Complete List of Books I Read in 2014

Here are the links to the books I read in 2014. Lists 1-5 are pieces of one chronological list of 87 books of my Excel spreadsheet. Click on each image to read it.

List 1



List 2



List 3



List 4



List 5

Picture Day Friday: A Tour of the Regency Town House

A detailed room-by-room tour of a Regency town house is located here. The picture below is a cross-section of a typical house built in Brunswick Square to the tune of 3000-5000 pounds (in Regency money) with a like outlay for furnishing the interior. (For comparison purposes, servants' wages in those days were 10-65 pounds per year.)

The kitchens, wine cellar, scullery, butler's room, housekeeper's room, etc. were all in the basement. The ground floor comprised of a dining room, a Decker's room, which is a small staging area for keeping the food warm, and a parlor (also called a morning room or a breakfast room). In a small house, the parlor might also be the library. Halfway up the main staircase was a waiting room with an attached water closet. The first floor had two connecting drawing rooms. The ground floor and first floor rooms together made up the formal entertaining rooms of the house and were the most lavishly decorated. The bedrooms were on the second floor and the nursery and servants' rooms were on the third floor. The grooms and coachman slept above the mews (also called the stable block and coach house) in the back. The mews were separated from the main house by a garden. The front steps of the house leading down from the front door ended at street-level.

According to The Regency Town House, "Architects and designers produced Pattern Books, containing all manner of designs, from whole houses to railings, cornices, mirrors and mouldings, wall coverings, curtains, and furniture. Lavishly illustrated magazines, such as Ackermann’s Repository of Arts monitored fashions from the continent and recommended suitable furnishings and how to arrange them in each room."

A Look at My Reading in January

In my blogging goals at the beginning of the year, I had mentioned wanting to read less romance, more LitFic, more nonfic, more children's books, more poetry, and more diverse books. Here's how I did with January's reading.

Flower in the Desert by Lavender Parker
Categories: romance, american, contemporary, poc
Diversity: Featured African-American and Native American protagonists. It was a self-published and in eBook format. I'm trying to become a little more adventurous by choosing self-published books, which largely come in eBook format, a format that I read extremely reluctantly.
In a few words: Well-developed characters, plot, and narrative structures despite the short length; first half moved at a cracking pace and was beautiful; too much sex made plot lose pacing in the second half; story resolution was too quick. Overall, I enjoyed it. This was a community read book with @liz_mc2, @sonomalass, @_ridley_, and @meoskop.

Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale
Categories: romance, regency, big fat book, religious
Diversity: I enjoyed reading a big fat book last year and would like to read more in the longer length (>500 pages) this year. I don't read religious books or inspirational ones, since so far I've not been interested in either conversion themes or the influence personal faith has on the story (plot and characters). However, I read this book, and it was an eye-opening experience. (I mean, it's KINSALE, of course!) This book would not exist without the Quaker religion—it's in the threads that weave the fabric of the story—and I loved it. A five-star read.
In a few words: Heartrending. I cried tears of sorrow and tenderness as I read it. The main characters were frustrating at times and sympathetic at others. Despite where each one came from, by the end, I completely believed in their HEA. Read with @__marijana_.

Emily and the Dark Angel by Jo Beverley
Categories: romance, traditional regency
Diversity:
In a few words: Typical traditional Regency; would've liked to have seen more relationship development before declaration of love, but convincing HEA; lovable characters

The Travelling Parsi by Kamal Sunavala
Categories: nonfiction, literary fiction, memoir, anthology
Diversity: Featured Parsi-Indian characters, including the narrator of the stories AKA the author. This is another self-published book in e- format.
In a few words: Humor covered the gamut of funny, tedious, and mean-spirited; some vignettes were nonfiction but all dialog was made up, so a curious amalgam of nonfiction and fiction; all secondary characters sounded the same; loved this look into the Parsi-Indian culture; language tics were interesting. My detailed comments are here.

Viscount Vagabond by Loretta Chase
Categories: romance, traditional regency
Diversity:
In a few words: Typical Chase with silliness, lightness, delightful characters and plot, and marvelous writing. Recommended by __marijana_.

The One Skill: How Mastering the Art of Letting Go Will Change Your Life by Leo Babauta
Categories: nonfiction, male author, life skills
Diversity: Self-published in e- format by a male author.
In a few words: Excellent meditation on how letting go of idealism in life about situations and people leads to a happier, calmer life. This was not a cerebral book, but rather a very practical how-to book. A five-star read. This is my March TBR Challenge book.

The Recruit by Monica McCarty
Categories: romance, medieval, Scotland
Diversity:
In a few words: Very much a Highlander story with a well-developed warrior whose muscles had been described in detail many times; a delicate, sweet, beauteous woman; a rawr-mine with sex start to the romance, building up to jealous possessiveness; well-done love scenes, superb fight choreography, good research; McCarty is my go-to for a Highlander fix.

The Writer's Life: Insights from The Right to Write by Julia Cameron
Categories: nonfiction, writing
Diversity:
In a few words: I picked up this book at the start of the year when I decided to start writing Morning Pages. It has been very helpful to read a few pages every now and then—it's a short book. Sometimes when I couldn't think of anything to write about, I picked a page from this book and "discussed" it. This is my May TBR Challenge book.

The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott
Categories: children's, fantasy, male author
Diversity: Book by male author
In a few words: I admit to a slow start to this book, until I stopped seeing this as a lame adult book and looked at it as the middle-grade novel it is. Then the pace picked up right away. Lots of flashy magic, icky creatures, intrepid child heroes, wise adults, and just plain old-fashioned derring-do. Thoroughly enjoyed it. This is my February TBR Challenge book, recommended by my daughter.

North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Categories: literary fiction, victorian
Diversity: Written in the mid-nineteenth century
In a few words: I have loved the miniseries based on this book very much and so was eager to read the book. While the romance is of course there, the focus is more on the culture of the north and the details of Margaret's life. So the book fills in the gaps of the movie storyline marvelously well. In fact, since Netflix is about to lose its contract for the miniseries, I'm re-watching it and enjoying the duality of the experience. Book recommended by @miss_batesreads and Sunita.
Status: Still reading...

Tomorrow is National Readathon Day

According to the National Book Organization, tomorrow is National Readathon Day. It's being sponsored by Penguin-Random House, Goodreads, and Mashable. So tomorrow, January 24, between 12pm and 4pm (in each respective time zone), pick up a book and participate in a national read. I shall be reading Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South.

Today is National Handwriting Day

I'm celebrating National Handwriting Day today by writing my Morning Pages with a Mont Blanc fountain pen with J. Herbin Terre de Feu ink in a Clairefontaine notebook. Ah! The bliss of a good pen in hand gliding over good paper with good ink.

2015 TBR Reading Challenge: The Travelling Parsi by Kamal Sunavala

2015 TBR Reading Challenge
Book: The Travelling Parsi by Kamal Sunavala
My Categories: nonfiction, memoir, literary fiction, anthology
Wendy Crutcher's Category: We Love Short Shorts

This book was recommended to me by a Parsi friend of mine, and it has been a delight to read. Before this, the only thing I knew about the Parsis was that they'd produced two of the world's best loved musicians: Conductor Maestro Zubin Mehta and Queen's lead singer Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara).

A little background. In the seven hundreds, when Islam came to Iran, some of the Zoroastrians fled in boats to the distant shores of India. They landed in the state of Gujarat and settled there, adopting the language, food, clothes, and customs. Not completely, of course. They retained their original religious books and practices, married strictly within themselves, and otherwise behaved as all immigrant minorities do to preserve their old culture.

The Parsis, according to my friend and from reading the book, are also fairly westernized as compared to the average Indian. For instance, when the author was a kid, their parties featured meat dishes, whiskey drinks, and ballroom dancing; kids took piano and elocution lessons; far more women wore dresses as compared to the rest of the Indian population which wears saris; their knowledge of music was also of western classical music, not Indian; etc. So while the main language of communication is English sprinkled with Gujarati for the generation in their 50s now and older, my feeling from reading the book is that the Parsis seem to see themselves as separate from the rest of the Indian population. In fact, and unfortunately so, they seem to see themselves as superior.

This is a very broad outsider's perspective reported second-hand as opposed to a sensitive and accurate picture of the nuanced and complex culture of Indian Zoroastrianism. (By the way, Parsis are distinct from Iranis, though both are Iranian Zoroastrians in India.)

This anthology of short humorous memoir vignettes about the Zoroastrian Parsi community is narrated through the satirical voice of a Parsi girl. It talks about community, and the joys, wisdoms, customs, and prejudices that are contain therein. The book starts out as being a memoir of stories, but there's no way Sunavala could've accurately recalled all that dialogue that's sprinkled throughout the book. And given that all Parsi characters in their 50s in her book sound exactly alike, she made those conversations up out of whole cloth.

So this book is a curious amalgam of half-remembered incidences and pure fiction for dramatic purposes. There's no category box you can tick to make this book fit, and yet, the book pulls together and is an entertaining read for the most part. It's also informative—you get a good flavor of this minority culture from India.

I did find a few of the vignettes to be downright mean-spirited, which is the danger of humor. What is uproariously funny can quickly turn into uncomfortable silence. It felt like Sunavala had a couple of ideas, got carried away, and ran down rabbit holes with them. Judicious editing would've helped curb this tendency.

I also felt that overall, Sunavala didn't mean to portray a sympathetic or empathetic look at her culture, but a more satirical and pointedly critical one. This also made the humor come across as mean-spirited. Sometimes, vignettes written in this vein were wrapped up with upbeat conclusions, which were out-of-sync with the tone and content of the pieces. A pity.

That said, I enjoyed this little book. I recommend it to anyone wondering about India's Parsi culture or just wanting a quick light read.