I am ridiculously excited — got the email yesterday that I will be a Book Giver on World Book Night! For those of you not familiar with this amazing event, people all over the United States and United Kingdom will be promoting reading in the most effective possible way: by giving people free books. This year, on April 23rd, I will be somewhere in my town, handing out copies of a book from the terrific list the WBN folks put together. (My first choice was The Book Thief which I absolutely loved.) Now I just have to figure out where I want to hand these out! I can hardly wait!

Reginald Hill, author of The Woodcutter,  as well as the Dalziel and Pascoe mysteries, has died at the age of 75.

Happy Monday! This is going to be a busy week — and not just here at Alive on the Shelves. I’ve got presents to wrap (although my shopping is long done, thank goodness)! I’ve got food to cook, wine to buy and cleaning to do. Plus, I’ve got reviews to write, a little knitting to do and I need to find some time to read in all that. And did I mention that I’m working this week? Busy, busy, busy.

So, coming up this week…

Tuesday, December 20th: I’ve got my review of Jokers Club, a book I received from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. I’ve also got my Tuesday Teaser from my current book, Blood and Other Cravings by Ellen Datlow. Great stories in that one — I should be able to find a great teaser!

Wednesday, December 21st: Wondrous Words Wednesday — I’ve got a few cool words from my current book to share.

Thursday, December 22nd: I’ll be posting my review of The Stranger You Seek, a terrific new detective novel. I would definitely add Keye Street to my All-Time, All-Fictional Girl’s Night Out invitation list.

Friday, December 23rd: Countdown to the holiday! Since we’re thinking about giving at this time of year, I’m going to talk about World Book Night and how you can give books you love to perfect strangers.

Saturday, December 24rd: For Saturday Snapshot, I think I’m going to pull out some photos from last Christmas that I took in The Netherlands and Belgium. I was spending some time there for work and there is something very old-world and magical about Christmas in that part of the world.

So, stop back every day this week for something new — grab a glass of eggnog or a cup of tea, the Christmas cookies are on the table in the corner, and make yourself at home by the tree. I’m celebrating the holidays with all of my best friends, near and far.

Happy Monday! I’ve got a couple of cool things coming up this week. Tomorrow, I’ll have a Tuesday Teaser from a terrific new mystery I’m reading, The Stranger You Seek. Wednesday, I’ve got some new words for Wondrous Words Wednesday. Thursday, I’ve got a new review: Getting Off: A Novel of Sex & Violence and you know you wanna come back and read that.

Also on Wednesday, I’ll have a guest post from author Larry Kahn about his new book, King of Paine. He’s got a giveaway going on for a new Kindle and there will be more details on Thursday. Be sure to stop back.

What do super spies do when they retire? Buy a beach house on a little island in the South Pacific? Spend their days squirreled away in basement offices in D.C., drinking bad coffee and filing reports no one will read? Maybe they don’t get to retire — maybe they just keep on working until they blow their cover one last time.

In Original Sin: A Sally Sin Adventure, Lucy Hamilton appears to be a run-of-the-mill suburban mom. She has playdates. She gets manicures. She has a handsome husband with an important job and an adorable toddler named Theo. But Lucy Hamilton barely exists. She has no paper trail. But she has plenty of secrets.

Sally Sin, Lucy’s alter-ego, once attracted the attention of Ian Blackford. He was once the pride of the USAWMD but he turned his back on the agency and went rogue — and how do you hunt down your best agent, once he’s on your Most Wanted list? He seeks out Sally, over and over, but she thought she was free of all that. Now Blackford is back and dragging Sally into a very dangerous game. Can Sally stop the bad guys, save the world and still make it to yoga on time?

This book was so much fun! I must admit, I rolled my eyes a little when I got it. It seemed like pretty silly stuff. (I still can’t imagine walking away from an exciting career — even something as dangerous as espionage — to change diapers and drive the carpool. Different strokes, I guess.) But that’s all part of the fun. Lucy is a little torn as well. She misses the excitement of her old job, bringing down terrorists and international criminals for the USAWMD, but she doesn’t miss the danger and she loves her husband and her son very much. Luckily, her husband is the forgiving sort — he knows she’s got secrets and he hopes one day she’ll share them, but he doesn’t push too hard.

Original Sin: A Sally Sin Adventure would be a great beach read. It’s light and funny, with plenty of excitement, and once I got past my eye-rolling, I really enjoyed it. My copy of Original Sin was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

Sometimes, a book makes lovely reading, even when the subject matter is very sad. Partitions by Amit Majmudar is one of those books. I was not at all surprised to read that the author is an award-winning poet; there is a certain poetry to the language in this story that gives it away. (He is also a diagnostic nuclear radiologist, but I haven’t quite worked that into the mental picture I get when I’m reading.)

In 1947, the border between Pakistan and India was closed. It was not a peaceful closing. Muslims and Hindus caught on the wrong side of the border found themselves in great danger; by some estimates, up to a million people died. Partitions deals with the stories of several people trying to get to the right side of the new border.

Our narrator, Roshan, is dead. He has been dead for five years now, but he is keeping watch over his wife, Sonia, and his twin boys, Shankar and Keshav. In the train station, trying to get on the last train headed to Delhi, the boys become separated from their mother — an absolutely terrifying event for all of them. Roshan will follow the boys on their journey. He will leave the story of Sonia’s fate to the very end.

We also follow Ibrahim Masud, an elderly Muslim doctor. The doctor frightened me — he seemed somehow simple, stunted either by age or defect, with tremendous difficulty speaking to adults around him. His tremendous tenderness dealing with children leads him to try and help those he meets on the road to Pakistan. There is also Simran, a young Sikh girl who found that at the last minute, she could allow her father to “save” her, and fled her home and family. Both will encounter kindness and cruelty as they search for safe passage on what Majmudar describes as a river of humanity.

The stories are heartbreaking. In the face of so much hostility, it is hard to imagine any sort of happy ending. The narrator is particularly interesting — he is not quite omniscient, but he sees these events, travels back and forth in time and place, to bring us their stories. He wants desperately to protect his sons, but in the end, all he can do is watch.

Still, I did not find this a sad book to read. The writing is beautiful, although I had some trouble with vocabulary. I gave up trying to look up all the Indian words that were unfamiliar to me; most are clear enough in context, but I feel like I’m missing something, translating them on my own. I loved the narrator’s voice, his fierceness in defense of his sons and as well as his hesitance. He makes you want to invest in these characters, even if you can’t see a way for there to be any good ending.

For more on Amit Majmudar’s poetry, check out The Poetry Foundation or his Facebook page.  My copy of Partitions was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

How do you transfer a comedy routine to the printed page? It’s not easy and it is bound to lose something in the translation. For some comedians, the joke is in their body language, or their facial expressions. Or their voice.

In the case of Rubber Balls and Liquor, it’s pretty simple: if you find Gilbert Gottfried’s comedy entertaining, you’ll probably enjoy the book. Lots of self-deprecating humor, a lot of dick jokes, lots of jokes about being Jewish, and some good celebrity stories. I thought it would be a pleasant change to get the funny stuff without the annoying, grating voice, but it didn’t really matter. I heard the voice in my head anyway.

The book starts with an introductory section on why he’s writing a book and he’s got pretty modest goals:

“I want the book to be the literary equivalent of a slice of pizza and a grape drink. That’s all. It might not be a gourmet meal, but it should at least be filling.”

That’s aiming pretty low, but that’s familiar territory for Gottfried. This is, after all, the guy who lost the AFLAC job after offensive tweets about the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It’s not really highbrow humor…but it is funny.

There are some great celebrity stories in the book. He pissed off Marlon Brando with a joke on Hollywood Squares. He convinced Harrison Ford he didn’t recognize him.  But the one that really made me laugh was the story about being in the row behind Kiefer Sutherland on an airplane:

“A couple minutes later, the stewardess stopped at Kiefer Sutherland’s row, and asked in her most professional, hostess-y voice if he would like a set of headphones.

‘What’s the movie?’ Kiefer Sutherland asked.

‘Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride,’ the stewardess answered.”

If you don’t know why this is funny, you need to brush up on your celebrity break-ups.

This book is probably not going to be a big hit with people who aren’t Gilbert Gottfried fans. Like I said, I heard Gottfried’s voice inside my head. The book is full of dirty jokes, foul language and ethnic slurs. I find that funny, but not everyone will. It’s best read in small doses — no comedian is funny after hours and hours of material — but it was still a pretty good read.

Curious about the title?  Check out Urban Dictionary for an explanation.

And now…the Giveaway!

So, wanna check it out for yourself? I have a signed copy of Rubber Balls and Liquor to give away to one lucky reader! Just fill out the form below (don’t worry – it doesn’t show up in the comments, so your email and info is safe).  Here are the rules:

1. Contest runs through Wednesday, June 8th at 5:00 pm EST.

2. Contest is open to readers with US and Canadian mailing addresses.

3. You get one entry for filling out the form. You can get additional entries for tweeting or blogging about the contest (you must include a link to this post) or for talking this up on Facebook. Please let me know in your entry form what extra entries you have earned.

4. The winner will be notified by email, so please make sure you provide a valid email address. You will have 48 hours to respond or I will choose another winner.

Good luck!

A special thanks to the folks at Zeitghost Media for providing my review copy and the free giveaway copy!

Tags: Gilbert Gottfried, Rubber Balls and Liquor

Earlier this week, I promised you a guest post from Maria Hamilton, author of Mr. Darcy and the Secret of Becoming a Gentleman. I’ve been curious about all the Jane Austen remixes out there lately – is Elizabeth Bennett only relevant if she’s fighting zombies? And I was curious before I even knew about the missing mens’ scenes and the Mark Twain connection! Maria has some interesting ideas about why Austen continues to interest us — and about what piqued her interest in Mr. Darcy’s story. So, without further ado…Maria Hamilton!

——————-

Jane Austen is presently having a cultural resurgence second only to vampires (and I am not sure they count because by definition they are supposed to live for centuries). The phenomenon began quietly enough when Austen’s books were turned into several engaging miniseries and films, like the 1995 versions of Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion, Emma Thompson’s Sense & Sensibility, or Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow. This led to more loosely based modernized film versions of her books exemplified by Clueless, Bride & Prejudice, and even Bridget Jones Diary. The films have kept coming and in Becoming Jane, Austen herself was the focus. The proliferation of books has been even more diverse. At one end of the spectrum, there are novels like Pride & Prejudice and Zombies where Austen’s storylines is transported to a world inhabited by the undead. At the other end of the spectrum lies sequels and stories like my new novel, Mr. Darcy and the Secret of Becoming a Gentleman, where Austen’s characters inhabit their original settings but are allowed free reign to engage in new adventures.

I believe there are such diverse Austen themed variations because her work is particularly suited to believable transformations. If you read Pride and Prejudice as an assignment in college, you might have considered it a book concerned with the manners of the regency era. But if you were lucky enough to read it independently or reread not as an assignment, you quickly realize it contains strikingly drawn characters facing life’s universal questions. At a time when women were reduced to either shadows of reality or as actors driven by simplistic motives, Elizabeth Bennett shines as a smart, witty, complex woman prone to alternating bouts of superiority and bravery. Modern writers have seldom portrayed a more fully drawn heroine. Consequently, because a reader can be confident that they “know” Elizabeth Bennett, it is possible to see her in new settings, even if that includes fighting off zombies. This is true of all of Austen’s characters because she provides them with as many flaws as virtues.

But this alone can’t explain why there has been so much interest in putting Austen’s characters in different situation. I believe that is due to a peculiarity of Austen’s writing style and the time in which she wrote. Austen famously never penned a scene between men where a woman was not present. She felt that because she could not personally know how such a scene would play out or how the dialog would unfold, she should not attempt it. Consequently, in Pride & Prejudice those scenes are either referenced in passing or missing completely. When you are satisfyingly done with one of Austen’s novels, your mind instinctively begins to ruminate on what must have happened in those missing scene. There has been much debate over Mark Twain’s quote regarding Jane Austen and I think that when he famously said, “Everytime I read Pride & Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone” he was referring to the lapses in the story as even a man as mercurial as Twain would not continue to reread a book he hates.

Similarly, the propriety of the age required that there be a minimum of private dialog between our hero and heroine. Austen wrote in a time, when woman did not write publically and while she was a trailblazer for female writers to come, she could not realistically challenge that convention. As a result, much of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett’s courtship is left tantalizingly to readers’ imagination. Consequently, while Austen’s novels appear sufficiently detailed to make her characters seem completely formed, they are still sparse enough to leave room for many possible adventures, endings, and interpretations.

For me, curiosity over those missing scenes eventually led me to envision a different course for the story where those scenes could be played out more fully. My novel introduces the reader to Mr. Darcy after his disastrous proposal to Elizabeth Bennett at Hunsford while he is struggling with the knowledge that he has unfairly separated his friend, Mr. Bingley, from Elizabeth’s sister, Jane. I explore how Darcy would have come to terms with his own behavior since the months in which Darcy did so in Pride & Prejudice is never explained. Darcy eventually determines to correct his mistake much earlier and in the process of doing so returns to Hertfordshire. As Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy become reacquainted, he pursues her and a more overt courtship evolves as they attempt to see each other without their prior misunderstandings. My story focuses on the dialog between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth and tries to explore their developing intimacy. I believe the story holds true to the original but allows the modern reader to go where Jane Austen could not. I hope you agree.

Maria Hamilton

——————————————-

So, ready for more Mr. Darcy?  You can check out Maria Hamilton’s biography at Austen Authors, or look for her novel at Amazon.com..

Tags: Jane Austen, Maria Hamilton, Mark Twain, Mr. Darcy

On Friday, I will have a special guest post from Maria Hamilton, author of Mr. Darcy and the Secret of Becoming a Gentleman. There have been so many remixes and sequels to Jane Austen works lately, and I’m really interested in hearing what Ms. Hamilton has to say about whole phenomenon and about what inspired her to tackle Mr. Darcy.  Although, really, who wouldn’t want to tackle Mr. Darcy…

Check back on Friday for more!

As promised, more Gilbert Gottfried! His new book, Rubber Balls and Liquor, was released this week and if the trailers are any indication, it is very funny indeed. Check back for trailer #3 and a chance to win a free copy.

STEPHEN KING ON GILBERT GOTTFRIED -”More than a national treasure, he’s a secret weapon. If we had had Gilbert Gottfried in World War II, Hitler would have given up in 1942.”

Tags: dirty jokes, Gilbert Gottfried, Rubber Balls and Liquor