Tag Archives: Fiction

The Quilter’s Apprentice

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The Quilter's Apprentice

Jennifer Chiaverini
I picked this book up on impulse – it looked interesting, and I’ve had quilting on the brain lately – and was instantly hooked. Some of the formatting is annoying, specifically the lack of quotation marks in the ‘flashback’ sequences, but it does a good job of meshing lessons in quilting technique with the plot.

The story is a simple one, a young couple moves from a Pennsylvania college town to another town a bit farther away, because the husband, who has a degree in landscape engineering, has been offered a permanent stable position, and the wife has recently come to realize she hates her job as an accountant.

The husband’s clients include the owner of an estate that used to be owned by a horse breeder, and the wife bonds with the sister of the dead owner, who agrees to teach her how to quilt. From that point, the narrative is interrupted by flashbacks from the woman in charge of the estate, as well as quilting lessons.

There are, apparently, other novels in the series, as well as a website where you can see the quilts mentioned

in the story (some are ugly).

Stormqueen, and others

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Darkover: First Contact (Darkover Omnibus)

Marion Zimmer Bradley

After a break during which I read some more modern novels, I went back to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series, and read all the books that had been missing from my own collection, largely thanks to the folks at Half Price Books.

I’m not going to list every title, but I am going to mention that my favorite of the second batch of books was Stormqueen, though I’m certain this had to do with the weather outside the apartment matching the weather in the book.

Small things like that influence me far too greatly.

Still, it’s a great series, especially if you really want to immerse yourself in another world.

Traitor’s Sun (and others)

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Traitor's Sun: A Novel of Darkover (Darkover)

Marion Zimmer Bradley

During the months of August and September, I was under a self-imposed book-buying moratorium, while we packed the house, and moved from California to Texas. However, I was still engaged in retro-reading, and, because I hadn’t read the series in a long time, I indulged in re-reading the entire Darkover series, by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Darkover is one of my favorite fictional worlds, partly because there are so many novels in the series, and partly because the culture is believable. Rather than listing every novel in an independent entry, I offer the list (in series order, not publication order) of the novels I read before arriving in Texas.

Darkover Landfall
Hawkmistress
Two to Conquer
The Shattered Chain
Thendara House
Rediscovery
The Spell Sword
The Forbidden Tower
Star of Danger
Winds of Darkover
Heritage of Hastur
Sharra’s Exile
Exile’s Song
The Shadow Matrix
Traitor’s Sun

Islands

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Islands

Anne Rivers Siddons

We all have “guilty pleasure” authors – Anne Rivers Siddons is one of mine.

I’ve just finished her most recent novel, Islands, and while I have to agree that it’s not her best work, it was still an enjoyable read. She’s returned to the South Carolina Low Country she loves so much, which means that even when you hate the characters, you love the houses they live in, and even when the plot gets rather cheesey, you can still feel the sea breezes and smell the sand, and feel the humidity.

People are often surprised that I read Siddons’ work, because her target demographic is really my mother’s generations, but there’s something compelling about her tragic heroines in their weathered beach houses. Though, admittedly, my favorite of her novels didn’t take place anywhere near a beach.

This novel tells the story of a group of friends – doctors and their wives – who own a Low Country beach house together. It’s fairly typical beach reading: entangled relationships, personal tragedy, a dash of romance. It’s not as meaty as, say, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, but I’d still recommended it.