Books, tv, etc.

Here’s a few books I enjoyed and recommend, read in the last year or so.

The Outlander by Gil Adamson

I found this so absorbing that I read it in one sitting. This is the debut book from Canadian author Gil Adamson. I’m not one much for poetry usually, but I enjoyed the poetic writing style here. It’s the early 1900s, and widower Mary flees from her marital home with her twin brother-in-laws in close pursuit. Her trek takes her across a few provinces (I’m a bit fuzzy on the details now, but I think she ends up in Alberta). This is the hardcover pictured, the paperback cover has too much text for my liking.  5/5

blurb:

In 1903 a mysterious, desperate young woman flees alone across the west, one quick step ahead of the law. She has just become a widow by her own hand.

Gil Adamson’s extraordinary novel opens in heart-pounding mid-flight and propels the reader through a gripping road trip with a twist — the steely outlaw in this story is a grief-struck nineteen-year-old woman. As the young widow encounters characters of all stripes — unsavoury, wheedling, greedy, lascivious, self-reliant, and occasionally generous and trustworthy — Adamson weds her brilliant literary style to the gripping, moving, picaresque tale of one woman’s deliberate journey into the wild.

Another Shore by Nancy Bond

I seem to have read books with similar topics lately (Timeline by Michael Crichton and Doomsday Book by Connie Willis). I’ll have to say that of these three, this story stuck with me the most. It’s a historical time travel tale, set in 18th century Nova Scotia. This YA book seems to be out of print, but I found a copy to read at the library.  4/5

Publisher’s Weekly blurb:

Lyn, 17, takes a summer job in a reconstructed village in Nova Scotia, and finds herself transported back in time to the original French settlement. She is accepted there as a member of a local family, and gradually begins to adapt to new conditions and routines. Lyn learns that she is not alone in her predicament among the villagers are two who have similarly been thrown back from the 20th century, but this knowledge does not help her solve the puzzle of how to return to her own time. As her attachments to those around her deepen, her dilemma becomes even more complex: not merely how to go back to her century, but whether to try to go back at all.

The Moonlit Cage by Linda Holeman
This is another book that was compelling enough that I finished it in one sitting. It takes place in the Victorian era, and it’s about a young woman from Afghanistan and her journey away from her homeland through life, which takes her all the way to London.

4/5

blurb:

Darya’s simple life in mid-nineteenth-century Afghanistan is torn apart when a hateful curse by a jealous tribeswoman leaves her an outcast in her small Muslim village. She looks to her arranged marriage to the son of a nomadic tribal chief with hope that it will deliver her from this oppression; instead, Darya finds herself regularly beaten by her wrathful husband, and more isolated than she can bear. Seeing no choice other than to flee from her torment, Darya barely escapes through the foothills of the Hindu Kush.

Destitute and alone, Darya meets David Ingram, an enigmatic Englishman traveling in Afghanistan. Although he is a complete stranger, she joins him on his journey to Bombay—and embarks on the adventure of a lifetime.

Sorcery and Cecelia by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

This was a random library find for me, and it turned out to be a great pick. It’s an epistolary YA novel following the adventures of cousins Cecelia and Kate in Regency England. Some of the descriptions I’ve seen say it’s a cross between Jane Austen and Harry Potter – not so much on the Harry Potter, I think. There’s magic, yes, but it’s nowhere near the universe of HP. This is the first of a series of three books. I enjoyed all of them but I only loved this one.  5/5

blurb:

A great deal is happening in London. There’s the witch who tried to poison Kate and the man who seems to be spying on Cecelia. Then there’s Oliver, who has been turned into a tree and who doesn’t bother to tell anyone where he is anymore. The prim and proper world of Regency England is crossed with the wizardly doings of high fantasy in this story that was first published in 1988.