Vanja Cerimagic Cerimagic itibaren 2116 Au, Avusturya
I read this on the airplane and the time went by very quickly. It is best to have read The road to Gandolfo first. It is a very amusing book.
I went to the library sometime back to renew books that I had borrowed – books that I had borrowed many months back and books which I kept renewing every month, instead of reading. I don’t want to give up on the library yet, and so I keep renewing books, but I am a guy who reads my own books more, and so the library book normally stays unread on my desk. But there was a happy development on this side. A couple of weeks back my dad needed surgery and so I had to go to the hospital and stay with him. While packing things to take with me, I reached the most pleasurable part of packing – decide on which books to take with me. (I realize that if I had a Kindle or another e-reader, this was not really a decision that I would have needed to make – I can just take the Kindle with its hundreds of books and worry about what I will read later. However, it does take the pleasure and romance out of packing :)) I thought long and hard. I asked myself, whether I should take a comfort read or whether I should take a serious read. Another thing I had to decide was how many books I should take with me. A third question popped up, while I was thinking about this – should I take my own books or should I carry some library books? I decided that I will carry a couple of library books and three books that I own. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to read five books in three days, but I knew that I would be able to read one or two. One of the library books that I carried with me was ‘Love Letters’ by Katie Fforde. I saw it the last time I went to the library, when another member returned it. It looked like a romantic novel. I rarely read romantic novels and so I don’t know why I picked it up and looked at it. After I picked it up, I did what I normally do, when I see a book by an author unknown to me – I looked at what the back cover said about the book. From the back cover, I discovered that the story involved a young woman working in an indie bookshop in England which is closing down, a literary festival, a recluse Irish writer who hasn’t written for years, creative writing workshops and all things literary. How can a book lover resist this? I immediately grabbed the book and borrowed it and took it home. When I was waiting in the hospital during my dad’s surgery and then later, waiting for him to recover, I sat at the café in the hospital and read the book from the beginning to the end. Inspite of the anxieties involved in any hospital visit, it was a fun two days of reading. Here is what I think about the book. What I think ‘Love Letters’ is about a young woman called Laura Horsley, the story’s heroine, who works in a indie bookshop. Unfortunately, the bookshop is closing down soon, because the owner wants to retire from the business. Laura organizes one last author event at the bookshop. After the event she meets a literary agent, Eleanor, who is impressed with Laura’s work, requests her to help out in a literary festival that her niece is organizing. Laura is in two minds about this – she likes the idea, but she has never been involved in the organizing of a literary festival, except for bookshop author events. She feels that she doesn’t know much about the nitty-gritty of organizing literary events. But her bookshop friends compel her to attend the first meeting called by the literary festival organizers and there, an interesting and impossible task falls on Laura’s head – she has to convince the famous Irish writer Dermot Flynn, who is Laura’s favourite writer, but who is also a recluse like Salinger, who hasn’t written anything for years, to come to the literary festival and give a talk. The sponsorship of the festival hangs on Dermot Flynn being able to attend the festival. Laura goes to Ireland with her musician friend in search of Dermot Flynn. She stumbles upon him by accident. She finds that he is infuriatingly attractive but he is also temperamental and is stuck with a serious case of writer’s block. She also finds herself falling in love with her favourite author. Is Laura able to get Dermot Flynn, who is famous for never leaving his Irish village, to England for the literary festival? Does Dermot Flynn respond to her love? The answers to these questions form the rest of the story. I loved ‘Love Letters’. But I should tell you more about it, because when I say ‘I loved it’, I don’t mean that ‘I admired it’. I loved the way the book depicts the literary world of today – how indie bookshops are closing down, how everyone is trying to work in an internet company or in a financial services company, how accounting is regarded as a ‘useful’ course, how graduates of the softer subjects like literature, philosophy, classics are looked down upon and how parents discourage their children from studying these subjects in university, how it is difficult to make a living as a writer, the excitement and the nuances of organizing literary festivals, the interesting facets of creative writing workshops, the unspoken hierarchy among different genres of fiction and the authors of different genres – the book depicts these and others quite beautifully. I loved the literary part of the book very much. After all, wasn’t that what grabbed my attention in the first place? I liked the romance part of the book too – the romance between Laura and Dermot. It showed that writers are also normal people, though Dermot is depicted as a Adonis-like character in the book. But I felt that the romance part of the book was also a bit weak, because the way that Laura and Dermot have misunderstandings and the way they make-up aren’t depicted smoothly, and those transformations of the heart are sometimes too predictable. If I compare ‘Love Letters’ with other favourite romances of mine – like ‘London is the Best City in America’ by Laura Dave or ‘The Undomestic Goddess’ by Sophie Kinsella or ‘After You’d Gone’ by Maggie O’Farrell or ‘Book Lover’ by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack – I think ‘Love Letters’ falls short. I also feel that it could have had a better title, because ‘Love Letters’ doesn’t begin to describe the literary part of the book (of course it can be understood as comprising of two love letters – a love letter to literature and a love letter to love :)). But the book makes up for all of these shortcomings by its depictions of the literary world. And for that it wins my love and affection. And the romance part of it is not that bad – it was enjoyable and a pleasure to read. If you like literature and romances, you will love this book.
It’s tough having responsibilities in two different worlds and spending the appropriate amount of time and energy in each place. In the human realm Eugenie has a physically difficult job expelling things that have crossed over from Otherworld and she’s taking fewer jobs. This causes Lara to wonder how much longer her boss will be able to pay her, and Tim fears losing his place to live. But with Kiyo out of her life and her stepfather looking at her as the enemy, there’s no emotional support system in this realm. But being the queen of a kingdom at war in the Otherworld realm is both physically and mentally draining. Not just the fighting, but the casualties and destruction of villages on both sides has Eugenie upset. So when a peaceful option presents itself in the form of a fabled Iron Crown that causes others to fear the one able to obtain it on a quest, it seems like the perfect solution. She can’t take anyone with full fey blood with her as the region is loaded with iron, so she’s somewhat surprised when Dorian suggests taking Kiyo. Eugenie is torn both with her responsibilities and finding that her trust is misplaced as motives become clearer. This aspect of the story drags on somewhat, but the author appears to be making the character as realistic as possible. Eugenie is definitely not perfect and there are times I’d live to give her a swift kick in the butt. She’s got a lot of responsibility and it’s time for her to step up to the plate. However we do get a great deal of action and there are plenty of surprises to keep the story interesting in this long awaited third book in the Dark Swan series.