The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

 ★★¾

GENRE: Historical Fiction
SUBJECT: natural resources, water for electric power
Setting: Niagara Falls,
CHARACTERS: Bess Heath, Tom Cole, Isabel Heath, Edward Atwell, Jesse Cole, Mrs Andrews
DATE READ: July 1 - July 5
NO. OF PAGES: 298
Off the Shelf (pre-2013)? Source?:   Yes, loan from Tina

PLOT:...............................................2.50
CHARACTERIZATION:..................2.50
TOPICS:...........................................3.00
STYLE:.............................................3.00
ORIGINALITY:..................................3.00
ADDICTIVENESS:..........................2.50
OWNERSHIP:..................................3.00
Threshold Quality.............................2.50
Average..............................................................2.75

What I was expecting to be an historical account of a time period when Niagara Falls was frozen and its effects on the neighboring population and economy turned out to be a somewhat lackluster turn of the century romance between a young woman from a well-to-do family hitting hard times and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks.  The title was extremely misleading especially since there was only one  small portion about a time when the river/falls froze.

I kept hoping that the story would pick up, but IMHO, it fell flat.

THERE IS A SEASON by Joan Chittister

★★★★★

GENRE: religious reflection
DATE READ: February 28 - February 28
NO. OF PAGES: 118
Off the Shelf (pre-2013)? Source?:   Yes, my bookshelves

 The Book of Ecclesiastes "invites us to see life as a mosaic made up of small pieces of human experience common to us all"  and there in lies the beauty of this book.  We as the reader are taken through the compartments of time - birth, death, loss, gain, love, hate, war, peace, sowing, reaping, and all that heaven holds for us. But do we ever really look at how we treat Time?

Time in our society is very often treated the same as money - being saved and counted, we even "invest"  and spend our time.
 
But this book reminds that we must look deeper into what we see.  For instance, the signs of the zodiac are all compared to a  fragment of ourselves - Ram for Aries is a reminder that just as with Abraham finding a ram to sacrifice in place of Isaac we must make sacrifices, Taurus the bull shows us we must set aside the "golden calfs" that we worship, Gemini the twins identifies a manner of seeing the personal inner self as well as the personal relationships that we are a part of.  Each of the zodiacal signs can find a non-pagan equivalent.  

"Before we face the world, we must first face ourselves"
But are we capable of looking that deep or are we afraid?  Fear governs are reactions whether we see it or not.  We fear a loss of status so we say nothing, we fear a loss of comfort, so we mindlessly turn away from effort that might risk greater accomplishments.  We fear criticism but we must reach inside our selves and give birth to a courage that we alone can muster.

Loss teaches us that we need to learn the lesson of how to begin again, learning how to be wrong,  teach our children to learn not shame and guilt and anger from losing but pride and goodness and resolve to try again. We also need to find the true lesson of love because "anything that degrades or demeans or destroys a person in any way is not love, no matter how loudly proclaimed."

"Love is about regal respect, royal reverence and total support. It needs to be taught rather than made the victim of a hormonal roulette."  How has our socieety today changed the definition of love? "Love resides in the santification of friendship" and yet how many marriages are based on friendship, how many can say my spouse is my best friend? The word 'friend' in our society has become so warped by social networks and texting  do we really have BFFs?

The book continues  on, reaching out and grabbing your soul because the words, that are almost poetry, explain what your thought processes and feelings are unable  to express.  When I started I thought this would be a book for those of the Christian faith, but the farther I went the more I realized that everyone would benefit from these words.

And so all purposes under heaven tells us that "in life we become that which we could not have been without our own particular recipe of cleansing pain and perfect joy in proper proportions."

My apologies for so many quotes, the author just said it so much better than I ever could.

All I can say is WOW!

Thanks Tina for recommending this book.  I'm keeping my copy too.

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

 ★★★★
Genre:  Biography
Subject: Egyptian history
Setting:  Alexandria, Rome
Main Characters:  Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Octavius
Series:  no
Dates Read:  September 18 - September 25
Number of pages: 432
Off the Shelf (pre-2012)? Source?:  no, loan from tutu
Category for 12 in 12 challenge: Speech Class, Lunch
OVERLAP

I will admit that when I started reading this book I was expecting a fictionalized life story, not realizing until I looked closer that this was a non-fiction biography by a Pulitzer Prize winning author.  So the opening made me  sit up and take notice with the statement "She was a Greek woman who's history fell to men's whose futures lay with Rome."  and "Cleopatra's Egypt produced no fine historians."

There were many facts that were conveyed about Cleopatra of which I was unaware.  She came to throne of Egypt with her younger brother when she was eighteen and he was ten during the last century before the birth of Christ.  He was her husband - intermarriage being the norm of the Ptolemys. "While the inbreeding was meant to stabilize the family, it had a paradoxical effect. Succession became a perennial crisis for the Ptolemys, who exacerbated the matter with poison and daggers. Intermarriage consolidated wealth and power but leant a new meaning to sibling rivalry."

At the same time as Cleopatra's accession, Pompey the Great of Rome was defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus, he sought refuge in Egypt, where he was assassinated.  Cleopatra had sided with Julius Caesar who was in Alexandria when she needed a little assistance to assume the power of the Egyptian throne. Caesar claimed her as an ally as well as a lover. While in Egypt, Caesar was exposed to the enormous amount of  knowledge that was stored in the library at Alexandria.  After his return to Rome, Cleopatra gave birth to his son, Caesarion.

"The personal inevitably trumps the political, and the erotic trumps all. We will remember that Cleopatra slept with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony long after we have forgotten what she accomplished in doing so, that she sustained a vast, rich, densely populated empire in its troubled twilight, in the name of a proud and cultivated dynasty."  She was an intelligent, well-educated, politically adept ruler beloved of her people.

The author managed to divulge enormous amount of facts while keeping this reader's interest throughout.  Highly recommended to those interested in ancient history.  Ancient Egypt may not have had any great historians, but this author filled in extremely well.

An Irish Country Doctor by

★★★½

Author: Patrick Taylor

Genre: Fiction

Subject: Small Irish village and new doctor

Setting: Ballybucklebo

Main Characters: Barry Laverty, Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, Kinky Kincaid

Series: no

Dates Read: July 2 - July 9

Number of pages: 448

Off the Shelf (pre-2012)? Source?: yes, audio stockpile

Category for 12 in 12 challenge: Geography Class

Dr. Barry Laverty has finished medical school and searching for a location to hang out his shingle, answers an advertisement and heads to a small village in Ulster called Ballybucklebo. There Dr. Laverty is confronted with the town doctor who is looking for an assistant. Dr. O'Reilly is a larger than life character who proceeds to teach the younger man the nuances of treating the village residents.

The amusing tales highlight the gentleness of the area - reverberating with the simple setting and the lack of the urban rush of most of our everyday lives. The characters and situations make you smile and often laugh - just a wonderful summer read. Highly recommended.

Shakespeare's Landlord by Charlaine Harris

★★★

Genre: Cozy Mystery

Subject: impulses, self-defense

Setting: Shakespeare, Arkansas

Main Characters: Lily Bard, Claude Friedrich, Marshall Sedaka

Series: yes, Lily Bard #1

Dates Read: June 2 - June 7

Number of pages: 224

Off the Shelf (pre-2012)? Source?: yes, audio stockpile

Category for 12 in 12 challenge: Geography Class

Lily Bard has a past. She's been living in Shakespeare, ARK for 3 years, working to clean the homes of many of the residents of this little town. Trouble threatens to expose what she's hiding when she witnesses a hooded figure wheeling a mysterious bundle into the nearby park. When she goes to investigate, she finds the area landlord dead.

This was a simple little cozy. More time was spent on Lily and her relationships with the town residents than maybe was necessary. The main characters and secondary characters do need a bit more development but since this is the first in the series, there's time. The mystery was light but entertaining. Hope for improvement in future installments.

A Killer Plot by Ellery Adams

★★★★

Genre: Cozy Mystery

Subject: writers, development

Setting: North Carolina

Main Characters: Olivia Limoges, Captain Haviland, Chief Rawlins George-Bradley Staunton,

Series: Yes, #1 Books by the Bay Mystery

Dates Read: February 26 - March 6

Number of pages: 311

Off the Shelf (pre-2012)? Source?: no, borrowed from Tutu

Category for 12 in 12 challenge: Home Ec, LT Rec

Olivia Limoges is as special as her last name suggests. Living on the Outer Banks, Olivia owns a 5* restaurant and is working on writing a book. Her constant companion Captain Haviland, a well-trained Poodle, seems almost human when the "conversations" between the two come to the fore front.

This first book in the Books by the Bay Mysteries has wonderful characters, numerous villains (non terribly bad except the murderer, of course)and with the small town feel that the secondary characters exude, it's a place you want to visit, so make your reservation at the Yellow Lady.

Well, maybe you need to be a bit careful because there's a murderer running around and he's a cut above the norm leaving HAIKUs at the scene of the crime. Could the murderer be part of Olivia's writers group? Well, the Chief of Police is a writer so maybe you'll be safe there.

There are all different angles in this murder mystery and Olivia is so multi-dimensional, I was enthralled through the entire book. Even at the end, there were still areas of Olivia that were left unexplored, so I am definitely looking forward to the next one. Too bad I have to give it back, it's a keeper!