Mar 15, 2024

Sunday Salon: French Windows and The Venus of Salo

 In the Mailbox


French Windows by Antoine Laurain, publication June 25, 2024 by Gallic Books
Source: ARC from Meryl Zegarek Public Relations, Inc. 

I was intrigued by the stories in French Windows, written by Nathalia about her neighbors in the building across the street. She is a photographer who says she witnessed a murder there, in the style of the well known suspense movie, Rear Window. But her first story, told to her therapist, made me wonder how she could know so much just from observing from her window? I'll have to finish the novel and read the other four stories about her neighbors to get the full picture.

Description:

Antoine Laurain’s new novel of intrigue, murder and neighbourly curiosity ....  Nathalia, a young photographer, has been seeing a therapist. Having accidentally photographed a murder, she finds that she can no longer do her job.  Instead, Doctor Faber suggests that she write about the neighbours she idly observes in the building across the street. 

But as these written snapshots become increasingly detailed, he starts to wonder how she can possibly know so much about them. With each session, Doctor Faber and his mysterious patient will get closer and closer to the truth. 

 Bestselling author Antoine Laurain serves up a dose of suspense and intrigue in Rear Window fashion, with a Parisian heart



Antoine Laurain (born 1972) is a French author. He previously worked as a screenwriter and antiques dealer.
His works have been translated into 14 languages and partly made into films. 











by Ben Pastor
June 25, 2024 
Source: Bitter Lemon Press


 Description: 
October 1944, in the Republic of Salò, a German puppet state in the north of Italy and the last fascist stronghold in the country. Transferred to the town of Salò on Lake Garda, Wehrmacht colonel Martin Bora must investigate the theft of a precious painting of Venus by Titian. While Bora’s inquiry proceeds among many difficulties, discovering three dead bodies throws an even more sinister light on the scene.

Caught in an unforeseeable web of events, hounded by the Gestapo (for years at his heels on the charge of anti-Nazi activities), hopelessly in love with an enigmatic, real-flesh “Venus,” Bora must resort to all his courage and ability – not only to solve the mystery and expose the perpetrator, but also, in a breathtaking crescendo, to try to save himself from the firing squad, and secure an unlikely way out...

These are my new books this weekWhat are you reading/watching this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated BookreviewerAlso, It's Monday: What Are You Readingand Sunday SalonStacking the ShelvesMailbox Monday


Mar 11, 2024

Nature Images in Poetry: Guest Post by Anique Sara Taylor, author of Civil Twilight

 Poetic Book Tours 


 Anique Sara Taylor’s chapbook Civil Twilight is the winner of the 2022 Blue Light Poetry Prize.


Guest Post

The Nature of Nature in Poetry 

When we think of Naturein poetry, we often mean the beauty that nurtures us. The outer part of the universe that mirrors our own inner world and provides us with endless, glowing metaphors. 

I grew up beside a natural swamp that bordered hundreds of acres of wild forest, a lake with small islands and a waterfall. It wasnt ours, but we were free to roam there for hours in all seasons. I knew many of the ancient trees and could climb huge boulders left by glaciers, inhale green fragrances of the pine forest, and scurry down the sharp side of cliffs. Id lie down by the brook, soothed by its sounds. These were my favorite places where I was safe, and I could sing at the lake’s edge until I was calm again. 

I wondered about the other tribes that had lived there before us, what their lives had been like. In so many ways, these lands sustained me. But I also understood the lakes thin ice, the black water with dark weeds just below the surface that could entangle us and pull us under. How one could fall in if we skated too close to the edge of moving water. Of woods so deep that if something happened, if we fell and couldnt move, if night set in, we might never be found.         

It was years later that they fashioned a name for the strange childhood symptoms that had plagued me from the onset of double digits into adulthood. The undiagnosable symptoms that followed me as closely as a shadow through ensuing decades. I learned about the microscopic universes inside me, creatures that spun bacteria into a mutiny of cells gone wrong chronic Lyme Disease.         

As beauty and challenge entwine in our world, I try to reflect it in my poems. Both the gifts and the challenges of nature. 

Poetic Tools Often Used in Relation to Nature: 

Metaphor: 

Poetry can often synthesize deep experience because of its non-linear form. Metaphor is one of its interesting tools. Without explaining, it links two things that are usually unrelated. This can open up unexpected layers of sensation or insight and bring about new possibilities. This can spark surprise or awaken, strengthen or animate life in a poem.

 Imagery: 

Imagery allows us, in a few almost picture-like words, to invoke vivid sensations. Visual, yes, but it can also call upon any of the senses. Plus, movement, emotion, and physical response. A tool of unfolding, it can trigger imagination to generate vibrancy. Minute details are often described. Nature imagery can parallel human experience and in that way intensify meaning. 

Personification: 

Although also a form of metaphor, personification is when we attribute human characteristics to something non-human. This assignment of our emotions, feelings, behaviors to the non-human can help frame an imaginative link between our own attributes and those of nature, to envision a more complex intimacy between us.

 A Note, the Speaker: 

People often tend to believe the I” in poetry is the writer, implying that the poem is nonfiction. But the I” in a poem can be the writer, or it can be the point of view of almost any entity the writer imagines. Therefore, in discussing a poem, the I” in a poem is often referred to as the speaker. 

Below are examples of ways Ive tried to work with metaphor, imagery and personification to create something more interesting and intimate without explaining it outright, as one would do in an essay. To leave a new brocade of word, thought and image, open and spinning. 

Excerpts

 Civil Twilight

Blue Light Press

To describe the feeling of emotional emptiness that can be left by the loss of a loved one, by referring to stars:                   

Now only the brightest stars will ever be enough.

 Using bird attributes to render the speaker helpless, as she tries to steady herself through daily-life anxiety: 

Even lying featherless

in dusk, I carve each day with care.

 In asking Aprils first-flower shoots if they question the meaning of their existence, as humans tend to do:

                                      “…Swollen pop of hollow reed, blushing

bones brake naked through bedrock crust,

do they wonder what they came here for?

 • Illness is also part of nature. How it circles inside us, not unlike planets in the outer universe.

                              Invisible illness’ eccentric orbits buried inside marrow

 Even in graceful language, a bird falling can be the harbinger of human damage to Earth. Where metaphor allows us to talk about tragedy in a subtle way, and not hammer the reader with it directly. 

A cardinal plummets to the ground

like fallen fire, reinventing the darkness.

 The speaker refers to self with bird-parts, reflecting that even with difficulties, she moves forward with whatever she has, the way she is:

Clutching bundled words, I stumble

forward, neck frozen between beak & wing.

 The glory of eagles mating is straight forward here, but the metaphor is in calling their ritual a waltz. Waltz, a symbol of coupled grace, beauty in movement. A nod toward everything in the universe being connected. 

Eagles grasp claws swirling

endlessly downward. Can you hear the waltz? 

 Poetry and Our Own Nature Through the Prism of Nature

 I am thankful for the gifts of poetry that split apart linear thought. I am thankful for poetrys relationship with nature that uses imagery, personification and metaphors

to enrich and enable the poem to enter a complicated experience with fewer words. How this can reflect cognitive dissonance, magically juxtaposing the fierce and the beautiful, the sinister and the ecstatic, at the same time. The macrocosm and the microcosm. And our place within it. Exquisite beauty, torment, death, nature-driven illness beside the geometric perfection of pattern repeats. (For a treat, look up the Fibonacci sequence in nature.) 

And what may be the strangest thing about this essay is that the more we look to nature to immerse ourselves in what is outside of us, the more it refers to us as an integral part of nature. Though we consider people to be separate entities in the world, examining our atoms, cells, tissue, even our motion through time, separation becomes more of an illusion. 

As you continue through your daily life, I hope you will experience our world with an unfolding awareness of how nature can be more than sun, moon, spring and flowers. 

I close with a devotion to Edna St. Vincent Millay who more than a hundred years ago in her poem “Gods World”, expresses an almost unbearable beauty: 

“Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.”


Thanks to the author for her guest post.

Anique Sara Taylor’s book Civil Twilight is Blue Light Poetry Prize 2022.  FacebookXInstagramLinkedIn, and her blogher newsletter.

Mar 9, 2024

Sunday Salon: Historical Drama; Social Influencers in Novel and Kdrama

 Watching on TV

I watched all 16 episodes of this historical drama and romance set in the Joseon era in Korea.The actor playing the King, Jo Jung Suk, is in contention in Korea for a best actor award this year, and I can see why. 

From The Economic Times, English edition: 

Captivating The King: Unraveling the intricacies of Netflix's historical K-drama release schedule
Netflix's latest historical K-drama, "Captivating The King," has gripped audiences with its tale of war, revenge, and love set in the Joseon era. As viewers delve into the intricate political landscape, where a game of baduk (the board game of Go) becomes a strategic tool....

Exploring the Plot:

"Captivating The King" unfolds against the backdrop of the Joseon era, weaving a captivating narrative around Prince Jinhan, portrayed by Jo Jung-suk, and the enigmatic baduk player Kang Hee-soo, played by Shin Se-kyung. 
The strategic game of baduk/Go transforms into a political maneuver as Prince Jinhan employs it to secure the release of hostages. Simultaneously, Hee-soo, disguised as a man, weaves her way into the prince's life, driven by a larger agenda of revenge. (from The Economic Times).

You Will Never Be Me by Jesse Q. Sutanto ( August 2024) put me in mind of Celebrity, (June 2023) the influencer Korean drama on Netflix I just finished. 

                                                Promotional poster (Wikipedia)
In 
Celebrity, (see trailer) Seo A-ri achieves social media stardom overnight, but deadly consequences await in this glitzy, glamorous world of influencers. (with subtitles and dubbed on Netflix). The influencer plot in both Kdrama and the new book seem similar.

 Now reading


River East, River West  by Aube Rey Lescure

Publication: January 9, 2024; William Morrow, NetGalley.  Genre: literary fiction, historical fiction, China

Description:

Set against the backdrop of developing modern China, this mesmerizing literary debut is part coming-of-age tale, part family and social drama, as it follows two generations searching for belonging and opportunity in a rapidly changing world.

In a stunning reversal of the east-to-west immigrant narrative and set against China’s political history and economic rise, River East, River West is an intimate family drama and a sharp social novel. Alternating between Alva and Lu Fang’s points of view, this is a profoundly moving exploration of race and class, cultural identity and belonging, and the often-false promise of the American Dream. (publisher)

My tv watching has eaten significantly into my book reading! But I'm having fun watching drama series. Don't know when my infatuation with Kdrama will come to a close....Watch this space...

What are you reading/watching this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated BookreviewerAlso, It's Monday: What Are You Readingand Sunday SalonStacking the ShelvesMailbox Monday









Mar 2, 2024

You Will Never Be Me by Jesse Q. Sutanto, and Talking to Strangers by Fiona Barton: Sunday Salon

 


You Will Never Be Me by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Publication: August 20, 2024; Berkley
Genre: women's fiction, thriller, suspense, adult contemporary fiction

I love Jesse Q. Sutanto's books, from her romantic comedies to her newest books, contemporary thrillers.

In You Will Never Be Me, two best friends, Meredith and Ashley, get into social influencing, and though one helped the other to gain followers at the beginning, both soon become fierce competitors, always comparing the number of followers they gain. They both need the money from their social media work, as Ashley's husband makes a meager salary, and Meredith is a single mom.

I liked the plot direction that takes the reader on a roller coaster ride between the two former friends, and how one sabotages the other. I also think the book is a spoof on the abnormal lengths social influencers will go to get fame and fortune through their followers. The book also shows the negatives to this kind of lifestyle, when it becomes extreme, and how it could affect families and readers alike.

The suspense becomes more intense as Meredith and Ashley compete fiercely, and after one too many sabotages, one of them disappears. At the end, I found myself rooting for one of them. This is fiction, after all, a mystery thriller, but one with a unique way of bringing a message about influencers and social media.

See also, a Kdrama, Celebrity, a thriller with a similar story of murderous influencers. 


My next read 


I've read The Widow and The Child and gave them high ratings, so I'm eager to get into the author's latest mystery thriller, Talking to Strangers, to be published August 15, 2024 by Berkley. 

Description: 
When the body of forty-four-year-old Karen Simmons is found abandoned in remote woodland, journalist Kiki Nunn is determined this will be the big break she so desperately needs...

While the police appear to be focusing on local suspects, Kiki sets out to write the definitive piece on one woman's fatal search for love. But she will soon learn that the search for truth can be just as deadly...

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated BookreviewerAlso, It's Monday: What Are You Readingand Sunday SalonStacking the ShelvesMailbox Monday

Feb 24, 2024

Sunday Salon: A Domestic Thriller, and K-Dramas

 Currently reading


Publication: May 7, 2024; Harper Perennial and Paperbacks, NetGalley

Genre: domestic thriller, romance


I'm enjoying this one as a lighter thriller/romance novel.

Description:

Bestselling romance author Sarina Bowen’s debut thriller, about one woman’s search for the truth after receiving a text from her deceased ex, Drew,  asking her to meet him under their special tree. Seeing Drew’s name pop up five years after his death is heart-stopping. Ariel’s gut says it can’t be real. But she goes to the tree anyway. She has to.

Nobody shows.... Only two things are clear: everything she was told five years ago is wrong, and someone is still lying to her. 

The truth has to be out there somewhere. To safeguard herself—and her son—she’ll have to find it before it finds her. And with it, the answer to what became of Drew. 


Watching TV

I started binge watching Korean dramas on NetFlix after seeing Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, a romance comedy series that takes place in a small seaside town in Korea between a new dentist and the hometown man who runs the village.  The cha-cha-cha title grabbed my attention. I found this online: 

Netflix photo

Wikipedia: Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha series was a commercial hit and became one of the highest-rated dramas in Korean cable television history.[10][11] It ranked first place during its entire run for eight weeks, and the last episode achieved 12.665% nationwide rating, with over 3.2 million views.[12] It also became one of Netflix's most-watched non-English television shows, and one of its longest-running hits as it spent 16 weeks in global top ten rankings.[13 (from Wikipedia)

I like the plots, characters, and the cultural information given by the dramas I've seen so far. Many of the shows have colorful, humorous characters to balance out any tragedies. And I am really impressed by the screen writing as well as the actors and screen production. I don't mind reading the subtitles although Netflix allows the English dubbed version also. I'm on my seventh drama, I think, and still going.....This means I've been reading fewer books!


What are you reading/watching these days? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated BookreviewerAlso, It's Monday: What Are You Readingand Sunday SalonStacking the ShelvesMailbox Monday

Sunday Salon: French Windows and The Venus of Salo

  In the Mailbox French Windows  by Antoine Laurain, publication June 25, 2024 by Gallic Books Source: ARC from Meryl Zegarek Public Relatio...