The American Adventuress

The American Adventuress is a biography of Jennie Jerome Spencer-Churchill, the mother of Winston Churchill. This novel is Gortner's 7th. He writes historical fiction accounts of women and in the past has written about Catherine de Medici, Coco Chanel and Lucrezia Borgia. He holds an MFA in writing, specializing in Renaissance Studies, from the New College of California.  

The publisher's summary:

Daughter of New York financier Leonard Jerome, Jennie was born into wealth—and scandal. Upon her parents’ separation, her mother took Jennie and her sisters to Paris, where Mrs. Jerome was determined to marry her daughters into the most elite families. The glamorous city became their tumultuous finishing school until it fell to revolt. 

Fleeing to Queen Victoria’s England, Jennie soon caught the eye of aristocrat Randolph Spencer-Churchill, son of the Duke of Marlborough, one of Britain’s loftiest peers. It was love at first sight, their unconventional marriage driven by mutual ambition and the birth of two sons. Undeterred by premature widowhood or society’s rigid expectations, Jennie brashly carried on a lifelong intimate friendship with Edward, Prince of Wales—a notorious bon vivant—and had two later marriages to younger men. When her son Winston launched his brilliant political career, Jennie guided him to success, his most vocal and valuable supporter.

By turns scandalous, tragic, and exciting, Jennie Jerome lived an unconventional life full of defiance—one that enshrined her as an American adventuress.

The American Adventuress is a fantastic read.  Gortner did a great job of telling Jennie's story. I knew before reading the book that she married into the British aristocracy when she married Randolph Spencer-Churchill and that she was the mother of Winston Churchill. I did not know though that she was a playwright, entrepreneur, interior decorator, and publisher. I also was not aware of her affair with Edward, Prince of Wales who later was crowned King Edward VII. Jennie also married twice after Randolph died. Both of these husbands were half her age which was scandalous at the time. She was definately a woman ahead of her time. 

I enjoyed the New York City, Parisian and English settings. Jennie's childhood was in New York City where her parents attended and hosted banquets for the Guilded Age millionaires. When her mother separated from her father, they moved to Paris where Jennie met Randolph. Former Empress Eugenie became a friend of Jennie's mother so they were in the top social circles. After her marriage, Jennie and Randolph moved into Blenheim Palace where Randolph's family lived. I was surprised to read that it was cold and oppressive inside it's walls. That is not how I believed living in a castle is really like. The Palace did not appeal to me but Jennie and Randolph's London homes did. This is where they did their politicking and hosted many parties. Another fact that I learned was that Randolph's oldest brother Charles, the heir of the Dukedom of Marlborough, married an American himself, Consuelo Vanderbilt. 

I loved this historical biography and am rating it 5 out of 5 stars.

2023 Calendar of Crime Challenge

I love mysteries and have my favorite authors.  This challenge, however, makes me search for new authors and new books fit for this challenge so I am signing up for the 2023 challenge. The challenge is hosted by the My Readers Block blog.

This challenge allows readers to include any mystery regardless of publication date. If it falls in a mystery category (crime fiction/detective novel/police procedural/suspense/thriller/spy & espionage/hard-boiled/cozy/etc.), then it counts and it does not matter if it was published in 1893 or 2023. 

 

 

 

A larger version of the spreadsheet may be found HERE. Click on the 2023 tab at bottom. 

 

The Rules

1)    Challenge runs from January 1 to December 31, 2023. All books should be read during this time period. Sign up at any time. If you have a blog, please post about the challenge. Then sign up via the form below and please make the url link to your challenge post and not your home page. If you don't have a blog, links to an online list (Goodreads, Library Thing, etc.) devoted to this challenge are acceptable OR you may skip that question.

2)    All books must be mysteries. Humor, romance, supernatural elements (etc.) are all welcome, but the books must be mysteries/crime/detective novels first.

3)    Twelve books, one representing each month, are required for a complete challenge.

4)    To claim a book, it must fit one of the categories for the month you wish to fulfill. Unless otherwise specified, the category is fulfilled within the actual story. for instance, if you are claiming the book for December and want to use "Christmas" as the category, then Christmas figure in some in the plot. Did someone poison the plum pudding? Did Great-Uncle Whozit invite all the family home for Christmas so he could tell them he plans to change his will?

5)    The "wild card" book is exactly that. If July is your birth month (as mine is), then for category #9 you may read any mystery book you want. It does not have to connect with July in any way--other than a July baby chose it. The other eleven months, you must do the alternate category #9 if you want to fulfill that slot.

6)    Chinese Zodiac: Animal must be important to the book in some way. Examples: animal name appears in title (stand-alone, not part of another word); animal itself is important to the story; animal appears on cover; important character is associated with the animal (nickname--for instance, owns one as a pet, etc.) OR book may have been published in a year that corresponds to the Zodiac year.

7)    Books may only count for one month and one category, but they may count for other challenges (such as my Vintage Scattergories Challenge). If it could fulfill more than one category or month, then you are welcome to change it at any time prior to the final wrap-up.

8)    Books do not have to be read during the month for which they qualify. So--if you're feeling like a little "Christmas in July" (or May or...), then feel free to read your book for December whenever the mood strikes.

9)    A wrap-up post/comment/email will be requested that should include a list of books read and what category they fulfilled. [Example: January: The House of Sudden Sleep by John Hawk (original pub date January 1930)]

10)    If you post on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media to log a book, please use #?CalendarOfCrime2023. 

2023 Cruisin' Through the Cozies Reading Challenge

This challenge is another one of my favorites.  There are two ways to participate.  You can read only cozy mysteries of your choice, which I will do, or read one book from each of the following sub-genres.

1)    culinary

2)    animal related

3)    craft related

4)    paranormal

5)    career based

6)    based outside the U. S.

7)    holiday

8)    travel 

9)    historical (I tend to prefer these types of books)

10)  wild card or a book of your choice

In addition, there are four levels from which you can choose to join:

Level one (Snoop):  read 10 cozy mysteries

Level two (Investigator):  read 20 cozy mysteries

Level three (Super Sleuth):  read 30 cozy mysteries

Level four (Sleuth Extraordinaire):  read 40 cozy mysteries

The challenge runs the 2023 calendar year.  Books do not need to be chosen in advance and can overlap with other challenges. Also, books can be in any format such as paper, audio and ebooks. Reviews are not required but welcome. 

I am joining at the Snoop level and will be selecting 10 books of my choice. Most of my choices will be career related or historical cozies.  If you would like to join the challenge, sign-ups are at the Socrates Book Reviews blog.

2023 Reading By the Numbers Challenge

2023 is the second year of the Reading by the Numbers Challenge on the My Reader's Block blog. This reading challenge is at its most basic--just track everything you read. Anything counts--graphic novels or comic books, hard copy, e-books, audio novels, etc. If it is a book, it counts. Books with numbers in the title are not required. I merely used those above as a play on the challenge name. And, although the covers shown in the challenge image are all mysteries, you may read from any and all genres that interest you. This challenge is so easy why not participate? Last year I forgot that graphic novels counted for the challenge and did not link my reviews of them.  I won't forget this time.  I am challenging myself to read 100 books next year. The challenge for me is to read less and create art more.  This year I read around 125 books.

The Rules: 

1)    Challenge runs from January 1 through December 31, 2023.

2)    There are no pre-set challenge levels. You decide on your personal goal.

3)    Books may be used concurrently with other "number" reading challenges (such as the Goodreads Challenge) or with any other challenge.

4)    A blog and reviews of the books are not required to participate, but if you have a blog, please post your sign-up for the challenge and link the post in the form on the host blog's site. 

5)    If you post on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media to log a book, please use #ReadingByNumbers2023.

2023 Color Coded Reading Challenge

I have found many interesting books and new authors from participating in this challenge over the years. I am excited to participate again. Once again the categories will be more open--the color may either be named in the title or it may appear as the dominant color for the cover of the book. For "implies color" the image implying color should dominate the cover--for instance a large rainbow, a field of flowers, or the image of a painter. 

General Rules:

The Challenge runs from January 1 through December 31, 2023 and any book read after January 1 may count regardless of when you sign up. You may sign-up any time and crossovers with other challenges are fine. If you post on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media to log a book, please use #ColorCoded2023.

The challenge is to read nine books in the following categories:

1. A book with "Blue" or any shade of Blue in the title/on the cover.

2. A book with "Red" or any shade of Red in the title/on the cover.

3. A book with "Yellow" or any shade of Yellow in the title/on the cover.

4. A book with "Green" or any shade of Green in the title/on the cover.

5. A book with "Brown" or any shade of Brown in the title/on the cover.  This color is my hardest to find.

6. A book with "Black" or any shade of Black in the title/on the cover.

7. A book with "White" or any shade of White in the title/on the cover.

8. A book with any other color in the title/on the cover (Purple, Orange, Silver, Pink, etc).

9. A book with a word/image that implies color in the title/on the cover (Rainbow, Polka-dot, Plaid, Shadow, Paint, Ink, etc).

In order to sign up for the challenge you need to fill out a form on the My Reader's Block site.  If you have a blog, please post about the challenge on your site and enter the url link. You may also enter a link to a Goodreads or Library Thing list, Instagram, etc. 

This is a fun challenge. Won't you join me in participating?

Book of the Month: November

My best book for November is Mike Rinder's A Billion Years.  I learned alot about the scientology religion although none of it was positive. This autobiography follows Rinder's life from childhood to the present in chronological format, concentrating on his adult life in scientology. He held a top management position and writes about the problems the religion faced, particularly after the death of founder L. Ron Hubbard. Rinder makes his case that scientology is a cult which I agree with. His writing style is engaging and the book is unputdownable. I highly recommend it.

15th Annual Graphic Novel and Manga Reading Challenge

There have not been sign ups for this challenge in three years but I believe that 2023 will be the 15th year of the challenge. Participants have been posting reviews in a Facebook group all along and I am planning on continuing to do so. This past year I signed up to read 52 graphic novels. I didn't complete the challenge and will reduce the number of books that I will read next year.  I cannot remember what the challenge levels used to be but I will challenge myself to read 24 graphic novels.

Iced in Paradise

Iced in Paradise is a cozy mystery taking place in Hawaii. It is the first of two novels in the Leilani Santiago Hawaii Mystery series and is the first book that I have read by the author, Naomi Hirahara. She is the Edgar-winning author of the Mas Arai mystery series and the L.A.-based Ellie Rush mystery series. Her Mas Arai books earned a best book of the year award from Publishers Weekly. Iced in Paradise was published in 2021.

The publisher's summary:

Leilani Santiago is back in her birthplace, the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, to help keep afloat the family business, a shave ice shack. When she goes to work one morning, she stumbles across a dead body, a young pro surfer who was being coached by her estranged father. As her father soon becomes the No. 1 murder suspect, Leilani must find the real killer and somehow safeguard her ill mother, little sisters, and grandmother while also preserving a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend in Seattle.

Iced was not as exciting as I had hoped. I struggled with the Hawaiian slang and could not always figure out what was being said. I wasted too much time trying to figure it all out and kept reading. However, the slang was too big of a disturbance for me. In the beginning I thought that it was pretty cool to learn all these new words. It became cumbersome though. I found it hard to decipher what the action was because it too was told to the reader through slang terms. The plot shown above in the summary is a good one. I just didn't see it and am disappointed with the book. I had high hopes for it due to the positive reviews but it just didn't click with me.

1 out of 5 stars.

It Won't Always Be Like This

It Won't Always Be Like This is Malaka Gharib's second graphic memoir. The book follows last year's I Was Their American Dream. The storyline covers the author's relationship with her stepmother, which is mentioned in American Dream. 

The publisher's summary:

It’s hard enough to figure out boys, beauty, and being cool when you’re young, but even harder when you’re in a country where you don’t understand the language, culture, or social norms.
 
Nine-year-old Malaka Gharib arrives in Egypt for her annual summer vacation abroad and assumes it'll be just like every other vacation she's spent at her dad's place in Cairo. But her father shares news that changes everything: He has remarried. Over the next fifteen years, as she visits her father's growing family summer after summer, Malaka must reevaluate her place in his life. All that on top of maintaining her coolness!

Malaka doesn't feel like she fits in when she visits her dad--she sticks out in Egypt and doesn't look anything like her fair-haired half siblings. But she adapts. She learns that Nirvana isn't as cool as Nancy Ajram, that there's nothing better than a Fanta and a melon-mint hookah, and that her new stepmother, Hala, isn't so different from Malaka herself.

I enjoyed this coming of age story. It is a realistic portrayal of a child who grows up with divorced parents who are from different cultures. Malaka's mother is Filipino while her father is Egyptian. Her parents met while in the U. S. but when they divorced, Malaka's father moved back to Egypt. Malaka dresses like an American youth, which shocks her father's Egyptian neighbors. The Islamic faith is a big part of the story as Malaka's father and her new stepmother are Muslim. The story solely takes place in Egypt over several summers which Malaka always spent with her father. As she got older, Malaka's dress became an issue. She was expected by both her father and the Egyptians to dress modestly as she she came of age. On one occasion Malaka was groped by a group of boys because they thought she would be easy, given her dress style.

Gharib is a natural storyteller. It seemed like she was speaking to me face to face about her summers in Egypt. She knew what angles of her story would keep me reading and exactly how to write it out. Because the storyline actually happened to her, the writing flowed naturally.

A fantastic read!  5 out of 5 stars.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was published in 1988 and is a romantic mystery novel. I was not able to finish the book though. The writing read like a primer for kids just learning how to read. It reminded me of those old Dick and Jane books that my generation grew up on. Yes, this is a severe criticism but the suspension of belief was too far for me to go. Girl meets boy. Girl brings boy's rabbit to his home and then stays there alone after a new mother drops off her infant and boy leaves for work.

I selected the book for the Calendar of Crime Challenge. However, I am not sure whether there was any mystery element to the plot. Given that Janet Evanovich wrote Thanksgiving, I expected a mystery. This is the first book that I read in 2022 that I didn't like and didn't finish. I guess that makes 2022 a successful year for my reading. 

No rating.

Measuring Up

Measuring Up is a YA graphic novel for ages 9 to 12. The plot concerns a young girl who moves from her native Taiwan to Seattle with her parents when she is 12 years old. Cici misses her grandmother back in Taiwan and comes up with a plan to raise the money the family needs to bring her over for a visit. Cici decides to enter a cooking contest that is similar to the Great British Bakeoff where 12 contestants cook each weekend. One contestant is eliminated each week. The only requirement for the contest is to use whatever ingredient is demanded for that particular week. Cici only knows how to cook Chinese food so her challenge was to learn to make American food.

Measuring Up is about much more than the contest. We read how difficult it was for Cici to assimilate into American culture. Her mother filled her lunchbox with Taiwanese food which disgusted her classmates. Finding friends was a challenge because she was culturally Chinese and had to learn how to act like an American. 

Fans of Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese will love Measuring Up. 5 out of 5 stars 

A Billion Years

Mike Rinder's autobiography details his life in the church of scientology. Mike was a child when his parents became scientologists which made him one too. He rose to the highest levels in the church before escaping from its grasp.

The publisher's summary:

Mike Rinder’s parents began taking him to their local Scientology center when he was five years old. After high school, he signed a billion-year contract and was admitted into Scientology’s elite inner circle, the Sea Organization. Brought to founder L. Ron Hubbard’s yacht and promised training in Hubbard’s most advanced techniques, Mike was instead put to work swabbing the decks.

Still, Rinder bought into the doctrine that his personal comfort was secondary to the higher purpose of Hubbard’s world-saving mission, swiftly rising through the ranks. In the 1980s, Rinder became Scientology’s international spokesperson and the head of its powerful Office of Special Affairs. He helped negotiate Scientology’s pivotal tax exemption from the IRS and engaged with the organization’s prominent celebrity members, including Tom Cruise, Lisa Marie Presley, and John Travolta.

Yet Rinder couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that something was amiss—Hubbard’s promises remained unfulfilled at his death, and his successor, David Miscavige, was a ruthless and vindictive man who did not hesitate to confine many top Scientologists, Mike among them, to a makeshift prison known as the Hole.

In 2007, at the age of fifty-two, Rinder finally escaped Scientology. Overnight, he became one of the organization’s biggest public enemies. He was followed, hacked, spied on, and tracked. But he refused to be intimidated and today helps people break free of Scientology.

In A Billion Years, the dark, dystopian truth about Scientology is revealed as never before. Rinder offers insights into the religion that only someone of his former high rank could provide and tells a harrowing but fulfilling story of personal resilience.

I thought the book was well written. It begins with a description of the author's childhood in Australia before entering scientology and it seemed idyllic compared to what came next. Once his parents became interested in founder L. Ron Hubbard's writings, the family traveled alot internationally so that the parents could get to courses that would take them up the scientology bridge. However, when Rinder was 17 he signed a billion year contract to work for the Sea Org and was busy 20 some hours a day, every day. I didn't understand why no one refused to work these hours. With no prior knowledge of working in the Sea Org entailed, it was a surprise to all of the Sea Org members. Why did they put up with it? I would have quit. Rinder learned many years later that if he had tried to leave, the church would have prevented it. Herein lies the truth that scientology is a cult. Cult leaders do not let their followers leave.  What follows next in the book is incident after incident of abuse that Rinder endured, mainly at the hands of the successor to L. Ron Hubbard: David Miscavige. Gradually Rinder began to see that he was not advancing scientology but rather Miscavige's personal desires. I am glad that Rinder was able to escape the church and start a normal life. 

This is an eye-opening read about the dangers of scientology.  It has been in the news alot lately because of the Danny Masterson rape trial in California. Masterson is a scientologist who is accused of raping 3 women who are former scientologists. The church's requirement that no member give up another to the civil authorities has played into the trial. 

5 out of 5 stars.

Reading Update

I wanted to let my blog readers know that I am experiencing life challenges right now and as a result, cannot concentrate when I am reading.  I have a long list of books that I wanted to read last month and this month but I am not sure whether I will be able to get through them.  A recent MRI diagnosed 5 disc herniations, nerve impingements at 3 levels, stenosis, and 10 spinal joints that don't move at all. Needless to say, I have alot of pain. As usual when I am in a pain flare, the plumbing in my apartment doesn't work.  The kitchen sink is backed up and the toilet no longer flushes, overflowing last night.  I am physically unable to deal with these issues and have to let others assist me.  It is humbling to need to accept help. Yesterday I collapsed while waiting in a long line to vote. An election judge brought me a chair to sit in. When I fell, my jeans tore in an embarrassing place so when I got home at 7 pm I went to bed. I was done. And I don't care who won the election. I voted and that is all I can do so I will not be thinking about whatever consequences there are to the vote.

Today is better but the murder of a friend back in March is always on my mind. Perhaps 2022 is just a lousy year for me but I feel that 2023 won't be much better.  It might just be that the negative thoughts from pain are influencing my feelings but we shall soon see what 2023 has in store for all of us.