M. Clifford (1)Reseñas

I had been looking forward to reading The Muse of Edouard Manet for a while. The plot sounded so interesting, a woman travels back in time and falls in love with a painter. Unfortunately the author apparently decided to write and publish this book without an editor. And that wasn't a great idea. The dialog isn't so good and the lovestory between Edouard and Emily is so cheesy that it's actually cringeworthy to read the book. Or perhaps I'm really picky when it comes to romance...
 
The only redeeming part is Edouard Manet himself. I had never heard of him and it was my curiosity about the man that kept me going. Also the kindle edition provided images of his paintings, so I didn't have to google them, that was great.

A dystopian novel that seems to be predicting the not-so-distant future. An interesting concept with the occassional clunky paragraph and odd turn of phrase.

I had been looking forward to reading The Muse of Edouard Manet for a while. The plot sounded so interesting, a woman travels back in time and falls in love with a painter. Unfortunately the author apparently decided to write and publish this book without an editor. And that wasn't a great idea. The dialog isn't so good and the lovestory between Edouard and Emily is so cheesy that it's actually cringeworthy to read the book. Or perhaps I'm really picky when it comes to romance...
 
The only redeeming part is Edouard Manet himself. I had never heard of him and it was my curiosity about the man that kept me going. Also the kindle edition provided images of his paintings, so I didn't have to google them, that was great.

I feel so lucky to have stumbled across this gem. I can't even remember what I was looking for when I discovered this book, but something about it made me instantly purchase it. It just seemed like it had something special. It did.

I absolutely loved this story. Everything about it. The art, the history, the murder mystery.

I think the best thing about this book was that I was honestly able to trick my mind into believing that it was real. It was so well written and made so much sense that I almost believed that a woman named Emily traveled backwards in time and inspired Edouard's paintings.

I really think everyone should give this book a chance. I can't wait for the next book in the series to come out.

vacation read #4. Brain twisting and infuriating little addendum to The Book.

Reading is good, and ebooks are good for readers. They're smaller, cheaper, conserve natural resources. They're accessible to all. Ereaders make it easier on the eyes and hands. Bad eyesight? Use text-to-speech and other audio devices. Or instantly make any book a large-print version. Ride the bus? Now you have a whole library in your pocket. It's wonderful!

I do believe that, wholeheartedly, and have embraced digital reading, along with millions of other avid readers. I love the digital community, the easy to use devices, and above all, the access. I'm pleased that I've reduced clutter, that (if I maintain my equipment,) I'm leaving less of an environmental footprint. Instead of buying 75,000 pages a year, I'm paying for the ethereal – story in pixel.

Technology has its price. In the real world, we have not only an ongoing fight against net neutrality, and access freedom, but also against censorship. Think it's not happening in the “Land of the Free?” Think again.

“Whitewash washes white not only its target but, over time, any memory of the target. That is the purpose of whitewash.” ~ Ron Powers, CNN Opinion Special, speaking of the sanitizing of Huck Finn.

Boyce Watkins, also a CNN Opinon correspondent, labels it thus: “Making a more appropriate version of Mark Twain's novel available...” He says that NOT editing offensive material is “disconnected from reality.”

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, was quietly censored for over 13 years, and replaced in schools with the mutilated version.

Bradbury's tale has become an iconic tale of censorship, (although he has always maintained that he wrote it to highlight how television destroys our desire for literature.) In 451, it was only after most people stopped reading that the Firemen began to burn the books. In a twist of greatest irony, Ballantine, in 1967, began sanitizing the novel. In all, 75 sections were edited in the school and library version issued by this imprint. Bradbury learned of the “mutilation,” around 1979, and a restored version was released in 1980, and Bradbury issued an incredibly important essay called Coda.

In The Book, we have a society of readers and non-readers, presumably in similar proportions to our current reality, but they read everything on a government edited electronic book. Under the influence of environmental crisis, and a highly effective reduce/reuse/recycle program, books gradually came to be seen as a “wrong” choice, then they became unavailable, and finally illegal even to possess.

The Book showcases some of these concerns, and it does it in a wonderfully well-written, compelling, and believable story of a man who has just discovered how circumscribed his access to thought, controversy, growth and challenge has become. Intention at the highest level has been to make these edits for the greater good. Erase even the memory of conflict, and peace is preserved. It's the uniform presentation of the same interpretations that erases the ideological loggerheads of their past.

Without the print versions to compare, edits, both large and small, became very easy to issue, via daily update transmissions. Digital information being highly mutable, is used to “protect” the citizenry from unpleasantness, maintain political correctness, avoid giving offense, expunge inflammatory ideas, and to eventually bring about peace through uniformity.

It's happening now. Some of the participants at ereading forums refer to printed books as DTBs – short for Dead Tree Book. This is very subtle but it is, nevertheless, shaming language. Printed books are gradually being accepted as wasteful, with digital versions the “environmental” response. And with digital versions, we are faced with a blessing and a curse. Find a typo? Fix it. Terminology becomes offensive? Change it. Maybe we should rename 1984 to 2084? Easy as pie, with just a few keystrokes. Want to add a “stronger female character” to Heinlein's brilliant Puppetmasters? All it takes is a few sentences inserted here and there. Voilá, political correctness. It's good, right?

It's a chilling fiction that is all too real. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.

I love to read on my Kindle, but also love the feel and smell of real paper books. In The Book, all paper books are banned and it is against the law to be caught with one. People read on The Book which is similar to the Kindle. When I first started reading this book, I thought I would really like it. It was about my favorite topic-books-and it was holding my attention. Then, in about the middle, it got so boring, I quit reading it. I decided I only had so much time alloted to reading, so why read a book I didn't like. But for some unknown reason, after about a week, I decided to try it again. I'm glad I did. While it is not the best book I have ever read, it's a long way from the worst. It does make you think about the future of our world. The characters are very interesting and you feel like you know them personally. They don't do very much and parts of the story that could be very action packed are only lightly touched upon. The ending of the original story was unexpected but good. There is another ending after the addendum that I did not understand at all. While it ties up some lose ends, it ends up adding more.

The Book was extremely thought provoking. This was one of my favorite sections of the book from page 88. It is a conversation that takes place between Winston and Holden.

"Have you ever read a book like this before? From a bound stack of printed paper?"
"No, I haven't."
"Well, enjoy it. The experience is a unique one."

This rings so true to me. I don’t think I could ever enjoy a digital book as much a bound book of pages that I can physically flip through.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Although the ending, well the Addendum ending, confused me. What was so special about Moses? What did I miss there? Message me if you have an idea please!

There are no more books being printed, using paper is outlawed, paper is wasteful in this dystopian novel. Every book was to be recycled, the only way to read a story is on The Book; an E-reader that is controlled by the conglomerate Publishing House. That wasn’t a problem for an everyday guy like Holden Clifford, he liked the stories he read on The Book. In fact he couldn’t wait to get home and clean-up from his job as a pipe fitter, ready to relax and escape into the many novels they offered. His life would have gone on just fine if he hadn’t stumbled upon an incongruity in one of his favorite stories. At a bar called The Library, the original owner had pasted the pages of old books on the walls during the beginning of the Reduce, Reuse and Recycle era. Holden was examining a page of one of his favorite stories, when he noticed that the words were a little different. This discovery starts him asking himself if changing one word could change the meaning, and if one word was changed how much more was changed, and most importantly who was doing the changing? In a future where “big brother is watching you,” asking these types of questions can put you in danger.

Unfortunately I read this on my Kindle which kept me feeling a little bit guilty and tiny bit anxious, and as an author I had questions of my own about the future of publishing. Yikes! Editors are hard enough to work with when you hire them yourself, but what if someone you didn’t know was twisting your words and distorting the meaning of what you wrote? Oh wait that’s the job of the spin doctors on TV news… Seriously, I can see this becoming more of an issue in the coming years. If you are a writer, an editor, a publisher or just someone who likes a good story that makes you think then check out M. Clifford’s The Book.

I tend to think of books as being either plot driven or character driven. This one can better be described as driven by an interesting idea. Imagine a world where recycling means it is illegal to print or even posses a book. For someone who loves reading and has not yet joined the e-book world, this idea pulled me through the story. It kept me reading despite the rather simplistic plot and the characters who were less than fully developed. I enjoyed finding references to other books I'd read more than I cared about the people in the story.

I was disappointed in this novel. In my opinion it promised much but failed to deliver in a number of ways.
The premise is excellent and appeals to my own views of the world. In the near future it is, for ecological purposes, made illegal to produce or own paper books. The “Great Recycling” sees the authorities taking possession of all books and recycling them. Paper is considered as precious to the extent that a piece of paper embedded in banknotes is vital to the banknotes’ value.
That being the case the only way to read books is using, “The Book”, a government sponsored e-reader that, like the Kindle, is connected via wireless networks. On a regular basis, the network connection is used to “update” everyone’s device.
The hero, Holden Clifford, realises that text from his favourite novel, “The Catcher in the Rye”, has been changed and sets out to discover why. In his search he finds that all texts are subject to alteration to mould the thinking of the readers.
There is an Orwellian comment that I think of often; (paraphrased) “Whoever controls the present controls history; whoever controls history controls the future.” This phrase sums up the motivation of this novel, but nowhere in the novel is this motivation brought out strongly enough to make a reader care. Instead of giving more indication of the socio-political implications of someone controlling and amending all the texts available to the people, Clifford emphasises the insult this is to book lovers and how book lovers should be willing to give their lives to protect their right to read the original texts.
As Holden continues his investigations he discovers that people who realise there are text amendments and who start asking questions mysteriously disappear. “The Publishing House” is the master of the amendments and their agents, with typical US secret service trimmings, chase up on anyone asking about why the books have been changed. Also, they can track what people are looking at on their “Book”, and if people are looking up texts that have been extensively amended, then they disappear.
I’m afraid the plot left me a bit cold as there were many gaps some of which are:
Paper is really scarce, yet the hero and his friends burn logs on the fire; The Publishing House can track people’s movements, yet Holden gives out the address of his friends’ hideaway with no consideration of security leaks; Everyone holds up in a single house, Waco style, and yet there is no hint the authorities can find them; Holden becomes a hailed hero of a movement without the story giving us any indication of why; When launching their biggest move, the climax of the book, a contact in the target organisation is made simply by phoning up people and asking contacts who might be in a position to help; and more…
I’m afraid the plot was rather naïve and may have suited a 1950s novel but looks rather innocent for the twenty-first century.
At the end of the story there is a request that the reader send a letter to their local Senator pleading for legislation against censorship and to ensure secure electronic copies of every text are made and protected from amendment and manipulation. This helps the book in one way and damages it in another.
It helps in that one starts to feel, “Ah, this is a book about a good cause. Yea! Sure I’ll support it and write off to my Senator. Good for the author to have brought this to my attention.” In that way one is left with a warm feeling about the book and starts to consider it a great piece of work.
On the other hand, one might think: “Ah! What a clever trick to make the reader ignore the poor plot and editorial errors and to have a little tug at the old heart-strings.”
Another attempt to appeal to the reader’s goodwill is constant reference to well loved classics, in particular “The Catcher in the Rye”, “Fahrenheit 451”, and “The Little Tin Soldier”. This became somewhat irksome.
Editing was another problem. I believe a good editor would have ensured that “acre”, a measure of area, was not used as an indication of distance, and that “stationary” was not used to mean “stationery”. The editor may also have prevented the inclusion of some quite convolute sentences that didn’t seem to make much sense.
I ignored the strange formatting of the document. It may have been a technical problem, but if not it would appear the book was written in a world where paragraphs hadn’t been invented.
Apologies for such a long review, but I felt this book had such a great premise with so much promise that it deserved a bit of specific comment and analysis.½

When is the last time you read a book that you didn’t want to end? A book that you couldn’t put down, one that took you on a journey? The Muse of Edouard Manet was that book for me. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute I spent reading it. I only stopped reading long enough to look up Manet’s paintings. It has all my favorite things: mystery, romance, artists, Museums, puzzles, time travel, Paris in the company of the Impressionists, writers, combined with a touch of danger and some heart pumping action. It’s a great mix of fact and fantasy. Well executed and well researched. Please someone make this a movie!

Let me preface this by saying that there are very few books out there that deserve such a high rating, and it was sheer luck that I happened to stumble across this one in my search for a self-published author with a book under $3. Having read the electronic version, now, I'm considering paying the full price for the print.

While a bit slow in the beginning, the story quickly picks up and launches the reader into a world where government-issued ereaders have driven paperbacks into obscurity as illegal examples of a profligate society. Sounds good for conservationism, doesn't it? Wrong. The ebooks have been censored, with words - and oftentimes, characters - deleted from the manuscripts. Even the Bible was altered. This Orwellian novel is an example of conspiracy theory that is chillingly believable. The concept may sound outlandish, but it appeals to our love of the written word and the importance of the truth, while admonishing our gravitation towards electronic gadgets and willingness to disregard the intangible worth of something easily mass-produced. It was good in theory, but corrupted in its execution.

The characters were easy to invest in emotionally, and while some, such as Marion, were not as developed as they could have been, it still manages to work in a piece that is essentially plot-driven. The dialogue is believable, as is the basic sequence of events. The sole chink in the armor of credulity is that the Ex Libris movement was able to remain undetected for so long. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never came - at least, not in the way that I had anticipated.

Now, the reason why this book receives a 4.5/5 for language is because there are a few instances where words are misused: "all together" in a case where "altogether" really is appropriate, or "vigilante" for "vigilant". (Yes, I am fully aware that this is being nitpicky.) The way in which the first chapter was written also made it hard to get into the story, but the writer seems to settle into a comfortable rhythm as you move out of the preface and into the beginning of Holden Clifford's tale. Don't let the first two pages turn you off - the rest of it is well worth reading.

Once again, the electronic formatting leaves much to be desired in the way of a built-in table of contents, chapters that start on new pages, and improper indenting of first paragraphs. As before, these hiccups have no bearing on the review above. The book was good enough for me to stop processing these minor annoyances after the first few screens.

As stated in another review: who could resist reading anything that starts with "Don't Read The Book"? As an avid reader and an all around lover of books, this book really resonated with me. Holden Clifford is divorced, a somewhat absent father, and a very simple man--all around he's an unlikely hero. But I was rooting for him the whole way. The cast of this book are very believable and relatable and loveable (for the most part). I was very intrigued by the world Holden lived in, where paper was illegal and all printed material was read through a digital device (much like the e-readers that are becoming more popular today). The revolution sparked in this book made me realize my deepset love for the printed page (and paper in general) and I found it hard to put this book down. The end left me with many questions, which was the point, and I do wish I had a bit more resolution, but this was a wonderful read!

A conservationist at The Art Institute of Chicago, Emily Porterfield has always been attracted to the works of pre-Impressionist painter Eduoard Manet. When a Manet exhibit is scheduled to display at the Art Institute, Emily x-ray's one of the paintings and discovers a hidden letter written in lead white paint beneath the artist's scene. The discovery could change her career, but her life is even more drastically altered when, upon falling asleep after reading the letter, she is mystically transported to Paris in the 1870's and meets the artist himself.

Swept up in the amazing impossibility of time travel while dreaming, Emily finds herself getting to know, and falling in love with, the man whose work she would adore a hundred fifty years in the future. However, in the present, she faces the discovery of three "new" Manet paintings, seemingly lost during World War II. Whether the paintings are real or forged is a secret that someone might just be willing to kill to keep.

M. Clifford's work is a stunning blend of genres - science fiction and history, romance and mystery. The details of Edouard Manet's life and work are as intricate and precise as the expertly researched descriptions of modern day art authentication and preservation. Sweetly romantic, action-driven, and emotional, with a mix of information, humor and suspense, The Muse of Edouard Manet is a literary work of art!

The book tells a succinct story with a satisfying conclusion, but with writing this vivid and characters so enjoyable, readers will be eager for the soon to be released second and third books in The Time Chronicles of Emily Porterfield!

Four simple words begin the narrative of M. Clifford's The Book: "Don't Read The Book".

What bibliophile can resist a challenge such as that? With a slight smirk I eagerly defied those words and plunged onward into the world of Holden Clifford - an intriguing dystopia in which environmental laws have banned paper and all literature and news media are conveniently conveyed to audiences via digital hand-held devices, portable and personal, each one called The Book. Holden, like his Salinger namesake, is a character caught existing rather than truly living and right from the start - as I, too, used a novel to shroud myself from a daily Chicago commute - I found myself empathizing with him and silently hoping for whatever would break him from his mundane life.

Holden's awakening comes in a Chicago bar called The Library, a tribute to the recycled book pages that wallpaper the venue. Upon seeing his name on an antique page from his favorite book, Holden's eyes are opened, not only to the powerful mystique of the printed word, but to the alterations from the original text that exist in the digital version he read his whole life.

M. Clifford's writing style is fresh and unique. The gripping story proves him to be an expert storyteller, beautifully weaving together political intrigue, suspenseful action, intricate relationships, and philosophical discussion. His descriptive techniques encourage the reader to engage with the writing - to enjoy the language as much as the story. It is a novel to be both savored and devoured. There are books which are meant to be read, respected, and reshelved, but The Book is one which lingers in my mind after the final pages have been viewed. It is a conversation starter as much as a story, drawing on themes such as the benefits and pitfalls of technology. Clifford's work sheds light on new thoughts and raises unanswerable questions but it could just be that the resolution is not nearly as valuable as the inquiry.