Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities

• ISBN-13: 9781593081386
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 8/1/2004
• Series: Barnes & Noble Classics Series
• Pages: 448

 "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." With these famous words, Charles Dickens plunges the reader into one of history's most explosive eras - the French Revolution. From the storming of the Bastille to the relentless drop of the guillotine, Dickens vividly captures the terror and upheaval of that tumultuous period. At the center is the novel's hero, Sydney Carton, a lazy, alcoholic - but honorable - attorney who is in love with Lucie Manette, a beautiful woman brought up in London. When Lucie marries a man condemned to death for his ties to the aristocratic Evrémonde family, Carton makes the supreme sacrifice on the blood-stained streets of Paris.
 One of Dicken's most exciting novels, A Tale of Two Cities is a stirring classic of love, revenge, and resurrection.
 
This book. Just...ugh. This book
 I suppose I've become jaded, or just have read too many books, but there are very few these days that make me stop and go, "Wow. That was incredible." When I started reading this book, I knew it was going to be well-written, but I didn't think I would like it too much. First of all, it's depressing, we know that from the get-go, and normally books that don't make happy...well, don't make me happy.
 However, this book made me cry, made me hate humanity, and helped me find my faith in them all over again.
 The story centers around the Manette family, Dr. Manette and his daughter, Lucie. They are reunited after nearly twenty years of separation, when the good doctor was wrongly imprisoned in the Bastille. They are at last brought together again by one Mr. Jarvis Lorry. Flash forward to the trial for treason of one Charles Darnay, assisted by one Sydney Carton. Both men in love with Lucie, both looking surprisingly similar; however, one is a French aristocrat who has forsaken his inheritance to make his own way as a tutor in England and the other a wastrel lawyer who has squandered his youth in booze.
 Aside from all these wonderful personal issues, there's a revolution on in France. Ah, yes, that spectacle of liberty, the French Revolution. Started off as a good idea and degenerated into mass violence, betrayal, and madness.
 The novel does a wonderful job of portraying the insanity of the times. I felt genuine terror for what it must have been like to live in those times, never knowing if you were going to be the next one sent to Madame Guillotine for an unknown crime. Along with that terror and disgust of the extravagancies of the uprisen poor, you are also made to feel how very bad their lives actually were, and so you're caught between horror and sympathy. Except for Madame Defarge. She can just go straight to hell and never return.
 Finally, the novel ends in a last act of ultimate sacrifice. A beautiful moment in the face of stark brutality. I don't mind telling you, I cried. It was a beautiful, sad cry.
 Overall: A+
 I am pretty sure that if someone asks, I'm going to say this is my favorite book from here on out. I recommend that everyone read this book. EVERYONE.

Georgette Heyer: Detection Unlimited

• ISBN-13: 9781402218057
• Publisher: Sourcebooks, Incorporated
• Publication date: 9/7/2010
• Series: Inspector Hemingway Mysteries Series , #4
• Pages: 384

 Slumped on a seat under an oak tree is old Sampson Warrenby, with a bullet through his head.
 Everybody in the village is ready to tell Chief Inspector Hemingway who did it. Could the murderer have been the dead man's niece? Or perhaps it was the other town solicitor? The couple at the farm had a guilty secret - what was it? And why is it someone else actually wants to be the prime suspect?
 Add to this the fact that Warrenby was blackmailing someone, and Hemingway has his work cut out for him.
 
 Let's be clear about this title first, because it confused the hell out of me initially: it's called Detection Unlimited because basically every character in the novel is trying to solve the mysterious death of one Mr. Sampson Warrenby. And they all have their theories. Which leads to much hilarity (in my mind at least).
 Mr. Sampson Warrenby, much like a lot of other victims in English murder mysteries, was pretty universally hated, excepting his simpleton niece. Okay, she's not literally a simpleton, but she's just about as annoying as one. She's one of those people that conforms to what society expects and puts a rosy glow on her now-dead uncle. I suppose I have a lot of angst about her since she's obviously still bothering me.
 The mystery, then, lies in who actually had a motive aside from pure dislike, because if we went on that alone, the entire village would be on the suspect list. And they actually are. They lead a merry chase for our hardworking Inspector and his erstwhile companion, who does not have a working appreciation for the cleverness of our little hero.
 Some of the characters are fun and make up for the other busybodies, and the end is a twist that you probably would have seen coming if you'd thought about it enough. The real surprise, though, is more the method of murder than the actual culprit.
 Overall: B
 Not my favorite of Heyer's mysteries, but still a jolly romp nonetheless. And a few of the characters were quite enjoyable and took some of the sting out of the general nosy character of the village.

Chelsea Handler: My Horizontal Life

• ISBN-13: 9781455577514
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 7/16/2013
• Pages: 221

In this raucous collection of true-life stories, Chelsea Handler recounts her time spent in the social trenches with that wild, strange, irresistible, and often gratifying beast: the one-night stand.

 You've either done it or know someone who has: the one-night stand, the familiar outcome of a night spent at a bar, sometimes the sole payoff for your friend's irritating wedding, or the only relief from a disastrous vacation. Often embarrassing and uncomfortable, occasionally outlandish, but most times just a necessary and irresistible evil, the one-night stand is a social rite as old as sex itself and as common as a bar stool.

 Enter Chelsea Handler. Gorgeous, sharp, and anything but shy, Chelsea loves men and lots of them. My Horizontal Life chronicles her romp through the different bedrooms of a variety of suitors, a no-holds-barred account of what can happen between a man and a sometimes very intoxicated, outgoing woman during one night of passion. From her short fling with a Vegas stripper to her even shorter dalliance with a well-endowed little person, from her uncomfortable tryst with a cruise ship performer to her misguided rebound with a man who likes to play leather dress-up, Chelsea recalls the highs and lows of her one-night stands with hilarious honesty.

 Encouraged by her motley collection of friends (aka: her partners in crime) but challenged by her family members (who at times find themselves a surprise part of the encounter), Chelsea hits bottom and bounces back, unafraid to share the gritty details. My Horizontal Life is one guilty pleasure you won't be ashamed to talk about in the morning.

 Before I get into this, I just want to say that I think Chelsea Handler is hilarious. She's one of my favorite comediennes. HOWEVER. This book is way more information than I really wanted. About a lot of things. Mainly, her vagina.
 The book started off hilarious, but somewhere in the middle it lost me. I personally am not a promiscuous or adventurous person. Far from it, in fact. I would say somewhat reserved even. But I acknowledge that other people have fewer scruples and repressed guilt issues than I do, and I don't begrudge them their sexual misadventures. But Chelsea, according to this, takes it to another level. Some of the stories are suitable mortifying and riotous. Some, however, are lessons in what not to do - ever.
 I was continually impressed, however, with Chelsea's stunning ability to act in the moment and improve her way out of awkward situations. I wish I had that presence of mind. Most of the time I just loose my tongue, unless I've already thought up a pliable lie and then BAM Oscar-winning performance. Swear to God.
 I don't feel like there is very much to say about an autobiography aside from one's personal reactions. It is, after all, someone else's life story, not fiction, and there isn't much to say about plot holes or character development. I did appreciate, though, that we visibly moved forward in Chelsea's life, and that there was a life lesson to take away at the end. She showed a level of maturity and self-realization that she had not previously displayed throughout the whole of the book, and I am a huge sucker for development. Four for you, Chelsea.
 Overall: B
 Not super impressed with her sexcapades, but props for the amounts of laugh-out-loud material. The stories, while some required mind-bleach, were told brilliantly.

Oscar Wilde: The Collected Oscar Wilde

• ISBN-13: 9781593083106
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 12/1/2007
• Series: Barnes & Noble Classics Series
• Pages: 640

A renowned eccentric, dandy, and man-about-town, Oscar Wilde was foremost a dazzling wit and dramatic genius whose plays, poems, essays, and fiction contain some of the most frequently quoted quips and passages in the English language. 
 This volume features a wide selection of Wilde's literary output, including the comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest, an immensely popular play filled with satiric epigrams that mercilessly expose Victorian hypocrisy; The Portrait of Mr. W. H., a story proposing that Shakespeare's sonnets were inspired by the poet's love for a young man; The House of Pomegranates, the author's collection of fairy tales; lectures Wilde delivered, first in the United States, where he exhorted his audiences to love beauty and art, and then in England, where he presented his impressions of America; his two major literary-theoretical works, "The Decay of Lying" and "The Critic as Artist"; and a selection of verse, including his great poem The Ballad of Reading Goal, in which Wilde famously declared that "each man kills the thing he loves."
 A testament to Wilde's incredible versatility, this collection displays his legendary wit, brilliant use of language, and penetrating insight into the human condition.
 
So Oscar Wilde is pretty much one of my favorite playwrights of all time. I mean, The Importance of Being Earnest? Come on. One of the most hilarious plays of all time. He was also incredibly intelligent, albeit Socialist. And did I mention that he went to jail for being gay? So yeah, A+ life story.
 In Barnes and Nobles' classics edition, they compile a rather stellar display of his many works. Starting off with short stories, they segue into poetry, articles, essays, and finally end with a three act version of Earnest. Therefore, you get a great sampling of the many interests of Wilde and the way in which his brain worked.
 Personally, a lot of what he said really resonated with me and what I feel the political and media situation of today. His essay, Critic as Artist, screamed at me about the faultiness of the media. He also spent a lot of time in The Truth of Masks talking about the importance of period-accurate costuming in drama, referring to Shakespeare's copious notes to his performances, making it easy for reproductions to portray the characters as Shakespeare originally intended.
 Wilde, aside from having a great intellectual mind, was also highly creative and wrote beautifully. The collection starts off with eight short stories, my favorite of which was Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, which is written with the same humor and attention to the ridiculous as Earnest. Which is probably why I was so amused. I cracked up laughing just telling the story to my uncle after I read it.
 Overall: A
 Wilde can sometimes become dry and pedantic, which makes his essays occasionally difficult to muddle through. But this is still a great collection, and I highly recommend it. WARNING The House of Pomegranates is actually not included in this volume, not sure why it's in the blurb.

Janet Evanovich: Wicked Appetite

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks; First Edition edition (August 16, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 978-0312383350

Lizzy Tucker has inherited a historic house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, taken a new job as pastry chef for Dazzle's Bakery in Salem, and set her sights on a comfortable future. The comfortable future and any hope for normalcy evaporates when dark-haired, dark-hearted Gerwulf Grimoire and his nemesis, a blond beach bum named Diesel, enter Dazzle's and change Lizzy's life forever.
 Grimoire has set his sights on the Stones of SALIGIA, rumored to have found their way to Salem. These seven stones, each representing one of the seven deadly sins, can bestow frightening powers upon its owner. Powers that would be dangerous in Grimoire's hands...
 Diesel is a man with a mission: to stop Grimoire at all costs. In order t do so he'll need to convince the baker she alone has the ability to keep Grimoire from the stones. Once Lizzy and Diesel become a team, Diesel will have to guard Lizzy's body...day and night.
 The Seven Deadly Sins pretty much cover everything that's wicked. Diesel thinks they also pretty much cover everything that's fun. And Lizzy thinks Diesel and The Sins cover everything her mother warned her about...
 
 I sometimes forget how short Evanovich novels generally are these days. No less funny, no less ridiculous, no less Evanovich-y, but short.
 In Wicked Appetite, the first of the Lizzy and Diesel series, Lizzy is initiated into the world of the Unmentionables. And no, I'm not talking about your grandmother's underwear. I'm thinking there are going to be at least seven in the series, because I am a fan of complete-ness (not completion, mind you) and I swear to God if she doesn't hit all seven deadly sins...there will be hell to pay. See what I did there?
 Diesel, who we know from the between-the-numbers holiday books of Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, is hunting Gerwulf Grimoire, his cousin, who is looking for the stones of the seven sins in order to rule the world. According to Diesel, of course. Lizzy seems to be the only person around who can help him, having the Unmentionable ability of being able to sense Unmentionable objects. Sound convoluted? It's not really. She makes Unmentionable cupcakes.
 Evanovich's humor shines through, as usual, in the completely unrealistic and ridiculous antics her characters get up to and the completely bemused, I-give-up-let's-roll-with-it attitude with which they confront their increasingly complicated lives. Her usual animal sidekicks are present in the forms of the monkey Carl and Cat, the one-eyed guardian of Lizzy's inherited home.
 As far as characterization goes, Evanovich has started to rely on tropes. Her girls are good-natured, awkward ladies confronted with strange circumstances who have breakdowns every once in a while that are easily tempered with baked goods. The men are sweet but occasionally lascivious. There's the crazy sidekick who is also good-natured but constantly causing problems. It's a formula that works, but it's a formula nonetheless.
 Overall: B
 There wasn't much punch to this novel, but it was funny and enjoyable. Hopefully the plot is cleared up a little more in future books. The characters aren't even really certain what they're looking for most of the time.

Diana Gabaldon: Dragonfly in Amber

• Mass Market Paperback: 976 pages
• Publisher: Dell; Reprint edition (November 2, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 978-0440215622

For twenty years Claire Randall has kept her secrets. But now she is returning with her grown daughter to Scotland's majestic mist-shrouded hills. Here Claire plans to reveal a truth as stunning as the events that gave it birth: about the mystery of an ancient circle of standing stones...about a love that transcends the boundaries of time...and about James Fraser, a Scottish warrior whose gallantry once drew a young Claire from the security of her century to the dangers of his...
 Now a legacy of blood and desire will test her beautiful copper-haired daughter, Brianna, as Claire's spellbinding journey of self-discovery continues in the intrigue-ridden Paris court of Charles Stuart...in a race to thwart a doomed Highlands uprising...and in a desperate flight to save both the child and the man she loves...

She even used the book title twice in the book (at least). Label me impressed.
 This book picks up right where the last one left off, once you get into the second part. First, though, you have to suffer through a few chapters of intense confusion. Claire is back in the present for some reason that we cannot at that point fathom, and she's looking for information on the men who died at Culloden, the very battle she was trying to prevent when last we left her. So immediately we know she failed. The question then becomes how and why.
 From there on it's a fairly romping adventure through France and back to Scotland with murder, scandal, and, of course, political intrigue. Jamie and Claire are trying to sabotage James and his Charles' attempt to initiate a revolution in England to gain the throne from George, but they have to appear to be Jacobites in order to farm their information without suspicion. This leads to some pretty uncomfortable circumstances as can be imagined.
 The one complaint I would have to lodge is a pacing issue. There are quite a few times when I was reading and I wondered why I was reading about some minute moment in Claire Randall's life. The book is already pretty massive and packed with action, so I could have done without some example of random domesticity. At the end, when you think it might be time to be close to over, you're wrong. The book continues far beyond what is reasonable. It seemed to be wondering in the last few chapters, skipping huge chunks of time. It was almost as if she was trying to cram everything into the last few sections and it came out kind of a trainwreck, I felt. Finally, the giant "plot twist" at the end seemed random and irrelevant when it came down to it. You didn't see it coming because a) it was almost forgotten and b) there was absolutely no hint of it. Rule #1 of writing a good mystery - don't pull your suspects or your motives completely out of your ass.
 SPOILER ALERT SPOILER SPOILER DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT A SPOILER
Aside from the pacing issues, the characterization was great. I especially enjoyed the development of Jack Randall (yes, he shows back up, are we really all surprised?). She did an excellent job of compromising what you thought of him and letting you see that maybe he had a softer side after all. And I thought Jamie learned a huge lesson in the last scene with Randall as well.
 Overall: B-
 The pacing issues really did bother me.

Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles

• ISBN-13: 9781593082284
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 6/5/2005
• Pages: 544

Highly controversial because of its frank look at the sexual hypocrisy of Victorian society, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles was nonetheless a great commercial success when it appeared in 1891. It is now considered one of the finest novels in English.
 Using richly poetic language to frame a shattering narrative of love, seduction, betrayal, and murder, Hardy tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, a beautiful young woman living with her impoverished family in Hardy's fictionalized Wessex, a pastoral community in southwestern England. After the family learns of their connection to the wealthy d'Urbervilles, they send Tess to claim a portion of their fortune. She meets and is seduced by the dissolute Alec d'Urberville and secretly bears a child, Sorrow, who dies in infancy. Angel Clare, a very different man, seems to offer Tess love and salvation, but he rejects her - on their wedding night - after learning of her past. Emotionally bereft, financially impoverished, and victimized by the self-righteous rigidity of English social morality, Tess escapes from her vise of passion through a horrible, desperate act. 
 With its compassionate portrait of a young rural woman, powerful criticism of social convention, and disarming consideration of the role of destiny in human life, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is one of the most moving and memorable of Hardy's novels.
 
 This book should be called Tess of the D'UrberVILES.
 Aha, see what I did there?
 Joking aside, there is nothing funny about this book. It is literally a sad fest from beginning to end. Now that you have that out of the way though, and you know that you will derive no happiness from reading this book, you can sit back and enjoy it. Because it really is beautifully written, and when you're reading it you forget a little bit about how miserable it all is.
 Really, this book is one thumper of a social commentary. The subtitle, not presented in this addition, is actually A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented. You would laugh if you knew the story beforehand and read that subtitle. Thanks to me, you can enjoy the inside joke now. Tess is a poor "farm girl," despite the fact that what I can tell, her father and mother do little to no work. She's beautiful and sweet and pure, until Alec D'Urberville comes into her path. A kindly clergyman alerts her father to his ancestry, coming from the illustrious D'Urberville line going back to William the Conqueror, and so her parents send her off to claim kin with the D'Urberville family living up the road. Except they bought into the name, don't actually come from the line. And Alec is a horny philanderer.
 All of this results in the destruction of Tess' life. It's not her fault - and that's the key. She might be blamed for being weak-willed and succumbing to her parents' wishes too easily, but other than that, her plight is the plight of many women before her and probably many after. What Hardy points out is the hypocrisy of society in blaming and punishing the woman for actions outside her control. Even when she attempts to distance herself from the circumstances of her disgrace, she is still held accountable by those who purport to be more understanding. She can't escape and her weakness leads her into more problems, until, finally, there is no way out.
 Well, that's about as best as I can describe it without giving you the entire story. Although, if you're really, super desperate to know the full tale, Wikipedia is your friend. Now let's talk about some characters.
 Alec is a giant douchenozzle to end all douchenozzles. He's manipulative in the extreme. Angel Clare, the other purported protagonist of the tale, is a sweetheart with some serious identity issues. He's parted from his clergyman father because he disagrees with his extremist religious views, but he still can't escape his roots. It's a common problem. No matter how old you get, it's hard to break old habits and ways of thought. Another lesson to take away.
 Overall: B+
 I enjoyed it, mostly because I didn't expect a lot of happiness to come out of it. There were some dry bits, but even in the amidst of wordy paragraphs celebrating odes to the beauty of the countryside, Hardy's craft is obvious. He was a great writer. So there you have it. Don't read this if you want to be happy and have faith in humanity after.