All The Book Blog Names Are Taken

Sunday, March 28, 2021

Palm Sunday, 2021

It's that time once again, Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. The power of this week and what it means never fails to both awe and inspire me.

Each year I read The Final Days of Jesus, one of my all-time favorite books. The authors have broken the week down day-by-day, starting with the triumphant entrance into Jerusalem by Jesus just as predicted in Zechariah 9:9.

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy King cometh unto thee; he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass."

(Big surprise, I am partial to the KJV.)

I enjoy this book so greatly because it discusses discrepancies that we see in the four books of the Gospel, and explains why these might exist. The book is also full of maps and diagrams that I find helpful.

Most importantly though, the authors use the four books of the Gospel to look at the day-to-day movements of Jesus and the disciples as they prepared for what was to come - or, as Jesus prepared. His disciples were all a little slow on the up-take despite Him repeatedly tell them what was going to happen. And I suppose we should be grateful for that - if those screw-ups could walk with Jesus and be called His most beloved, there is so much hope for the rest of us.

Hosanna!

Saturday, March 27, 2021

Stacking the Shelves #139

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly feature co-hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It is a chance to showcase all the goodies you've collected throughout the week, whether they're bought on-line or in-store, an ARC or a final copy, borrowed from a friend or the library, physical or digital, etc.

NetGalley

Library Treasures

Happy Reading!
Sarah

Friday, March 26, 2021

First Line Friday #125

First Line Friday is brought to you by Hoarding Books. Playing along is easy: open the book nearest you and share the first line. Then check out the link to see the other first lines posted this week.

"For eight millennia, men have won glory coaxing soldiers onto bloodstained fields to which only a few intrepid women have ventured."

I'm mainly here for Boudicca. I could not care less about QEI.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think, and leave a link to your FLF so I can stop by to see what you've posted this week.

Happy Reading!
Sarah

Monday, March 22, 2021

Book Review | Murder by the Book: The Crime that Shocked Dickens' London

Rating ⭐⭐⭐

I am strangely drawn to the Victorian era for one very specific reason: their weird obsession with death and murder - by poison in particular. The way murder and death was written about in that time period is so scandalous and salacious, which seems to be a direct conflict with the 'values' and 'morals' of the era. You may have noticed I have reviewed a lot of these books lately, and there are a couple more coming.

The murder of Lord William Russell is little-known today, but in 1840 it was a HUGE story, not only because of the viciousness of the attack, but because of how it shook the very foundation of the literary circle of London.

The well-known member of parliament was found dead, a massive wound to his throat/neck/head from an ax left at the scene. It was a brutal murder and his valet was immediately suspected, though there was little physical evidence. Small items such as coins and a watch are missing, and before his murder Lord Russell had reported that the locket containing his deceased wife's picture had gone missing also. Eventually, in an unlikely turn, it is discovered Courvoisier (the valet) had done quite a bit of reading in the couple years before the murder. At a time when the publishing industry began to boom, with books being made quickly and cheaply, it wasn't hard to find true-crime stories - which no one will be surprised about because Victorians loved the lurid tales of murder.

The valet finally claims in what feels like his fifty-third confession that he was influenced by the book Jack Sheppard, written by William Harrison Ainsworth. The story tells of a criminal who manages to escape justice time and again. He actually used this as a defense, but the idea was solid enough in that time to get the likes of Dickens, Thackeray, and even Queen Victoria talking about it.

Though this was a fairly quick read, it ended up being a bit of a disappointment. I thought the literary aspect would be a lot more interesting than it was. It is still a decent look at a horrible crime, but the connection to Jack Sheppard is tenuous at best. The parallel commentary about the works of Ainsworth and Dickens, among others, and how the criminal element of their novels is interesting at times but also felt kind of forced. It is interesting to note that the arguments being made about violent music and video games in our lifetime were made back then about books.

Recommended for those with an interest in Victorian true crime.

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Book Review | The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime

Rating ⭐⭐⭐

I had such high hopes for this one, but it ended up being somewhat of a disappointment.

The premise was fantastic. The author set out to explore some of the most sensational attention-grabbing murder cases of Victorian England. I feel like the title and subtitle were misleading because we know the Victorians did not invent murder. They did, however, invent making it salacious. Sensational newspaper accounts shouted grisly details (often inaccurate, but who cares? It's murder!) and people actually went sight-seeing to the locations of the crimes. So gross.

Side Note #1: It reminded me of the Villisca Axe Murders in Villisca, Iowa in 1912. A family of six and two girls who were friends with the children were horrifically murdered with an axe and the killers never captures. People from all over the town traipsed through the house when the murders were discovered, even HANDLING THE MURDER WEAPON. So gross, on so many levels. No respect for the dead.

Side Note #2: Okay, so I have been to the Villisca Axe Murder house on a tour given by owner Darwin Linn, who has sadly passed away since then. But we were on a tour of the restored house, not the bloody crime scene, so it is not the same.

Murder became entertainment and the author recounts all the ways in which this entertainment was produced - ballads, operas, novels, broadsides, and more. It is easy to see how this fascination with gruesome deaths paved the way for novelization of these crimes to develop - Sherlock Holmes is a product of this age.

Overall it was not a terrible book, but it became a repetitive one. The chapters were long, and followed the same format: the murder or group of murders were discussed with a good amount of detail, and then we are told how the crimes were depicted and in what medium. I skimmed at times only because the latter was indeed repetitive.

The author has researched and explains the ones you would expect of the era: Burke and Hare, Sweeney Todd, and Jack the Ripper, but also delves into some cases that are lesser-known today, but were huge when they occurred. I appreciate the variety, as many kinds of crimes were explored, though murders were always the most sensational and best-selling.

Side Note #3: When my mom and I were in Edinburgh, we went on a Burke and Hare night tour. It was November, so it ended up just being the two of us and our tour guide, Dougal. He was lovely and quite pleasant to follow around the city. We saw all the places associated with the body-snatchers and their crimes. This is kind of morbid too I suppose, but again, at least we didn't make a day of visiting a crime scene to look at dead bodies and having a picnic lunch with the kids!

I did find it distracting and unnecessary that the author would randomly insert herself in the story to make some quick little quip about the research she conducted. I really hate when authors do this.

Recommended for those with an interest in the shenanigans of Victorians who were obsessed with murder.

Tackling the TBR Week 11: Mar 15 - Mar 21, 2021

I am now entering year three of Tackling the TBR. Slowly but surely I have made big strides in getting by TBR under control. When I first started in 2019, my TBR was topping out at over 5,000 books. I don't know that I will ever get below 500, but a #BookDragon can dream!

I will be posting on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and the last day of the month. Feel free to join in if you'd like!

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Announcement: I have added a linky to this post and will do so for future Tackling the TBRs as well. A few people expressed interest in this in one of my 'goals' posts so I thought this would be an easy way for us to all connect. I post weekly, but feel free to do whatever works for you - weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, whatever!

The link will be open the entire week.

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Previous Week's TBR Total: 2,940

Currently Reading

Books Added to TBR

Books Removed from TBR: 14

Books Read

Books DNF-ed: 0

Duplicates Removed: 1

New TBR Total: 2,925

Any of these catch your eye? Have you already read any? Let me know!

Happy Reading!

Sarah

Saturday, March 20, 2021

Stacking the Shelves #138

Library Treasures

Happy Reading!
Sarah

Friday, March 19, 2021

First Line Friday #124

"The sheriff once told me this part of Oklahoma was haunted, that once you're a part of it, you can't ever leave."

I can't even begin to imagine the utter heartbreak for these families, watching the complete negligence by those tasked with solving the murders. I'm over halfway done and the book is absolutely infuriating.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think, and leave a link to your FLF so I can stop by to see what you've posted this week.

Happy Reading!
Sarah

Monday, March 15, 2021

Book Review | The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

It will surprise no one that surgery was dangerous in the nineteenth century (and, as a result, every century before that). Not the surgery itself, but the aftermath when infections were likely, causing death rates to soar. Here you will read about the operating theatres and can easily imagine being in the room as surgeons worked quickly and without anesthesia. I am grossed out very easily by all manner of bodily fluids, so there were definitely parts I had to skim or I would have been gagging. If you suffer from a similarly quick gag-reflex I would still recommend this highly engaging and illuminating work, and skim over certain parts like I did.

Not until Dr. Joseph Lister came along would this seemingly complex mystery be solved - what caused infections post-op, and how could they be prevented? We are fully immersed in his world from the start. In addition to front row seats in the operating theatres, we go along to the dreary and disgusting hospitals, dead houses, even graveyards to procure bodies for the med students to practice on. Hospitals were considered the last option, especially if you were wealthy, due to the filthy conditions, and were basically where one went to die instead of heal.

Surgeons in particular were a nasty bunch. They certainly did not wash their hands, nor their tools or clothing as they went from patient to patient, living or dead. At the time, the death rate post-op was a ghastly 90%. Congrats on surviving a painful and bloody surgery, your reward is a painful and less-bloody death. The idea of germs, something so small they could not be seen, being the root cause of so much death was unfathomable and it would take several long, arduous years for Lister to convince colleagues of his discoveries.

Yet this is the world Dr. Lister wanted to be part of and we should be eternally grateful for that fact. I can't even begin to count the number of lives saved due to Dr. Lister's experiments and the confidence he had in himself that he had found not only the cause of so many needless deaths, but also the cure. With the discovery of those pesky and microscopic germs, the field of medicine/healthcare was completely transformed - though not without struggle on Lister's part to get his colleagues to see the error of their ways and convince them of the merits of cleanliness.

Dr. Lister focused on the cleaning of surgical tools and operating tables, as well as cleanliness of hospitals and specifically the beds in which patients were supposed to recover. Often patients returned to lice and bedbugs, and were somehow expected to recover in such conditions.

Dr. Lister began experimenting with the best ways to rid both surgeons and patients of the germs he was certain were causing so many deaths. He conducted experiments and took extensive notes on what worked and what did not. He put his antiseptic theories to test by creating a system in which he used carbolic acid to clean both his hands and surgical equipment. He also used the acid to soak gauze, then he applied gauze to the would post-surgery.

As Dr. Lister found success with his new system, he faced extreme backlash from colleagues in the medical community - big surprise, many did not believe that germs were the root cause of the problem. This would prove to be his toughest battle, as few surgeons were willing to come around to his way of thinking.

Overall I found this to be an incredibly captivating account of the practices of medicine in the 19th century. The advances Dr. Lister made still impact us today. I admire his work greatly; it would have very easy for him to give up, given the pushback he received from others. Yet he persevered and we should be grateful for that.

Highly recommended.