Book Round-Up

 Cold Clay by Juneau Black: Sad to say, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the first. The authors have created fun characters in a delightfully cozy setting, but the actual writing in this novel was not great — both overwritten and messy.

Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch: I’m enjoying the Rivers of London series, an urban fantasy about a police officer learning to become a wizard. This one centered around jazz music and its vampiric fans.

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly: This book, about a boy who finds himself in a world of fairy tales, was a lot darker than I expected, but it was a moving exploration of grief and growing up, deeply satisfying by the end. The only flaw was the chapter with Snow White, which was completely out of place tonally.

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-García: This was a bit of a disappointment; it has lots of interesting elements and characters, but it doesn’t quite cohere, feeling more like a draft than a finished novel. Some elements are left dangling — ownership of the land, so critical in 1908, is not mentioned at all in 1998, and Minerva talks about her mother and great-grandmother, but her grandmother is entirely missing. Then there’s Alba’s relationship with her putative lover: Alba, and the narrative itself, treat it as if it were merely inappropriate and not absolutely awful. I don’t regret reading it, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as Gods of Jade and Shadow.

The Other Side of Midnight by Simone St. James: I try to read a Simone St James novel every fall; she excels at mysteries that are spooky and romantic. I didn’t love this one as much as the first two I read, but it was an enjoyable, creepy-but-not-too-creepy story about psychics real and fake.

Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher: Kingfisher's novels have certain commonalities -- middle-aged characters with ordinary jobs, humor to counterbalance the horror and weirdness, and a pantheon of saints and gods -- but the settings and stories are varied and inventive. This one takes the elements of Snow White (queen, daughter, mirror, apple) and puts them together in an utterly novel way. I just can't get enough of Kingfisher, and I'm pacing myself through her extensive bibliography.

Book Round-Up: Cozy Fall Edition

 Shady Hollow by Juneau Black: The delightful first novel in a cozy mystery series set amongst woodland critters. It reminded me quite a bit of Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas.

The Simplicity of Cider by Amy E. Reichert: This was basically a Hallmark movie in book form. Some aspects I liked, such as the protagonist's synesthesia, and other parts I didn't (therapy generally works better than the love of a good man).

The City Baker's Guide to Country Living by Louise Miller: This was a reread for me. It's also a Hallmark movie in book form, but with sex, alcohol, and messy relationships, which makes the inevitable happy ending more satisfying.

An Inquiry into Love and Death by Simone St. James: This was the perfect ghost story -- atmospheric, spooky, romantic, not too violent, and neither over- nor underexplained. I will be reading more of her books.

Still Life by Louise Penny: Another smart, melancholy Three Pines mystery? I've been reading this series backwards, starting with The Cruelest Month. But where do I go now? For real, I'll probably read no. 4 and maybe one or two others, but from what I've read the series has diminishing returns.

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny: Zelazy's last novel (and supposedly his favorite) is a fun mash-up of various literary monsters who gather together to bring about, or maybe prevent, the end of the world. It's narrated by a talking dog, too!

Book Round-Up

Seven Men by Max Beerbohm: I stumbled across a reference to this book in The Moving Toyshop, and intrigued, I got it from the library.  It consists of five short stories about six men (Beerbohm is the seventh, a character in his own work), with satirical, supernatural, and postmodern elements (I seem to have a knack for finding these "postmodern before there was modern" works).  They tell the tales of fin-de-siècle writers, intellectuals, and bon vivants, and several of Beerbohm's observations made me snort out loud.  The first one in particular, "Enoch Soames," is a masterpiece of tragicomic meta-ness, and the best one in the group.

Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: I watched the movie version recently, and it was not good -- while absolutely gorgeous to look at, the script was underwritten and the story perfunctory.  So as a corrective, I re-read the book.  It is also gorgeous, and moving, well-told, and filled with wonderful characters. 
 
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson: This sweet little romance deals with the racial, social, and class boundaries in a quaint English village.  Major Pettigrew, a widower, first becomes friends with, and then falls in love with, a widowed Pakistani store owner.  Both have to contend not only with local prejudices but the prejudices and baggage their own families bring.  Simonson is originally from England, so presumably her depiction of an English village is fairly accurate (if somewhat exaggerated for satirical and quirk purposes).  And yet, the open and casual racism and classism exhibited by the characters was horrifying to me.  I live in Queens, one of the most diverse places on the planet, so I sometimes forget other parts of the world are still quite insular.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym: Grace, a great secondary character from Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (I kind of wish her story had been told), is one of Pym's excellent women -- fine, capable, unmarried women who busy themselves with their churches, good deeds, and occasionally the personal business of others.  Because of Grace I had to re-read Pym's novel, which is the wonderful, funny, clever, poignant, satirical story of Mildred, an aforementioned Excellent Woman.  I love Mildred -- she's responsible for one of my favorite lines:

Let me hasten to add that I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women who tell their stories in the first person, nor have I ever thought of myself as being like her.

 Rex Libris: I, Librarian and Book of Monsters by James Turner: A comic about a 2,000-year-old librarian who fights the forces of evil?  Of course I had to read it.  These two volumes collect all the issues, and as one would expect there are all sorts of literary and publishing jokes and references.  I didn't like the art at all (it has the cold, sterile look of most computer-generated imagery), and the story was a little heavy on the action and a little light on the characterization, but I nonetheless enjoyed it.

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant: A fun young-adult collection of steampunk stories.  The tales run the gamut, tone-wise, from nihilistic to Dickensian to exhilarating to weird.  Standouts are Shawn Cheng's "Seven Days Beset by Demons" (one of two comics, short, spare, and funny), Dylan Horrocks's "Steam Girl" (heartbreaking), and M.T. Anderson's "The Oracle Machine" (slyly witty, and a surprisingly accurate depiction of the Roman Republic).  On the other hand, Holly Black's "Everything Amiable and Obliging" had an intriguing idea, but was way too short to do it justice.