Book Description:
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Clarissa, an Asian/Caucasian young woman has lived in seven different countries and has no lasting connection to any place. She thinks it’s time to settle somewhere she could eventually call home. But where?

She decides to live in the city of her birth. There, she joins a quest for the provenance of stolen illuminated manuscripts—a medieval art form that languished with the fifteenth-century invention of the printing press—hoping it would give her the sense of belonging she craves. But will it be enough?

For her, these ancient manuscripts elicit cherished memories of children’s picture books her mother read to her, nourishing a passion for art.

The trail of the manuscripts leads to an American soldier who served in World War II. Clarissa is anxious to know what motivated him to steal and keep the artwork for fifty years. But instead of easy answers, she finds bigger questions.

Immersed in art, but naïve about life, she’s disheartened and disillusioned by the machinations the quest reveals of an esoteric, sometimes unscrupulous art world. What compels individuals to steal artworks, and conquerors to plunder them from the vanquished? Why do collectors buy artworks for hundreds of millions of dollars? Who decides the value of an art piece and how?

The Golden Manuscripts: A Novel is inspired by the actual theft of medieval manuscript illuminations during the second world war.

MY REVIEW

Clarissa has lived in many places and now she’s trying to put down roots. This takes her back to the US, where she was born. Looking for a subject for her MA theses, she comes across an article in a art newspaper. It’s about illuminated manuscripts that were supposedly stolen during WWII and disappeared. Their reappearance raises many questions.

I’d not heard of illuminated manuscripts so I did a search to understand what they were. I got lost down the rabbit hole and quickly realized how this would be a great subject for Clarissa’s thesis. And how daunting the task would be to prove their authenticity and ownership. Of course, she’d need help and someone from her past is called upon to help. As Clarissa and Nathan dig deeper into the mystery of the manuscripts, their attraction to each other grows.

As much a mystery as a romance and a woman seeking a place to call home, The Golden Manuscripts was a fascinating and hopeful read.

4 STARS

Book Description:
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Luna hungers for adventure. Lucien has chosen a solitary professional life. She’s breaking away from her sheltered existence while he’s a widely-traveled but disillusioned young architect.

Drawn together by an intimate journal that he found abandoned in a café, these two strangers begin to shed the shackles of their painful pasts.

Lucien opens himself up to Luna. But she isn’t ready. She travels far, into a world steeped in ancient culture and the ravages of a deadly history. Can she survive unscathed? And will she be the soulmate he has been searching for?

Book 5 in the series Between Two Worlds is an epistolary tale of courage, resilience, and the bonds that bring diverse people together.

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MY REVIEW

Luna hasn’t always lived in San Diego. She moved there to live with her parents when she turned thirteen. Before that, she lived in Hawaii, raised by her grandmother. She had special memories of her life there and one of those memories was time spent in the shade of a Mango tree. One that never bore fruit. She looked forward to adding new memories when she returned to Hawaii every summer. The summer she turned fifteen was one of those. Her grandmother gave her a black leather journal to jot down her thoughts. It became very dear to her. She wrote in it for years. Then…… she lost it. Lucien, the man who chanced upon her journal, recognized it was special. With no idea who it belonged to, he had to return it.

Told from both perspectives, I liked Luna and Lucien. They were both looking for something. For direction. The story is often told through journal entries and some might find this disruptive, taking them out of the story. I liked it. It helped me understand both of them better. As their friendship became attraction I was rooting for them. Perhaps what they were both seeking was right in front of them.

This was more of a romance and finding oneself than an adventure. I enjoyed the characters and the story. The writing was descriptive. And I got the ending I was hoping for.

4 STARS

Book or Film?

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I watch more films than I read books—a no-brainer maybe since most films take less than two hours to finish, unless you’re watching a miniseries. But that’s not the reason I love films. It’s the visuals and the immediate excitement they elicit. With four video streaming accounts, I can easily satisfy my addiction to film every night.

Watching film adaptations of books is how I sometimes discover my next read. A movie can make me curious enough to read the original it’s based on. That’s how I discovered Elizabeth Gaskell, when I saw a BBC miniseries of her novel, North and South. In contrast, Jane Austen is an old friend from early college days. I love Austen and have read all her novels before I saw an excellent production of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. I’ve watched more recent adaptations, but I still prefer Ms. Austen’s book to its film versions. For certain books, I think something is inevitably lost in translation to a purely visual medium.

I can’t say the same of Shakespeare plays which I laboriously read for classes before I saw them on film. But wonderful British productions—a few of them done by actor/director Kenneth Branagh—rekindled my interest in Shakespeare. I found young Branagh mesmerizing in Hamlet.  He made Shakespearean language more compelling. More dramatic. More beautiful. Shakespeare created these pieces for the stage so that may not be surprising. Though writing in the 16th century, Shakespeare is timeless, but to be fully appreciated, I believe he needs to be performed by great actors.

Another film I enjoyed more than the book is The Guernsey Potato Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I liked the book very much. It’s an epistolary novel written completely as an exchange of letters, like Jane Austen’s Lady Susan. Letters and diaries are intimate and unsurpassed for revealing private truths. But turning an epistolary novel into film that mostly shows people writing letters or diaries would have been dull. Cinema requires vibrant scenes and dynamic actors to make the book pulsate with life, and the The Guernsey film delivered on those.

Books are superior to films when the author uses stream of thought as a device to convey intense emotions such as an inner turmoil. Though long introspection by characters would be boring, if not trying, for most modern readers, written words could communicate thoughts much better. They give us a deeper, clearer perception of character growth and, consequently, a more satisfying story. I felt this to be true in Henry James’ The Portrait of A Lady.

How do you act out introspection and inner turmoil, for instance? Outward facial gestures can only go so far, and quite a number of them are culture-specific and ambiguous. A smile, for instance, can mean one is happy. Or embarrassed. Or putting on a face to mask a darker emotion. Many times, the expressions in the eyes, cheeks, and mouth would cue you in on what a particular smile means. But they still would not fully convey an idea or a feeling the way words can.