the references and allusions to Dumas works, as I read the Musketeers when I was something like 14, and even The Count of Monte Cristo (a true favorite of mine) was several years ago, and while easier for me to remember, still only a more distant memory. The main character was not terribly likable either, although I’m certain that’s what the author meant to do there. And his relationship that developed mid-book did not seem all that believable, but hey - generally the people who fall in love with each other are just as surprised as the outsiders are. So it wasn’t that the story wasn’t believable that bothered me, but something felt slightly off the whole time...although, I suppose that was largely because the entire book was very “meta”, with the protagonist recognizing how things would go were he the main character in a novel. That was probably my favorite part: his omniscient understanding of his role and his place in the story as a character, written in by another. The author did great with that little bit. Overall, an enjoyable book for a book-lover, that is for sure. I definitely enjoyed the ride, especially when things actually started moving. But, looking back on the book as a whole, I do understand how it all fell together now, and needed to be presented how it was. Best, Arianna