Greenery

Overgrown - Wickham Bishops, Essex, England by Future-Echoes - http://pinterest.com/pin/17099673560563049/

More beauty

500px / Autumn flame by Tsuguharu Hosoya - http://pinterest.com/pin/142074563220079998/

Foxglove beautiful and deadly

foxglove - http://pinterest.com/pin/193514115213933448/

Two new books for my reading list.

So The Map of Time was not a winner. I couldn't get into the novel. I tried. If you are curious about what I thought of the map of time, and how far I did get into the novel. You can find the post regarding this novel here.

----I did get some new books from the library. 

----Alice Hoffman's The Probable Future.
I've read one other novel by Alice Hoffman - Practical Magic. I read the novel long before I saw the movie. Frankly I prefer that novel.  Perhaps I will read it again and provide a review.

----Liane Moriarty's The Hypnotist's Love story.--This novel I stumbled across while browsing on Amazon.com. I have not read anything else she's written, in fact I do not know if she has written anything else, but the concept sounded unique.

Liese

The Map of Time

This was meant to be a review of The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma. This is not going to be a review of that book, because I did not finish reading that book. I tried, but after 131 pages I could not finish the over 600 pages. 

The first 131 pages were difficult to read. The story sounded interesting based on the inside cover blurb. The blurb did not prepare me for the story. I tried to finish it, but I was not able to. It began with a depressed character intending to commit suicide. Why you might ask? It is because of a woman who was murdered eight years ago. It is an interesting premise, but every time I started to lose myself in the novel something within the actual writing style would jar me from the story. So I can't review this. 

It contained author intrusion, historical characters and time travel. Note that this novel is actually original written in Spanish, which may have contributed to my difficulty in reading it.

--If you pick up this book. You will meet Andrew with the first few pages. Andrew is the son of a well to do family who falls in love with a white chapel prostitute. He intends to end his life in the same place that his lady love lost hers. Thankfully he is interrupted. 
--The novel contains many interesting and unique takes on things like time travel and the use of historical characters. For instance the reigning monarch at the time has a palace situated on and interdimensional plain.
The language is poetic, at times flowery and the the narrator is not in fact that any of the characters in the actual novel that I encountered, but a rather cheeky third person that seems to be observing and relating the details.

--Liese

 

Welcome to the Tea Room

So you might be wondering ---what exactly is the tea room?

The tea room is just a place to document my reading habits.

Why would I do that? Well, I read voraciously. I read science fiction, fantasy, romance and whatever else happens to strike my fancy. I am also a writer. So it goes without saying that reading a good book is an important part of being a decent writer.

I from time to time am going to post book reviews. These aren't going to spoil the stories, but they may contain some plot points. I figure if I take the time to read a novel, I should be a bit more willing to take the time to acknowledge that I read it, and rather I enjoyed the read or not.

So today is day one.

I picked up a copy of The Map of Time by Felix J Palma from my local public library. If you don't frequent your local library, you should.

I love libraries. I spent many a summer afternoon curled up in one section or another looking at and reading everything I could get my hands on, on one subject or another not to appreciate the wondrous nature of the library system.

In the area where I live, we are lucky. We have a fantastic library system made up of numerous buildings. Many of the small towns in the area have their own libraries. The large towns have bigger libraries that sprawl out in a landscape created by shelves populated by a seemingly endless supply of a paper and ink children who will wander into our lives and change the way we see ourselves and the world.

Books are a kind of magic that no one can deny. They can act as a catalyst, as conveyance, and most of all they can be escape. A writer once said that books were important not because they were escapist, but because they offered escape. The quote was much more eloquently put than that, and I believe it was Neil Gaiman, who said it, but the idea behind his words remains the same. Books provide safe havens for peoples whose hearts, minds and souls are at risk of being trampled on by the unkindness of the world.

He has a very valid point. Books can save lives. The  power of words is indisputable. Words have allowed rulers to rise and tyrants to fall. It's not all about the words, but what those words can incite people to do. Words can drive people to become more than they ever dared to dream, be it bad or good.

Mr. Gaiman's actual post regarding Escapism can be found here.

I've never met Neil Gaiman, I most likely never well, but by the simple fact of being one of the word smiths of the world, he's someone I would be honored to share a cup of tea with.

----Liese