I’ve read that twice, the second time just a year or two ago, and enjoyed it both times. It’s a good mix of WWII and the supernatural. I’ve heard the rest of the series sucks, though, and haven’t gone beyond the first book.
Still on my post-election comfort read kicks, so I’m reading a lot of cozy mysteries and romance novels.
I really need a cozy series to latch onto. I’m finishing my reread of Carolyn G Hart’s Henrie O books, and I still have the Laurien Berenson Melanie Travis books that I find weirdly addictive. But I need another series and can’t seem to find one in that sweet spot. Suggestions welcome, though I struggle to identify exactly what it is I’m looking for.
I saw on Goodreads that a romance I finished yesterday is part of a series. Since most of the time such series in romancelandia are launched from secondary characters in the original, I got really excited. Why? The only secondary female character in the book I just read (who wasn’t the heroine’s married mom) is trans.
I looked it up and yes, the next book stars that secondary character. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m just delighted.
Finished:
Kate MacLeod’s Mitwa I love books that really paint a picture of the world they inhabit and this one really did it for me. This goes a lot deeper than most dystopian Sci-Fi books and really gives a good sense of character and plot.
*That’s Not How You Wash a Squirrel *by David Thorne was definitely hit and miss for me. When he is responding (allegedly) with other humans, he is really in his zone. Otherwise it’s labored filler.
Currently reading:
999: New Stories Of Horror And Suspense I forget I have this anthology on my Kindle and in between books I’ll go back to it and read another short story. The scariest part is the editing though. It really takes me out of the story when I see glaring typos.
The Familiar Vol. 4: Hades by Mark Z Danielewski. It arrives tonight from Amazon and is one of the few books I still read in paper form. This is part of a major work that makes A Song of Ice and Fire’s tangled web seem elementary. There are supposed to be 27 volumes with 5 “seasons” and the season finale, volume 5, is coming out on Halloween 2017. I am ridiculously geeked out about this series.
Love that book
Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, just delivered and going far too quickly. Seems the central message is everyone loves Loki even when they hate what he does, and hates Loki even when they love what he does.
My favorite cozies are Charlotte MacLeod and Alisa Craig books.The down side is that they are older somight be harder to find. The Steampunk series"The Parasol Protectorate" Are kind of cozy too,likewise for Colleen Gleason’s Stoker and Holmes books.
I finished reading Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Part I, which I thought was delightfully warm and funny without being too saccharine. I was less excited by Part II which seemed like a pretty typical 19th century “should I or shouldn’t I?” romance, with some additional preachiness and comments about how women should focus on being good wives and mothers.
Is Little Men any good? I read a plot synopsis and it didn’t really grab me. And I have to admit that I really hate reading baby talk, like “I dess Dod does it when I’s asleep” or “Me loves evvybody”.
I recently finished Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth. I haven’t quite decided what to make of it yet. Anyone else have an opinion?
Next up, I’m about halfway through Love in Lowercase, about a bachelor whose life is upended by the appearance of a cat. Like jsgoddess, I’ve been looking for comfortable reads recently, and this seems to fit the bill.
Hmmm, I’ve clearly been adopting the wrong cats. This guy’s cat changes his life; the only thing that my furry bastards have forced me to change is the litter box.
Last night, I finished Cynthia Voigt’s Izzy, Willy Nilly. Terrible title, nice book about a teenage girl dealing with the aftermath of a terrible car accident. Voigt gets inside people’s heads really really well.
I just finished A Taste of Honey, by Kai Ashante Wilson. He writes fantasy set in a vaguely Northern-African setting (in this book there’s another culture that seems vaguely Roman, in addition to the locals). The book is a same-sex romance at its heart, and is beautifully written. If any of these genres appeal to you, consider it recommended!
I added it to my Goodreads queue.
I, too, finished an LBGTQ book, The Lawrence Browne Affair by Cat Sebastian. A short Regency romance with inventors and scallywags galore.
One thing I forgot to mention about Palace of Treason is it has an interesting 2-1/2 page sentence describing a desperate fight from start to finish.
Meanwhile, I finished W. Somerset Maugham’s book of short stories entitled Far Eastern Tales. I really love Maugham, he’s one of my favorite early-20th-century writers – hell, one of my favorite writers period. In Bangkok, the venerable old Oriental Hotel, which routinely ranks in the top five hotels in the world on just about everyone’s list, has a whole Somerset Maugham wing in his honor. He stayed there in his travels, and there’s a story that he showed up once suffering from malaria, and the German manager didn’t want to let him in, because Mauagham was so sick that the manager was afraid he would die there and would not allow such a thing.
In the first short story in this volume, “Footprints in the Jungle,” Maugham makes an observation that I have personally seen to be every bit as true today as it was 100 years ago when he wrote it:
**" ‘You know how many fellows when they come out East seem to stop growing.’
“I did indeed. One of the most disconcerting things to the traveller is to see stout, middle-aged gentlemen, with bald heads, speaking and acting like schoolboys. You might almost think that no idea has entered their heads since they first passed through the Suez Canal. Though married and the fathers of children, and perhaps in control of a large business, they continue to look upon life from the standpoint of the sixth form.”**
A recommended read along with all of his works. I’ve already detailed in the past how his The Razor’s Edge quite literally changed my life by giving me the gumption to leave my shitkicking Texas hometown and get out into the world.
Next up will be The Greatest Generation, by Tom Brokaw.
Never read it myself, but when Elmer Fudd appeared in a Warner Bros. cartoon reading it, I assumed it was a spoof of Little Women. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned it was a real book!
I spent the day reading “The Soldier’s Scoundrel” By Cat Sebastian, it’s another Regency M/M romance. A decent mystery formed the main plot of the book, overall a fun read.
On audio I’m reading Stacy Schiff’s The Witches – Salem 1692. I’ve read many books on the Salem witchcraft trials, but I swear that they all seem to make it seem like a completely different event than the others. I hadn’t read a new one in a long time, and this was available on audio for my commute, so it seemed a good choice.
This one seems overall better-researched and takes a much longer view, giving detailed biographies of the characters and setting events in their historical contexts. This is something that earlier books by and large lacked. They might mention, for instance, the changeover in Massachusetts’ charter shortly before, and the upheaval that went with it, or mentioned the threat of Indians, but they didn’t mention that several of the girls had directly been victims of Indian raids. They didn’t mention that George Burroughs, accused and finally hanged, had to be subpoenaed from all the way up in Maine – he wasn’t even living in Salem anymore (he had been, but earlier).
There’s also a lot of jarringly modern comparisons – she quotes Dumbledore at one point. My favorite line is her description of George Burroughs as “a very bad man, but a very good wizard.”
Harland’s Half Acre, by David Malouf. Basically turns out to be some short stories, with enough of a tenuous link to call it a novel, I guess. A bit of a Faulkner-esque writer, in my estimation. Odinarily, I shun short-story collections, if I’m going to make the investment to get into a story, I don’t want to keep doing that over and over.
Mary Beth Norton’s book In the Devil’s Snare deals extensively with the Indian Wars and the fact that several of the Salem girls had been in the middle of that mess. It’s a slow, very dry book to read but well researched and interesting. (And Professor Norton emailed me back when I wrote to tell her how much I enjoyed it.)
Ha! Great username/post combination.
Does either book refer to the theory (cutting-edge when I was in high school) that ergot poisoning of local food might have led to the girls’ hallucinations?
Professor Norton does adress it, but she dismisses it. I don’t remember her reasoning, it’s been several years since I read it, but it was a plausible dismissal. Her major theory is PTSD and that the women never meant the crazy to go so far but they were powerless to stop it once the men started running with it.