Hi everyone! Welcome to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today, I’ll be talking about all the books I read in May. This month I read 5 books. Here are my thoughts about them:
1. CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE: The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
This book was on hold at my library for a very long time and when it was finally available I borrowed it, didn’t pick it up, and returned it a week later. Then I had to wait another three months or so before borrowing it again. Was it worth the wait? Some people might think so, but I’m more inclined to say no. Trigger warning: Death of a loved one and grief.
Meet Florence Day. She is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry. But after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. In fact, she can no longer write about it either and her career is starting to suffer. When the deadline for her next book is just around the corner, she asks for an extension but it is denied. So, she has two options: meet the deadline or kiss her career goodbye. She is going to have to find a new job pretty soon. But then, she receives the phone call. The one where her mom tells her that her father is dead.
Now, Florence must go back home to bury her father. But Florence Day is dreading the prospect. The small town she was born in has been anything but nice to her. After helping solve the murder of a young girl, people started talking about her. About her ability to see the dead and help them move on, an ability she inherited from her dad. So, she left. She hasn’t stopped seeing the dead, but she no longer helps them. Until the form of her new editor, Benjy, shows up at her door and asks her if he is dead.
I’m going to start this review with the protagonists. Florence is an introverted, shy, and sheltered young woman who was a victim of a boyfriend who gaslit her and took advantage of her innocence. People like that deserve their own circle in Dante’s hell, in my opinion. Benjy, on the other hand, is quiet, protective, and not afraid to support the strong women in his life. Especially his grandmother. I liked that about him. I also liked that Benjy accepts Florence wholeheartedly. He doesn’t even question it. In fact, he is protective of her ability to see and help the dead. But most importantly, she is always first. Second, he helps her find herself and believe in love again.
Unfortunately, Ben spends most of the book in a coma. And it is hard for us to get to know him. The only two scenes where he is physically present are the ones where he meets Florence and denies her the extension for her book that she is asking for, and where the two of them meet again three months after he wakes up. So, we never really get to know him in a way that isn’t through Florence’s eyes and as readers we are inherently prevented from totally connecting with him. Consequently, this lack of connection also prevents us from rooting for Florence and Benjy as a couple. Now, the death of Florence’s father is pivotal for her character development, but unfortunately I also think that the plot focuses too much on the death and funeral of Florence’s father and the romance storyline struggles to catch up. We don’t get enough scenes with these two together to make their budding romance believable, which is sad because I thought that the few scenes that we do get with Florence and Benjy together are very cute. I would’ve liked to see more of that.
I Will Not Read This Book Again.
2. CLASSICS AND AMERICAN LITERATURE: The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner
“Widely considered a difficult book to read, The Sound And The Fury is also known for its complex characters and insightful exploration of the human condition.” Yeah…I get why this novel is one of most celebrated works of fiction in American literature, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And I didn’t. I picked it up for one of my book clubs and because I remember loving As I Lay Dying in college. But this novel was not my favorite. I’m glad I read it, because now I can strike it off my reading list but I doubt I’ll ever pick it up again.
What I don’t understand is why this book is required reading in some high school English classes. I didn’t go to high school in the United States, but I remember watching a family drama TV show where one of the characters plagiarizes her mother’s high school essay about this book. Its non-linear narrative, multiple points of view, and stream of consciousness writing style make it a very challenging book for many readers. It is even more challenging, in my opinion, for high school students. So, I am not surprised that many of them end up not liking it at all, and to some extension, not liking to read. Now, I’m not saying that this book is the sole reason why a lot of high school students don’t like to read, but it definitely doesn’t help when the book is divided in four parts that overlap, interweave, and jump around in time; when the first section of the book is told by the mentally retarded and disabled Benjy Compson. The book also explores complex themes of family, race and the decay of the Old South, something that if you’re not familiar with, can also make the novel very difficult for readers to grasp; particularly to those, like me, who didn’t grow up in the United States. The book is ultimately about the fall of the Compson family, which itself symbolizes the fall of mankind depicted in the Bible.
Like I said, I am glad I read this novel but I doubt I’ll ever read it again.
3. SELF-PUBLISHED/INDEPENDENT AUTHOR AND FANTASY: Becoming A Druid by Mike Mollman
For this review, I was contacted by the author and kindly received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Please read it here.
4. CLASSICS AND POETRY: The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, A Retelling by Peter Ackroyd
Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales are a must-read for anyone in an undergraduate literature program, and mine was not the exception. I read him pretty early on in my studies, and since then I’ve kept a copy of the Tales on my shelves. It had been a while since I picked them up though, and this time I didn’t read all of them. I read seven, including the general prologue. Of those seven, my favorite were The Wife of Bath’s prologue and tale and The Pardoner’s Tale. The story of Chanticleer and Pertolote from the Nun Priest’s Tale uncontestably takes third place. The Miller’s Tale is also pretty funny and a favorite among readers.
The idea in reading some, and not all, of Chaucer’s tales this time around was to try to read them both in Middle English and then in a contemporary translation to Modern English. This modern verse translation, it is said, provides a fascinating contrast with the original. I, however, did not do this. Frankly, I didn’t do it because right now I don’t have the mental bandwidth to immerse myself completely in Middle English of the fourteenth century, something that I did do when I was in college. Only, my contemporary version back then was in Spanish. So, I just read the superb retelling of Chaucer’s Tales written by Peter Ackroyd, which, in my opinion, is well-worth the read as well. It is also a great version to pick up if you’re reading Chaucer for the first time. I highly recommend it.
5. HISTORY AND WWI: The Proud Tower by Barbara W. Tuchman
This book takes its name from the poem “The City in the Sea” by Edgar Allan Poe. The lines, “While from a proud tower in the town/Death looks gigantically down”, used as an epigraph in the book, represent the feeling of impending doom and collapse of European civilization, focusing particularly in the period before World War I, that the author describes in the book. The subtitle, however, describes exactly what this book is about: a portrait of the world before the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
The Proud Tower is a collection of essays, compiled here in eight long chapters, about a different country, theme, and time prior to the Great War (but all of them set approximately 25 years before 1914) that the author published in several periodicals during the 1960s. Two chapters, for example, are about the British governments in 1895 and 1910 respectively; another chapter is about the Dreyfus Affair in France, a third about music and culture in Wilhelmine Germany, centered around the figure of Richard Strauss, and a fourth about the efforts of Thomas Reed, Speaker of the House, to overcome the tyranny of absent quorum in the United States. Other chapters are about the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the anarchist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the activities of Socialist, labor parties and trade unions between 1886 and 1916.
The book ends with the death of Jean Jaurès, a French socialist leader, who, after the attack on Sarajevo, i.e., the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, one of the key events that led to World War I, on June 28, 1914, was the most prominent opponent of the war. His death on July 31st, 1914, ended Jaurès’ long-fought campaign to prevent war in Europe. On August 1st, World War I broke out. Three days later, France entered the war. Published after The Guns of August by the same author, I decided to read The Proud Tower before this highly successful history book about WWI, which today is still considered as one of the most famous history books on any topic whatsoever, and about which I will talk about in my next wrap up, to maintain the chronology of events.
Is The Proud Tower a prerequisite for The Guns of August? No. Do I recommend reading it before or after The Guns of August? Frankly, this is up to your preference. Personally, I found that this helped me understand more the course of events leading up to the outbreak of war because this is the first book I pick up about WWI. But it all depends on you, really, and how much prior knowledge you have about The Great War beforehand.
For me, it was the right choice. However, this book might not be for everyone. Each chapter is tenuously related to one another; i.e., each one of them talks about every key player in the war later on: Britain, Germany, Russia, and France. It talks about both the echelons and the lowest classes of society. However, these essays can be read separately without it affecting the cohesion of the book. The purpose of it is to portray the way of life in each one of these countries but, most importantly, how and why this way of life led to the outbreak of war in 1914. Immersed in all of this are movements such as the anarchist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and socialism. I didn’t know, for example, that Empress Elisabeth of Austria, nicknamed Sisi, the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph and considered as one of the most beautiful women of her time, was killed by an anarchist in 1898. I knew of her because she was also the sister-in-law of Maximiliam I of Mexico, the Austrian archduke who became emperor of the Second Mexican Empire in 1864. He reigned until his execution in 1867. And I learned about him in my junior high school history classes.
I recommend this book, but it is not necessary to read The Guns of August, the second book in this author’s Great War Series. I will also read The Zimmermann Telegraph.
