BBAW Day 5: Setting Goals

Write in 50 words or less…what do you like best about your blog right now and where would you like your blog to be a year from now?

Right now, I like seeing other people's comments about the reviews I post, and in a year from now, I hope more people are stopping by to start conversations about all these great books!

BBAW Day 4: Found Books

Today we encourage you to blog about a book you read only because you discovered it on another book blog. Preferably, this will be a book you loved! You might also write a bit about the blog you discovered it on!

So, I discovered the fabulous Broken H and Tin Star, both by JL Langley, through Oddmonster's blog. Odd reads way more than I do, and manages to get reviews up all the time (some of which appear here), and when I read about these two books, I was hooked. They're both set in the same small Texas town, and involve two different LGBT love stories: one between a local ranch owner and the disowned son of one of his rivals, and the other between the town sheriff and the man he's idolized for years. They're very quick, sweet reads, with likable characters and believable settings. Definitely recommended. They do feature semi-explicit interactions, though, so 18+.

BBAW: Day 3: The Reading Meme

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
Oh, way too much. Usually it's gingersnaps and tea. Now if only gingersnaps were fat-free...

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of
writing in books horrify you?
Ouch! Yeah, no writing in books please.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?
Laying the book flat open?
I can remember page numbers with astonishing accuracy.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Yes please!

Hard copy or audiobooks?
Yes please!

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you
able to put a book down at any point?
I like to be able to read to the end of a chapter.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
Nope! I just keep rolling.

What are you currently reading?
L.A. Heat by P.A. Brown

What is the last book you bought?
Ghost Hunter by Jayne Castle

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can
you read more than one at a time?
I read as many as I can carry, but lately I've been having to split time between reading other people's things, and my own things. Novel edits. Nothing but novel edits.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
Nope!

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
Depends on the book.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
I'm a pretty big fan of JL Langley, and more so of James Buchanan, who writes really great men in love.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
In piles, based on not falling over. I really need more bookshelves.

Unnecessary But Lovely Things for Book People, Part 3

Instead of virtuously finishing up the novel edits (oy vay, why did I write so many words?), I've been window-shopping over at etsy again. I love that place. It calls to me. Especially when I'm supposed to be doing something else. :)

Thing 1: Bookshelf Print:



I like the artist's style a great deal. I wonder if she'd be willing to do a custom job with just titles of my books? It could be called, "Modesty, Thy Name Is Kate."

Thing 2: Come fly with me:



I spent quite a bit of time browsing in this artist's shop, because in addition to these reclaimed book page prints, she has an amazing selection of collages and multimedia artworks. I came this close >< to owning a triptych involving fabric hair. Only then Visa would have likely owned me. Sigh.

Thing 3: What page are you on?



I've had this bookmarked as a favorite for at least a month, and I'm amazed no one's snapped it up yet. It's just so cute! It's also what I suspect my Rottie Miss Mimi gets up to when I'm not home...

Today's Final And Most Awesome Thing: "Hang on, Nancy!" Tex shouted.



Okay who among us does *not* want a Nancy Drew themed tote bag? That is a-number-one adorable with a capital A in both cases. And the cute themed print fabric on the inside is a touch of genius. There are others in her shop too, in case you hate horses or something, but I'm kind of sold on this one. Makes me want to reread the book, too.

Allright, back to the editing board...

Review: After Dark and After Glow, by Jayne Castle

Okay, Oddmonster's making me look like a slacker here, and theoretically this is my reviews blog, so a couple days ago I went searching through a friend's bookshelves for something quick and easy to get through. And I found it! Or them, rather.

After Dark and After Glow are Books 1 and 2, respectively of Jayne Castle's Ghost Hunters series, romances that take place on Harmony, a colonized planet whose previous inhabitants left mysteriously and in a hurry. The current inhabitants have been trapped there by events that took place before the series begins, and some of them spend a lot of time investigating the first civilization's ghost-infested ruins.

Lydia Smith is one of those para-archeologists, who, at the beginning of After Dark has awakened from a lost weekend trapped in the ruins and at the mercy of the ghosts therein. When she's finally rescued and brought topside, she finds her professional academic archeology career in tatters and, still shaken by the experience, is forced to find employment at a second-rate ruins museum, which may or may not be involved in the illegal antiquities trade. And then she meets a powerful and mysterious man...

Okay these are just fun. They're fun and sort of mindless and for me, at least, what I qualify as perfect beach reading. The romance is believable and the setting's intriguing, and best of all, there are carnivorous rabbits on Harmony. Lydia has one as a pet. It has six feet and tries to eat her new boyfriend. Loved Fuzz. Love him!

After Glow is the second book in the series, and I'd pretty much have to give away a ton about the second book to summarize it, but suffice it to say, Lydia's back, and Fuzz gets lucky.

Light, fluffy, interesting paranormal romances.

Frankenstein: Dead or Alive, by Dean Koontz

From grandmother to neighborhood bully, to Antoine, to Evangeline, Bucky and Janet Guitreau went through the Arceneaux family like a school of angry piranha through anything that might piss off killer fish.

Synopsis: Victor Frankenstein, alive and well in modern-day New Orleans, is having a spot of trouble with his army of killer zombies. Also, his wife's adopted a half-human albino dwarf.

There's so much to say about a book I had to wait FOUR LONG YEARS for Koontz to get around to writing that it's hard to know where to start. Okay wait, I'll start here: I tore through this thing in an evening and a half, and cursed work in-between times. It was clever and visceral and deadpan funny, and sadly, I want O'Connor/Madison stories. And while I'd seen a couple of previous reviews label it as sort of meh, I have to say, I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Victor Frankenstein has set up camp in modern-day New Orleans, and is cranking out perfectly formed replicants to take the places of highly placed people around the city, with the aim of one day having his "New Race" eat and kill every last human being on the planet, while simultaneously chanting his name. A bit much to do all at once and with a full mouth, but you know, I admire his goal-setting.

Book 1 launched the idea and introduced Frankenstein and his original monster, now a tattooed 200-year-old monk, as well as Carson O'Connor and Michael Madison, two hardboiled New Orleans homicide detectives. Also, a portion of the book was narrated by a very determined severed hand.

Book 2! Things have started to go wrong: the replicants are experiencing difficulty staying with the plan (Eat humans, chant "Victor! Victor!", which just goes to show that if you're going to take over the world, you need really simpleminded replicants to do it) and there's O'Connor/Madison along with lots of my beloved placeporn.

Book 3! (This book.) I have to agree with the reviewer elsewhere on lj (whose name I have shamefully forgotten), that one some level, Koontz wrote this book because his agent scaled the fence and made it past the dogs and appeared on the front lawn with a sharp and pointy stick. "Four years, Dean! Contract!" But the best part of this is that Koontz appears to have taken out any frustrations he might've had at having to actually finish the trilogy by inserting snark whenever possible. This, for example:

When she reached the door, however, and turned around to gaze in at Arceneaux, her expression was convincingly that of a frightened and helpless woman desperate to find a strong man to lean on with her ample but perky breasts.

He's enjoying himself on some level, I maintain, and that makes it a better read for me. Also, he tosses in everything but the kitchen sink: mutant genetics monsters, shapeshifting mindless killers, Du Maurier's Rebecca, a sarcophagus filled with blood. It's quite an awesome lack of restraint.

The majority of this book, however, is dominated by the relationship between Frankenstein's wife and her pet albino dwarf, which, however wrong that sounds, is delightfully funny and touching all at one go. He's experienced four days of life as a reviled and hunted monstrosity, she's beaten and lonely and desperate for a child. It's an odd dynamic that Koontz pulls off with above-average flair.

My one complaint--I know, I have them every single time--is that the climax is not in the least climactic, and the main characters from the preceding books have basically been ordered on stage at gunpoint, which is less fun than you might think.

Still, highly recommended for fans of the macabre.

Review: Biggie and the Fricasseed Fat Man, by Nancy Bell

The day it rained feathers in Job's Crossing, J.R. and Rosebud were gathering pecans in the front yard.

Synopsis: In rural Texas, the tiny but imposing Biggie Weatherford does her best to raise up her grandson, J.R., while keeping a handle on everybody else's business. All the murdered bodies, though, make that a bit challenging.

Texas is all kinds of dangerous, it turns out.

Good book. Not an awesome book, but a good solid mystery. I'd read an earlier one in the series, Biggie and the Poisoned Politician which was a little better, but still, a quick and solid read. Bell's strength is really her characters, and specifically that each book is narrated by ten-year-old J.R. I think it's hard to write really convincing kids, but J.R.'s voice always sounds spot-on.

Technically a culinary mystery, since it includes one recipe in the back, but as with Politician, it was not the recipe I'd been hoping for.

Review: Garden Spells - Sarah Addison Allen

The tree was situated toward the back of the lot. It wasn't very tall, but it grew long and sideways. Its limbs stretched out like a dancer's arms and the apples grew at the very ends, as if holding the fruit in its palms. It was a beautiful old tree, the gray bark wrinkled and molting in places. The only grass in the garden was around the tree, stretching about ten feet beyond the reach of its branches, giving the old tree its room.

Claire didn't know why, but every once in a while the tree would actually throw apples, as if bored. When she was young, her bedroom window looked out over the garden. She would sleep with her window open in the summers, and sometimes she would wake in the morning to find one or two apples on the floor.

Claire gave the tree a stern look. Occasionally that worked, making it behave.

Synopsis: Two sisters bring their secrets to the old ancestral home and cause all kinds of magical upheaval in a small North Carolina town.



Beach reading. That's what this is, beach reading. It's sunny and light and romantic and...uplifting. This book has not one iota of dark in it, despite the fact that one sister is on the run with her daughter from an abusive, controlling boyfriend, and one's an emotional shut-in. Everyone gets what they want, and moreover, what they need, which is rarely the same thing. There's also a wonderful little old lady wandering around giving people things without knowing why, and eventually she attracts a passel of wistful gay men looking for love. Which is how life should be, I feel.

When Claire Waverly's grandmother died, Claire stepped right into her footsteps and turned the family's magical recipes into a catering business, bringing the people of Bascom fine, gourmet charmed foods. After all, cooking and hiding in the Waverly mansion, tending the magic garden and resolutely refusing to interact with the rest of the world are what Claire does best. Right up until her prodigal sister Sydney returns, bruised and shaken, with her daughter Bay in tow. And then there's the staunchly oblivious, madly in love artist who's moved in next door.

So, I've seen this book listed as culinary fiction on more than a few sites, but for me this isn't a book about food per se, but being fed, and who you let feed you. Technically, there's food everywhere in the book, and yet no one really seems to eat, unless it's narratively important. A nifty trick, but one that wears thin about the middle of the book. It's a good thing that Allen can back up the relatively light weight of the narrative with prose that positively sparkles, leaping right off the page.

Oh and ? This house is haunted in a *good* way.

Review: Sandman Slim - Richard Kadrey

L.A. is what happens when a bunch of Lovecraftian elder gods and porn starlets spend a weekend locked up in Chateau Marmont snorting lines of crank off Jim Morrison's bones. If the Viagra and illegal Traci Lords videos don't get you going, then the Japanese tentacle porn will.

New York has short con cannibals and sewer gators. Chicago is all snowbound yetis and the ghosts of a million angry steers with horns like jackhammers. Texas is criss-crossed with ghost railroads that kidnap demon-possessed Lolitas to play strip Russian roulette with six shells in the chamber.

L.A. is all assholes and angels, bloodsuckers and trust-fund satanists, black magic and movie moguls with more bodies buried under the house than John Wayne Gacy.

There are more surveillance cameras and razor wire here than around the pope. L.A. is one traffic jam away from going completely Hiroshima.

God, I love this town.

Synopsis: Just how big of an asshole do you have to be for your friends to pay demons to come drag you down to hell for 11 years?

This is a really great book. For a start, it's completely insane. Wild Bill Hickok's last living descendant takes up black magic in Hollywood, only to be betrayed by his Satanist friends one night and cast into Hell. When the book opens, he's escaped after making a living there for 11 years: gladiator by day, unholy assassin by night. Which makes waking up in a North Hollywood cemetary the day after Christmas seem real fucking nothing much.

From there he acquires a bitter, depressive severed head, goes on a revenge-rampage and discovers that Homeland Security's in league with a secret society of angels, doing the Lord's work by locking up anyone with the slightest natural inclination to magic. Add in the world's weirdest brothel, an immortal French alchemist and a cult of Lovecraftian glow-in-the-dark slugs and the book simply *rockets*.

It's like Daniel Pinkwater on a bad heroin jag.

Two minor complaints:

Dear Author,

Women don't exist solely to motivate or piss off your hero. They turn out to be living, breathing people. Totally not kidding.

And two, the whole book is set in LA, yet I really didn't get an authentic LA feel from it. The LA descriptions read like someone who took a high-toned author's grant and rented a North Hollywood apartment for a month before returning to Portland. It's a visitor's LA, a shadow or a caricature, unlike the real thing in all the most important kinds of ways. Disappointing.

Still, the dialogue rocks and the plot is surprising; this is easily the best urban fantasy I've read in about four years. Highly recommended.

Review: Who Moved My Cheese? by Dr Spencer Johnson

Now, I'm not much in the way of reading "business books" myself, and fortunately for me as an IT professional it's rare that my boss pushes one on me, but a year or so ago everyone in our team was encouraged to read this book, and I had to fly halfway across the country the next day, so I went ahead and read it on the plane.

And I'm glad I did!

Who Moved My Cheese? is a short book, about a couple of mice and a couple of littlepeople who live in a maze. Every day they eat cheese, until one day - the cheese disappears!

It's a fantastic parable about what happens to us when the rewards we expect suddenly dry up, and about how we can go on banging our head against a brick wall, expecting to receive something that simply isn't there any more.

I found the story amusing, thought-provoking and extremely relevant. It's a short read, and a very enjoyable one, and if you're looking for something to read on the train, or on a flight, I'd say go for it.

One quibble: the edition I have, and likely it's the only one available these days, has a boatload of introductions and case studies in which various people bang you over the head with parallels and uses for this book. If you're into that, great, but I'm not, and my advice is: Don't be put off by them. Simply skip straight to the story, read it and go ahead and draw your own conclusions.

Review: Wicked Gentlemen, by Ginn Hale

The night hung in tatters. Gas streetlamps chewed at the darkness. Candles cast dull halos through the dirty windows of the tenements across the street. Heavy purple clouds pumped up from smoke stacks and patterned the sky like ugly patches on a black velvet curtain. A few fireflies blinked from what corners of black velvet curtain. A few fireflies blinked from what corners of blackness remained.

A pair of them invaded the darkness of my rooms. I watched them flicker, darting through their insectile courtship. They swooped past my face, circled, and then alighted inside the fold of my shirtsleeve.

They crept close to on another, brilliant desire flashing through their tiny bodies. Their antennae touched and quivered. The female firefly reached out and stroked the male. He rushed into her embrace. Holding him close, she crushed her powerful mandibles through his head. Their flickering bodies blinked in perfect unison as she devoured him.

Some romances end more badly than others.

Synopsis: Gothic fairytale meets steampunk murder-mystery.

So good. Sooooooo good. About 100 pages in, I realized that this was the book I've been trying to write for the past year and a half. I can hang up my keyboard and move on. It's just so....lovely. The book has two protagonists, one from the dark side and one out to prosecute his kind, and Hale makes both of them incredibly compelling and sympathetic and I would cheerfully sell my soul for more of their story. The world-building--sort of 18th century London or Boston steampunk with a unique class system--is intense, and goes light on the supernatural, which worked for me.

Okay, there was one moment where Belimai Sykes is described as walking into a stiff breeze, stiff enough to make his scarf billow out behind him all Romantic-like while puffing cigarette smoke enough to form a cloud in front of him. Yeah no.

Totally made up for by the fact that the romance is both incredibly poignant and believable and so so hot.

This will definitely be a re-read, and has knocked Scales of Justice off of my list of favorite novels

I genuinely can't say more about this book without ruining several surprises, but really. You should read it.

Unnecessary But Lovely Things For Book People, Part 2

Etsy: It's a problem.

I am, yet again, not working on line edits for the current finished novel, or revising Ch 7 of the next novel or even writing wee short pieces to keep me from losing my mind and yelling at the dogs for eating the last of the cork coasters. No, instead, I'm cruising etsy for all the latest in Unnecessary But Lovely Things for Book People. Hee!

Thing 1: Bookmaking Kit:



Oh if only it was this easy to get a book in print. And yet, who doesn't want to feel bindings under their fingers and lace a tiny secret story around their throat? Tempting. Very tempting.

Thing 2: Book Earrings



Oh dear. I am *such* a girl.

Thing 3: (and be still my beating heart) Hollow Book



Most useful thing ever. Especially with 18 more chapters of line edits to go. Oh my goodness. I wonder if they do overnight shipping?

Review: The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

# 51: The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie:

"She's been up to something," he opined, as he took a last hasty drink of coffee. "Depend upon it, she's been up to something."

(That's the quote I'd like as my epitaph).

Synopsis: A jape appears to have gone horribly awry during a countryhouse weekend and a promising, if emptyheaded young man lies dead. But what does that have to do with the mysterious Seven Dials society, and how can Bundle Brent find a way to risk her life finding out?

Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent's main occupations in life are wearing trousers, driving motorcars very very fast and worrying her father. So when the opportunity arises for her to embroil herself in the mysterious death of Gerry Wade, she leaps in headfirst. And then runs down another young man in her fast fast motorcar. Fortunately he'd been shot first, so she comes out ahead there. And then the peril starts.

This was a great read, definitely one of Agatha's finest. It combines witty dialogue, fast-paced action, plot plot plot and more plot. And of course, Bundle Brent. It's a smart mystery combined with a drawing room comedy. The servants are all deferential and all-knowing, all the ladies are clever and determined, and all the young gentlemen are foppish, mildly confused and easily startled. There is a sort of casual misandry that runs throughout the book; Bundle and her female cohorts are basically beset by men who are in no way their equals. Much as I know the right thing to say is gosh how awful, I confess I did enjoy it quite a bit. It made a refreshing change from the rest of Western civilization.

And I did not see the ending coming one bit. At all. There were at least three plot twists that snuck by me like ships in the night, and at the end, I was flabbergasted. Completely flabbergasted. It was glorious.

My only complaint is that the pacing if anything, is too fast, which is an amazing change from pretty much everything I've read in the last 15 years. But at points it is a little hard to keep up with the quick scene changes and leaps of Bundle logic. Then again, what a great problem to have...

Review: Jubal Sackett - Louis L'Amour

So it was that in the last hour of darkness I went down the mountain through the laurel sticks, crossed a small stream, and skirted a meadow to come to the trace I sought.

Nearly one hundred years before De Soto had come this way, his marchings and his cruelties leaving no more mark than the stirring of leaves as he passed. A few old Indians had vague recollections of De Soto, but they merely shrugged at our questions. We who wandered this land knew this was no "new world". The term was merely a conceit in the minds of those who had not known of it before.

When someone says "western" to me, I immediately think of Louis L'Amour. He's an above-average writer in a genre I have to admit I don't know well - but to me, that underlines his appeal.

Louis L'Amour has a consistent style, and Jubal Sackett, like the rest of the Sackett series, is written in first person, and with a depth of understanding of the character which for me makes it an engrossing read.

Jubal Sackett is a young man heading west in the mid 17th century, and the book is a tale of his adventures. I am in no position, from my present day living-room, to comment on the likely authenticity of Jubal's experience, but what I can say is that Louis L'Amour makes me believe each and every one, and read "on the edge of my seat" at times. All of it told in the matter-of-fact, story-telling prose that for me makes L'Amour's writing an endless delight.

Jubal Sackett is a Western, and adventure and a romance, with also a touch of the paranormal. I'm a great fan of all L'Amour's writing; I love the Sackett series best of all; and of all the Sackett books, this one (which is one of L'Amour's 4 longer novels) is my favorite.

If you're a Sackett aficionado, this book would come fourth in the series, but it's not necessary to read all, or even any, of the other Sackett novels to enjoy Jubal Sackett.

It's a perfect bedtime book, a lovely way to spend the long summer evenings :)

Review: Dissolution - Richard Lee Byers

"Obviously, you understand the fundamentals of illithid society," said Syrzan. "You probably also know that we prefer to dine on the brains of lesser sentients and that we share your own race's fondness for torture. Still, some of your folk will fare all right. I can't eat or flay everyone, can I?"

Synopsis: The drow city of Menzoberranzan, deep in the heart of a mountain and safe from the light above has come under threat from a new danger: the demon-goddess Lolth herself. She's abandoned her clergy (distracting them somewhat from their fulltime pursuit of trying to kill each other) and stolen their magic. Weakened by the loss, many of the drow turn on each other, leaving two heroes to try to figure out where all the male drows are running away to...

Ah, the problems inherent in taking over the world.

Okay, I sort of liked this book a ton. The writing is facile and intricate, sentences and paragraphs fit to be moved into at a moment's notice, the plot hanging together well but most of all, the characterization is stunning. It's just so well done. There aren't clean-cut heroes and villains, and the people you want to be heroic turn out to be selfish and murderous because they want to win, because that's how things work in real-life.

It's stunning.

So, this is book 1 of a 6-book arc, but each is written by a different author, so I'm really hoping the other 5 are just as good as this one.

Review: Sleeping with the Fishes - Mary Janice Davidson

Above-average romance involving several heroes and a mermaid named Fred, this first of a new series by Mary Janice Davidson is funny and fast-paced, and opens with one of the most memorable scenes I've run across in awhile. The heroine, Fred (the mermaid) walks in on her mother and stepfather, in flagrante on the sofa, and from there talk turns to her memorable parentage, explaining her uncanny ability to hold her breath underwater...not to mention the fact that water also makes her break out in a tail.

Okay, so you have to do a little suspension of disbelief with this one. Maybe more than with your average Harlequin romance. But this is not such a bad thing. Once you buy into the whole story and just hang on for the ride, it's quite adorable.

Fred gets a job at a local aquarium (hee), and becomes involved in the fight to save it from local developers. It's not entirely clear how she does this, except by making a gorgeous marine biologist fall in love with her, along with the High Prince of the Black Sea (merman), so they'll unite forces and figure out who's poisoning the bay.

Trust me, it's super cute! Fred gets to be strong and sassy and ignore everyone, and she doesn't commit to one dude or the other simply because it would make a pat storyline. She's not that easy to pin down, and she's only known them for a few days apiece.

Cute book! Definite beach reading. ;)

Review: At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie

# 48: At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie:

His eye was caught by a movie theater sign: Walls of Jericho. It seemed an eminently suitable title. It would be interesting to see if Biblical accuracy had been preserved.

He bought himself a seat and stumbled into the darkness. He enjoyed the film, though it seemed to him to have no relationship to the Biblical story whatsoever. Even Joshua seemed to have been left out. The walls of Jericho seemed to be a symbolical way of referring to a certain lady's marriage vows. When they had tumbled down several times, the beautiful star met the dour and uncouth hero whom she had secretly loved all along and between them they proposed to build up the walls in a way that would stand the test of time better. It was not a film destined particularly to appeal to an elderly clergyman; but Canon Pennyfeather enjoyed it very much. It was not the type of film he often saw and he felt it was enlarging his knowledge of life.

Synopsis: Miss Marple begins to notice strange goings-on at Bertram's Hotel, the ultra-posh luxury throwback to a London long-past and very much missed. At the same time, a girl and her mother have the ultimate dysfunctional relationship, a string of robberies plagues the West Midlands and a member of the clergy accidentally sees a porno and goes missing.

There's also a mysterious race car.

Okay, I read this one last when I was 12, and I remember at the time thinking that it was very posh and exciting and all, but this is one that did not, sadly, stand up to a reread. It's an Agatha Christie, true, so there's a base level of quality (for me, ymmv), which consists largely in word-choice and well-written, rhythmic sentence structure, but overall, I was kind of unimpressed by the whole effort. The crimes aren't very interesting, for a start, and Miss Marple's been relegated to the background by the efforts of a PC Plod who turns out to be brilliant and only need her help to make any progress on the case whatsoever. And the resolution was sort of meh.

Overall, it was 250 pages of Dame Agatha banging on about Kids These Days, which is totally her right, but next time I'm rereading Peril at End House.

Unnecessary But Lovely Things for Book People on Etsy

Because I need to spend money on absolutely nothing this month in order to stay on budget, I went over to Etsy and perused for all things bookish. I am a weak, weak woman.

Unnecessary But Lovely Thing 1: Book Pillow



This is kind of clever! I totally wish I'd thought of it first, because it makes a terrible kind of logical "but I bought it because it's useful" sense. I'm not sure how well I could actually put it into practice, though. I'm more of a "lean backwards to read" type of gal. But it's a step in a clever direction.

Unnecessary But Lovely Thing 2: Vintage Pulp Novel Wrist Pouch



No, there is simply no excuse except "I didn't have a purse with a dame on it already". And I love that it just slides around your wrist.

UBLT 3: Recycled Harlequin Romance Journal



Finally! The answer to what to do with that big stack of already-read Harlequins you're never going to touch again! Also, there'd be a strange sort of satisfaction in perverting the paradigm of heteroromance by scribbling your latest m/m story inside....

Okay maybe that last one's just me. 

(Must be good and touch nothing. Touch nothing, buy nothing...)

Review: Indigo Dying - Susan Wittig Albert

# 38: Indigo Dying by Susan Wittig Albert:

Ruby had managed to light the kerosene lamp, and it cast a golden glow around the cabin. She'd alread y taken a shower and was sitting cross-legged on her bed, a henna-haired buddha in a floral-print caftan. There was a book on her lap, the latest Cat Who adventure; a bottle of blue nail polish and shiny nail implements on one side of her; and a box of chocolates on the other. Delicately, so as not to mar her freshly painted blue nails, she screwed the cap back on the polish bottle.

'You know,' she said, 'I could get to like this pioneer life.'

'Some pioneer,' I replied with a laugh. 'I'll bet you wouldn't be wearing that caftan if you had to spin every inch of threat that went into it.

'Oh, absolutely,' Ruby said. 'I'd go naked.' She reached for a chocolate.

Synopsis: Small-town Texas politics and the cosy murder mystery collide.

So there's a big bad bad guy up to environmental badness, and a small town standing up to him, and a fiber-dying workshop, phony legal papers, Harleys, car chases, shotgun booby traps, child abuse, llamas, eavesdropping and kerosene lanterns. Good times.

A seriously above-average cosy mystery set in Texas and written in the first-person present. I adored the protagonist and her crazy best friend, and there was quite a serious amount of placeporn going on, which y'all know floats my wee readerly kayak. I will definitely be reading another in the series.

Review: Bloodroot - Susan Wittig Albert

# 39: Bloodroot by Susan Wittig Albert:

When I was a little girl, Aunt Tullie used to bring me with her when she came to put fresh flowers on the graves. She'd point out the headstones to me, one by one, and we'd say the carved names until I knew them, and the relationships, by heart. She would encourage me to connect the characters in our family stories, to see them, not as individuals, but as part of our clan. It was like reading the Family Record page in the Bible. It was a family history lesson.

But now our family history had a much more ominous significance now that I had learned about Aunt Tullie's illness, and as I thought of this, another shadow seemed to wheel across the evening sky. I shoved my hands into my pockets and stood still, realizing that the secret of her frightful genetic inheritance--and Leatha's and mine, as well--was buried somewhere in this cemetary. Somewhere among these graves was the Coldwell who had sentenced those who came after to a dreadful end. Who was it? Where did Aunt Tullie's dying begin?

Synopsis: When herbalist China Bayles is summoned by her absent, flawed mother to come help cope with her great-aunt's decline in the family's Mississippi plantation house, a ton of dark family secrets come to light and need burying all over again.

If anything, this book was even better than Indigo Dying, seeing how I just sat down and read it cover to cover today instead of getting anything done like I was supposed to. Also, apparently I am just going to read this series entirely backwards. Go me.

Actually, that's not bothering me overmuch so far, because while Albert sprinkled both these novels with references to past events, no spoilers are included (Diane Mott Davidson I am looking right at you), and it just makes the stories more layered and interesting.

So. China Bayles' wayward alcoholic mother demands she drive from Texas to Mississippi right this red hot instant to help with "complications" that have arisen from her great-aunt's slow death from Huntington's Disease. When China arrives, her past basically roundhouse-kicks her in the head, and bodies start popping up, and ugly old secrets start being uncovered, and things get all mystical, and it's a great big party, with the Old South as the guest of honor.

Good book. I continue to enjoy China's voice (hush, you) but I am mesmerized by her control of pacing and the way she makes places live and breathe and crawl off the page and up your arm. It's stunning. I also liked that the book doesn't shy away from dealing with race at all, and everyone gets called on their bullshit. Strong female characters of various colors, who are not all in the mystical Negro role.

It's and interesting picture of a South where there are flaws and family and things that go bump in the night.

You know what they say about this country. Folks die, but they never leave.