Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

Good morning, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the TLC blog tour for Joanna Trollope's Sense & Sensibility. This latest from Trollope is part of The Austen Project, a new series of Jane Austen reimaginings from Harper - modernized twists on the classic tales! Trollope's Sense & Sensibility is the project's launch title and 2014 will see Val McDermid's Northanger Abbey and Curtis Sittenfeld's Pride & Prejudice.

Henry Dashwood has died leaving his second wife (though some question whether they were really married) and his three daughters almost penniless and homeless. Norland Park, the estate they'd long called home, is to go to Henry's son by his first marriage. And while John supposedly promised his father he'd care for the Dashwood women, his wife has insisted that they leave. Belle and her daughters, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret, are fortunate in that one of Henry's cousins has offered them a place on his own property. It does mean relocating to Devon and enduring their gregarious host family, but it's surely better than the alternative. Life as the Dashwoods know it seems to have been forever changed, though, as they face the loss of not only their home but the status their name once gave them.

If you're familiar with Sense & Sensibility in any of its forms (the book or the various movie adaptations), you'll notice that Trollope hasn't deviated from the main premise. It does make reading this new modern twist easy in that there's no question what will happen. It's instead a reassuring return to a classic tale but with slight differences to account for the twenty-first century.

I must have more sensibility than sense considering Elinor is the character I always most closely associate with in this story and Brandon is the one I've always found to be more romantic when it comes to the male leads in the story. I alternate between finding Marianne sweet and somewhat endearing and overwhelmingly annoying and shallow. As for Willoughby and Edward, neither of them is exactly my kind of guy. None of that's changed in Trollope's version.

Is it necessary to rework Austen? Probably not. But still, I found Trollope's S&S to be highly entertaining and I thought she did a wonderful job of staying true to the classic and capturing the essence of Austen. As a bonus read for you, Trollope wrote this excellent piece for Waterstones explaining why S&S is both timeless and perfect for a modern audience.

Rating: 4.5/5

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here. And for more on Joanna Trollope and her work, visit her website at www.joannatrollope.com.

For more on The Austen Project, click the link above to visit the official site. You can also like the project on Facebook and follow it on Twitter.

Muckers by Sandra Neil Wallace

And now for the Muckers review as part of my stop on the TLC blog tour!

For Hatley, Arizona, the mine is life but to Red O'Sullivan it seems it's going to close any day. In fact, their school is already set to shut its doors permanently in the coming months, with all of the students pretty guaranteed to be sent to their rival school in Cottonville. The only thing second to the mine in Hatley is football. The Hatley Muckers have gone to the state championship just twice - once with Red's own brother leading them - and now it's Red's turn. The odds are against them in every way - their record isn't great, they only have fourteen players, and they're outweighed by every other team in the state - but Red and his friends are determined. With the whole town seemingly relying on them, the Muckers are dead set and ready to fight for the championship. 

If you're under the impression that this is just a football book, you're definitely mistaken. Set in 1950 and based on the real life story of the Jerome Muckers, Sandra Neil Wallace fleshes out this story of football and the state championship with real people and social issues.

Red and his family have never recovered from losing his brother, Bobby, in WWII and one of Red's own friends is off to join the war in Korea. As the Communist scare worsens, one of the teachers at Hatley High is ready to turn in every last townsperson if so much as a hint of red is revealed.

Hatley itself is a town divided with pieces of it sectioned off by race. And while their school is integrated - as the real Jerome school was - the opposing teams are shocked to find Mexicans playing on the same team as whites. For Red it's made that much worse because the object of his affection is Mexican and the town definitely frowns on mixed race couples. Not that that's enough to stop a teenager in love!

I loved Muckers in the same way that I loved Friday Night Lights (the tv show). The characters on the page were here with me as I read and I honestly couldn't resist the fact that it was based on a true story. The idea that Wallace discovered this cache of letters and clippings telling what was until now an almost forgotten story was one that appealed to me on so many levels. Muckers is a true win in my opinion!

Rating: 4.5/5

Guest Post by Sandra Neil Wallace

Good morning, readers! Today I'm a stop on the TLC blog tour for Sandra Neil Wallace's Muckers and to go along with my review post, I've got a great guest piece from Sandra herself!

A big, big welcome to Sandra Neil Wallace!

Would you give up fame and fortune to do what you truly love? How finding the Muckers story changed my life. 

In the 1990s, long before I knew I’d actually be a published author, I was an ESPN reporter. 

I remember the first time I was about to go on TV for an NHL broadcast. There was a production assistant counting me down to the minutes before I went “live,” and she said to me, “Do you ever think about the millions of people watching, and if you screw up, it would be the end of your career?” Of course I’d never thought about that, but guess what I started thinking? I suddenly felt fear like I never had before. Luckily, I didn’t screw up, but after five years in sports TV, I never forgot her words. The truth was I didn’t want a career in television. I wanted to be a writer. I just needed to find a story, and the courage to leave TV. 

Little did I know I’d find that story at a historical society in one of history’s wildest towns in the west—Jerome, Arizona. I lived nearby, in Sedona. 

A box of memorabilia had been dropped off that resembled the boxes you’d find at flea markets. In it were yearbooks and photographs of people eating watermelon in the Gulch a hundred years ago. Then letters began tumbling out; all written by young men to the principal of Jerome High School. The heartfelt letters, penned mostly by Mexican Americans, spanned the three decades up to the Korean War. Some wrote from bunks of battleships headed for Iwo Jima, terrified about what might happen. Others told of separate swim times in Jerome—one for Mexican Americans, and one for other whites known as “Anglos.” 

I photocopied every letter and stayed up all night figuring out what to do with them. I knew they were too important to let go of. 

No matter how dire those letters were, they always signed off with hopes of a Muckers football championship. It was obvious that the team brought these young men hope. So I connected the letters to the yearbooks, and the yearbooks to the newspapers and uncovered an incredible sports story: the 1950 Jerome Muckers football team, the smallest in Arizona, and one of the few integrated squads--Anglos and Mexican Americans--went undefeated. Together, the team defied prejudice and took a run at the championship. Then their school closed. 

Here was my story. Yet as I faced the box of letters and a sports triumph forgotten for more than forty-five years, I considered walking away from that box. My own fear had set in. 

How could I write in the voices of young men, most of them Mexican American? What if I really did screw up? As a woman sportscaster, I’d been down that road before: “A woman can’t report on the NHL or the NFL—they’ve never played the game.” One of my ESPN colleagues suggested that I tell a Latino writer about the story because how could I write it as well as he would? Another said to use initials like S.E. Hinton did for The Outsiders, to cover up the fact that I was a woman writing about male sports heroes in first person. 

Then I interviewed the real Muckers. 

When I asked them about their undefeated season despite so many obstacles, they said, “There was no way we were going to lose.” 

I knew I had to take hold of the story and do the same. So I left sports television and wrote the novel, Muckers, inspired by the courage of that 1950 team. 

My life took different turns, but I kept writing Muckers during yearly trips to Jerome. I wrote chapters sitting on the ledge of the segregated swimming pool, drained long ago, and in the old high school and the rock football field. 

Fifteen years later, I can tell the real Muckers that their story hasn’t been forgotten. That I wrote a novel inspired by their heroic season, and that I was meant to find that box of letters.

About Sandra Neil Wallace 

For fifteen years, Sandra Neil Wallace was a news anchor and ESPN sportscaster before writing novels. After the publication of her first novel Little Joe, she was named an outstanding newcomer to the children’s literature scene by the Horn Book. Muckers is her first historical fiction novel. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, author Rich Wallace, and their shelter dog, Lucy. Visit Sandra at www.sandraneilwallace.com and on Facebook and Twitter.

New Releases 11/5/13

Some of the new titles hitting shelves this week are:

Limit by Frank Schatzing

The Dinosaur Feather by S.J. Gazan

The Boleyn Deceit by Laura Andersen

The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan

Havisham by Ronald Frame

Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield

Masks by E.C. Blake

Rituals by Mary Anna Evans

Rustication by Charles Palliser

The Thrill of the Haunt by E.J. Copperman

The Good Boy by Theresa Schwegel

The Whole World by Kristina Riggle

The Truth About You by Susan Lewis

The Minor Adjustments Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

Through the Evil Days by Julia Spencer Fleming

Death of a Nightingale by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnette Friis

No Man's Nightingale by Ruth Rendell

Cracked by Eliza Crewe

The Trap by Andrew Fukuda

Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger

Revelations by J.A. Souders

Broken by CJ Lyons

The Lair by Emily McKay

Champion by Marie Lu

The In-Between by Barbara Stewart

The Creature Department by Robert Paul Westin and Framestore

New on DVD:
As I Lay Dying

New reviews at Bookbitch.com:
Mage's Blood by David Hair

Pre Pub Book Buzz: The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris

Ok, readers, this one might be a LEETLE far out (for us here in the States) but I really can't wait! So far I'm only seeing a UK release date of Feb 20, 2014 from Gollancz. I'm sure at some point we'll have it here in the US but I've no idea when. (I may have to order mine overseas come Feb.)

I very much enjoy Joanne Harris's work. Ever since my introduction to her with Five Quarters of the Orange, she's been on my must have list. This includes her excellent teen release, Runemarks, which - like Gospel of Loki - concerns Norse mythology. Though in this case Gospel of Loki does appear to be an adult title and I'm assuming no linked to Runemarks in any way other than the source material.

Here's a bit about The Gospel of Loki from the Goodreads entry:

The novel is a brilliant first-person narrative of the rise and fall of the Norse gods - retold from the point of view of the world's ultimate trickster, Loki. It tells the story of Loki's recruitment from the underworld of Chaos, his many exploits on behalf of his one-eyed master, Odin, through to his eventual betrayal of the gods and the fall of Asgard itself. Using her life-long passion for the Norse myths, Joanne Harris has created a vibrant and powerful fantasy novel.

Loki, that’s me.

Loki, the Light-Bringer, the misunderstood, the elusive, the handsome and modest hero of this particular tissue of lies. Take it with a pinch of salt, but it’s at least as true as the official version, and, dare I say it, more entertaining.

So far, history, such as it is, has cast me in a rather unflattering role.

Now it’s my turn to take the stage.

With his notorious reputation for trickery and deception, and an ability to cause as many problems as he solves, Loki is a Norse god like no other. Demon-born, he is viewed with deepest suspicion by his fellow gods who will never accept him as one of their own and for this he vows to take his revenge. 

From his recruitment by Odin from the realm of Chaos, through his years as the go-to man of Asgard, to his fall from grace in the build-up to Ragnarok, this is the unofficial history of the world’s ultimate trickster.

Honestly, any new title from Joanne Harris would be featured here but the fact that this one is an adult fantasy makes it that much higher on my must have list!

To See or Not to See: About Time

Ok, I'm going to head this up and go ahead and say this is a 100% highly recommended definite see in my opinion. Technically the movie is in limited release this Friday and everywhere next week. Mike and I were lucky enough to get early screening tickets *for free* (I have no idea how or why, but we did and I was THRILLED). So we actually saw this a couple of weeks ago. I loved it, you guys, and so did hubs!

The year he turns 21, Tim learns that the men in his family have a particularly interesting ability: they can travel in time. Only into the past and only in their own lifetime, but even still the possibilities are endless. Tim's first use of it is to rectify the previous night's New Year's Eve party where he spurned a young lady at the toll of midnight and subsequently felt awful about it. That fixed, he decides his power will be used to help him find love. And so it does, but every change he makes affects something else, complicating Tim's life a little further. 

The movie stars Domhnall Gleeson (you may recognize him from Harry Potter) in the lead role as Tim and Rachel McAdams as his love interest Mary. Bill Nighy plays Tim's dad, Lindsay Duncan is Tim's mom, and Lydia Wilson (who is new to me but we'll hopefully see in Dirk Gently - if it comes to TV in the States) plays Tim's sister. 

About Time is the perfect rom com! First and foremost, it's British so it's full of their particularly fabulous blend of funny and romantic. Normally I would never consider dragging hubs out to see a romantic movie unless it happens to be something like Bridesmaids (where the romance element is second to the raunchy comedy). Though I do make him watch both Bridget Jones' Diary and Love Actually just about every Christmas. Coincidentally About Time is directed by Richard Curtis, the same director as Love Actually so I didn't feel so guilty about taking Mike.

And as I said, he really did enjoy it. He says he's not actually disliked anything with Bill Nighy, so that was a plus in About Time's favor from the start. Other comic relief comes from Tom Hollander who plays Harry, a disgruntled playwright, and Tim's various friends.

The movie is much more than a simple boy meets girl love story, though, in that Tim's got some other family things to face down as well. But while I certainly teared up at the end, the movie has way more heartfelt and funny moments than downright sad ones. Cast, script, and direction are all really fantastic. I have no complaints, only praise to give to this movie.

Amidst the many, many movies Mike and I have seen this year, About Time is tied up with The Way, Way Back as far as best I've seen in 2013! Go see it!

My Own Miraculous by Joshilyn Jackson

Morning, readers! Later this month I'll be part of the TLC blog tour for Joshilyn Jackson's latest release, Someone Else's Love Story. I'd actually not read her before now but folks always talk about her work so glowingly that I just had to get on board. So when I came across her new short, My Own Miraculous, and got a taste of her work I just had to share!

Shandi was just seventeen when she found out she was pregnant. Now, just a few short years later, she's still learning to be a mom to her son Natty. With the support of her own mother and her best friend Walcott, things have worked out ok and Shandi even has plans for a college degree. But a chance encounter at the local blood drive causes her to have to reevaluate everything she thought she knew about being a parent.

Shandi and Natty are characters in Someone Else's Love Story, so My Own Miraculous served not only as an introduction to Jackson's work for me but a taste of what's to come in Someone Else's Love Story. And readers, I can't wait to get to the book. Shandi, Natty, Walcott, and all of the others have already captured my heart completely!

It's clear from this tale that we'll all be in for a great ride with Someone Else's Love Story. Even if I hadn't already heard how wonderful Jackson's writing is and how quirky her characters are, I know now.

My Own Miraculous is out now in e format and on audible.com. A print edition will be available on November 12 and Someone Else's Love Story is due to hit shelves on November 19.