Facebook

This is a Good Book Thursday, December 12, 2024

This week I’ve been reading and thinking about my favorite detectives–Miss Marple, Albert Campion, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, and so on–and I realized I go back to those series because I want to spend time with those people because they’re smart and witty and not evil. I just want to live in a nice place with nice people (which I do in real life, but not in my country as a whole) where the people who lie and cheat end up in jail instead of a White House. But mostly, I just want to hang out with the people again. Doing three book series doesn’t give us a lot of scope for that–it’s very hard to arc a romance over more than three books–but maybe we can find a different approach. It might be nice after creating these detailed worlds to stay in one a little bit longer.

What worlds did you read about this week?

169 Responses

  1. I read the second in the siege series by KJ Parker, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It. Slower to start up than the first one and less about competence porn but still there, and still the story of a trickster, and with a better ending. LN, I think it’s worth it. I’m moving onto the last one.

    I also read Josh Lanyon’s Ghosted, another one of her dependable reads.

    I read three TA Moore’s: Liar, Liar which I enjoyed especially since the MC is ousted as a liar in the first chapter and then it builds from there. I don’t much like romances based on a lie in a long arc. I also read the first two in her Babylon Boy series, Hex Work and Hex Sells. I’m usually not much for contemporary magic and surprised that there’s no sex, but I enjoyed them anyway, and hoping for some in the next book.

    I read Laurell K Hamilton’s Smolder in her Anita Blake series which makes #29. It’s all quite formulaic at this point but such a delicious formula and what can I say, I’m loyal.

    2. So nice that someone else reads Laurell K, although I’m a bit behind. I think “Crimson Death” was the last one I read.

      1. Yeah she’s a guilty pleasure. I mutter away about how there’s barely an excuse of a plot anymore and how she doesn’t care about how she looks YET everyone of any gender wants to sleep with her mutter mutter …and I read ’em all.

  3. As for me, I was going to talk about a sf book that I was initially enjoying quite a lot but there was something that didn’t feel quite right to me. I couldn’t work out what it was so I looked up some reviews and one of them gave all the reasons why the science was terrible in this book. I don’t necessarily need my science fiction to be all that sciency to enjoy it but now all I can see is the bad science and I can’t read it anymore 🙁

    Fortunately, there is a book I can wholeheartedly recommend today: Rainbow Rowell’s newest, Slow Dance, a really lovely second chance romance.

    I think the way the book is structured is really clever because you discover gradually the reasons why and how they ended up estranged by going backwards in time and at the same time you see unfold slowly the way they eventually reconnect and that is just lovely.
    Definitely one of my favourite reads of 2024.

    1. My library hold on Slow Dance just came in today. So glad to hear it’s good – I’ll start it today!

    2. Glad you enjoyed Slow Dance. I, on the other hand, found it waaaay too slow. The structure was fine, but it felt like they covered the same ground over and over. I disliked it so much that when I saw it in the library the other day, I flinched.

      1. I find Rainbow Rowell very mixed. I loved her hilarious first book “Attachments”, and “Fangirl” was enjoyable, but her much loved “Eleanor and Park” was fine, and “Carry On” left me cold. So I’ll try “Slow Dance” but unless someone tells me its like “Attachments”, its not at the top of my list 😉

  4. This week I finished ‘Cross’ by SE Harmon which is, in effect, the second part of Chrysalis (Formicary series). Not as much fun as Chrysalis but a good enough thriller/sci fi/technology plot (not really sure what genre it falls in to).

    Then, shout out to chachal who mentioned her book Awake and Dreaming (Alexandra Caluen) last week. I tracked it down and enjoyed it very much, it is not the usual MM, which was great. I loved the settings (mostly Asia) and the situations of the MCs are very different. It has a nice pace (nothing over dramatic) and the storyline isn’t predictable. Would recommend it!

    Most of my reading has been on AO3, I’m enjoying ‘The Same Old Streets’ by thesameoldstreets (Catherine Cloud). This has 6 main characters, 3 male, 3 female and it is more of an ensemble than a romance which is a nice change. Lots of hockey, and other things (ice rinks).

    Also on AO3 I’m enjoying ‘Two Truths’ by theundiagnosable, which is coming out every second day until Christmas (so it’s not a long term reading commitment). It’s an MM romance with lots of hockey and hockey culture. I’ll post a link.

    On audio I’ve just started ‘The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo’ by Taylor Jenkins Reid as I enjoyed Daisy Jones and the Six (same author). Will report back

      1. I have actually marked my calendar for Christmas Day for downloading the full Two Truths story from Ao3. So glad to hear that its living up to expectations!

    2. I’m loving Two Truths so much! Really hope this author gets a publishing deal because they will definitely have a spot on my auto-buy list.

  5. Jenny, what I did with the Baba Yaga world was tie all the characters together, but focus on one per book, with the others showing up occasionally. Each character got her (or his, in the case of the Broken Riders spin-off which really was a continuation of the series) HEA, but there was also an ongoing through-story which ties them all together. Maybe you could do something like that.

    I’ve been reading The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna. I think someone here might have recommended. It’s charming and I’m loving it.

    Just started a reread of Bet Me, which I know I love.

    1. I love the Very Secret Society too! Such great kid characters as well as adults, and yeah, charming without veering into cute.

  6. Still in a bit of a reading slump but I finished To Die For by David Baldacci and liked it. I started reading some holiday novellas from my keeper shelf and enjoying them. Earth Angel by Christine Rimmer and Kissing Frosty by Anne Stuart. Both fun reads.

    Book club tonight. We’ll see how that goes. The one hosting it said she still didn’t finish it and said that was okay because she doesn’t need to know who the murderer is.

    2. Love to listen Baldacci with my DH on road trips! Thank you for this title.
      We enjoyed the Camel Club quite a bit.

  7. Although I adore Archie Goodwin as a narrative personality and have enormous respect for Stout’s lexicon (and The Doorbell Rang has developed some unexpected relevance the last 4-5 years), it’s Sayers who is first in my heart; she achieved so much (academic, translator, copywriter, novelist, educational and feminist philosopher… I’ve managed only three out of five and am quite tired, tyvm) and brings it all to bear in her work. Murder Must Advertise is still my favorite of hers, Lord Peter acting as our Nemo in the loud, strange world of advertising.

    1. I think my favorite Wimsey must be one of the ones with a bigger role for Harriet Vane, but I’ve read pretty near ever published word Sayers ever wrote (well, minus most of her advertising copy). Her collected letters are worth scrounging up

    2. I’m definitely a Rex Stout fan. But Sayers started to irritate me. When I had to look up an dictionary whether or not the main character had accepted a proposal I gave up.
      I’ve always liked Margery Allingham. And I adore Emma Lathan, which is two women riding together. They have two series. One is the John Putnam Thatcher books and he is the second vice president of Sloan Guarantybank.
      And I always end up knowing something more about an industry while enjoying it thoroughly.
      Their other series they write as RB Dominic.
      And the hero is a republican congressional from Ohio.
      He has several cronies from the house who help solve things, including both Democrats and Republicans. And I reread them often.

      1. Susan, I had no Latin either, and in particular no experience with the -ne construction, but I thought it was obvious that placet without the ne was cognate with “(it) pleases.” Not to mention context. Granted, Sayers was a bit of a snob, but it was fantasy wish-filfillment for her as much as for her Depression-era readers, at least at that point in her life. I’ve read the other authors you mention, and liked them (maybe Stout less than the other two—counting Latham as one unit). I didn’t know that Latham also wrote as RB Dominic. I’ll have to look at those. Of the making of books there is no end!

        1. It probably didn’t really strike her that not everyone knows Latin. In her day, everyone who went to grammar school (selective secondary school) or private school would have had to learn it – just as most male writers up to the 19th century would have had a Classical education.

          1. Neither of my parents, schooled mostly in the 1920s was even far into the middle class—my father started as blue-collar and became a postal clerk, and my mother was a stenographer, but both had had some Latin in high school. A lot of Sayers’s readership was in the US. I’m not who in the UK was reading her, including the readers in public and rental libraries, but I wonder if Latin might have been less widespread among them there, if readership reached below the grammar-school educated (in the British sense). As far as I know, neither of my parents read Sayers, but they did sometimes read mysteries. In my early years, Sayers was a bit in abeyance in the US. I only learned of her in grad school, not long before the BBC dramatizations shown on public television inspired a revival here.)

      3. I always thought it was a pretty romantic proposal because Peter is not only acknowledging Harriet as the woman he loves, he is acknowledging her as a scholar and a professor in Latin, the (ha) lingua franca of the place they both love, Oxford. Also, remember one of the (many) storylines in Gaudy Night was about whether it was “unwomanly” of a woman to aspire to higher education and a higher position in life, even at the expense of the men surrounding that woman. Peter made it clear throughout the book, and through this final proposal, that he accepted and admired everything about Harriet and would not seek to change that even in marriage. As an aside, I actually studied Latin in school. The French references were the ones I had to google, lol.

    3. She’s first in my heart too. Gaudy Night and Murder Must Advertise jockey for first for me. And I also have a special fondness for The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club because it was the first thing of hers that I read. I found the depiction of between the wars London fascinating.

  8. I finished off Assistant to the Villain. There were lots of reveals at the end of the book, and a cliff hanger finish so you are encouraged to go to the next book to see what happens to the characters. Don’t know that I’m that invested.

    I started “Under Italian Skies” by Nicki Pellegrino. A woman at loose ends after her friend/mentor/employer dies does a home swap, ending up living in a villa in Italy. I’ve been finding it charming, as she grows into her new better self. I’m also hopeful for a romance by the end, although I’m only halfway through it.

    1. Nicki Pellegrino is good. I started reading her books because Jo Walton is a fan and I have enjoyed all of them.

      The last one, Marry me in Italy is very good too.

      They all work as standalone but it’s more fun to read them in order as there are recurrent characters and settings.

      I want to go and have a holiday at the Villa Rosa!

  9. I’ve been re-reading Murder After Christmas by Rupert Latimer. Written and set during WW2, a couple living in the English countryside are amazed to discover Rich Uncle Willie has taken them up on their pro forma invite to come for Christmas. Rich, grumpy, and in a dodgy state of health, when he’s found dead in the garden the morning after Christmas, still clad in his Santa Suit, the police are called in…

    I’ve also been re-reading Robert Barnard. Argh-ers might enjoy A Hovering of Vultures, about mystery and murder among a nascent literary society devoted to the works of Susannah Sneddon, author of books about rural passion, murdered sixty years ago by her brother, an unsuccessful poet.

    1. I need Ista more. Maybe that’s what I’ll go on to when I finish the Linesman trilogy.

    2. i love Cazaril. My type of guy.
      Only the large age gap bugs me with Bujold. But at least it’s not predatory at all from his side.

      1. Having had a friend marry a man 30 years older than she was, older than her father, and watched them live happily until his death from cancer, age gaps just don’t bother me.

          1. I don’t judge or care if others have an age gap relationship. Love is love.
            However, for me personally a large age gap makes it more difficult to connect to some aspects of the story.
            Maybe because I’m conditioned by my relationship with dh. I treasure the shared experiences of the decade we grew up in.
            In Curse of Chalion, I’d have loved to glimpse more of Cazaril’s life. It wouldn’t have made sense storywise to include it. Still, thise experiences have shaped the man. While Betriz is soooo young. Just my personal quibble.

      2. I think large age gaps matter when it creates a power imbalance. I am deeply troubled by men in their late 20s and 30s and older being with girls in their teens.

        But my dad was 12 years older than my mom
        And my mom was the dominant personality for sure. They don’t always create those imbalances.

  11. I am still feeling like I want to step back into VNF, the sure mark of a good book, when you carry it around with you for days after.

    I started a very forgettable m/m Christmas audiobook and dnfed it. I am not sure if it was just boring or if the narrator was bad. Or both.

    Then I tried the first to Jon Mysteries by A.J. Lancaster. Not my most favorite stories of two guys falling in love and solving crimes, but engaging enough to get me through the week. I don’t know if I will go on to the next one. They achieved stability as a couple much too early for me and now it is just two nice guys taking care of each other. I like a bit more angst than that. Also…. Spoiler ahead, proceed with caution…. I don’t really care for the perpetrator of both crimes having severe mental illnesses. One was enough and now it feels like a pattern/gotcha. I did enjoy the added complication of Jon not being able to use electronics because of his psychic abilities.

    I listened to A Christmas Carol again, third time this year with different narrators. This one was not a famous person and I think that I liked his performance the best.

    Now I am a bit at a loss. I have tons of choices to read and listen to, and nothing started, but I don’t know what to begin. Maybe it is decision fatigue.

    Oh, and I got my husband Hulu for Christmas because the black Friday deal was so good, although the ads are annoying. We watched the newest season of Fargo, which was maybe not the strongest, but I still really enjoyed it and it had a great ending.

      1. I didn’t coin the phrase, but learned it during covid, when every choice seemed so weighty. It fits, doesn’t it? Sometimes after a long and busy day or one that has been especially hard, even choosing what to have for dinner feels like too much.

        1. Something I find helpful is I keep books in acquisition order, so my decision is do I want to read the first book on the pile Yes/No, if no, then do I want to read the next book. It really really helps when nothing is calling to me!

  12. I just finished Dogs and Goddesses and am starting Temptation, and your reasons for re-reading are exactly the same as mine.

  13. The last few weeks I’ve been reading the Last Binding Trilogy by Freya Marske. It’s a historical fantasy romance, and the world-building is so rich! I definitely recommend. (For those who care, the first book is MM, the second is FF and the third is MM. All the important characters in the first book and the second book are together in the third.)

  14. Also, thank you, Jenny for not trying to arc a romance for more than three books. This is one of the reasons I don’t read cozy murder mystery series. It starts to feel really forced and artificial, or just fades into the background and everything becomes flat for me.

    1. I agree but using the same setting with glimpses of previous characters or having them be secondary characters works for me, providing it isn’t done in a heavy handed way.

      Some authors will shoehorn a visit from six previous couples and that rarely works well :).

      1. Agreed. You put that so well. I was struggling with how to word that feeling, but it can get very heavy handed. Balance is a delicate thing, or it feels like a laundry list of people who need to be included in the roster…

    3. Agreed three is the max. And I still prefer my HEA in one book!

      There are only two series I’ve seen that transition well from romance to mystery – JD Robb’s “In Death” books and CS Harris’ “Sebastien St Cyr” books and they do that by having the romance only in a few books, and in the rest of them the detective is in a committed happy relationship and there’s no real romantic sub-plot for most books. I really like seeing a happy couple balancing work and life. Even then I can’t read too many in a row.

  15. I went through a Sarina Bowen hockey binge, but didn’t love the last few books, so stopped. Then dnf a variety of things.

    But I just read/listened to Get a Life, Chloe Brown (narrated by Adjoa Andoh before she was Lady Danbury) and started Dani Brown. I’m going to try to get the audio from the library so I can listen when work gets boring today. (Not narrated by Andoh. I checked)

    1. I agree with you on Sarina Bowen’s hockey books. I lost steam on them and have had no desire to go back. I found the men to be emotional wimps and didn’t like the dynamic of a lot of the relationships.

      1. I’m the odd one out. I still like Sarina Bowen.
        I love her early ones, the Ivy Years and the Him series.
        But I like many of her Brooklyn Bruisers books and I really like the latest ones, the MM Guys series. Have pre-ordered the third one that’s out in March.

        Compared to the many many many authors flooding the market with stories where the sport aspect seems nothing but a veneer, she’s one of the authors where I don’t feel a big disconnect with the female MCs. And one that knows her hockey. Which is a big plus in my book.

        3. I still really like her books! This was all reread for me. There are some in the Brooklyn series that I skip, like the one in Italy. Plus too many in a row feels like too much.

    2. I too abandoned the Sarina Bowen hockey books. The first few were definitely the strongest but I don’t think I’ll go back to read those either.

  16. I read three really good books this week.

    Someone to Build a Nest In by John Wiswell. This is a monster story, but somehow also a cozy, quite sweet romance. Funny and fun, although there were a few pacing issues at times. Highly recommend for Arghers who aren’t squicked out by a little bit of goo & gore.

    The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel. It’s the story of the most prolific art thief in modern history, well-written, fast-paced. Narrative non-fiction that reads like a crime caper, basically.

    The Message by Ta-Nehesi Coates. Superbly well-written series of essays (not surprising, he’s incredibly talented) about writing, journalism, travel, and responsibility. I loved it, and then accidentally left the book on a low table and my dogs ate it, so I had to return to the library to hang my head in shame. The librarian who helped me pay for it was very nice, but also revealed that she was slightly crushed because she’s on the hold list. Well, I recommend this one, but also suggest leaving it out of the reach of philistine dogs.

    1. Our grand-dog also will eat books but we have decided that this is her way of providing her review (negative obviously) of the books in question because she doesn’t destroy books indiscriminately — rather she picks and chooses. So far she has disagreed with the Booker Prize Committee and with a number 1 New York Times bestseller…

    2. I had a hanging head in shame library story too. My cat chewed on a library book and when I returned it, the library clerk thought it was funny, and told me not to worry as the damage wasn’t too severe. I insisted on paying for a replacement anyway. This is the cat who likes to annihilate cardboard boxes. I think he got the taste for it by chewing on the library book!

      1. Wow. Conscience once made me later pay for a book (one of a stack) that the bookstore clerk had failed to ring up before bagging, but I haven’t worried about any wear that the library let me get away with. (Before they abolished overdue fines they collected a pretty penny from me that way and they once charged me $7.00 for a magazine that I’m pretty sure that I did return.)

    3. When I worked at the library, we once had a chewed book returned in the book drop. When we called, the family swore that they didn’t have a dog and the book was not damaged when they returned it and a demon must live in the book drop and took a nosh on it… I wish I remembered what the book was. Something nonfiction.

      1. This is hysterical! What did you say to them when they told you the demon munched on it?? Do you have a special “I’m a librarian so I’m going to pretend you’re a completely sane person” look?

    4. The title, at least in the US is instead Somebody You Can Build a Nest In. I’ll look for it.

      I admire the librarian for rising above her feelings. (I’m still looking for my misplaced library CD. I’ve got about 2 weeks left of fine-free grace, then they send me a bill for the whole audiobook. But the thing has to be here somewhere. )

  17. I’ve been re-reading a lot, partly because my last 4 or 5 library books never grabbed me, and partly I think because I’m kind of on edge as I’m going though my last few weeks at a job I’ve been at for seven or eight years.

    So that made me really examine what brings me back to certain books? What’s the choice of a re-read based on?

    I go back to some series because something triggers me to think about them, then I start #1 and I’m off to the re-read of all of them. I did this not too long ago with the “Others” series by Anne Bishop, which has a lovely innocent as the MC, who escapes from bad guys who are exploiting anyone with ESP that will help them make more money. And since she’s been living in a very restrictive environment, she’s helping to pull the reader in as she first experiences new things, new people, and new friendships that she wasn’t allowed to have before. There are certainly bad guys in the series — and they get badder as the series goes on, but that viewpoint of someone trying to learn the world and figure out how she fits into it — that’s somehow a great re-read premise.

    And recently I went back to read one of the Mary Balogh series I’d read several years ago, and it was another element of the Re-read? question. in a Balogh series, she is very skillful at taking a romance from its first encounter to its blossoming. I don’t really know how she does it, but she gives you just enough inner monologue to know exactly how the MC is experiencing things, how the hero first encounters her and she him, and what exactly changes their perception of the love interest bit by bit, and gradually follows it with a deeper and deeper appreciation of the other person until the final resolution.

    I also saw how important it is to me that a book resolves both love stories and coming-of-age stories well and believably. I don’t want any sense that something the MCs do at some point is just wrong for the character she’s drawn. The more I know about the people’s inner lives in a book, the more I tend to like it — as long as the MCs are clearly good, well-intentioned people within the relationship.

      1. Yes, me too. Less of the EVERYBODY’s RICH!! feeling of some of her other books. And they had real reasons to be recovering from traumas. But really sweet romances, too!

  18. I’m almost finished reading T. Kingfisher’s Swordheart.

    About five books in is where my interest in a series usually begins to wane. To keep me going longer, I have to love the characters — Campion and Amanda, for example — as well as the writing itself. Allingham’s is stellar, with not much explanation (I love having to figure out what’s really going on) and superb ways of describing people.

    Also, many series with a hero and heroine start with a lot of sexual tension, which shouldn’t and can’t be the focus of a long-term series relationship. Yes, they (whichever two characters in whichever series) fall in love, marry, have children, therefore they must have had sex, but so what? The focus has to be on other aspects of the relationship and the mystery they are currently solving, or I’m rolling my eyes.

  19. This week I finally read T.J Klune’s The house on the Cerulean Sea which an Argher fan favorite. Even though I found it a bit preachy, I enjoyed it (I particularly love Chauncey who longs to be a bellhop) and it was a nice palate cleanser after a bunch of DNFs. Thank you to all who recommended this fairy tale!

    Best read of the week was a reread of Cait Nary’s M/M Hockey romance “Season’s Changes”. A lovely story. Lots of hockey.
    I followed that with rereading the same author’s “Contract Season” which I loved as well, this one is an M/M romance between a hockey player and a country music singer/songwriter.
    Both will definitely stay on the reread loop.

    I reread another Lauren Layne story: “Love the One you’re with” — M/F romance in NYC between two writers for GQ and Cosmo type magazines. Enjoyed it. Soothing.

    Finally I read J.J. Mulder’s “Save the Game” which is M/M romance between college students, one a baseball player, one hockey player. It was mainly focused on the recovery from assault by one of the MMCs and the sports are incidental – it was more a hockey and baseball adjacent story. The writing was a lot of tell don’t show and I didn’t feel the connection between the characters. The ending was a bit abrupt; so much so that I had to go back later to be sure I’d finished it. Not sure I’ll go back to that author.

  20. Jenny, I agree with this statement of yours wholeheartedly: “I just want to live in a nice place with nice people (which I do in real life, but not in my country as a whole) where the people who lie and cheat end up in jail instead of a White House.” I also want all his crazy, unqualified “mini-me’s” not to pass the vetting process.

    I read Dreadful, by Caitlin Rozakis, and liked it, but it may not be a reread. Usually an inner monologue that denigrates the thinker puts me off, but the amnesiac villain’s thoughts are funny, true, and so earnestly trying to be a better person, that they worked for me. The princess was portrayed as a resourceful, intelligent, insightful person, and her solutions for problems kept surprising me. I loved the various servants, especially the Goblins. Orla, the cook, comes up with truly disgusting gourmet menus. It’s a funny read with a HEA.

    Then I reread a favorite comfort read, The Cinderella Deal, by Jenny. It exemplifies her statement, quoted above. I would happily move next door to Daisy and Linc, and live in that small college town, even though I don’t think they have a Trader Joe’s, which is my one condition for a place where I live. This book is about the art of compromise, and how two people with very different styles somehow managed to fall in love. There are several people who fit the role of villain, including Daisy’s father, whom Link described thus: “That’s not a father, that’s a sperm donor. Forget him.” I love that line. This book is falling apart, but I’m keeping it, no matter how bedraggled it gets.

    1. I’ve just started listening to Dreadful and I’m loving it, the narrator is fantastic.

  21. I’m still struggling through Widows of Malabar Hill. Why have I not given up yet when I seem to be giving up easily on books these days? I have renewed it for the third time (which apparently means it’s not new enough to have a waiting list.)
    I keep starting books that keep me interested for a short time and then lose me. DNFd five books with promising openings this week. This is not one of them. This one is actively fighting me!
    I’m about to finish the Linesman trilogy and was wondering what comfort read came next when Elizabeth mentioned Chalion. Next up!

  22. I’m reading Naomi Novik’s short story collection Buried Deep. It includes, aamong other delightful and creepy tales, a Scholomance story, and a retelling of Pride and Prejudice featuring Elizabeth and her dragon. Both stories were far too short. Moar, please! Also, I just finished The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso which I’m not quite sure how to describe. It’s a fantasy in which there are alternate realities layered upon one another and the MC has to pass through the layers in an effort to stop ill intentioned beings from taking over her reality. There is a F/F romance involved too. I didn’t think I was going to like tge story but I very much did.

  23. Here’s one comment, lengthy because I’m trying to get thoughts together for an upcoming book club meeting. More later, I hope.

    Naomi Kritzer, Liberty’s Daughter, 2023.  This novel is a fixup* of stories that appeared in _The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_ in 2012 to 2015, probably here revised and with added material.  New Minerva is part of a multi-polity seastead, a conglomeration of artificial islands and attached retired cruise ships and freighters, lying 220 miles off the California coast, just outside the US Exclusive Economic Zone.  Like the real-world failed original Republic of Minerva near Tonga, New Minerva and its fellow micronations represent an attempt to form new entities outside of the existing national sovereignities.  For unexplained reasons, for 49 years the effort has worked with no invasions, although few other countries recognze New Minerva (and presumably the other polities).  Like real-world Taiwan, New Minerva does host a non-embassy called the American Institute.  To one degree or another, all of the seastead polities practice a high level of libertarianism.  This works about as well as one would expect, which is to say not very much like what the real-world Libertarian Party or other libertarians would hope. 

    True, most of the libertarian utopias that I’ve read are set on other planets or parallel worlds, or at least a future Earth that has somehow gone libertarian all at once.  Here, the seastead  has to contend with having the resources only of an offshore settlement.  It makes do mostly by giving sanctuary to people fleeing from the law and bringing in either capital or labor as bonded servants (the latter much as in the history of the Thirteen Colonies).  Besides fishing and tourism (including,  of course, gambling, drugs and prostitution), its income-producers are risky medical procedures, the development and manufacture of recreational drugs to be smuggled into other countries, and other enterprises of dubious social utility. 

    Our heroine Rebecca (Beck) Garrison is a 16-year-old girl by origin from the upper class, since her father lives well on the capital from his big embezzlement score in the US.  Beck, however, is trying to develop a future career on a sort of gig basis (not unlike Jazz Bashara in Andy Weir’s 2017 Artemis).  Through Beck, we get a plausible picture of how the seastead operates.  Subordinate plots involve interactions with the American Institute, family issues (I was tempted to elaborate, but spoilers), and a teen romance.  Given Beck’s age and the nature of the storyline, this probably qualifies as YA fiction, but it should be of equal interest to adults. It does come to a definite conclusion, but if Kritzer should choose to write a sequel, I’ll certainly read it.

    *For this term, see
    https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/fixup

    1. Thank you! Now on my holds list. From the description I know I have read one of the stories somewhere, but not the entire book.

      1. I’m reading Stella Riley’s series set in the British Interregnum. I had read her Georgian books but not these. Her sense of what things cost and class distinctions is poor but her characters and their relationship are compelling.

    3. Correction: the term in history was indentured servant, not bonded servant. On the seastead, as in history, this sometimes came close to being a slave or bondservant, but that’s not what I meant. Senior moment?

  24. Speaking of classic detectives — has anyone else watched Dalgliesh (on Acorn)? Not sure how they compare to the books, but I’m enjoying them. Not sure the current season is the best, but there’s one more, and there doesn’t seem to be anything else new to watch right now. Although there’s a Christmas special for Chelsea Detective (releases next week), which isn’t classic and maybe isn’t extraordinary, but is pleasant.

    In reading, I’m partway through the third Thursday Murder Club, which I’m listening to while quilting, and I reread (via audio) A Christmas Carol and the first half of Hogfather.

    1. I haven’t seen Dalgliesh yet, thanks for the recc. But I’m watching a French police procedural, Magellan. The MC is a gentle older divorced family man raising a teen in a picturesque French town. It might be a contradiction in terms to say that these are cozy homicide investigations, and yet…

      1. Magellan is a fun series. Definitely a cozy homicide investigation 🙂 Sort of a French Midsommer Murders type feel to it.

  25. I’m hopping back into Georgette Heyer’s mysteries – they’re light, they’re brilliant, they’re funny. Right now, it’s _Envious Casca_ with Inspector Hemingway, one that takes place during Christmas.

    3. I just started Footsteps in the Dark, which I haven’t read before. The hijinks are a lot of fun so far. And I love Behold, Here’s Poison.

  26. This is why I re-read your books – I love the characters you’ve created and enjoy spending time with them!

  27. I’ve been re-reading Anne George’s Southern Sisters Mysteries. They are wonderful, and make me happy.

  28. I just finished reading Grandma Gatewood’s Walk which is a biography of the first woman to thru hike the AT. She was also the first person to thru hike the whole thing twice, walked the Oregon trail, and she started all this when she was 67 after raising 11 kids and escaping an abusive marriage. Truly an amazing woman.
    I love AT and PCT bios so it’s funny it’s taken me so long to read this one.
    Jenny,/ Bob, I appreciate that you aren’t dragging out the relationship drama more than three books. I always end up quitting series or shows that do. Especially with love triangles. I personally enjoy series where the characters are solidly together and the drama is related to them working together as a team while navigating their differences and outside forces. I know that’s hard to do.
    I don’t enjoy series where later books feature the kids of the primary couples and now the original couples are old. I like the idea of growing old with someone, and I’m happy they did it, but it’s bittersweet to know it’s going to end soon.

    1. I too don’t much like series where later books feature the kids (or grandkids) of the primary couples. There is a the bittersweet aspect you mention but also maybe the couple doesn’t turn out to be the way we’d like them to. For me, Georgette Heyer’s “Infamous Army” is a prime example of that – the romance is good (so is all the detail re the Battle of Waterloo but I don’t have those parts on the reread loop.) The heroine is the granddaughter of Dominic and Mary from Devil’s Cub. I love Devil’s Cub. I do NOT love the way Dominic and Mary turned out though…Nor do I like the fact that their children pre-deceased them so they clearly had a lot of sadness in their lives. And in this book the loss of a grandson. I would have been happy without that cameo and would have been quite content thinking that they had lived happily ever after…

      2. And then there’s the time scale. Devil’s Cub is set in the 1780’s, and Waterloo of course took place in 1815. There’s just not enough time elapsed for Dominic and Mary to have adult grandchildren.

  29. I bailed out of a couple of library books, then comforted myself with some Christmas story rereads – a few Eli Eastons, then back to Joanna Chambers. Didn’t like the look of her Enlightenment series, though I must have liked it enough to buy it some years ago. Instead bought a contemporary – Tribute Act – which was pretty good, and a couple of follow-ups to Introducing Mr Winterbourne, which I’d filed with my Christmas stories by mistake. Enjoying The Labours of Lord Perry Cavendish at the moment.

          1. There is…but a beautifully crafted love story over the three book arc, some great history such as the king’s visit to Edinburgh, sexy bits and characters I love, despite their flaws.

  30. Stories with good people (ideally also smart, interesting, competent) I would love to know in real life – that’s basically what I like best. Therefore no Mafia books etc.

    I’m not too critical as long as the story manages to draw me in, makes me fall a little bit in love with the MCs. And been taken seriously as a reader.
    Also, I’m in the mood for uncomplicated stories, no heavy stuff, life provides this anyway.
    So the books this week were all lightweight stories and short ones, audiobooks (part of the”eargasm” promotion for newsletter subscribers of Saxon James and NR Walker etc.). James’s Anti-Wingman was quite nice – the prequel to her Accidental Love series, Mr Romance by Louisa Masters had a similar premise (two guys getting together because one either falls too easily or seems to date too easily and the other one shielding the first MC from that). Pick One by May Archer was the third friends-to-lovers story about room mates-turned best friends and more. The main theme and “conflict”: how to confess that you’ve fallen in love with your best friend without ruining it all if the other doesn’t feel the same way.
    Very light, fun stuff. Anti-Wingman and Pick One were very short – I prefer longer stories because I find it hard to connect. Mr Romance was very nice, yet what bugged me was that some characters obviously have their own story, the hints are strong but I find it annoying I get baited to hunt for their back story. Here, two minor characters and their brothers were “raised in a cult”. Hints are dropped and dropped. So where do I find more info? Turns out they seem to be minor characters in another series. A paranormal one. Me: not happy, this detracted.

    MM “Elevator Pitch” was a very short story (only 50 pages): an insurance broker/amateur chef and pro hockey goalie get trapped in an elevator in Vegas. Imagine – it gets hot, so shirts are shed and love at first elevator incident erupts. Grrr. To me it seemed like a prompt to make two strangers have sex in an elevator and FALL IN LOVE. In the very long time of 2 hours?? Of those 50 pages too many were on the sex imo.
    Also – why did one of them have to be a hockey goalie? Yes, because hockey stories are the big thing right now. The jumping-on-the-hockey-bandwagon was done too heavy handed for my taste. ANY profession where being out is still a taboo would have worked. And sorry, but I rolled my eyes fearing they might get stuck when the pro athlete so deep in the closet that he’s a celibate outs himself to a random if hot stranger in an elevator AND tells him his name, profession and everything unprovoked! Sure path to some career catastrophe unless you’re the MC in this novella – here it leads to a potential HEA.

    So no real recommendation this week but thanks for letting me rant 🙂

    1. I’m rolling my eyes about the trapped on an elevator with a goalie plot. It makes me want to ask ChatGPT for ten different ways I could jam a hockey player into a book just to get on that bandwagon. NOT.

  31. Having finished the bulk of THE COOKIE-ING, I started THE DEAD GUY NEXT DOOR by Lucy Score. It was on sale at Aldi’s of all places. So far it’s lots of fun. The MC is an unwilling psychic who only wants to live a normal life. Yeah, that’s not going to happen, and it’s wonderful. 😀

      1. I’m sorry to hear that. I too loved The Dead Guy Next Door, but I’m struggling to finish book 2. I took a break from it awhile ago and haven’t been able to make myself go back and finish it. Which is a bad sign 🙁

  32. Stopped in to mention Smashwords winter ebook sale. I picked up a bunch of Celia Lake, Victoria Goddard, and Josh Lanyons for half price.

  33. I just read “The Stardust Thief” by Chelsea Abdullah, a fantasy set in a land where jinns and humans live and murder each other. Humans started to murder jinns because when a jinn dies and their blood is spilt, an oasis is formed. Jinns murder humans out of revenge, and so the cycle continues. The protagonists of this story – which is the first in a series – are set on a quest by a murderous sultan to find the jinn in a lamp so he can command it and stop the cycle in a more permanent way.

    It was an interesting book and I will be reading the second book – The Ashfire King – when it comes out. I liked the characters and the plot so far.

    I am trying to read “The Jasad Heir” by Sara Hesham which is another fantasy about the lost heir to a peaceful kingdom which was destroyed by lies and deceit. I’m having a hard time reading it because the destruction of the kingdom AND the on-going persecution and killing of the former inhabitants due to lies and a hunger for killing and destroying enemies is only reminding me of current events.

    1. Wow! I just tore through “Teller of Small Fortunes” by Julie Leone about a fortune teller who travels around her country telling fortunes. As long as the fortune does not deal with ancient prophecies, gods or fate – as her sign says. I really liked all the characters the fortune teller picks up along the way and the plot. Everything was heartwarming and I still have a smile on my face after reading the book.

  34. My favorite reads right now are my rereads
    I did read Debbie Macomber‘s Twelve Days of Christmas, which was OK but…
    So my next reread will be manhunting
    Then the Cinderella deal. Then Agnes and the hitman and then I think I’ll do the Liz series
    I’m happy in a crusie world and especially happy in a Crusie Mayer world

  35. Someone mentioned Jodi Taylor’s book of long-ish short stories ‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ last week, so I’ve been reading that, as well as rereading ‘About Time’. I love the whole ensemble cast of her books, they are enormous fun to spend time with.

    Also read and loved book 4 in the Hazard and Somerset series (two men solving crimes and pretending they’re not falling in love with each other), ‘Guilt by Association’. Talk about a long slow burn of a relationship! This series is solidly on my favourites list.

  36. I watched a very wonderful movie this week, Wild Robot, that reminded me in some ways of Murderbot in how Murderbot protects its humans as kind of a prime directive, and how it’s considered a monster by those who don’t know it. Lovely movie.

    I also re-read Mary Stewart’s Airs Above the Ground after being reminded of the book in last week’s blog. Great story, still holds up as an action adventure and beautiful description of Austria.

    The latest Stephanie Plum, #31, Now or Never, lived up to my expectations: fast-paced with interesting characters and lots of humor. Not a keeper, but okay entertainment.

    Now I’m re-reading Amanda Quick’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much, one of her Burning Cove mysteries. Her books are always a good read.

  37. Sharon Shinn’s Alibi, the author’s latest novel, was a disappointment. I liked her earlier novels – the angels and the elemental blessings and the Twelve Houses series – much better.
    Mary Lancaster’s Entangled was her signature regency, the first in a new to me series. Not the best of hers, but predictably readable and mildly enjoyable. I already bought the other 3 novels of the series and I anticipate a moderate amount of pleasure from reading them all. I’m truly happy I’ve discovered this author. Her books are such a comfort read for me.
    I also re-read a couple of Jayne Ann Krentz’s Arcane Society novels. I love that sub-series of hers.

  38. Yes, I’m a character-first reader too, and I like watching characters change gradually over time. It’s easier to find in long-running mystery series, though it’s also why I love Murderbot, Tiffany Aching, and others. I do tend to enjoy the ones that have some bigger gradual character relationship arc more, like those ones, or Nero and Archie, Star Trek, or Leverage, rather than the “episode of the week” style, like Jeeves and Wooster. (I love them too, but I don’t want to read six in a row in the same way.) Not being able to follow a protagonist from book to book was a big frustration to me when I started reading romance.

    (As a librarian, Nancy Pearl’s Four Doorways approach really helped me see why other readers liked different books than I did — we weren’t looking for the same aspects at all!)

  39. Jenny, Drat! Like an idiot I wrote a fairly long post here on the site rather than offline and the system glitchesd and ate it, and I don’t have time to rewrite it. But the gist was that I don’t think you have to limit yourself to being a romance author (or coauthor). You could build, say, a mystery, espionage, or thriller using characters you have already married off. As an illustration, I described where I thought you could go from Don’t Look Down (keeping the paired couple as leads, *not* in a secondary position as in genre-romance sequels, and starting only a year or less after that novel). I would also similarly like to see characters from other books such as Bradley, and the same principle would apply to any new series you embark upon, or indeed to Max and Rose. Marry them off and have more things keep happening.

    1. Good ideas, Patrick. I really want to do Nadine and Alice grown up, too. But mostly I just like writing limited series at this point. I have a seriously short attention span.

  40. I wanted to read something totally different. I have Michael Dalton’s GOBLIN APOCALYPSE trilogy in my Audible library. So far, I’ve listened to Book 1. I enjoyed the plot – MD is very good with the engineering details. There was a bit too much sexual mechanics for my taste (considering how lurid my tastes run…), for all that there were only four such scenes. Also, it’s another of his harem series, this one on a planet in the Terran Empire.

    I reread DOGS AND GODDESSES. It was great the first six or seven times I read it. It’s still great. I noticed I wasn’t the only one.

    I have all the Murderbot Diaries and that’s my current reread. Book 0 took just minutes (COMPULSORY) and I’m three chapters into Book 1 (ALL SYSTEMS RED). Wells deserved all those awards.

    Obligatory mention of the continuing serial word opera, VARIATION ON A THEME Book 5. This week’s chapters were Chapters 111 & 112: They visited Grandmother, who, as Steve suspected disbursed various heirloom engagement rings.

    I am still distracted by Reels and other videos from FB and YT. Better was BATMAN V SUPERMAN and more Star Trek stuff. I also started STRANGER THINGS but gave up pretty early. BUREAU OF MAGICAL THINGS. It’s so kyute! After all the mentions of detectives, I should mention re-watching the two ENOLA HOLMES movies. They’re based on Nancy Springer’s stories that I also love. I will not compare them. Not yet.

    1. Thanks for the Goblin Apocalypse recommendation. I have the trilogy on my reading/ listening list. I’ll bump it to the top.
      Funny thing, I’ve discovered that while I love audiobooks, I have found that some books are better read, and some books are better performed as audio. And sometimes, as with all my Crusie- Mayer books, I love them equally in print and audio.

      1. The audiobook… performance… was interesting. The Goblin girls are described as excessively cute, but the one girls voice is SO screechy!

    2. I love Stranger Things, but I do think that it comes into it’s own more in the second season. I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue after the first, because it was on the dark and dire side for me, but the found family really tightens up once the cast establishes its self. The later seasons are really great in how they merge multiple storylines.

  42. I haven’t read much of anything either, not even crochet patterns. I have dusted which I don’t like to do so i don’t. Except when I have people coming to stay.

  43. If anyone has ever read my GBT lists and thought “what in the world does this person write,” all of my titles are 50% off on the Smashwords sale and if the original price was 1.99 or less they are free. So, you know. 🙂 On to this week’s reading.

    1. [re-read] ‘Under Orders’ by Dick Francis, or more likely his son Felix in the end times before Felix was given official co-author status. It reads like Felix, is what I’m saying. Sid Halley the ex-jockey turned PI, gambling scheme causing murders, not great.

    2. ‘Shakespeare (Eminent Lives series)’ by Bill Bryson. A novella-length historical biography that makes much of the few known facts about the man’s life in Stratford and London.

    3. ‘The Unlikely Pair,’ by Jax Calder. I had this on my radar because I liked the preceding book a lot, but had completely forgotten the premise: rival members of Parliament are on their way to a climate conference when their chartered jet crashes. True suspense ensues as the conveniently-available jet was a kidnapping and they’re now being hunted. It’s a forced-proximity enemies-to-lovers scenario that worked very, very well for me. 5 stars.

    4. ‘Playing for Keeps’ by Avery Cockburn, M/M set in Glasgow revolving around a LGBTQ+ amateur soccer team, its new captain, and a university student / intern who convinces them to sign up for a charity match. The MCs have a very serious core conflict, the captain (mid-20s, freshly minted architect) being Catholic and the intern Protestant – not only that, but a member of an actual anti-Catholic hate group. They have work to do, so much of it that the ‘falling in love’ part, while credible, is like a somewhat leaky rowboat on a river full of spiky flotsam. Call it HFN, with fingers crossed.

    5. ‘The Men From Echo Creek’ by N.R. Walker. An Australian western set around 1890 featuring two young men (19 and 18ish) who are nearly alone in the world, one of whom has just inherited a ranch after his father’s untimely death, the other of whom is hired to fill in after four old hands walk out on the new owner because he’s too young. Or they’re assholes. Not very polished writing but I was invested. Unusual setting, laconic tone, with some incidents / adventures / conflicts but mostly just a couple of decent guys who luck into the peace, privacy, and allies they need in order to build a life together.

    6. ‘Cliffhanger’ by Ulysses Grant Dietz. A cool and unusual M/M contemporary featuring two freshly minted assistant curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who become friends, then lovers, while investigating an item from the collection that turns out to have family ties to both of them. Multi-generational back story, a 19th-century Hudson River mansion, a whiff of magic. Tons of decorative-arts realness (Dietz was a curator!), competence, kindness, terrific family on both sides, and a complete story – i.e. the epilogue goes 50 years into the future when one of the men is dying. It’s sweet & touching without overdosing on sentiment. If you’ve ever visited a heritage home with all its contents intact and thought “OMG I want to live here and catalogue everything and know all the history” I think you’d like this book; I definitely did.

  44. Best thing I read this week was “A Rogue of One’s Own” by Evie Dunmore, a suffragette and Viscount poet battle over control of a magazine. Loved the history and a good antagonists to lovers story.

    Also excellent was Micaiah Johnson’s sf “Beyond the Wall” – if you’re in the mood for anger and an exploration of the uses and abuses of violence. Really thought-provoking. I liked her first book “The Space Between Worlds” slightly better but this is a worthy follow-on with a couple of minor references for those who’ve read both.

    In fanfic, read “The Least of All Possible Mistakes” by rageprufrock, which was the Mycroft/gender-flipped Lestrade story I never knew I needed. Grippy and gorgeous. https://archiveofourown.org/works/330685

    Best of the seasonal reading was “Christmas at Steel Beach” by M L Buchman, m/f contemporary on a navy ship. Pure competence porn and I really liked that the FMC was a chef in charge of a big industrial kitchen rather than the usual café or fine dining restaurant.

  45. Really enjoyed Freya Marske’s Swordcrossed (an m/m in an alternate world), the combination of one excessively responsible character and one charming weasally character is one I really love.

    Midway through the bookshop detectives by Gareth and Louise Ward (about two ex british coppers who have set up a bookshop in small town New Zealand). The sense of community and oddballs reminds me a little of the Corinna Chapman series. One of the characters loves a lot of the other books that I love (rivers of london and the lockwood and co series) which always leaves me with a warm feeling.

  46. Epic fail that I have to share… It’s ugly sweater day at work and I am wearing a shirt that says Marley was dead to begin with. So far I have had three people ask if it’s about Bob Marley and one person ask if it was about Marley the dog. Save me. I don’t belong here.

    2. .. those 3 are possibly not your people, Lupe.
      Or maybe they are worthy people minus any literary frame of reference relating to the festive season & Scrooge providing potential insight into the machinations of some future govt. leaders….

      1. …😊…. but why be so beautifully succinct when a poly speak non answer (which Australian politicians use as their default response) could suffice. And I am totally rubbish at ‘less is more’ in so many aspects of my life 🤣.

      2. …😊…. but why be so beautifully succinct when a poly speak non answer (which Australian politicians use as their default response) could suffice. And I am totally rubbish at ‘less is more’ in so many aspects of my life 🤣.

  47. I’ve been comfort re-reading the Innkeeper series but Ilona Andrews. The characters are wonderful and likable, and the idea of living in an inn that’s actually able to alter its inferior to suit different guests needs is really fun. I always get a warm fuzzy feeling reading this series.

  48. “I go back to those series because I want to spend time with those people because they’re smart and witty and not evil. I just want to live in a nice place with nice people.”
    That’s exactly what I came here to say to you, about your novels. I’m listening to Fast Women for the umpteenth time, and I never get tired of it. A safe haven, in this scary world. Thank you so very much!!

  49. This week, I haven’t disappeared into a comfort series. I’m tempted to revisit Archie and Harriet and Cazaril (and Ista) after reading the comments.

    I can recommend How to Summon a Fairy Godmother, by Laura J Mayo. Cinderella from the point of view of one of the evil stepsisters. I wasn’t sure I’d like it at first—this character started out really nasty to everyone. (I was glad there wasn’t a puppy in the book or she might have booted it.) But surprisingly, the author made me believe in her arc to a character I could respect.

    Another series that has a world you can immerse yourself in would be the Many-Colored Land by Julian May. The first two books should be one book, imo. At the end of that duology, she makes geology an important part of the plot, which was unexpected.

  50. Diana Gabaldon keeps going back to her same couple, although they married long ago. As both you and Bob know, life neither ends nor suddenly becomes simple once a couple marries. Throw both your characters’ lives and their relationship a curve ball, and write three more books.

    Which couple do you most want to revisit?

  51. Other worlds – how about The Place of Tides by James Rebanks? A true story, beautifully told, about an old woman who did her utmost to bring eider ducks back to next on one of the Norwegian islands of her childhood.

    I also re-read The Beckoning Lady, by Margery Allingham. I really love the way she writes characters in all her books but particularly this one, and especially the children.

About the Author

Jennifer Crusie is the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author and co-author of twenty-three novels, one book of literary criticism, miscellaneous articles, essays, novellas, and short stories, and the editor of three essay anthologies. She lives in a cottage in Pennsylvania, where she often stares at the ceiling and counts her blessings.

Find out more about Jenny’s published works by visiting JennyCrusie.com

Recent Comments
Archives
Categories