A new Face and Feet on High Heels Blog...

A very nice hello and welcome to all High Heels and Stockingsfans, here I'am - Vivian - the new face and feet of Higherheel. Maybe you have already recognized the new design, but thats just the beginning - I'll bring a lot of fresh air to this Highheels-Blog ;). It has been quiet a long while and a lot of things happened since the last post on this Shoe-blog. But from now on you'll see the updates coming often ..
For now, just a few new High Heels photos of me as a kind of first introduction of me. On my first photos I wear 6 inch high Oxford Style High Heels from Pleaser Shoes and fishnet stockings. Hope you like the photos - a longer, more detailed introduction with me wearing 4 inch red pumps will follow soon ....

High heeled greetings
- Vivian

Update: This High Heels and Stockings photos are now available in a pictureset including 10 high res shoe Images..
Buy now for just $6.89 -

"G" by John Berger (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

John Berger at Wikipedia
Order G HERE or read an excerpt

INTRODUCTION: Sometime ago I stumbled by chance upon a remark that "G" by John Berger is the strangest book to have won the Man Booker prize (in 1972), not to speak of the author's acceptance speech that became notorious. I was curious and after I checked and liked the excerpt from "Amazon read inside" above, I finally got the book.

"Winner of Britain's prestigious Booker Prize, John Berger's "G". relates the story of a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of this century. Berger sets his novel against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898, the Boer War, and the first flight across the Alps, making "G". a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history's private moments."

ANALYSIS: As storyline goes, G is a modern interpretation of the classical Don Juan story but from the perspective of several of the women involved. G. himself - the illegitimate son of a rich but strange English girl and a conventional Italian businessman - is seen through the eyes of the women, the narrator who inserts his comments here and there and only sometimes directly, this last especially in the midst of violent events at which he is essentially a bystander until they engulf him.

Hypnotic and quite un-intelligible either by the men in his circle who mostly dislike and even hate him, or by the women who are mostly fascinated despite themselves, G remains a mystery to the end with his actions confounding everyone expectations. The book is worth reading for this unexpected moments, though of course it has more strengths. The prose is just beautiful and on many occasions mesmerizing and the introspective descriptions of people in a romantic and erotic context are among the best I've ever read.

"G" focuses on several key moments: Garibaldi's Italian saga and the early years of the modern Italian state are interlinked with G's conception and childhood, The Boer War coincides with G's sexual awakening, a 1910 aviation first with some of G's conquests as a young man and the Great War with G's apotheosis so to speak... G himself looks for the strange, in women and events, so for example one of his "conquests" is interesting for him only as long as her husband is threatening to shoot him...

The novel has an unusual structure with paragraphs linked in a whole as well as authorial insertions about this or that; overall the structure works well despite the seeming scattering in places, though it requires constant attention to detail. The combination of personal and historical, story and authorial musings give the novel its "interesting-ness" flavor that I appreciate a lot and I am highly recommending it for a very rewarding and entertaining reading experience.

"Lovers and Beloveds - An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom" by MeiLin Miranda (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Official MeiLin Miranda Website
Order "Lovers and Beloveds" HERE or HERE(Kindle) or HERE(Smashwords)
Read 50% from "Lovers and Beloveds" HERE (either online or download various formats)

INTRODUCTION: "The Tremont family has conquered kingdom after kingdom, and rules its continent. Now, Tremont stands on the cusp of an industrial revolution; trains and steam engines are new, and the Scholar Priests of Eddin's Temple make exciting discoveries daily. Magic is long forgotten, but the Gods are not. Prince Temmin must now leave his childhood home to live with his father--Harsin the Fourth, by the Grace of Pagg, King of the Greater Kingdom of Tremont and Litta, Emperor of Inchar. Harsin expects his son to become the kind of ruthless, pragmatic man he is. But his immortal advisor Teacher has other plans, involving the seductive human avatars of the Gods called the Lovers. Teacher intends to bind Temmin to the Lovers' Temple, bring him closer to his people, and set him on a path that will lead to ultimate glory for Tremont--or its end."

"Lovers and Beloveds" is an indie title I have discovery from a review inquiry. The Jacqueline Carey comparison the author used attracted my attention, while the excerpt linked above convinced me to read the book and I am really glad I did. I would note that indeed Lovers and Beloveds has "Kushiel vibes"; while it is more explicit though in the same tasteful vein as there, it posits a world where the Gods' embodiments - including the erotic one in dual male/female manifestation - play an important role in society.

FORMAT/CLASSIFICATION:"Lovers and Beloveds" stands at about 400 pages divided into 17 chapters with an Appendix about Tremontine Calendar and Measurements and one about Pronunciations.

The main POV of the novel, Temmin is the only son of King Harsin and for reasons we discover as the novel goes on, he has been raised far away from the capital in his mother's stronghold, very sheltered and with limited possibilities of female companionship. To the scorn of the capital's young bloods, he is still virgin when the king summons him to assume his responsibilities as heir. That factoid is very important since it is provable in a conclusive way in a special magic ritual which is fatal otherwise. But that magic ritual involves subtle issues about the power distribution in the Kingdom, so having the heir undergo it is not in the King's interest and the novel's main motive driver follows from here.

The mysterious Teacher who seems to be a long-lived magician advising the King and who is both in the King's power to command but who can also try subtly to influence things starts training Temmin as well as dropping hints about important events from his family's past that somehow never made it into the official histories. One such event is the subject of the secondary thread of the novel which starts interspersing with the main narrative after a while.

"Lovers and Beloveds" is secondary world fantasy in the Legacy of Kushiel vein with quite a lot of explicitness which is integrated well into the main story. The first volume in a series, "Lovers and Beloveds" stops at a good "to be continued" point and offers a complete and satisfying reading experience. I am very interested in the sequel which is tentatively expected in the second part of 2011.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The novel starts slow and a bit on the raw side but it picks up considerably after a while; I liked the writing and was intrigued by the premise so I persevered beyond the clumsy descriptions in the first several pages, where things seem just out of kilt somehow, not quite making sense in the "pseudo-medieval" setting we are introduced to.

The later events and world building will make sense of that part, but here we encounter one of the common problems in secondary fantasies that contain "unhistorical elements", whether in social mores or in how political power distributes, namely that the author knows much more than us, but fails to convey the reasons for the 'way things are' against our empirical knowledge of the human nature.

"Lovers and Beloveds" ultimately depends on the character of Temmin and while he becomes quite interesting by the end of the novel, readers have to put up with a lot of silliness and even dullness before; not a bad prince as they go, but still spoiled and naive which makes for the worst combination sometimes.

The emotional distance of 3rd person narration works against the book to some extent - one big reason the Kushiel books are so good is the immediacy of first person narration - and since we essentially follow Temmin's path with few outside events recounted, I think that a first person narration would have made the book better.

The secondary story that Temmin sees in the magic book of the subtitle (Intimate Story of the Greater Kingdom) is somewhat cliched and predictable, so a bit overlong as a subthread but it works as a morality tale/history lesson and I guess it may play a role in later world building expansion.

The huge strength of the novel is the writing style which is excellent and helps smooth some of the issues mentioned above, while keeping one turning the pages and accepting at least temporarily what the author "sells"; once getting going, the world building is pretty good, still a little bit sketchy to the end but not with great flaws and I expect continuing volumes to expand it. The characters develop and show a lot of nuance after a while, so I urge everyone to give this book a little time to develop as story and hero go.

All in all the series has extremely great promise so I am very interested in the sequel, while Lovers and Beloveds (A+) is one of the best indies - more or less a debut since the book has been expanded a lot from its first edition - I've read this year. If you are a fan of Jacqueline Carey I would definitely urge you to try this one and as mentioned give it a bit to settle down and of course I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in beautifully written fantasy of intrigue and eroticism and who is not afraid of some explicitness.

More Books in Covers; Reading, Get Back To, Wanted (by Liviu Suciu)

In the spirit of showing more books in covers using the wonderful capabilities of Goodreads, an image grabber and a little picture editing, here is the list of 13 books I am focusing now on and some more 40 books I started and could get into main focus at any time, with 30 more books I do not have but would at least start if not read end-to-end on getting them.

Of course I am open to new books too, but they better have something to wow me considering that the 53 books below that I have - and some sequels/related books I may read on completing the appropriate book from the 53 - not to speak of the 30 wanted below and others I may have forgotten from 2011 - are material for months of reading...

All three lists of titles are linked in the corresponding descriptions below.

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Currently reading:

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Started and can get back to anytime - I have lots more books I started and put on the reading pile but these are all recent revisits.

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Wanted and most would be asap reads, the rest at least try on receive:

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2010 Reads in Covers (by Liviu Suciu)

Using the marvelous Goodreads and it's sorting/display capabilities plus an image grabber, I decided to do a collage of the 244 books I've read this year sorted by rating.

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A's or better in chronological order of listing them by me on Goodreads from recent on

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A's or better in chronological order of listing from recent on

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A's or better in chronological order of listing from recent on

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A's or better in chronological order of listing from recent on

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A's or better in chronological order of listing from recent on

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5 A's and then 25 B's in chronological order of listing from recent on

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3 lines of B's and 2 lines of C's in chronological order of listing from recent on

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10 C's, 19 D's and the 5 F's I've had the (dis)pleasure to read in 2010 in chronological order of listing from recent on

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