orthodoxmom

Today was rather stressful. First I was at the Liturgy at the chapel. It was rather nice, I got to see a Bible signed by St. Justin of Celije. I had a long talk with Branislav Zivkovic - he was feeling rather depressed and anxious over being sacked from St. Basil of Ostrog church. I rushed home, had a 5 minute nap, and then rushed to have a coffee with Nikola Radovanovic. We talked for a couple of hours, really had great time.

Another sunny day.... I think, just maybe, we might get to have spring this year, too? It's looking like it. Almost all of the snow is gone. I kind of wish I'd kept melting snow for the geese as long as I could, so that I'd have a full water barrel now that the snow is almost all gone. Soon, I'm going to have to start hauling water, at least until the next good rainfall, which of course I am not going to wish for.

I headed out to get water last night, but then I discovered that the snow that is left in the ditch which never got filled in uphill from my house is melting and leaving a puddle at the bottom of the ravine. It looked clean enough for goose water... I'm not sure it really is, but I did scoop out a couple buckets full last night--I was really not in the mood to haul water. I will see what the geese think of it tonight.

In an unforgiveable breech of goose mother manners, I simply let them keep their dirty bucket of water from yesterday this morning. Why do I give them fresh water every day, only for them to put dirt in it on purpose every day and make it brown? The bucket is full, they can simply put more dirt in the same water today, instead of starting fresh. Tonight, though, I'll give them glacier meltwater, and then I may have to resign myself to hauling water.

I finished my flower egg, and it turned out nice enough but not necessarily a favorite. It'll be an easy one to sell--pretty enough to be wanted, but not so pretty that I can't part with it. I'll try to remember to get a picture of it sometime.

I think I've figured out a new pattern with my Georgian lessons. My new lesson book starts each chapter with a dialogue, then lists the vocabulary words, then has a section on grammar after that. I was going in the same order, but this time around I realized I had it backwards--I should start by learning the unfamiliar vocabulary words individually, first, and then go on to the dialogue which uses them in sentences. I think that will work much better.

When I first started memorizing sentences, I didn't know anything about the grammar and all the words were new, so it was just a matter of memorizing the whole sentence by rote. I didn't really know what I was saying, in spite of having it memorized. Now, however, I actually already know the meaning of many of the words in these simple sentences, and I can tell which words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and etc. It makes it much easier to "remember" the sentences, since it isn't all remembering--I actually know what I am saying. By starting a new lesson by learning the few new vocabulary words, it makes it even easier. I think I'll easily be able to learn the sentences in the dialogue by the end of this month, which will bring me up to my 100 words for the month. So I'm staying right on track.

The learning words out of context certainly hasn't been a waste, though. In both of the first chapters I've actually already known most of the words in the vocabulary list, so instead of having to learn the whole list and then put it to use, I've only had to learn a few new words each time. It is, very slowly, working.

Okay enough of the Georgian obsession for today. What is the news....

Hmm... there isn't much.

There was a shooting here in Sutton the other day. My mom saw the police car when we were going home from book club. I heard the next day that it was a standoff/shoot-out with the police, and that the man didn't survive. :( I don't really know what it was all about, though.

I'm glad the bullets didn't come our way as we drove past his house.

• Fri, 12:18: RT @The_Pigeon: Pittsburgh! Mo Willems signing Sun. May 26 at 2pm; Comic Arts Fest! http://t.co/gWzsXa8b3U
• Fri, 12:20: RT @JewelStaite: They called me over the loud speaker at the airport and I said "Every heist he's gotta start yellin' my name." No one got …
• Fri, 12:24: RT @maureenjohnson: Let's all be WONDERFUL today! And if WONDERFUL is not within our grasp, let's be DIVINELY ADEQUATE.
• Fri, 12:47: Have I mentioned the stupidity of lexile numbers lately? Just in case I haven't: lexile numbers are stupid. Thank you.
• Fri, 13:42: CONCRETE EVIDENCE of why lexile scores are stupid: this picture book of the song "Old MacDonald" is coming up 3.4. 4TH MONTH OF 3RD GRADE!
• Fri, 13:43: What, "e-i-e-i-o" is going to throw a newer reader off? "What's that say? Eieio? What's THAT?" #lexilescoresarestupid
• Fri, 14:31: I really have to stop reading when people start gushing about Movie!Howl. I know, Studio Ghibli is wonderful, but THAT'S NOT HOWL!
• Fri, 14:31: Sorry, rather large pet peeve. Honestly, I would have loved the movie, too, if they'd MANAGED TO GET THE TITLE CHARACTER RIGHT.
• Fri, 15:07: You know, I could ramble on Twitter about movie!Howl for entirely too long, so I think I'll write a blog post now.
• Fri, 23:37: MOVIE VERSUS BOOK: My Howl Rant. http://t.co/i9Q2fXSV4b

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*AHEM* So I was about to go off on a fangirl rant on Twitter, when I realized it would be so much easier if I just wrote a blog post.

As we've discussed before, I'm not really SURE why I can accept some movie adaptations of books, and not others. It's not a matter of QUALITY-- as I said in that linked post, I enjoyed the Wrinkle In Time made-for-TV movie just fine even though it hardly did the book justice (or anything close), but the adaptation of Prisoner of Azkaban, widely regarded as the best of the Harry Potter movies (and sometimes as the ONLY good Harry Potter movie), made me grouchy just because it WASN'T RIGHT. It's not a matter of how closely it keeps to the book, either-- I'm not a stickler about that; in fact I thought the Hunger Games movie SHOULD have strayed a bit more from the book plot, and, aside from the lack of Faramir being swoony and romantic, every other change Peter Jackson made to the Lord of the Rings movies possibly made the story BETTER. I've gotten the basic impression, though, that it's the portrayal of the characters that makes-or-breaks an adaptation for me. I understand plot changes for the sake of a story arc, condensing a book into a movie-- but if you change the CHARACTERS then how can you say you're telling the same story at ALL? I mean, there ARE only, like, three different plots in the world or something, so the characters are what make the story what it IS.

I'm also not sure why I can speak calmly and balanced...ly about some adaptations, good or bad, but others compel me to SHOUT THE SAME POINTS OVER AND OVER. Well, I did figure out that my automatic "ARTHUR DENT WAS PERFECT!" outbursts every time somebody says the Hitchhikers Guide movie sucks are probably caused by the actor actually having been my Soul Mate all along (but I will say Marvin-the-Paranoid-Android in that was ABSOLUTELY ALL WRONG. THAT I can rant about. Don't you dare touch my Perfect-Arthur-Dent though). But I don't have any such excuse with Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle. And yet you cannot so much as mention it around me (you can't even PUT A COPY OF IT IN MY LINE OF SIGHT) without me shouting "THAT'S NOT HOWL!" at you.

What's funny is that otherwise it was a lovely movie. It was beautiful and psychedelic. The castle was better than I'd imagined it (except for Howl's room, which was Wrong, but I'm getting to that). I had no problem with the plot changes, even though some of them were major: the book is so complex that it only made SENSE they'd have to condense it, and it worked for me. Most importantly, they GOT SOPHIE RIGHT. Sophie, my beloved #3 Fictional Girl-Crush! I'd been worried about Sophie, afraid they'd turn her into a bland Typical Movie Heroine-- either too much of a wide-eyed innocent, or too kickass and invincible. But no, Sophie was just right, even if her (young) hair wasn't the strawberry blonde it was supposed to be.

I hadn't even THOUGHT to be worried about how they'd portray Howl. After all, he was SUCH a striking, utterly unique character, how could anyone NOT get him right?

Now look, I'm not a Howl fangirl. He's got loads of people who are in love with him, and Diana Wynne Jones said that people asked her ALL THE TIME if they could marry him, to which she always wanted to reply "WHY? He'd be AWFUL to live with!" (I still think the answer is, "Because what they don't realize is that it's NOT that they want to marry Howl, it's that they want to BE SOPHIE.") My crush is on Sophie, and as I'm a heterosexual female that's saying something. But I somehow can NOT get past movie-Howl's COMPLETE LACK OF HOWL-NESS.

First off, and this may seem entirely too nit-picky and superficial, but I was DREADFULLY disappointed that movie-Howl wasn't Welsh. It's PART OF WHO HE IS! I hear him in my head and he's got this melodramatic tenor Welsh voice, but the guy in the movie has got a generic deep tormented MOVIE-HERO voice instead. AND HERE'S THE IRONIC THING, which I only just found out the other month: he's played (in the English overdub, which is all I've seen) by Christian Bale, who as it turns out IS WELSH. WHY couldn't he have used his REAL voice? Instead he turned him into BATMAN!HOWL.

Which is also wrong. In the movie, instead of sneaking off to watch rugby and visit his Welsh family, Howl sneaks off to GO FLYING AROUND A BATTLE ZONE. Uh, Howl's most plot-affecting character trait IS THAT HE'S A HUGE COWARD. He slithers out of everything. He has to trick himself into doing what he doesn't want to do, and the LAST thing he's going to do without someone needling him about it is go anywhere near a war zone. It's VITAL to the heart of the story that Sophie inspires him to be brave, that he'll do things for her that he'd NEVER consider doing for anyone else.

And THAT'S important to the story, REALLY important, because in the book the romance is so subtle you could miss it UNTIL you realize that it's so seamlessly woven in and perfect and Howl and Sophie are THE GREATEST FICTIONAL COUPLE OF ALL TIME... or, they're up there, at any rate. They FIT. They bring out the best in each other. They also bring out the worst in each other, but the best wouldn't have happened without each other, either. They have a true RELATIONSHIP, not the kind of shallow "the main boy and main girl character of this story are IN LOVE because they're both the main characters AND I SAY SO" thing that far too many stories show. And in the movie's misguided effort to make Howl into a more conventional HEROIC HERO, they destroyed that perfectly orchestrated relationship and turned it INTO one of those shallow "because they're the main characters and I SAY SO" things.

It's like an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice where Mr. Darcy's a drunken playboy party animal. It ceases to make sense.

Perhaps my disappointment wouldn't be SO pervasive if I hadn't watched the special features. One of my favorite things to look for in special features for shows based on books are the details of the adaptation process-- why did the screenwriters make the choices they did in adapting? Why change this, why keep that, what were they most passionate about showing? (To be honest, storytelling details are one of my favorite parts of NON-book-adaptation special features, too). And there was NOTHING about Diana Wynne Jones. It was as if all the people working on the movie thought whats-his-face came up with this whole thing on his own-- it was all from HIS imagination, not hers. And THAT offended me most of all. Do they not even REALIZE the awesomeness that is Diana Wynne Jones?

I know lots of people who love both the book and the movie, and they all say that they just see the two as Two Separate Entities, and don't compare them. Which is perfectly sensible! In fact that's exactly how I feel about Peter Jackson's Hobbit movie(s)-- I hear people say "that is NOT an adaptation of THE BOOK," and I'm like, "yeah, so? It really isn't meant to be. It's a dramatization of stuff happening in Middle Earth that uses the story of The Hobbit as a framing device." Notice, here, that I'm not even reflexively shouting "BILBO BAGGINS* WAS PERFECT!" even though obviously he was-- this is one of those movies I can speak rationally about. So WHY? WHY can I not be sensible about Howl's Moving Castle? Why am I unable to forgive what is otherwise a really nice movie for this ONE FATAL FLAW? It's a really HUGE Fatal Flaw, is all.

I'm starting to develop a theory I NEVER would have thought I'd espouse-- maybe it IS better to see a movie before reading its book. Because people who saw the movie first don't have this problem, and when they read the book, WOW, so much more awesome to discover! A movie can peak your interest, and then the book fills in the blanks and is AWESOME. Whereas when you read the book first, you go into the movie with PRECONCEPTIONS, and then you're likely to be disappointed. There are some exceptions: I think it's a mistake to watch the Holes movie first because then you know all the plot twists and you don't get the elation of watching them all unfold in the book for the first time-- the movie just doesn't have the same "OHHH!" effect, even if it will spoil you for the book. And obviously, it's HARD for me to NOT read a book first because usually I read books before they're even OPTIONED for movies. But I do wonder if doing HOWL the other way around would have completely changed my opinion. I may have still decided Book-Howl is a way more interesting character than Movie-Howl, but the movie wouldn't have that stigma of disappointment tied to it, so I wouldn't feel compelled to CORRECT everyone every time they bring it up.

So, I'm sorry I'm so hard-nosed about this movie. I really don't understand quite why I can't get over it. But, there it is, I've got it out of my system, so maybe I'll feel compelled to shout about it less.

---
*Completely unrelated: how does my spellchecker recognize "Bilbo" but not "Baggins"? Does anyone have any idea what might have possessed the spellchecker programmers to include one without the other? This is going to bug me all night.

I think I worked out the Incarnation this morning. I didn't know that I had been working on it, but apparently I was.

I'm sometimes frustrated that people reject Christianity when I can see that the Christianity that they reject isn't really Christianity at all--it is an imaginary version of Christianity which they picture the way they do partly out of misunderstanding, and partly out of bad experiences with religion, but also, sometimes, maybe, partly just because they want to identify Christianity in a way that they can easily reject. You can't easily budge someone's mind from what they want to believe, no matter what you say. They just take it and fit it into the image they already have, which they have already rejected, and that is that.

I think that some atheists have an idea of Christianity like this:

There is an imaginary man in the sky who passes down arbitrary rules to the "priests" who pass them on to the populace, who receive them in terror lest they be damned, and they, to whatever degree they believe in the man in the sky and his powers, obey the "priests" in hope that someday when they die they will be rewarded rather than punished.

There are some priests (even in the orthodox church) who subscribe to the same version of Christianity that the atheist do--the only difference being that they insist that God is not an imaginary man, but that He is real. I do agree with them on the reality of God, but they seem to leave the structure of religion that the atheist pictures intact otherwise--still thinking of it in the up and down position with God on the top and themselves in the middle controlling the people below with either fear of damnation or promises of salvation which come from God through them.

I started out trying to figure out how to make someone with that mindset understand what Christianity is to me, in real life, in practice (a goal which I fail at so miserably that I'm sure no one can tell I'm even trying). I had to sort out first how I really experience it.

I pictured myself drawing a diagram of an atheist's vision of the church on a board somewhere, and then tried to picture what I would draw in contrast--the way that seems real to me.

It would have to be a little line at the bottom of the board, going from left to right without much up and down. I would picture myself as a person, small at the beginning, and rather broken, with needs and wants and drives that I don't always understand, and circumstances I don't really like. I live life, and once while I was living life minding my own business and not really looking for anything, I happened to read and hear things from the bible.

I started thinking about those things, and right from the first, I saw there was a lot of good there. The more I read and thought about it, in small increments I saw more and more just how good and true it is. I want to try the things as I understand them--or maybe a little before I understand them--and when I do manage to put some little bit of right practices, or right attitudes, or right thinking, or right feeling into my life the way it is described in the bible, life works a little better.

I'm forever struggling and often lose one day what I gained the last, but I still keep going on, from beginning to end, left to right, with the hope, of course, that it will end well and in the right place.

The ending well is important, and I'm not without a certain amount of fear of what if it doesn't end well, but still, we have the hope that if we keep on as best we can, trusting in Christ, correcting our course as we notice when we need to, that it will end well in the end. We're counting on it, in fact.

But if you start with that with someone who thinks you're nuts for thinking you'll get some reward from the man in the sky in the end if you're good, they automatically go right back to the up-and-down image of god with power on top and people who are victims on the bottom and priests in the middle, some of whom mean well, others who are just cashing in on the fears of the people.

You have to stick with the small, humble, day to day journey image of discovering God, rather than the up and down one.

That is when I realized that what I was thinking about was, in fact, the Incarnation: God, becoming human, being born as a little baby; starting small and growing along in the way, day by day, facing human struggles with the resources we as humans have, but with the wisdom of God guiding Him, and progressing all on one level, which is the level of human life. Jesus did just what we do, and by doing that, He makes it so that instead of looking up to find God we just have to look a tad bit to the right, from wherever we happen to be, to see Him on the way with us.

And so that is what the Incarnation is all about. It is God being small and present, all along the way, just beside us instead of off in the ether somewhere. Once you start living it that way, it really does work. It just has to start small.

The Incarnation doesn't stay small, though. It is also simultaneously and magnificently huge--as huge as the cosmos and even bigger, and as intricate as all the connections between everything in the universe. Each being, and thought, and purpose is all tied in with all the others one way or another, and each tiny connection is, itself, in some way, as large as the whole. As long as you start from the small and humble, you can then picture it all as glorious and large as you can see, going up and down; being vertical and rising and taking us with it. It is an up and down sort of thing, and there are things for the priests to do, but it is totally different than the simple little power based diagram that an atheist might picture. The real up and down motion of being in Christ, I haven't quite yet figured out how to draw.

Unfortunately, I also haven't figured out how to stop myself from buying a cookie at the gas station on the way home, either; though I do have the expectation that with Christ I ought to be able to do these small, humble, little things better that would make for growth and progress in my own journey along the Way.

It seems that applied theology is my weak point.

There are a couple of tropes that have long bothered me--not necessarily in each instance of their use, but I wish those uses were less frequent. One is the character whose unrequited love persists for decades; the character forgoes all other chances at happiness and clings to the love that can never be. Now, this story line can be done well, and it has been ... but in real life more often than not, people get over it. Even if they carry a small torch somewhere in the backs of their minds for a lost love, they still find new relationships and happiness. As my friend Kelly Fineman has pointed out, Jane Austen knew this--her Rakes who Didn't Get the Girl did not pine away for the heroines forever. Mostly, they married others and had lives of their own. I find the unrequited love especially annoying when it's a minor character who seems to exist solely for the purpose of having a futile crush on the main character (and sometimes, to cheer on the main character's successful union with the main love interest).

The other pattern I dislike is the one where only the main couple in a story gets to have a love life, and all the minor characters are window dressing with no romances of their own. One reason I liked the TV show The Office was that the secondary characters, like Phyllis and Erin and Angela and Oscar, got to have their own love lives. (Although it bothered me that Toby ended up falling into the other trope, with an endless unrequited crush on Pam.) The rounded secondary characters in that show delighted me, and I've always wanted to recommend it to writers for that reason (and now the show is ending. But hey, it lives on in syndication.)

In reality, we're all the stars of our own dramas, and not likely to sacrifice our love and all our hopes and dreams to the interests of some other "main character." In our own minds, we're the main characters. Every side character in a story is the main character of his own life, and his actions should happen accordingly. If he helps or hinders the story's main character, it should be because his own interests happen to intersect (or conflict) with the main character's interests.

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Courtesy of the creek walk near the library...on a beautiful spring day. :) Happy Memorial Day weekend all! (Any relaxing and/or fun plans?)

Originally published at Kimberly Sabatini. You can comment here or there.

Hello Friday! What took you so long to get here??? Even though this week seemed endless, with very little sleep, it also simultaneously sped by at the speed of light. Yup. That’s exactly how it happened. Trust me. I’m feeling the need to recap, mash things up and write in bullets today. It may be the lack of sleep thing. Just go with it.

*Don’t forget you still have time to support a great film…PROMISE LAND…and earn yourself one of five signed copies of TOUCHING THE SURFACE or a 10 page ms critique from me. GO HERE!!!!

*The winner of the caption contest is….

 

At 11:02 am A.N.Remtulla said:

Your mouse? I eated it.

I’m still chuckling about that one. <3 Beans loves a good mousey. Reeces on the other hand loves a good hair elastic. Cat diversity.

*I’ll be at BEA on Friday May 31st!!!! I’ll be having lunch with my spectacular agent and hunting down ARCs with my roomie from last year, Lisa Lueddecke. <3 It’s our friendship’s one year anniversary!!! I’m also hoping to finally see Rachel Simmons in person. We just miss each other every where we go. LOL! I’m also going to miss my girl, Grace Smith who made me smile every time I saw her last year. Hoping to see a bunch of people who I connected with last year and of course make some new face to face friends. If you see me, don’t let me pass you by–I’m a little bit of a spaz when it comes to remembering names of cyber friends and then attaching them to real live people. HELP ME OUT!!!!

*On June 2nd I’ll be participating in the Chronogram Kids & Family Fun Day. When I have more information on the author panel, I’ll let you know.

*Interesting observation: I’ve been cleaning and prepping the house for sale and I’ve been writing and revising. One of those things burns a lot more calories than the other. Damn.

*On June 12th I’ll be a guest speaker at the Orange County Librarians Dinner. I’m super stoked about that!!!! Watch out Orange County Librarians, I’m giddy with excitement about hanging with you.

*And I’ll leave you with my very entertaining Goodreads review of…

“I’ll be honest. My boys and I LOVE Roald Dahl books. All of them. Rather than review this book in my predictably gushy manner, I thought I would tell you a funny story that happened during our nightly reading sessions…

For those unfamiliar with the story, a grandmother is instructing her grandson on the multiple ways one might recognize a witch in disguise. While giving this info to my eight year old, he checked me over to confirm that I was indeed, not a witch. When he heard they wore itchy wigs, he checked my hair line. He investigated my toes and fingers for cat like claws and block like feet without toes.I thought I’d passed inspection, but a few days later, I caught him staring deeply into my eyes. (There had been a mention of a witches pupils being multicolored.) After a good hard look, he pronounced that I was definitely not a witch–I didn’t have multicolored NIPPLES. I corrected him and indicated that he meant PUPILS. His response was…whatever…it’s the same thing.

And there you have folks.”

I figure I’ve given you enough information for the comments without having to light your way. ROTFL! Have a fabulous holiday weekend. I WILL NOT BE BLOGGING ON MONDAY (Memorial Day) I’ll be picnicking and celebrating my 12yo’s graduation and move up to middle school. I’ll also be very busy being proud to be an American. May the force be with you!

I really shouldn't go to FB first, since sometimes I forget that I haven't posted anything yet, here.

Our fundraising/thankyou/invitation to our one year anniversary letter is almost done. One sentence I want to reword... but I'll do that later when we get another little tidbit of information to add to the letter. Tomorrow, likely, it will be done.

Tonight is book club night. I have read the book and am ready. It was a kid's book from the American Girl series about a native Alaskan girl. I had coincidentally just read an adult book also about an Alaskan girl, which included a rather disturbing rape scene. Somehow in my mind the two stories got tangled, and I was feeling a bit shocked that the American Girl book would have such things in it. I was preparing my prudish objections to share at book club, when I happened to gather up my other books to return. Seeing the cover reminded me that I had recently read not one, but two Alaskan girl stories. Thankfully I realized before the meeting that the American Girl book was, in truth, quite morally acceptable. I'd have been embarrassed if I'd been the only one to "remember" the rape scene in the book we read...

Oops. I just got my five minute warning that I'm almost out of time on the computer, so I'd best go close down all my open windows and log out of everything I don't want the computer to remember for the next person...

And now I will go right a check for the Friends of the Library, and then I will go get some drinking water and go home.

I was looking for inspirational egg pictures on FB, but I didn't find very many. I still haven't finished my pink flower egg... maybe I will go finish that and then I will post an inspirational picture on FB myself. And then start another one, maybe.

Someday maybe I'll start pricing empty ostrich eggs again, too... that last one bought my kitty's insulin for the next six months.

It's a misty, quiet morning (isn't that a song?), and I finished up all my school responsibilities (until the last day, which is one week from today) yesterday. I'm not sure what to do with my time now (ha). I have a list of organizational things which need to be done around the house (a loooong list). The kiddos and I talked about our plans for the summer (the 'schedule' we'll follow), and they're kind of excited, I think. Of course, part of the excitement is simply being on break -- yay!

During the week, I try to follow a similar schedule to the kiddos'. Since I'm having them spend time in reading/writing/math and music, I'll do the same. Maybe I'll actually learn something about the guitar this summer (or maybe I'll just play around on the piano, like I did last summer). I'll definitely use the reading/math/writing time to both read and write (well, let's hope). We'll also be outside for part of each day, playing tennis or basketball or going on a hike. Just like a school day, we stop around 3-ish, and they get 'free' time. ;) It worked pretty well last year, so I'm excited to spend time with them again.

We don't have any weekend plans (yet), though we are heading to Glenwood Springs to visit some caves (E is very excited -- her 'passion' project was on caves) and take a cool hike near there.

So, for any of you who also have charge of kiddos during the summer break, what types of things do you do to keep everyone busy and relatively happy? :)

Originally published at Kimberly Sabatini. You can comment here or there.

 

I fell in love with Katherine Longshore‘s writing with her debut novel GILT.

TARNISH by Viking Juvenile, is available on June 18th (Pre-order HERE) and it’s even better!

GOOD READS SUMMARY

Anne Boleyn is the odd girl out. Newly arrived to the court of King Henry VIII, everything about her seems wrong, from her clothes to her manners to her witty but sharp tongue. So when the dashing poet Thomas Wyatt offers to coach her on how to shine at court–and to convince the whole court they’re lovers–she accepts. Before long, Anne’s popularity has soared, and even the charismatic and irresistible king takes notice. More than popularity, Anne wants a voice–but she also wants love. What began as a game becomes high stakes as Anne finds herself forced to make an impossible choice between her heart’s desire and the chance to make history.

MY REVIEW

I LOVED Katherine Longshore’s debut novel, GILT, and you should get excited because TARNISH is even better! The one thing that kept running through my mind as I read TARNISH, was how hard it must have been to be a woman in a man’s world. To have very little, or no control of your own destiny. The thought is frightening. And yet, against the odds, Longshore gives us Anne Boleyn. She wants more. Anne has a spark and it makes me think of her as one part of a long, bright, string of lights. Anne is part of a chain of women through out history, that have helped to shape our role in the world today. But it’s not just Anne. Reading TARNISH made me realize that Longshore is another light–one that continues to guide our way.

Katherine Longshore takes history and mystery and weaves it into magic. Irresistible.

ABOUT KATHERINE LONGSHORE

(Taken Directly from Katherine Longshore’s Website)

I’ve always been a writer. I’ve been writing stories since I learned how to hold a pencil, asking my dad how to spell words while I worked under the bar stools at our kitchen counter.

In my teens, I fell in love with theater. I wanted to act. On the stage. I loved the hush of the crowd, the sticky odor of pancake makeup and the dusty resin of wax on the stage floor. I loved to be able to look out over the audience, the flash of glasses reflecting the stage lights. I loved to hear their laughter. But mostly, I loved losing myself in a character made of words. To make that character live and breathe. Now, that is magic.

I played bit parts (including that of a catatonic in a mental institution—my only line was a scream) and grew into bigger roles on the high school stage. I spent five summers spouting Shakespeare beneath stars and redwoods, hoping one day to play Rosalind in As You Like It.

I got an acting scholarship to a good university and went on to study acting and costume design for two years. But then I traveled on the Semester at Sea—a program on which students study on board a ship and travel around the world, visiting ten countries in one hundred days. It changed my life. I realized I didn’t want to spend my entire life in a windowless black box (a theater) but in the greater world.

So I created my own major, planning to use it to be a travel writer. I spent two months traveling Europe by train. I worked for nine months for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association on a research boat as a steward (making beds and washing dishes) in order to earn the money to backpack around the world. The ship went to Chile and the Antarctic, and even stopped at Easter Island—one of the most remote locations in the Pacific Ocean. After so long at sea, I needed time on land, so I packed up my sister and her puppy in a beaten-down station wagon and drove across North America.

And then I packed a single bag and flew to Africa. Alone. I spent five months in southern Africa—South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, but primarily Zimbabwe. I saw elephants and rhinos and kudu, was woken up from a dead sleep in a tent by the roar of lions and sat for hours on the banks of the Zambezi watching Victoria Falls. I spent the rest of that year in Southeast Asia—mostly eating coconut curry. After a few restless months at home, I traveled to Australia and New Zealand and completely depleted my travel fund.

And then I went to England, invited by an Englishman I’d met in Zimbabwe. I went for two weeks and stayed for six months—I left the day before my visa expired—and the next year I married him.

I lived in England for five years, in a little town in the county of Kent. I lived within spitting distance of Hever Castle—Anne Boleyn’s childhood home. Penshurst Place, once owned by the Duke of Buckingham and Knole House, once owned by King Henry VIII himself were also nearby. I grew to love the English countryside—so different from the forests and volcanic mountains of California. And I came to love English history—so much more violent and colorful and ancient than my own.

In the course of my life, I’ve worked as a dishwasher, lingerie seller, coffee barista, cake decorator, ship’s steward, video rental clerk, freelance journalist, travel agent, waitress, contracts manager, bookseller and Montessori preschool teacher.

But in writing for teens, I’ve finally found my calling.

And through writing, I am able to encompass all my loves. Becoming a character made of words. Exploring new worlds. And living history.

YOU CAN CHECK OUT MORE GREAT BOOKANISTAS REVIEWS HERE

 

Elana Johson is enthralled by CROWN OF EMBERS by Rae Carson

Stasia Ward Kehoe is mesmerized by GRAVE MERCY by Robin LaFevers

Christine Fonseca  adores DEAD SILENCE by Kimberly Derting

Corrine Jackson revels in ALONG FOR THE RIDE by Sara Dessen

Katy Upperman is charmed by QUINTANA OF CHARYN by Melina Marchetta

Kimberly Sabatini is touched by TARNISH by Katherine Longshore

Lenore Appelhans  loves The Originals by Cat Patrick

 

What amazing women do you think has/had the spark that’s helped to change the role of women in the world today?

And yesterday I told you that I had a BIG Anniversary coming up today. I’d like to wish my wonderful, amazing husband, John a Happy 20th Anniversary today.

I love you more today than yesterday. <3