Book Review: The Book of Lost Fragrances by M.J. Rose

The Book of Lost Fragrances

By: M.J. Rose

ISBN-13: 9781451621303                       

Publisher: Atria Books

Publication date: 3/13/2012

Pages: 384

Source: I received a free copy of this book as part of the Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tour. This did not influence my review of the book in any way.

Synopsis:


A sweeping and suspenseful tale of secrets, intrigue, and lovers separated by time, all connected through the mystical qualities of a perfume created in the days of Cleopatra--and lost for 2,000 years.

Jac L'Etoile has always been haunted by the past, her memories infused with the exotic scents that she grew up surrounded by as the heir to a storied French perfume company. In order to flee the pain of those remembrances--and of her mother's suicide--she moved to America. Now, fourteen years later she and her brother have inherited the company along with it's financial problems. But when Robbie hints at an earth-shattering discovery in the family archives and then suddenly goes missing--leaving a dead body in his wake--Jac is plunged into a world she thought she'd left behind.

Back in Paris to investigate her brother's disappearance, Jac becomes haunted by the legend the House of L'Etoile has been espousing since 1799. Is there a scent that can unlock the mystery of reincarnation - or is it just another dream infused perfume?

The Book of Lost Fragrances fuses history, passion, and suspense, moving from Cleopatra's Egypt and the terrors of revolutionary France to Tibet's battle with China and the glamour of modern-day Paris. Jac's quest for the ancient perfume someone is willing to kill for becomes the key to understanding her own troubled past.

My Review:

I devoured this book in just about one day. It was easy to allow all of the sensory data, especially olfactory, to come wafting right out of the pages and entrance me. I think The Book of Lost Fragrances is a timeless story told in a new, wonderful way.

Jac is a woman who works to keep her emotions at bay and her past in the past, but when her brother discovers something within the family's failing business, it begins to engulf Jac completely and force to confront the present as well as near and distant past. Jac's extraordinary sense of smell leads her to notice what the average person doesn't, bringing her suffering as well as heightened experiences. Her family's problems take the reader on a sensational ride through history and the present, from America to Paris to Egypt to China.

I really enjoyed the levels of complexity and variety in this story. Through the emotions evoked from smell, we get to experience the lives several characters from different regions and time periods. Smell is the sense that most strongly activates memory in our brains. This fact is taken to an extreme in The Book of Lost Fragrances  when a certain perfume is able to allow people to recall past lives, not just their current past. M.J. Rose was able to bring together many fields of study: mythology, archaeology, the study of olfaction and perfumes to create emotions, and Buddhism. All of the separate fields coalesce into an imaginative and entertaining book.

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Book Review: Just My Type by Simon Garfield

Just My Type

By: Simon Garfield

ISBN-13: 9781592406524

Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)

Publication date: 9/1/2011

Pages: 356

Source: Library copy

Synopsis:

A hugely entertaining and revealing guide to the history of type that asks, What does your favorite font say about you?

Fonts surround us every day, on street signs and buildings, on movie posters and books, and on just about every product we buy. But where do fonts come from, and why do we need so many? Who is responsible for the staid practicality of Times New Roman, the cool anonymity of Arial, or the irritating levity of Comic Sans (and the movement to ban it)?

Typefaces are now 560 years old, but we barely knew their names until about twenty years ago when the pull-down font menus on our first computers made us all the gods of type. Beginning in the early days of Gutenberg and ending with the most adventurous digital fonts, Simon Garfield explores the rich history and subtle powers of type. He goes on to investigate a range of modern mysteries, including how Helvetica took over the world, what inspires the seeming ubiquitous use of Trajan on bad movie posters, and exactly why the all-type cover of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus was so effective. It also examines why the "T" in the Beatles logo is longer than the other letters and how Gotham helped Barack Obama into the White House. A must-have book for the design conscious, Just My Type's cheeky irreverence will also charm everyone who loved Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Schott's Original Miscellany.

My Review:

Simon Garfield has introduced me to a world that I never gave much thought to and took for granted, the wide world of font and typography. Just My Type is a fun history lesson on the design of many famous fonts today and why those designs are still used in today's world.  For example, Garfield explains why Helvetica is one of the most widely used fonts worldwide and what happened when IKEA switched their font from futura to verdana... gasp!

After reading Just My Type, I now find myself paying more attention to the font on signs and in books. While I can't tell the difference between most fonts, I do look to see if it is serif or sans serif and how the overall look of the font produces a feeling for what it is trying to express, such as stability or modernity.

I really enjoyed roughly the first half of the book because it made me keep thinking of all the things I never picked up on in signs or other written word forms, but towards the end I found myself getting bored and wishing the book would soon. After a while, because I'm not a font enthusiast, the list of designers and the types of fonts just started to blur. Then, the book did just end. I don't think the ending of the book really summed up the previous 300-odd pages or made a final point about the world of fonts. Maybe it was just me, but I felt like Simon Garfield just got a little bored of writing it and so he just stopped where he was. I really enjoyed the premise of the book and I learned a lot, but I think the ending could have been better handled, which is why I'm giving Just My Type only three stars out of five.

P.S. - I changed the font of this post to Arial, what do you think?

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Review of 2011 Reading

2011 was my first full year of blogging and keeping track of my reading on goodreads.com. I don't know how many books I normally read in a year, but I'm quite proud of the 70 books I read this year. According to goodreads, I read 29,074 pages! I don't know about anyone else, but that seems like a lot of pages!!

I've enjoyed blogging about the books I read this year, although I have fell incredibly behind in my reviews. The end of the semester and the holidays caught up to me and I broke out of the routine of posting about my books shortly after finishing. I want to start up again and finish up reviewing all the books I have left from 2011 and stay on track for 2012.

In terms of my 2011 book challenges, I succeeded rather well! I completed 4 book challenges. From goodreads, I originally challenged myself to read 50 books, but I read 70! Here are my other challenges along with the books I used to complete them:

2011 Chunkster Reading Challenge

I chose the highest level for this challenge- Mor-book-ly Obese - 8 books of 450 pages or more, 3 of which have to be over 750 pages.

 

Books Completed:

1. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - 1088 pages

2. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova - 592 pages

3. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - 1037 pages

4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - 552 pages

5. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood - 460 pages

6. The Iliad by Homer - 704 pages

7. The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin - 465 pages

8. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson - 515 pages

9. Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran - 464 pages

10. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky - 667 pages

11. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - 680 pages

12. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - 464 pages

13. Elizabeth I by Margaret George - 671 pages

14. Decision Points by George W. Bush - 497 pages

15. The Help by Kathryn Stockett - 544 pages

16. Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu - 528 pages

17. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood - 521 pages

18. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - 465 pages

19. The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson - 503 pages

20. The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson - 563 pages

21. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume 1 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 752 pages

22. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton - 562 pages

23. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie - 625 pages

24. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - 630 pages

25. Before Versailles: A Novel of Louis XIV by Karleen Koen - 460 pages

 

 

Off the Shelf Challenge

 

I entered at the Trying level, which was to read 15 TBR books on my book shelves.

Books Completed:

1. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

2. The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Short Stories by Leo Tolstoy

3. Human by Michael Gazzaniga

4. The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis

5. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

6. The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis

7. Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis

8. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

9. The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

10. The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

11. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

12. The Iliad by Homer

13. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

14. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

15. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

16. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

17. The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

 

 

I entered the first level of this challenge- Master of Trivial Pursuit- which meant I had to read 1 to 3 non-fiction books, each from a different category.

 

Books Completed:
1. Human by Michael Gazzaniga - Science
2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - Science/Cultural Studies
3. The Tigress of Forli by Elizabeth Lev - History
4. Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor - Travel/Memoir
5. Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution by Holly Tucker - Medical/History
6. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell - Science
7. Bossypants by Tina Fey - Memoir
8. You Are Not Your Brain by Jeffrey Schwartz and Rebecca Gladding - Science/Self-Help
9. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Barlett - Art
10. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - History
11. Decision Points by George W. Bush - Memoir/Politics
12. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch - Memoir
13. Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton - Memoir

14. Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever by Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard

15. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

16. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

 I exceeded my expectations in all of the challenges. Which means that I now have baseline to judge how I want to handle my book challenges for 2012 :)

Book Review: The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

The Distant Hours

By: Kate Morton

Pub. Date: November 2010

Publisher: Atria Books

Format: Hardcover, Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 9781439152782

Source: Library Copy

Synopsis:

A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old house, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13 year old child during WWII. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn’t been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941.

Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in ‘the distant hours’ of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.

Morton once again enthralls readers with an atmospheric story featuring unforgettable characters beset by love and circumstance and haunted by memory, that reminds us of the rich power of storytelling

My Review:

This is the first book I have read by Kate Morton, but I will definitely be reading more! This book was wonderful. The writing was absolutely beautiful and the plot was enthralling, full of suspense and layers of stories.

The Distant Hours switches back and forth between two time periods, the near past, the 1990s, and WWII, the late 1930s into the early 1940s. This expanse of time allows for the layers of the plot to slowly stack up and the secrets build, waiting for the final denouement. I loved the intricacies of the characters and their relationships to one another, especially the Sisters Blythe. This book explores how both war time and your family's history can impinge on one's life and how you can respond to it- many of the characters allowed the circumstances around them to dictate how their lives would go. Edie, though, the only characters from the newer generation, tended to make her own destiny more than her mother and the sisters. However, Edie also did not grow up in a time of world war or in a severely confining family.

My favorite part of The Distant Hours was definitely the ending. We learned the secrets of the past and watched the tragedies of the sisters unfold to their last moment. I'm trying to be especially vague because I don't want to give away of the major plot points. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has the time to sit and enjoy this book. The story and the writing are both beautiful and should be enjoyed.

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Book Review: Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

Blood, Bones & Butter

By: Gabrielle Hamilton

Pub. Date: March 2011

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Format: Hardcover , 304pp

ISBN-13: 9781400068722

ISBN: 140006872X

Source: Library Copy

Synopsis:

“I wanted the lettuce and eggs at room temperature . . . the butter-and-sugar sandwiches we ate after school for snack . . . the marrow bones my mother made us eat as kids that I grew to crave as an adult. . . . There would be no ‘conceptual’ or ‘intellectual’ food, just the salty, sweet, starchy, brothy, crispy things that one craves when one is actually hungry. In ecstatic farewell to my years of corporate catering, we would never serve anything but a martini in a martini glass. Preferably gin.”

Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty fierce, hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Above all she sought family, particularly the thrill and the magnificence of the one from her childhood that, in her adult years, eluded her. Hamilton’s ease and comfort in a kitchen were instilled in her at an early age when her parents hosted grand parties, often for more than one hundred friends and neighbors. The smells of spit-roasted lamb, apple wood smoke, and rosemary garlic marinade became as necessary to her as her own skin.

Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; the soulless catering factories that helped pay the rent; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a difficult and prickly marriage that nonetheless yields rich and lasting dividends.

Blood, Bones & Butter is an unflinching and lyrical work. Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion. By turns epic and intimate, it marks the debut of a tremendous literary talent.

My Review:

Ugh. When I started this book, I was so enchanted and interested in Gabrielle Hamilton's life and experiences that led her to be an owner and chef at a popular restaurant in New York City but once Gabrielle's descriptions of her childhood end, I just became more disgusted with her life and her poor choices.

I understand that many people don't have great childhoods or make the best decisions for their lives, but it seemed that Gabrielle had several opportunities to change the course of her life but chose instead to go in the opposite direction. I had little sympathy for her because she was competent enough to know what she was getting herself into. She also never seemed to reflect enough on her past and thus, I think, just ended up repeating some of her mistakes again. For example, she ended up marrying an Italian man so he could get a green card and stay in the US. She didn't love him and they lived apart, yet they had kids together... I don't understand that at all and she never explained her motives for staying (if seeing each other mostly for only one month a year in Italy counts as staying) with a man she never loved and having kids with him. Since this is Gabrielle's own memoir, I wanted more reflection and explanations of her decisions so that I could better understand her. However, I feel like I just got the surface layer of her life, which just left me tired of her and unsympathetic with her problems in life.

I also wanted more of a focus on her love of food. Gabrielle often worked in the catering industry, and I understand that that probably did not give her the time to use her passion for creating good food, but I still wanted more reflections on the use of food in her life and everyone's lives. As I said earlier, the descriptions of her early childhood were wonderful and I was hooked so that I wanted to know where her life of loving food would lead, but her life choices and subsequent shallow explanations of them, just left me wanting to stop reading, although I did push through and finish the book.

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars