Book Review - Crossing the Paris - Dana Gynter

Title:  Crossing on the Paris 

Author:  Dana Gynter 

Review: Crossing on the Paris is the story of three women on the move, their lives all on the cusp of change with the insecurity that it brings.  Set on the backdrop of the luxury liner The Paris’s maiden voyage to America at the turn of the century (think post WWI).  Each interact to solidify or gently redirect themselves on to their proper destinations.  You have Julie the young steerage maid who is just starting out in life, Costance the young mother in the middle, and Vera, the older socialite reaching the end of her life. 

Julie has seen her four brothers lost to war, and has decided she needs a fresh start.  Unsure of herself she begins with the view outside her window; the shipyards outside her home where luxury liners are built; including the aforementioned Paris.  Having seen these ships for years she decides they are a ticket to adventure and signs on as a maid to make her way in the world.  Unfortunately she discovers it is a hard life for a young woman on a cruise ship, and without the shelters of home or her brothers she finds herself soon taken advantage of.  Literally lost at sea she is hurting and directionless. 

Constance is a still beautiful young woman who got married young to a much older and stoic man, one who does not share her sense of adventure.  Travelling back home to America alone after unsuccessfully trying to convince her more cosmopolitan younger sister to come home she is left to reevaluate her life so far.  Seeing her sister so happy living for the moment and chasing hedonistic pursuits, she finds her life lacking.  Soon as the Paris sets sail she is soon enamored by the sexy ship’s Doctor, and the life she didn’t chose is opened up for her.  Seduced by what could have been she is unsure of what she should do.  It is interesting she loses herself in detective novels as she is on the trail of her own answers too. 

Vera is the older socialite who is coming home to America to essentially die after 35 years abroad.  She is in a sense Constance’s younger sister who has pursued her own desires for a lifetime and is now reflecting back on all the decisions passed.  As she struggles with her regrets she is befriended by our other two heroines and other passengers who help her see her worth.  We all have regrets but the secret to happiness is to focus on the good, for no one’s life is completely one or the other. 

As not to ruin the plot the three ladies eventually meet up and are able to provide support for their many indecisions, ultimately leading to resolutions for each of them.  A great freshman effort by Dana Gynter who delivers a well written story.  I would have enjoyed a little more plot development to “grab” me, and I will anxiously await that in her next book.   

Publisher: Gallery Books 
ISBN: 978-1-45167-823-9 
Copyright: 2012 
Pages: 308 
Quick Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars 
Where I Obtained the Book: Sent to me for review by the publisher 

Synopsis: Downton Abbey meets Titanic in this sweeping historical novel about three women of different generations and classes, whose lives intersect on a majestic ocean liner traveling from Paris to New York in the wake of World War I. 

The year is 1921. Three women set out on the impressive Paris ocean liner on a journey from Paris to New York. Julie Vernet is a young French woman from a working class family who has just gotten her first job as a crew worker on the ship. Escaping her small town and the memory of war, she longs for adventure on the high seas... 

Constance Stone is a young American wife and mother who has traveled to Paris to rescue her bohemian sister, Faith, who steadfastly refuses to return to America and settle down. Constance returns home to New York, having failed at the duty her father asked of her... 

Vera Sinclair, a rich, ex-patriate American is leaving France after thirty-one years to live out her remaining time home in America. Over the course of the transatlantic voyage, she reflects on her colorful life and looks forward to a quiet retirement. While each of these women come from different walks of life, their paths cross while at sea in a series of chance encounters. The powerful impact these disparate lives have on one another make for a magnificent and unforgettable read. 

Author Biography: Dana Gynther was born in St Louis but moved to the college town of Auburn, Alabama at the age of ten. She got both her BA and MA (Political Science and French, respectively) at the University of Alabama, spending a year and a half living in France in between. She and her husband moved to his hometown-- Valencia, Spain-- nearly twenty years ago where they work as teachers and translators. They have two teenage daughters and two cats. 

Other Reviews: 

Book reporter

Red Letter Reads
The Book Garden

e 

Book Review - A Train In Winter - Caroline Moorehead - A second look review

Title:  A Train in Winter  - A second look from another reviewer.

Author:  Caroline Moorhead

Review: This was an extraordinary book, well written and very thought provoking.  This is the true tale of the “extraordinary story of women, friendship and resistance in occupied France.”  Many books have been written over the years about the resistants’ movement in France and other Nazi occupied countries, this one is different as it taken from the perspective and living testimony of the women that endured it.  These were “teachers, students, chemist, writers and housewives…They distributed anti Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety and transported weapons.  The youngest was a schoolgirl of sixteen who scrawled ‘V’ for victory on the walls of bedroom, to the oldest, a farmer’s wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from all across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers.”

This is a book that is well worth reading and opens your eyes to the fact that not just Jews were tortured and died in the camps but also Jevohah Witnesses, homosexuals, resisters, Gypsies, communists and the “mentally damaged, from all the occupied countries, anyone that the Nazis thought were a threat to their view of an Aryan race.  Although many more Jews perished in the camps then other groups, this book talks about all of the others that history just sort of buried.

After the war was over and the camps were liberated, what was left of these extraordinary women came home to try and put back together their lives.  What they found were that people, not even their own families, wanted to hear about their experiences, they were too horrible to believe.  One of the women Marie-Claude Vaillant-Courturier gave evidence at Nuremberg at the war crimes trials, and was told that what she was saying couldn’t possibly be true as she had lived through it and looked so well.  At this time she had been home in France for more than a year.  The people of their own country and of other countries, even though the evidence was right in front of them, could not believe that any group of people, at war or not, could have been so cruel and therefore dismissed what these women were saying. 

Well I could go on but you need to read the book to learn the stories first hand from the women who lived them.  Of the 230 women taken from France to Poland and Germany 42 came back alive.  The stories of what happened in their lives after they returned, were for the most part, tragic.  So many of them were widows whose husbands were shot by the Nazi’s or whose husbands ended up in the camps also, most never to return home again.  These women left little children in the care of grandparents and foster care providers who wanted nothing to do with them when they returned home.  One young girl was dragged away to prison from her apartment and her 6 week old left at the flat with no one knowing he was there all alone.  Each of those stories are in this book!

I give this book a 10, I have read quite a few books about the Holocaust but this one was taken from a different perspective and shone new light on the subject, this is a must read for all history buffs and anyone who wants to know the truth of those tragic days.

I recommend this book to everyone but especially those interested in the role of women in WW II.

Thanks go to Eileen for this review.

Taken from the flyleaf of the book:

These women came to know each other in terms that not even the closest of mother’s and daughters could.  As each was caught and punished by the Nazis and collaborators’ they were sent to different prisons and eventually ended up in places called Birkenau, Auschwitz and Ravensbruck.  These extraordinary women were able to stay together for three years of captivity, their shared experiences caused a bond of friendship that would last until the end of their lives.

Publisher: Published November 8th 2011 by Harper (first published January 1st 2011)
ISBN: 9780061650703

Copyright: 2011 
Pages: 384

Quick Review: 5 out of 5 stars 
Where I Obtained the Book: My daughter loved it, from her. 

Synopsis: They were teachers, students, chemists, writers, and housewives; a singer at the Paris Opera, a midwife, a dental surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled "V" for victory on the walls of her lycée; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers.

Eventually, the Gestapo hunted down 230 of these women and imprisoned them in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and loved ones, these disparate individuals turned to one another, their common experience conquering divisions of age, education, profession, and class, as they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie.

In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only forty-nine would return to France.

A Train in Winter draws on interviews with these women and their families; German, French, and Polish archives; and documents held by World War II resistance organizations to uncover a dark chapter of history that offers an inspiring portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and survival—and of the remarkable, enduring power of female friendship.

Author Biography:  Caroline Moorehead has written columns on human rights first for The Times and then for the Independent (1980-91) and has made a series of TV programmes on human rights for the BBC (1990-2000). She has also written the history of the International Committee of the Red Cross (1998) and has helped to set up a Legal Advice Centre for refugees in Cairo, where she has started schools and a nursery.

Other Reviews: 

NY Times

Jenny Loves to Read

Original Review

Book Review - The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson

Title: The Psychopath Test

Author: JonRonson

Review: Full disclosure, I have a degree in Psychology and worked for a number of years in the industry; so I have a good understanding of where the author is coming from.  I mention this because if this book has a flaw is it leans to the generic while following an exploratory conversational style.  So if you are looking for a more specific text book like explanatory book there are plenty out there.  But if you want to hear a story from a extremely funny guy who went for a swim in the waters of the madness industry, you can’t do much better than this.  So like I said, I spent quite a few years in the business so I already had the background to enjoy this book an all sorts of levels.

At one time I used to manage apartments for schizophrenics and it was great fun.  I really enjoyed all the residents and they on the whole were delightful in their own way.  But it was interesting to see people experience the patients for the first time; either they were totally at ease and were able to interact, or they were just plain freaked out.  It was like they had watch a Hannibal Lecter marathon the previous day and if they were to relax for just a minute they patients would turn on them and be eating their kidneys with fava beans before they could shout for help.  And the really interesting thing was you couldn’t predict how people would react.  Their sex, age, size, education, and other traits did not lend themselves to prediction; they either were ok or they weren’t.

Well Ronson is a master story teller who goes on a walk about in the madness industry and specifically lands on psychopaths; people who do not process emotions like the rest of us.  Now during this journey he meets some fascinating people and even more theories of why these people are this way.  The whole time he is dealing with his own insecurities and paranoia.  He faces the same questions you will when you read this; am I a psychopath, are my family and friends, my neighbors and co-workers, my boss, that guy on TV?  And if you are not careful you will come away seeing psychopaths everywhere which will then feed your own fears and generally make you uneasy in your own life.

You will, like Ronson, need to take a step back and really think about what you have learned and how to integrate it into your daily life as a helpful tool.  Some of you unfortunately will be like those who met my residents and will not be able to feel calm regardless of the situation.  But most will be able to learn some great things from this book.  But for those of you who are a little weary if you are a psychopath, watch a few of those soldiers surprise their family videos on youtube (or better yet, they surprise their pets) and if tear up a little you are okay.

The most important lesson from the book is the dismissing of the all or nothing attitude a lot of people have towards mental illness, especially psychopathy.   The thing you soon learn about mental illness if you spend any time with it, it is not a black and white problem.  First of all there are no normal people in the world, we all have problems somewhere in our mental capacities.  All problems are on a spectrum and we all land somewhere on it.  Now sometimes a little problem can be no problem and can actually be a little helpful.  Like a little red wine can be beneficial to you, whereas two liters of vodka just to get out of bed is a problem.  Take OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder); a little bit will make you a detail orientated individual that would be amazing for an engineer or the like.  But if you can’t leave your house until you perform a lock check 43 times, or you have to wash your hands 100 times an hour you might need treatment.

Ronson meets several psychopaths and those who diagnose them and you get to see a picture where it is not all clear.  Yes when the individual decides to murder people to see what it feels like they should be locked up.  But when you begin to see psychopathic traits in CEO’s and other leaders you begin to see some value to being able to emotionally separate yourself from hard decisions.  It is all a matter of degrees.  It is like the Dexter series on Showtime (or the original Jeff Lindsay book series).  Dexter clearly has a problem so his late step father expresses to him constructive ways to use his fascinations.  You are who you are, but that doesn’t have to be an end.

So we all have problems, but how are we using them to make ourselves and the world we live in better?  The Psychopath Test is both an informative and fun book; you will never look at those around you the same again.

Publisher: Riverhead

ISBN: 978-1-59448-801-6

Copyright: 2011

Pages: 275

Quick Review: 4.5 stars out of 5

Why I Read It: Funny psychology book

Where I Obtained the Book: My local library

Synopsis: The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath.

Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

 

Author Biography: Jon Ronson is a writer and documentary film maker. His books, Them: Adventures With Extremists and The Men Who Stare At Goats were international bestsellers. The Men Who Stare At Goats was adapted into a major motion picture starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges.

He's written the popular "Human Zoo" and "Out of the Ordinary" columns for The Guardian, where he still contributes features. He currently writes and presents the twice Sony nominated BBC Radio 4 series, Jon Ronson On...

For Channel 4, Jon has made a number of films including the acclaimed five part series the Secret Rulers of the World and the multi-award-winning Tottenham Ayatollah. His most recent documentaries are Reverend Death (Channel 4), Citizen Kubrick (More4) and Robbie Williams and Jon Ronson Journey to the Other Side (Radio 4).

In the US, he is a contributor to Public Radio International's This American Life.

Other Reviews:
NPR
NY Times
Paperplates

Book Review - Meg the Egg - Rita Antoinette Borg

Title: Meg the Egg                 

Author:   Rita Antoinette Borg

Review:  My little five-year-olds response after I finished the book was “READ IT AGAIN!” I think that sums this children’s book up nicely. Not only did my kids like it, but I enjoyed it as well. It is well written, and I adore the illustrations. It is a cute story about a chicken who doesn’t want to hatch because it is scared of all the sounds it hears outside its little shell. The baby chick ends up saving its mother and “comes out of its shell” both literally and figuratively. I would definitely recommend this book.

Heather thanks for this review.

Publisher: Published June 1st 2012 by CreateSpace

ISBN: 9781466353145

Copyright: 2012

Pages:  25

Quick Review:  5 stars

Why I Read It:   sent for review and my kids love to read new books together.

Where I Obtained the Book:  from the publicist.

Synopsis: A tale of self-discovery; an egg is afraid to hatch because the world is too noisy, but when one of these noises captures her mother, she finds out just how brave she can be!

 

Author Biography: Though I have been writing since the age of nine, I began writing professionally at thirty years of age, mainly in newspapers and magazines. Then I decided to venture into children’s literature and have written three books, both in a bilingual format of English and Maltese. These are:

Fuq Sigra Imwarrba / On a Lonely Tree

Il-Harba taz-Zringijiet / The Frogs’ Great Escape.

L-Ghazla ta’ Rebecca / Rebecca’s Choice

I hope my imagination and creativity will spring up more stories for children to read in the future.

Other Reviews:

The Kids Book Review

Our Book reviews on-line

Raychelle Writes

Giveaway - Pump Up Your Book Feature - Saving Grace - set date

Title:  Saving Grace

Author: Pamela Fagan Hutchins

About the Author:

Pamela Fagan Hutchins writes award-winning mysterious women’s fiction and relationship humor books, and holds nothing back.  She is known for “having it all” which really means she has a little too much of everything, but loves it: writer, mediocre endurance athlete (triathlon, marathons), wife, mom of an ADHD & Asperger’s son, five kids/step-kids, business owner, recovering employment attorney and human resources executive, investigator, consultant, and musician.  Pamela lives with her husband Eric and two high school-aged kids, plus 200 pounds of pets in Houston. Their hearts are still in St. Croix, USVI, along with those of their three oldest offspring.

Her latest book is the mystery/women’s fiction, Saving Grace.

About the Book:

 If you're at all inclined to be swept away to the islands to fall in love with a rainforest jumbie house and a Texas attorney who is as much a danger to herself as the island bad guys, then dive headfirst with Katie Connell into Saving Grace.

Katie escapes professional humiliation, a broken heart, and her Bloody Mary-habit when she runs to the island of St. Marcos to investigate the suspicious deaths of her parents. But she trades one set of problems for another when she is bewitched by the voodoo spirit Annalise in an abandoned rainforest house and, as worlds collide, finds herself reluctantly donning her lawyer clothes again to defend her new friend Ava, who is accused of stabbing her very married Senator-boyfriend.

Book Excerpt:

Last year sucked, and this one was already worse.

Last year, when my parents died in an “accident” on their Caribbean vacation, I’d been working too hard to listen to my instincts, which were screaming “bullshit” so loud I almost went deaf in my third ear. I was preparing for the biggest case of my career, so I sort of had an excuse that worked for me as long as I showed up for happy hour, but the truth was, I was obsessed with the private investigator assigned to my case.

Nick. Almost-divorced Nick. My new co-worker Nick who sometimes sent out vibes that he wanted to rip my Ann Taylor blouse off with his teeth, when he wasn’t busy ignoring me.

But things had changed.

I’d just gotten the verdict back in my mega-trial, the Burnside wrongful termination case. My firm rarely took plaintiff cases, so I’d taken a big risk with this one—and won Mr. Burnside three million dollars, of which the firm got a third. That was the total opposite of suck.

After my coup at the Dallas courthouse, my paralegal Emily and I headed straight down I-20 to the hotel where our firm was on retreat in Shreveport, Louisiana. Shreveport is not on the top ten list for most company getaways, but our senior partner fancied himself a poker player, and loved Cajun food, jazz, and riverboat casinos. The retreat was a great excuse for Gino to indulge in a little Texas Hold ’Em between teambuilding and sensitivity sessions and still come off looking like a helluva guy, but it meant a three and a half hour drive each way. This wasn’t a problem for Emily and me. We bridged both the paralegal-to-attorney gap and the co-worker-to-friend gap with ease, largely because neither of us did Dallas-fancy very well. Or at all.

 Emily and I hustled inside for check-in at the Eldorado.

“Do you want a map of the ghost tours?” the front desk clerk asked us, her polyglot Texan-Cajun-Southern accent making tours sound like “turs.”

“Why, thank you kindly, but no thanks,” Emily drawled. In the ten years since she’d left, she still hadn’t shaken Amarillo from her voice or given up barrel-racing horses.

I didn’t believe in hocus pocus, either, but I wasn’t a fan of casinos, which reeked of cigarette smoke and desperation. “Do y’all have karaoke or anything else but casinos onsite?”

“Yes, ma’am, we have a rooftop bar with karaoke, pool tables, and that kind of thing.” The girl swiped at her bangs, then swung her head to put them back in the same place they’d been.

“That sounds more like it,” I said to Emily.

“Karaoke,” she said. “Again.” She rolled her eyes. “Only if we can do tradesies halfway. I want to play blackjack.”

After we deposited our bags in our rooms and freshened up, talking to each other on our cell phones the whole time we were apart, we joined our group. All of our co-workers broke into applause as we entered the conference room. News of our victory had preceded us. We curtsied, and I used both arms to do a Vanna White toward Emily. She returned the favor.

“Where’s Nick?” I called out. “Come on up here.”

Nick had left the courtroom when the jury went out to deliberate, so he’d beaten us here. He stood up from a table on the far side of the room, but didn’t join us in front. I gave him a long distance Vanna White anyway.

The applause died down and some of my partners motioned for me to sit with them at a table near the entrance. I joined them and we all got to work writing a mission statement for the firm for the next fifteen minutes. Emily and I had arrived just in time for the first day’s sessions to end.

When we broke, the group stampeded from the hotel to the docked barge that housed the casino. In Louisiana, gambling is only legal “on the water” or on tribal land. On impulse, I walked to the elevator instead of the casino. Just before the doors closed, a hand jammed between them and they bounced apart, and I found myself headed up to the hotel rooms with none other than Nick Kovacs.

“So, Helen, you’re not a gambler either,” he said as the elevator doors closed.

My stomach flipped. Cheesy, yes, but when he was in a good mood, Nick called me Helen—as in Helen of Troy.

I had promised to meet Emily for early blackjack before late karaoke, but he didn’t need to know that. “I have the luck of the Irish,” I said. “Gambling is dangerous for me.”

He responded with dead silence. Each of us looked up, down, sideways, and anywhere but at each other, which was hard, since the elevator was mirrored above a gold handrail and wood paneling. There was a wee bit of tension in the air.

“I heard there’s a pool table at the hotel bar, though, and I’d be up for that,” I offered, throwing myself headlong into the void and holding my breath on the way down.

Dead silence again. Long, dead silence. The ground was going to hurt when I hit it.

Without making eye contact, Nick said, “OK, I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”

Did he really say he’d meet me there? Just the two of us? Out together? Oh my God, Katie, what have you done?

Saving Grace Tour Page:

--

a Rafflecopter giveaway