Friday, September 29, 2017

Queen Victoria, October 2017

Websites for Daisy Goodwin and Queen Victoria:













Victoria's Diaries:





Lord M:





Young Lord M; around 1805



1844, age 65

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Lady Flora Hastings cartoon


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Windsor Uniform on Prince Harry and Prince William
Windsor Uniform



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Judi Dench as Queen Victoria:
Mrs. Brown
After the death of her beloved husband, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) withdraws from public life, so the court appoints a former servant of the prince, John Brown (Billy Connolly), to help her recover from her grief. Brown's unorthodox ways and disdain for protocol draw the queen out of her shell, and the brash Scot becomes her sole confidant. However, their growing closeness causes a stir, as scandalous rumors begin circulating about the exact nature of their relationship.
Release date: July 18, 1997 (USA)  Director: John Madden  Initial DVD release: April 22, 1998
Nominations: Academy Award for Best Actress, Awards: Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture – Drama,




Victoria & Abdul
Abdul Karim arrives from India to participate in Queen Victoria's golden jubilee. The young clerk is surprised to find favor with the queen herself. As Victoria questions the constrictions of her long-held position, the two forge an unlikely and devoted alliance that her household and inner circle try to destroy. As their friendship deepens, the queen begins to see a changing world through new eyes, joyfully reclaiming her humanity.
Release date: September 22, 2017 (USA) Director: Stephen Frears Costume design: Consolata Boyle
Screenplay: Lee Hall Distributors: Focus Features, Working Title Films

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AVAILABLE IN PLS:

TITLE OVERVIEW FORMAT & PUBLISHER CALL NUMBER

Caro: the Fatal Passion
The Life of Lady Caroline Lamb
by Blyth, Henry		 Book - 1973
Coward, McCann & Geoghegan		 921 LAMB

Queen Victoria's Daughters
by Benson, E. F.		 Book - 1938
D. Appleton-Century Company, incorporated		 DA554.B43

Victoria Regina
A Dramatic Biography
by Housman, Laurence		 Book - 1935
C. Scribner		 PR4809.H18 V55 1935

Victoria R
A Biography With Four Hundred Illustrations Based on Her Personal Photograph Albums
by Gernsheim, Helmut		 Book - 1959
Putnam		 FB V666G

Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed
by Longford, Elizabeth Harman Pakenham		 Book - 1965
Harper & Row		 DA554.L6 1965

Melbourne
by Cecil, David		 Book - 1962
Charter Books		 DA536.M5 C5 1962

Persons of Consequence
Queen Victoria and Her Circle
by Auchincloss, Louis		 Book - 1979
Random House		 Q941.081 VICTORIA

Louisa, Lady in Waiting
The Personal Diaries and Albums of Louisa, Lady in Waiting to Queen Victoria and Queen Alexandra
by Antrim, Louisa Jane McDonnell		 Book - 1979
Mayflower Books		 942.08 ANTRI

Queen Victoria's Sketchbook
by Warner, Marina		 Book - 1979
Crown Publishers		 741.9 WARNE

Victoria in the Wings
by Plaidy, Jean		 Book - 1990
Putnam		 FIC PLAIDY

Victoria Victorious
by Plaidy, Jean		 Book - 1986
Putnam		 PLAIDY

Life at the Court of Queen Victoria, 1861-1901
Illustrated From the Collection of Lord Edward Pelham-Clinton, Master of the Household : With Selections From the Journals of Queen Victoria
by Victoria		 Book - 1997
Sutton Pub		 942.081 LIF

Victoria and Albert
by Hough, Richard Alexander		 Book - 1996
St. Martin's Press		 941.08 H814V

Uncrowned King
The Life of Prince Albert
by Weintraub, Stanley		 Book - 1997
Free Press		 B AL14W

Queen Victoria
An Eminent Illustrated Biography
by Strachey, Lytton		 Book - 1998
Black Dog & Leventhal Distributed by Workman Pub. Co		 921 VICTORIA

Victoria, May Blossom of Britannia
by Kirwan, Anna		 Book - 2001
Scholastic		 J-ROY

Queen Victoria and the British Empire
by Whitelaw, Nancy		 Book - 2005
Morgan Reynolds Pub		 J921 VICTORIA

Queen Victoria at Home
by De-la-Noy, Michael		 Book - 2003
Carroll & Graf Publishers		 B V666D

Queen Victoria
by Arnstein, Walter L.		 Book - 2003
Palgrave Macmillan		 921 VICTO

Queen Victoria and Nineteenth-century England
by Price-Groff, Claire		 Book - 2003
Benchmark Books		 J921 VICTORIA

Becoming Victoria
by Vallone, Lynne		 Book - 2001
Yale University Press		 921 VICTORIA

Last Days of Glory
The Death of Queen Victoria
by Rennell, Tony		 Book - 2000
Viking		 921 VICTORIA

Queen Victoria
A Personal History
by Hibbert, Christopher		 Book - 2000
Basic Books		 B V666HI

Becoming Queen Victoria
The Tragic Death of Princess Charlotte and the Unexpected Rise of Britain's Greatest Monarch
by Williams, Kate		 Book - 2010
Ballantine Books		 BIO VICTORIA

We Two
Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals
by Gill, Gillian		 Book - 2009
Ballantine Books		 B V666G

Queen Victoria
Demon Hunter
by Moorat, A. E.		 Book - 2010
Eos		 F-MOO

The Last Princess
The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter
by Dennison, Matthew		 Book - 2008
St. Martin's Press		 921 BEATR

Shooting Victoria
Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy
by Murphy, Paul Thomas		 Book - 2012
Pegasus Books		 941.081 M956S

Victoria Rebels
by Meyer, Carolyn		 Book - 2013
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers		 YA-MEY

A Magnificent Obsession
Victoria, Albert, and the Death That Changed the British Monarchy
by Rappaport, Helen		 Book - 2012
St. Martin's Press		 941.081 R182M

Victoria
A Life
by Wilson, A. N.		 Book - 2014
Penguin Press		 BIO VICTORIA

Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter
A Biography of Princess Louise
by Hawksley, Lucinda		 Book - 2015
Thomas Dunne Books		 B L9301H

Queen Victoria
A Life of Contradictions
by Dennison, Matthew		 Book - 2014
St. Martin's Press		 921 VICTORIA

Victoria the Queen
An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled An Empire
by Baird, Julia		 Book - 2016
Random House		 B V666B

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Monday, September 11, 2017



Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
Sept 2017
Swedish author Katarina Bivald had to ignore the adage "write what you know" for her novel "The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend." It's the story of a shy Swedish woman who changes a small Iowa town by opening a bookshop.
Bivald wrote what became an international hit without visiting the Midwest. Now she's here to see the real thing.
….
Bivald said when she started writing "The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend," she didn't intend for it to be published. She called it her practice novel. She was 25 and working in a bookstore in Sweden at the time.
…
"And I chose Iowa because I knew absolutely nothing about the state," she said. "Well, that's not true. I knew two things: I knew that they had lots of corn, and that they once had a cat named Dewey Readmore Books. And what more do you need to know about a state?"
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Library Thing -- related titles

Recommendations

  1. The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (2014)
  2. The Little Paris Bookshop: A Novel by Nina George (1600)
  3. My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (1672)
  4. The Bookshop on the Corner: A Novel by Jenny Colgan (2016)
  5. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (2012)
  6. Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman (2014)
  7. Same series: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (Britt-Marie)
  8. The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows (2015)
  9. The Nest: A Novel by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney (2016)
  10. Be Frank With Me: A Novel by Julia Claiborne Johnson (2016)
  11. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson (1672)
  12. The Moment of Everything by Shelly King (2014)
  13. The Lake House by Kate Morton (2015)
  14. The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler (2015)
  15. Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart (2015)
  16. The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick (2016)
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Interview
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Q&A
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Why book isn’t ‘gritty’

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Thursday, August 10, 2017

Perfect by Rachel Joyce -- Aug. 2017


Byron’s mother, Diana, doesn’t have the time to worry about something as insignificant as mere seconds. She operates her life with precision, expertly managing the minutiae of motherhood and domesticity in a uniform of slim skirts and pointy heels. Yet her entire life centers around caring for her children and preparing for weekend visits from her estranged husband Seymour, who keeps her confined in Cranham Manor, their Georgian home that sits in the isolation of “winds, sky and earth.”
Byron has a habit of watching his mother closely, and imagines her mind as a “series of tiny inlaid drawers with jeweled handles so delicate his fingers would struggle to get a grip.” She makes everything looks so effortless, but that is largely because her life is an act that she assumes with the same efficiency as her tightly guarded wristwatch. Yet her perfection, like time, cannot be contained, or even controlled.
This spilling of time becomes palpable on the day that Byron believes he witnesses the addition of the two seconds. Diana is running late getting Byron and his sister to school, so she decides to take a shortcut down Digby Road, a decrepit social-housing project. When her Jaguar swerves under the heavy morning mist, it isn’t clear to Diana what has happened, yet Byron is sure that the two seconds are responsible for setting off a chain of events that destroy more than one life.
In the present day, we find Jim, a man so crippled by his OCD that he must enact a series of rituals to feel any sense of ease with the world. Jim has spent most of his life in Beasley Hill, a mental hospital that became a sanctuary, protecting him from the passing of time. Readers will wonder how Jim is connected to Byron Hemmings and the two seconds. And while the mystery of Jim is eventually discovered in a revelation as shocking as the truth about Harold’s son David in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, the tedious pacing of Jim’s story feels like a series of road blocks disrupting the more absorbing story of Byron and Diana.
The repercussions of single moments reverberate throughout Perfect. And by the end of the novel, past, present and future surge together, as time loses all sense of meaning for both Byron and Jim. Yet it is Diana who loses the most in Perfect. Joyce builds up her ivory tower only to tear it down, revealing the shell of woman that is a victim of time and the limitations of English class structures.
In a note to readers, the author confesses that the novel had initially come out of her own feelings of helplessness. After the birth of her third child, Joyce struggled with the demands of motherhood, reaching a shortfall between meeting the needs of her children, and her will to keep up appearances. With Perfect, Joyce not only questions whether true perfection can ever actually exist, her exploration of its causal relationship with time exposes both as liquid concepts that, as hard as one can try, cannot be contained.
Safa Jinje is a writer and editor living in Toronto.
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There are three distinct realms in the conception of time: the subjective present, which cannot be contained and therefore may not actually exist; the past, which has already happened, so it ceases to be; and the future, which hovers away at a distance, never actualizing into being.
This notion of time as manifold becomes essential when reading Rachel Joyce’s new novel Perfect, a dark follow-up to her highly celebrated debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. The novel begins in the summer months of 1972, in the English countryside setting of Cranham Moor. Byron Hemmings, an imaginative boy of 11, becomes anxious when he learns that two leap seconds are going to be added to time to balance it with the irregular movement of the earth. Byron insists it isn’t safe. “Two seconds are huge,” he tells his mother. “It’s the difference between something happening and something not happening.”
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LEAP SECONDS
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Rachel Joyce's 'Perfect' A Flawed, But Hopeful Novel : NPR

www.npr.org/2014/01/17/.../rachel-joyces-perfect-a-flawed-but-hopeful-novel
Jan 17, 2014 - Rachel Joyce's new novel offers two parallel narratives: the 1972 story of Byron, an anxious schoolboy, and the present-day account of Jim, ...

Review: Perfect, By Rachel Joyce | The Independent

Perfect: Rachel Joyce's new novel considers the weight of two extra ...

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/.../perfect-rachel-joyces.../article15484038/

Perfect by Rachel Joyce, review - Telegraph

www.telegraph.co.uk › Culture › Books
Review by Elena Seymenliyska
Jun 24, 2013 - So her second novel has quite a hard act to follow. Perfect opens in June 1972, in England. Byron is 11 and he is terrified because, later that month, in order to bring the clocks back into line with the movement of the Earth, two seconds will be added to time. “Two seconds are huge,” he tells his mother Diana.

Book review: 'Perfect' by Rachel Joyce - The Boston Globe

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/...review-perfect-rachel-joyce/.../story.html
Jan 9, 2014 - Fatimah Namdar. Rachel Joyce centers her second novel around an unpopular 11-year-old boy. Byron Hemmings is nobody's idea of a hero.

'Perfect: A Novel,' an Eerie Look at Life Via a Child's Eyes - The New

Jan 22, 2014 - Perfect” by Rachel Joyce covers a lot of ground: a beautiful, obeisant mother, two kids, a car accident and maybe a scam.

Summary and reviews of Perfect by Rachel Joyce - BookBrowse

https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview.../perfect
A spellbinding novel that will resonate with readers of Mark Haddon, Louise Erdrich, and John Irving,Perfect tells the story of a young boy who is thrown into the .
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This spellbinding novel from Rachel Joyce, the author who brought you The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, will resonate with readers of Mark Haddon, Louise Erdrich, and John Irving. Perfect tells the story of a young boy who is thrown into the murky, difficult realities of the adult world with far-reaching consequences.
“Perfect is a poignant and powerful book, rich with empathy and charged with beautiful, atmospheric writing.”—Tana French, author of In the Woods and Broken Harbor
We have the book club questions to get your chat started. Trust us, you’ll have a lot to talk about with this one!

1. The attempt to achieve perfection is central to both Diana’s and Byron’s behavior. Has the novel changed your perception of what it may mean to be ‘perfect’?

2. Rachel Joyce portrays time as a slippery and unpredictable concept. Has this affected your attitude towards the ways in which we measure the paths of our lives?

3. Responsibility is a theme that plays a key part in the novel. Who do you believe holds the greatest responsibility for the accident?

4. Is Jim’s mental illness the inevitable result of the events of his childhood?

5. Diana says, ‘I’m beginning to think chaos is underrated.’ Do you agree?

6. Byron identifies the moment at which he no longer considers himself to be a child. How does the novel question traditional definitions of childhood and parenthood?

7. Rachel Joyce writes beautiful descriptions of Cranham Moor and the English landscape. What is the significance of the natural world in the novel?

8. What is the significance of class in the relationship between Beverley and Diana?

9. Several characters struggle with depression and obsessive-compulsive behavior in the novel. How effectively do you feel mental disorders are portrayed?

10. Diana believes that the course of her life is determined by destiny. What part does spiritual belief play in the novel, and do you agree that our actions cannot influence our own fates?
11. Seymour and Andrea Lowe express strong views about feminism. How does Rachel Joyce represent the role of women in the novel?

12. How does Rachel Joyce represent the different time periods of the novel? Are there echoes from 1972 in the present or is it a world and time that has disappeared without trace?

13. Diana is lonely despite having a family and friends; Jim experiences intense loneliness. What do you think makes people feel connected to each other, and what creates fulfilling relationships?

14. Byron and James Lowe are best friends as boys, and the employees at Mr Meade’s café form bonds of kinship. How does Rachel Joyce represent friendship, and what do you think it means to be a true friend?
Who is the most powerful character in the novel, and why?

15. Eileen and Jim are damaged, in different ways, by their pasts. To what extent do you feel their private pain is transformed through the act of sharing?


Q&A WITH RACHEL JOYCE

Rachel Joyce
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry began as a radio play and then developed into the novel it is today after many years of writing and revising. But Perfect was written within a shorter space of time. How did your process differ in writing the two novels?
The truth is, I have been thinking about Perfect for even longer than The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. The idea about the cost of perfection and an accident that changes everything, as well as the central characters, have all been loitering in my head for many years. I could always see Byron and Diana and I knew I needed to find out more about who they were and what happened to them. Sometimes I have even tried fitting them into other stories, but it never felt right because this is where they belong.
As with most things, the story has grown over time. New characters have stepped in. Things I couldn’t understand have become clearer. I have played with different versions until I found this one. It was only as I began to write it this time around, for instance, that it dawned on me that it wasn’t a contemporary story and neither was it an urban one. It was only this time, too, that I thought about splitting the story between two tenses and two periods in time.
Otherwise, the writing process was very similar with both books. I sat here every day and I wrote and rewrote and rewrote.
How much of the novel is based on real places and people?
The moor setting is fictitious. But – as with Harold Fry’s story – I stepped out of our house and drew on what I saw. I am lucky enough to live on the brow of a valley. I write about the things I see when I look out of my writing shed or walk through the fields. It’s the same with characters. I write about people I glimpse and then I imagine the rest. I think I tend to find people in my head that I want to explore and maybe all of them have an element or two of me in them. I don’t know. In researching the character of Jim, for instance, I spoke to a number of people about OCD and whilst it is not a condition I’ve experienced, it reminded me of other things I’ve felt that had similar beginnings or resonances. For me, writing is about finding the links between myself and the outside world. It’s a way of better understanding.
You have written that Harold Fry was inspired in part by your father. Was there someone or something specific that compelled you to write Perfect?
It is difficult for me to know why I choose to write certain stories. Often I don’t understand until many years later. But I do remember vividly when the first nugget of this story came to me. It was just over twelve years ago, after the birth of my third child, and I was driving my oldest daughter to school. My second daughter was telling me she was hungry, the baby was crying, and on the passenger seat beside me was the plate of cakes I had got up at dawn to make for the very competitive children’s bake stall. I was driving slowly. Traffic was heavy. I had barely slept for days. And then I had one of those moments when you lift out of yourself, when you see your life from a new perspective, and it occurred to me that if I made a mistake, if someone ran into the road, if anything unexpected happened, I did not have the energy, the space, the wherewithal, the presence of mind even, to deal with it. I was stretched as far as I could go. I began writing the story as soon as I got home.





Newest title, The Music Shop -- not yet in US?

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