Summer Break Reading Challenge Activity #9

http://summerbreakreadingchallenge.blogspot.com/

Your Book in Pictures: The goal is to illustrate a book you are reading or have just read by using the internet to find pictures and text to explain:

I just finished Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare:

Tessa Gray leaves her home in New York to meet her brother in London.

Two evil sisters pick her up at the dock with a letter written by her brother saying that he sent them. She is taught by them to change into something/someone she never knew she was.

She is rescued by Will and taken to the Institute

Her brother is being held captive and they go to rescue him from the Vampire's

They find that the evil Magister has created an army of machines to help him take out the Shadowhunters so that he can rule the Downworld. Will the Shadowhunters win the coming war or will the strange new machines created by the Magister win?

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

Well I lied. I wasn't going to post my review until August 31st, but I am seeing reviews for this book all over the place so decided to add mine before I forget. So here goes:

This is the first book in a Prequel series to the Mortal Instruments series.

When Tessa Gray’s aunt dies Tessa sets sail for England to join her brother. Expecting her brother to meet her at the ship she is disappointed when 2 sisters meet her instead. They meet her with a letter from her brother saying that he has sent them to get her. This is the start of Tessa’s nightmare. She is held captive by the sisters and trained to become someone/something that she didn’t even know she was.

Rescued by Will and taken to the London Institute of the Shadowhunters she learns about the workings of the Downworld. Her newfound friends also discover a new invention of the Magister, an army of machines.

Tessa is confused about her feelings for Will. He sometimes acts as if he cares and then other times he is totally brooding and rude. Tessa’s ultimate goal is to find her brother.

When war breaks out who will be left standing? Will it be Tessa and her newfound friends or the Magister and his army of machines?

I have to say that I was a bit disappointed in this book. I was looking forward to it as I loved the Mortal Instruments books. I had a hard time connecting with the characters. It seemed to drag along. There were a few exciting parts in the book and some surprises that helped to keep me reading, but I must say it was a struggle to get through. You don’t have to read The Mortal Instruments to read The Infernal Devices. My understanding is there are 3 books planned for this prequel. I’m not sure that I will read the next 2.

Guest Post Author- Dr. Annette Laing

Dr. Annette Laing author of Don't Know Where, Don't Know When and A Different Day, A Different Destiny has written a guest post for My Only Vice. Dr. Laing sent me a copy of her first book in the Snipesville Chronicles,  Don't Know Where, Don't Know When for review. I enjoyed the book very much and currently have the second book on order. I can't wait to read where the kids go next and what time in history we will learn about! Here is Dr. Laing's post, I hope you enjoy:

Is anything more humbling for a historian than to write historical fiction?

Setting out to write A Different Day, A Different Destiny, the second volume in The Snipesville Chronicles series about three time-traveling kids, I thought I had the history angle pretty well covered. After all, I have a PhD in early American and modern British history, and a historian’s keen sense of when it’s a good idea to look things up.  Plus, this wasn’t my first try: In fact, writing Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know When, the first volume in the series, had seemed like cake, because it was so familiar to me. Having grown up in Britain, surrounded by the World War II generation whose presence made me feel sometimes that “The War” had never ended, it wasn’t much of a stretch to picture my modern American kids in England in 1940.

When I decided that, for their second adventure, the kids would head to 1851, I was confident: The Victorians fascinate me, and I’ve read plenty about them. Or, at least, I thought I had.

But it’s amazing, really, what stuff that trips you up.

Planning to set part of my book at a cotton mill in New Lanark, Scotland, I not only read about my subject, but  actually spent a couple of days in New Lanark—I even stayed in a youth hostel housed in former millworkers’ housing.  I looked for usable details: At the wonderful museum in the former factory, for example, I asked for and got demonstrations of how exactly the spinning machines worked, and how spinners “pieced” together broken threads of cotton.

When I sat down in Georgia to write about New Lanark, however, I was thrown for a loop by something altogether more mundane than the finer points of spinning: Where would my time-traveling kid Hannah go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I wondered? Uh-oh. The New Lanark museum doesn’t interpret bathrooms of any kind for the 1850s, and the history of the factory didn’t help much. I guess I could have made up something. But it bothered me to do so, even when we’re talking about fiction.  Now I’m not alone among academic historians in my ignorance of everyday details. We’re a pretty ignorant lot when it comes to material culture, oddly enough, and we tend to depend on museum folk to answer any questions that arise.  And so, I called a New Lanark museum curator, and learned that the loos were in a separate building from the workers’ flats.  That was where the fiction started. I imagined Hannah standing at the open exit from her building in the pitch darkness, shivering from cold, and finally deciding that, hey, maybe using a chamberpot wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

So being an historian isn’t always as useful to this novelist as you might guess. But there are times when it definitely helps to know where to look things up. The Dundee slum that Hannah inhabits has long ago been demolished, yet I was able to locate photos of it taken early in the twentieth century, and to “read back” more than sixty years using contemporary accounts, historians’ studies, census records, a visit to a preserved slum house in Birmingham, England, and pure imagination. It doesn’t bother me to use imagination: Even those who write history eventually find places where the evidence only takes them so far. But what I knew about Victorian slum life helped me recreate the world of early factory workers with some confidence. 

Yet it was much harder to figure out how those same factory workers understood their world, and what their attitudes were toward religion and politics. Fortunately, I could rely on the work of professional historians of the Victorian period who are far more familiar with the evidence than I can ever claim to be.

Finally, I have to say it:  Nothing I might invent in the name of historical fiction could possibly be as interesting as what actually happened in the past. There’s a point in my story when Hannah takes an upper-class woman through the slums of Dundee, Scotland, to show her how the other half live. The little tour quickly turns into a fiasco.  I’m delighted to say that I didn’t invent this episode from scratch: It’s based on an actual incident in 1851 Dundee, which I discovered in the Dundee City Library archives when I was prowling through microfilms of newspapers.  

That’s the most humbling thing of all: I can’t make this stuff up. 



You can visit Dr. Laing's website at: http://www.annettelaing.com/

Thank-you for sharing on My Only Vice Dr. Laing! I look forward to reading future installments of the Snipesville Chronicles.

Summer Break Reading Challenge Activity #6

http://summerbreakreadingchallenge.blogspot.com/

HEART THROBS

The challenge is to list the heart throbs that you have in books that you have read. Here is my contribution:



First and foremost the man that is the star of all my fantasies: My husband Michael! No man can ever come close to making my heart throb, whether in real life or in any book I have ever read or will read, like this man right here. He is the one that I compare every man I ever meet or read about with. Today is our 25th wedding anniversary and I am praying for many more years with him!

All of that said, I still have some favorite male characters in books that I like. As I was thinking about what characters that I have admired through the years of reading I found that I am partial to the older guys! So, here goes:



Rhett Butler(Clark Gable). I loved his character in Gone With the Wind. He was the only one that could ever tame Scarlett O'Hara. Gone With the Wind is one of my most favorite books and it has to be because of Rhett Butler! I even named a cat Rhett!



Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. I chose this image because David Rintoul portraying Mr. Darcy in a BBC version of Pride and Prejudice looks to me like what the real Mr. Darcy in the book would look like. Very hauty and prideful. And very handsome in my opinion!



Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre. He's crusty and he's grumpy and he's lonely and he speaks his mind and he loves plain Jane. I loved Timothy Dalton in the role of Mr. Rochester.



Charlie Swan in Twilight. I told you I like the older guys! I love his humor, his love for Bella and his wanting to remain clueless about some aspects of his daughter's life. I also love the part in the book where he tries to be a good dad by giving his daughter the "sex" talk! Too funny! And I think Billy Burk portrays Charlie excellently.

The last heart throb that I would put down is Edward Cullen from Twilight. I'm not even going to put an image here because I think Robert Pattinson is UGLY! But Stephenie Meyer's Edward in the books is handsome and his passion, love and obsession for Bella are 3 things that I think make the book such a great hit with young girls and older women.

So there you have it!

Deception by Jonathan Kellerman

I don't think Jonathan Kellerman has ever disappointed me in his Alex Delaware novels. Deception was no exception! I enjoyed it very much. There were lots of twists and turns to the  final outcome. Very entertaining and fast-paced.

COMING SOON!

I will be posting a Guest Post by the author of Don't Know Where, Don't Know When and A Different Day, A Different Destiny, Annette Laing. Check out her books on Amazon.com.

Don't Know Where Don't Know When by Annette Laing

Hannah, Alex and Brandon find themselves back in time in war-torn England. It is World War II and the children are being sent to live with families in the country to escape bombs falling on the cities. Shortly after arriving in 1940 Brandon disappears to England 1915! This time the setting of World War I.

The young people are sent back in time to find whatever happened to George Braithwaite. Hannah and Alex find themselves living with Mrs. Devenish, her grand-daughter Verity and Mrs. D's evacuee Eric. Brandon becomes apprenticed to a dentist named Mr. Gordon in 1915.

Hannah has the most difficult time adjusting to the time period and what their purpose for being there is. She has a huge attitude that needs adjusting!

Throughout the story the kids learn some history about WWI and WWII but mostly they learn about George Braithwaite and what happened to him and why they were sent to the past to help.

I enjoyed the story very much. I became attached to the characters. I think that Hannah still ended up being self-centered and selfish. But I also think that she learned a lot about herself and how to love other people. I will look forward to the next installment of the Snipesville Chronicles to see if she matures as she travels to different centuries and learns that there are other people with problems bigger than hers.