What I Found Out in the House of a German Prince - Alice Muriel Williamson

So I've been going back and forth between older fiction and memoirs, but this time I cheated a bit. This particular "memoir" is a piece of fiction that was supposedly so real that it was taken as fact and published in 1915 in a prominent English magazine, The Fortnightly Review. At the time, it was published anonymously as the account of an English governess who escaped from Germany after WWI started.

The anonymous writer goes through her time with two princes and a princess in a very realistic way. It's not all espionage and spying. It's a woman on her own in a foreign country trying to figure out if something more is going on around her. She was born in America but grew up in England. She considers herself English, but lets everyone around her believe she's American. They won't listen if she tries to correct them anyway. After a while, strange things begin to happen that make her suspicious, and she starts to pay more attention.

It's easy to understand why people would believe this was a true account. It has the vague details that you'd expect from an ordinary person. While most of the book is more benign events that probably aren't anything to worry about, I wasn't bored. I imagined a young woman going back over her diary evaluating every little encounter wondering what was important. I'm curious what the reception was at the time it was published. At that time, the war was already underway, and it could've created quite a stir depending on who read it.

Either way, I enjoyed this one. At the end, the author mentions that she doesn't think the reader would be interested to discover how she escaped and vows to sum it up quickly. I was incredibly interested and glad it was included. Overall, an entertaining read. Good Book!

Content page from Fortnightly Review January to June 1915

 

The House of the Whispering Pines - Anna Katharine Green

I picked this book randomly from the list I copied from one of the other older books I read recently. This book was originally published in 1910. 

Elwood is taking a ride to clear his head when he sees smoke coming from a chimney. No one should be in this building, and so he goes to investigate. What he finds is the woman he loves leaving the house and his fiancé's body upstairs. That may seem a bit strange, and it is. Elwood wanted to run away with his fiancé's sister, but she decides not to go, and he ends up finding both women at the house. After that, he's suspected of the murder (something he seems surprised by), and the mystery gets more complicated when the sister is too ill to explain what happened that night.

Elwood is a twit. The initial part of the book is written in the first person, which was incredibly annoying. He pops up in front of the cops with his shoes in his hands, lies, was seen putting his hands on the marks on the woman's neck, but then he's shocked when they arrest him. I also wasn't impressed with the way he pitted the sisters against each other to begin with. Even at the end, I wasn't super impressed with him. The entire book isn't written from his perspective, so that was good.

Overall, I did enjoy this book. I downloaded an old library book off Google, but I wish I'd gotten a copy from Gutenberg. The type was too small, so I wasn't able to read it as fast as I wanted to. As to the story itself, I did enjoy it. Once I got past Elwood's part, I was more involved. I thought I had the culprit figured out, but I was wrong. I like that. The reveal was satisfying, and the ending was written well. I liked the writing style, and it wasn't hard to follow at all. If I had one complaint, it would be that the book might be a tad long for my taste, coming in at over 400 pages. Good Book!

The Diamond Master - Jacques Futrelle (and The Haunted Bell)

Ok, so a couple of things. First, I told myself I wasn't going to let my daughter pick out my books for me anymore. I let her pick this one. Second, I didn't realize I had read something by this author until later on in the book. The copy I downloaded from Google had a second story, The Haunted Bell, which was a Thinking Machine story. Back in May, I'd read The Problem of Cell 13, a collection of 7 short stories featuring the Thinking Machine. 

The Diamond Master is a mystery that begins with a unlabeled box sent to a diamond seller. Inside is the most perfect diamond the man has ever seen. Included are no instructions, no owner is indicated, and the man isn't sure what to make of the situation. He eventually goes to a friend, where he discovers that his friend also received a perfect match to the diamond. They aren't sure what it means, but the mystery will grow bigger when they receive word from the sender.

I'm not going to say much more about the story itself. It was full of little twists and turns that I don't want to spoil. I really enjoyed it, but I had one complaint: the end was really abrupt. So abrupt that I was confused when the next story started, and I had to go back later and reread the last chapter. It just felt like there had to be more to the story, but there wasn't.

I'll put a brief mention in here about The Haunted Bell since it was included in my version, even though it wasn't mentioned anywhere that I could see. It was an interesting tale, but the beginning was pretty strange. Once the Thinking Machine was on the case, it picked up and became interesting.

Overall, The Diamond Master was a good book. It was short and easy to read. My main complaint was the ending, but the rest of it was interesting and kept me guessing. I just kept thinking, "This can't be the end!" But, alas, it was. Good Book!

Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak or Black Hawk

Black Hawk was a Sauk war chief in the Wisconsin/Illinois area in the early 1800s. After the Black Hawk War of 1832, he told his story to an interpreter. This was the first published Native American autobiography and was a bestseller. I chose to read this since I enjoyed my other venture into memoirs and wanted to go back in time a little farther.

I've been trying to think of a good way to describe what I read without digressing into a rant or a history lesson, so I think I'll just add a quote from Black Hawk and an excerpt of account from the other side. Regarding the settlers, Black Hawk stated, "Why did the Great Spirit ever send the whites to this island to drive us from our homes and introduce among us poisonous liquors, disease and death? They should have remained in the land the Great Spirit allotted them." After reading that, I wondered what his voice sounded like - was he bitter, resigned, angry, sad? Maybe all of the above. He was 67 at the time this was written, and he had a lot to reflect upon.

Toward the end of the book (after Black Hawk's story), there's an account of the encounter with the steamboat, Warrior, during the Black Hawk War. At this time, Black Hawk tried to present a flag of truce which was misinterpreted, and the fighting continued until Black Hawk surrendered a short time later. The account states, "Thus ended a bloody war which had been forced upon Black Hawk by Stillman's troops violating a flag of truce, which was contrary to the rules of war of all civilized nations, and one that had always been respected by the Indians. And thus, by the treachery or ignorance of the Winnebago interpreter on board the Warrior, it was b(r)ought to a close in the same ignoble way it commenced - disregarding a flag of truce - and by which Black Hawk lost more than half his army." For context, the fighting basically started when Black Hawk sent a few men with a flag of truce and one of them was killed. The whole thing just shouldn't have happened.

Black Hawk's story ended at about 60%. After that, entries were added from people that crossed paths with Black Hawk. Overall, they lined up with his story, and I was impressed with the level of respect these leaders showed each other. The very end of the book was an overview of the cities that now exist in the areas where Black Hawk used to live. I didn't enjoy this part and wish the focus had stayed on Black Hawk.

This story was incredibly sad and a perspective that needed to be told. After all the injustices Black Hawk endured, he came out the other side viewing the settlers as people he wanted to live in peace with. I'm not sure how he did that to be honest. Even after he died, his bones were stolen, and the land he loved would be unrecognizable to him today. A sad story of a truly brave warrior. Good Book!

The Amethyst Cross - Fergus Hume

I chose this book at random from the list of advertisements in the back of one of the other books I've read recently.

Lesbia loves George. She wants to give him a token of her love, but when her father sees the amethyst cross, trouble begins. George is attacked, and the cross goes missing. For much of the book, I was wondering the significance of the cross, and I kept reading to solve that mystery. I wasn't very invested in the characters themselves.

I had a few issues with the book. One of them is a spoiler, but something was more acceptable at the time it was written than it is now, making one of the major reveals slightly uncomfortable. My main issue with the book is the overly dramatic nature of the characters, particularly the women. And I wasn't a fan of comments like, "she wanted a man to master her as all women do" and "it takes a woman to fathom the duplicity of another woman." 

This is one of those books that didn't stand the test of time as well as some of the others I've read. Written in 1908, it shows its age in a number of ways. The details of the plot became unnecessarily overcomplicated in my opinion, and I just didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped.

Why I stopped using NetGalley and cut back on reading current fiction...

If you've been around my blog for a while, you may have wondered why my reading taste has changed so much this past year. My blog has never been a hotspot on the internet, and that's never bothered me. I initially created it as a personal way to track my thoughts on books and authors. Since I've stopped getting books from NetGalley, my number of views has dropped, and I'm okay with that as well. And I'll tell you why...

Before that, I want to clarify that everything here is my personal reflections. Other people feel differently, and that's fine. I think it's good for people to think differently and for us to challenge each other's thought processes once in a while (not all the time, though - that's draining!). I'm going to break this post into two sections: NetGalley and current fiction.

NetGalley

When I started getting books on NetGalley, I thought it was great. I wasn't spending a bunch of money on books, and I was able to read authors I enjoyed. I even had a few authors stop by my blog, and I was excited. But after a couple of years, I started to feel uncomfortable. What happened when I didn't like a book? I got it for free, I liked the author, but I didn't want to "hate" on their hard work. On the other hand, I also felt I owed NetGalley something for giving me the book in the first place. I didn't feel comfortable not giving any review, either. I once saw a comment saying, "If you don't like a book, just don't leave a review." I don't think that's the answer. If I post a negative review, I'll tell you why. Normally, there was something in the book that didn't appeal to me. That thing, whatever it is, might not bother you, but if it does, you'll know you may not enjoy the book. I mean it to be helpful, but some consider it to be negativity thrown at the author.

Another issue I came across was that many of my reviews were beginning to sound the same. The books were sounding the same in my head. I wasn't trying out new authors because I was too busy keeping up with the ones I'd come to love. I asked myself, what was I adding to the conversation? I'd be reading a book, enjoying it, and then stare at the keyboard when I'd go to write the review. Everything I wanted to say, I'd already said it somewhere else for another book.

In the end, I fell out of love with NetGalley through no fault of its own. It gave me books for free, but I felt guilty if I didn't like them. I wasn't going to lie, so I gave it up. I've heard change is good (not that I'm a fan), which brings me to my second point...

Current Fiction

Once I quit NetGalley, I evaluated what I was reading. The main thing I wanted to do was get outside my comfort zone. Since all the books I'd been reading had started to sound the same, I wanted to mix it up a bit. I started to wonder, "Who decides which fiction becomes popular?" Most people have heard of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, but who decided that? That's when I wondered who else was writing books back in the day and if any of them were any good. 

I want to hunt down some hidden gems that have slipped through the cracks. Anyone can write and publish a book now, and we're overwhelmed with choices. The tales of the past are being forgotten unless they were of significance, but maybe there are still a few out that deserve some recognition. Maybe I'll be the only one finding the little diamonds, but in the end, that's not the point. I'm actually enjoying this journey more than I thought. I've also started diving into some nonfiction (Night Witches and I held the sun in my hands), and it's been great. The lesson here, narrowed down to four little words is "read what you love."

Aunt Jane of Kentucky - Eliza Calvert Hall

At the end of Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, there were 16 pages full of ads for other fiction of the time. I wrote down the titles and looked to see which ones were available on Gutenberg.org. I was a little surprised how few of them were there. I then made the mistake of asking my daughter (who likes to mess with me) to pick one. Instead of picking one of the more exciting-sounding titles, she picked this one.

Aunt Jane is an elderly woman who tells tales of things she's observed over the course of her life. It's set in the old days of Kentucky, when the women were supposed to do what the men said and cook their meals, etc., so that's reflected in the topics and actions of the characters. People die young, and women are treated like property. To be fair, it wasn't just in the "olden days" that things like that happened. I experienced that in the late 90's when I visited my future husband's family in Kentucky. The "men-folk" ate first, and I felt like I'd travelled back in time.

Anyway, this book contains nine stories. I read about quilts, a woman who stood up to some men, a horse race at the fair, and some other things. What I didn't really read was the last chapter. I skimmed that one since it was literally all about flowers and gardens. I have what I term a "black thumb" where everything I try to grow immediately dies, so if Heaven is all gardens, I'm screwed.

The book made me think of what it would be like to sit down with my grandmother and listen to her tell stories of when she was younger. The problem is, I have no connection with Aunt Jane or the people she's talking about, and while her storytelling was somewhat engaging, I wasn't interested in her stories. I remember doing this with my grandmas, but the main attraction was spending time with them. Don't get me wrong, I loved their stories, but the best part was always just being with them, especially when I got older.

It wasn't all bad, though. Aunt Jane did have some real nuggets of wisdom in there. Two that stood out to me were, "Things is predestined to come to us, honey, but we're jest as free as air to make what we please out of 'em." and my personal favorite, "It's jest as wrong to be too hard on yourself as it is to be too hard on other folks." Aunt Jane may not have been my favorite book in this journey, but I'm still glad I read it.

Two closing thoughts. First, I don't know who chose this cover, but it's terrifying. And second, I'm not letting my daughter choose my books anymore! It was a decent book and pretty well written once you get used to the accent, but in general, I wouldn't want to read something like it again.