The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty
Epistolary young adult book. Three 10th grade friends from Ashbury high school, Emily, Lydia and Cassie, participate in their interschool pen pal project for class. Set in Australia and quite entertaining, Emily and Lydia have fun with their pen pals but Cassie runs into serious problems with hers.
4.5/5
Also published under the title Finding Cassie Crazy, it’s the second of these connected books: (1) Feeling Sorry for Celia and (3) The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie / Becoming Bindy Mackenzie / The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie.
Scholastic blurb:
The Ashbury-Brookfield pen pal program was designed to bring together the “lowlife Brooker kids” (as they’re known to the Ashburyites) and the “rich Ashbury snobs” (as they’re called by the Brookfielders) in a spirit of harmony and the Joy of the Envelope. But things don’t go quite as planned. Lydia and Sebastian trade challenges, like setting off the fire alarm at Brookfield. Emily tutors Charlie in “How to Go on a Date with a Girl.” But it’s Cassie and Matthew who both reveal and conceal the most about themselves – and it’s their secrets and lies that set off a war between the two schools.
starring Aishwarya Rai as Lalita/Lizzie and Martin Henderson as William Darcy
I’ve seen this before, but it was on tv the other night and I caught the opening number.
Yes, cheesiness but so entertaining. If you are a Pride and Prejudice fan I recommend it for kicks. The Bennets are reimagined as the Bakshi family with one less sister (Kitty is nowhere to be found). It was great to see Naveen Andrews (Balraj/Mr. Bingley) dance and sing like ‘an Indian MC Hammer’ in the opening number when his role as Sayid on Lost is so serious. The cobra dance by Maya, the equivalent of Mary’s piano playing and singing – priceless. Also fun was the ‘No life, without wife’ number (phrase coined by Mr. Kohli/Mr. Collins).
Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears
I’ve enjoyed Iain Pears’ art mystery series, but haven’t read his standalone works. Financier John Stone fell to his death from a window of his London home. This is presented in three parts, all with different narrators. It has an interesting structure – it’s told in a backwards fashion; starting in London 1909 it then jumps to 1890 Paris and then to 1867 Venice. I did skim quite a bit of the financial parts and was lagging by the time part three came around, despite the Venice setting. But if you can stick with it until the end, you’ll be rewarded with a whaaat? At least, that was my reaction. Cannot say I saw that coming, but everything falls into place.
3.5/5
Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2009, 978-0676979848
jacket blurb:
A panoramic novel with a riveting mystery at its heart, Stone’s Fall is a quest, a love story, and a tale of murder. It centres on the career of a very wealthy financier and the mysterious circumstances of his death, cast against the backdrop of WWI and Europe’s first great age of espionage, the evolution of high-stakes international finance and the beginning of the twentieth century’s arms race.
