Six Degrees of Separation - From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to the Twilight Series

This is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best, and I came across it on The Chocolate Lady's Book Review Blog last summer.  I thought this would be a great thing to do for my blog ahead challenge.  Also, this is supposed to be the first Saturday of the month thing, but I fit it into a little later in my month. Still thought it would be fun to do.

Anyway:  Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we start with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll:

So, I think at some point in my childhood I read part if not all of this book, but I of course know the story well either way, having seen the cartoon that I think Disney made when I was younger.  And of course, the very first book I thought of to jump to from this was:

Splintered by A.G. Howard is the first in one of my all time favorite series that is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, and actually made me want to go back and make sure I had read the original. Not that I ever found the time to do that.  The book that I jumped to next was:

Now The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde is not a retelling per se, but it did make me go back and read a book I'd never read because of how it featured in the story.  I'd never read Jane Eyre, until after this book.  This is also the time when I decided I needed to try to go back and start reading the classics that I felt I probably should have read when I was in school.  So of course, what book will I jump to next:

 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is one that I'd always heard a lot about, but had no idea exactly what the story was until the book above, and then I read it.  It was okay I guess, nothing that I got overly excited about.  Now, when we're talking about the classics I decided to read, I chose one that I'd heard was one of the greatest romances of all time:

I can honestly tell you that I pretty much HATED Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  They all deserved the way things ended for them because they did it to themselves!  But of course this book really inspired so many other books, and one of those is the book that inspired me with my second tattoo:

The characters in this book, After by Anna Todd, love, hate, re-read the book Wuthering Heights over and over.  I can forgive them that, since the relationship is so similar in a way of how they keep messing it up.  But I couldn't put this book down, this whole series really. Even though I knew it was a totally toxic relationship, I liked how the author ended up getting them together in the end, with some realistic things to be done.  And of course that book will lead into the book that inspired me to get my first tattoo.

Say what you will about Twilight and the whole series, but I loved it.  It sucked me in and I couldn't put it down.  It connected me and my 11 year younger sister in such a wonderful way that we both got tattoos based on the covers of the books.  It got so many of my middle school students at the time hooked on reading, and that to me is more of what makes it so awesome!  Now I guess there is a lot

So that was fun!  Interesting to see what I think of as each new book in the chain.  Have you read these?  Honestly, other than two of them, I read and reviewed these so long before I started blogging I can't share my review. 

If you want to participate, the link above will take you to the host's site and you should totally join in!

Review: Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley

First I'd like to thank Netgalley and Abrams Kids for allowing me to read an e-galley of this title.  I'm always intrigued with stories that are going to be historical fiction about authors.  I don't know a lot about the Brontes, although I have read both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.  At first I wasn't really pulled in, it didn't feel like there was that much about their lives in it.  But as I got reading, I did begin to see things that gave some hint into why their stories were the way they were.

The story is about Anne, Charlotte, Emily, and their brother Branwell.  The two oldest, Charlotte and Branwell, are the writers.  And when they write, somehow they are able to open up and go into the worlds they are writing.  In the past they would allow Anne and Emily to go with them.  But lately they have been more closed off about it.  Only Emily wants to go in, she kind of has a bit of a crush on one of their characters.  Charlotte is wanting to stop as she she keeps seeing that what she writes isn't actually ending up the way she wants it to be.  And, what they've given in order to go into the worlds, well she doesn't want to keep giving it up.  But their father, a clergy man, doesn't approve of her writing, so she sees a life of just being a governess ahead.  And it is not something she looks forward to.  When Anne and Emily convince Charlotte and Branwell to take them back in, it seems things may be getting out of hand.  Some of the characters, especially Rogue, the bad guy that Branwell has written, are beginning to do things on their own, not written for them. 

It turns out who they've made the deal with to go into the stories, doesn't want to let them stop.  And the characters in the story don't seem to want to let their authors end the story.  So all of it comes to a head when both Emily and Anne end up making a deal for something that they know will get their brother and sister to finally stop going.  Of course it won't be easy, and they must fight their way back out of the make-believe world of Verdopolis, and find their way back to the real world. 

Like I said at the beginning, I liked the connections that gave kind of reasons for why their stories may have been the way they were.  From the way the author of this book wrote the stories and the personalities, you definitely saw what could have led to the depressing parts of both of the stories I mentioned above.  And there was some look  into their personal lives, even if not as much as I'd have liked.  It was an okay read for someone wanting to read about the Brontes, and for a story about being able to go into the worlds of the books you read and interact with your favorite characters.

Review: The Rose Master by Valentina Cano

First, thanks to Netgalley and REUTS Publications for allowing me to read an egalley of this title.  The cover of course is so stunning, and the summary, Jane Eyre meets Beauty and the Beast, definitely drew me in.  I definitely got the Jane Eyre feeling, and I can see Beauty and the Beast.  But overall it was a different story than most of what I've read. 

The main character is Anne, she is a servant in a house in London, and has been since she was very young.  Her mother died when she was young, and her father is a servant in another household and she rarely sees him.  When she turns 17 a couple things happen. First, birds fall from the sky and die.  Then she is called in to the Lady of her household and told that she's being sent to work for Lord Grey at Rosewood Manor.  She's not happy about this, she'll have to leave the life she's known.  The people she thinks of as the closest she has to family.  But she must go, she has no choice, and her father has already given his permission.  So she travels to the manor which is in the country, a big difference from living in London.  The trip there is strange enough.  The lord of the house has sent a carriage to take her.  And the drive is very strange.  He will barely talk to her and when she tries to make conversation, he acts like she is doing something very offensive and tries to get away from her.  Once at the house she finds there are only a couple other servants, and no cook.  She's not taken to see the Lord right away, in fact she's told she may never see him, but she is expected to do her job.  Cleaning and dusting basically.  The other servants aren't that friendly either.  The house is kept extremely cold as well. 

Then, one night, she notices scratching and growling on her door in the middle of the night.  When she opens the door, there is nothing there.  Strange things happen around the house. She is almost drowned in a fountain, and once she does finally come in contact with Lord Grey, she finds that there is something going on, and maybe she is the only one that can help.  The supernatural part of the story isn't quite what you think at first. And it took almost halfway through to get an idea of what is going on.  But it kept me reading so that I could finally find out what was actually going on.  And when it all starts happening, there isn't a ton of time before it all comes to a head.  No long time spent trying to get it all learned and figured out. They have to do it when the time comes to fight the evil. 

It is definitely a good ending, a character shows up at the end that I had wondered about, and now was interested to see.  Not to mention that the romance isn't anything that could be considered insta-love, so that is nice.  A good read, kept my attention the whole way through.

A to Z April: E Reviews - Emily's Reasons Why Not by Carrie Gerlach/The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Today I have another Chick Lit book to share, as well as a book that is really hard to describe quite what it is, except for that I love the series.  Once again I'm going to share the synopsis from Goodreads along with a few sentences about why I like it.

First is Emily's Reasons Why Not which is another fun romantic story based on a single woman about to turn 30.  She still hasn't found the right guy and is feeling the crunch at her age.  Again this came in a time when I was early 30s and it just kind of resonated with how I felt at the time.  Here's the blurb from Goodreads:
Hollywood publicity pro extraordinaire Emily Sanders is hitting thirty –– hard –– and she wants the life her best friends seem to have: house, kids, perfect man. But finding true love isn't easy in L.A., where image is everything, and where every beauty pageant winner is an eight in a sea of nines, who all wish they were Julia Roberts.

For Emily, boyfriend material has always come in many strange shapes and incarnations –– beautiful young surfer god, aging music executive, boss's boss's boss, and a baseball player with two cell phones (one of which she does not have the number to).

With her confidence rapidly heading due south (like everything else on her body), it's time to find a smart, sharp–eyed psychotherapist to help her get past her surefire method for choosing the absolute worst man. With a little help, maybe Emily can learn to narrow her focus from looking for Mister Right to looking out for Mister Wrong. Because she knows that, eventually, "the one" comes for every woman ... even for a disarming, unflappable player in the mad, mad world of entertainment, with the edge of an insider and the heart of a dreamer.

I guess you might call The Eyre Affair a fantasy type of story.  It is set in a world where the books are something that people can go into, and characters can come out of.  As the title might have you guess, there is something going on in the book Jane Eyre.  And the main character works for the department of police that has to fix these types of things.  I'd never read Jane Eyre before this, so then I had to read it.  And I think this is probably what led me into trying to read more classics.  For awhile I would read a classic every 10 books. Here's the blurb from Goodreads:
Welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide.
And something really cool, I got to meet the author a few years ago when he came to one of the public libraries in Kansas City.  Here I am with him!

So those are my E reviews!  And don't forget while you're here to enter my month long giveaway below!!

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