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This is a Good Book Thursday: The ReRead Edition

Because I’ve been too tired to actually read, I’ve started watching TV again. I dabbled in Grimm, am loving Ludwig, and then I went back to Person of Interest. And after several episodes of that, I came back here and read some of the story analyses I did on the show, and you know, some of those essays were damn good. I have to stop bitching about flashbacks, though. So that’s the only thing I read this week. I’ll do better next week. Maybe.

What did you read this week?

243 Responses

  1. I read Ali Hazelwood’s Deep End, which as mentioned by other Arghers, features a BDSM relationship between the female diver and male swimmer on a college team. The BDSM aspect is more of a meet-cute than anything else – the on-page sex is quite sexy but the BDSM aspect is fairly mild; they talk more about what they’d like to do than actually do a lot of it, but definitely adds spiciness. The overall arc of their relationship is far more interesting, as is the MC’s development as a diver while she works her way through a mental block about her sport. I know next to nothing about diving so that was a world that turned out to be quite engrossing. And then since it’s Hazelwood, there’s a STEM thread about their pre-med studies. I really enjoyed this book.

    Speaking of BDSM, I also read Katee Robert’s Sweet Obsession, the latest in her Dark Olympus series, which tells the story of Icarus and Poseidon and yes, they have a BDSM relationship but I found this book somewhat…boring. Maybe because it’s her first MM? Or maybe because I’m chafing at the bit for someone to have some magical powers of some sort in this series? If they weren’t named for mythological figures would it be appealing at all? Dunno. It didn’t hit the spot though.

    I read SJ Wynde’s Cici and the Curator Search for Treasure – much fun like the first book.

    For hockey fans, I read Spiral, the latest in the LA Storm series by RJ Scott and VL Locey, about a dyslexic hockey player and a math nerd. I still think the first in this series was the best. The writers are a bit of a writing factory – maybe slow down and stop pumping them out so relentlessly? What do I know. PS – Go Leafs Go!

    I listened to the ninth book in the Rivers of London series, Amongst Our Weapons, and tried to pay more attention to the actual plot this time, which was difficult because there seemed to be a lot more exposition than is usual in Aarononvitch books, so went back to getting lost in the delightful narration and characters.

      3. The site Christine references worked for me! I put in a photo, which I downloaded.

      1. Yes it was disappointing. Especially since I’d been anticipating its arrival for so long. Oh well.

  2. Most of this week was spent reading my book club book ‘Nora’ by Nuala O’Faolain which is a novelised biography of Nora Barnacle, James Joyce’s wife. There were a lot of things l liked about it, particularly in the first half, and it was interesting to get to know more about Nora, and James Joyce too.

    I also read Alexis Hall ‘How to Bang a Billionaire’ which I didn’t love (but I finished it). I am not in a hurry to continue the series even though this book seemed more of a ‘Part 1’ than a completed story.

    Hockey Lovers, on AO3 I finished ‘antagonist’ by theundiagnosable. It is now complete and can be downloaded, I was reading it as episodes came out. It is good, as you would expect from the author. Not especially light, depression is a main theme, and not tons of hockey but good MCs. It wouldn’t be my favourite from this author but definitely worth a read.

    On audio I finished ‘Amongst our Weapons’ the last of the Rivers of London Peter Grant Novels (till July). Enjoyable though probably not my favourite. The I listened to one of the Rivers of London novellas ‘The October Man’ which is set in Germany. This is the only one of the novellas that I have liked enough to finish. Dodo if you want a good depiction of Germany rather than lazy cliches, this one is nice. I liked the reader too. Finally on Rivers of London, I am excited to see than the next one, due in July, ‘Stone and Sky’ is set (at least partly) in Aberdeen, Scotland where I did my PhD and worked for a while, so I’m interested to see how it is depicted.

    1. Sad to see I still have the new pink avatar ☹. I miss the green one.

      Hockeywise happy to have 2 of ‘my’ teams in the playoffs (Canes and Habs). A while back it looked like I would only have one, then it looked like two, then one again until finally last night the Habs clinched when they played each other.
      My Western teams did not make it, which was not a surprise, but I have two others I will cheer for instead.

      1. Yes, the new avatars are taking some getting used to. I didn’t realize how used to the other ones I was — will have to relearn them! 🙂

        The hockey playoffs are setting up to be pretty exciting. I don’t have high hopes for my favorite team (Edmonton) this year and the Washington Capitals seem to be slowing down just when they need to be heating up now that Ovechkin has broken Gretzky’s record. Still, I continue to be a Leafs fan and I find the Avalanche to be exciting to watch — sure one of these teams will do well? 🙂

        1. The Avs are one of the teams I’ll cheer for in the Western conference playoffs since my regular teams didn’t make it (the Canucks imploded and the Ducks were never going to).

        2. I’m also an Oilers fan – I would be chuffed to see a Canadian team win the cup. And the Avalanche is also exciting. It’s going to be a great playoffs.

          2. I would have mentioned the Habs and I appreciate their participation in the play-offs – the time slot for French debate for the would-be prime ministers was changed to accommodate the game that squeaked them into the play-offs – but I think your brother may being optimistic about their chances of winning, LN, don’t tell him I said so.

      2. I’m pumped that my favorite teams, the Habs and the Wild, both clinched their wild cards at the very last moment, grrr. Same with the Oilers (my third favs) with less last minute stress.
        As anyone else, I don’t have too much hope for them reaching the finals: Too much key players injured, not the strength others seem to have, the Habs a very young team. But hey, each positive bit will be double the fun. I do find playoffs rather nerve racking, tho…

    2. FrozenPond, could you give a link to the latest Theundiagnosable, I am very bad at finding things on AO3…

      I recently reread their M/F « two types of sacrifice » which I really like. I would very happily pay for their books!

      3. I too would happily pay for the Undiagnosable’s books! Makes you wonder what other gems are on Ao3 that we are missing. Again, Frozen Pond thank you for your finds on that confusing site!

        1. Its less confusing if you’re searching by fandom, rather than looking for a specific work by a specific author. You can find almost any ship for any fandom (unless its an m/f canon couple in which case crickets!) and as a data nerd their tagging system is seriously impressive.

    3. Great news that the undiagnosable’s latest is finally finished! Thanks for the heads up. I’m off to download it now.

  3. I finished HPP this past week. I enjoyed it a lot, especially having figured out the big bad. I didn’t see the twist with the resurrection of a character, nor did I see the final showdown – so that’s all good. Things seem settled in Rocky Start, although I do wonder what Max is going to do with his time, now that he is retired. Everyone else had a thing, except him.

    I’ve started book two of Granny McCreedy’s penguin saga. Already turmoil. It’s a slower read than HPP – probably because I’ve been tired this week, but so far so good.

    1. I too finished the HPP this past week and I am wondering if there was a Honey Pot Plot spoiler post? While I truly enjoyed the book and need to go back and read all 3 in a row, I had one or 2 questions. One of them I can do without giving away a big plot point.

      When Poppy goes to see Betty, they go around Betty’s house to the back and sit at the white table with 4 chairs. At one point, Poppy sits in a chair and Betty goes through a sliding glass door to get the tea. This all tells me that they are sitting outside on Betty’s porch… in the 2nd week of December, with snow on the ground, and Max tells us a few paragraphs later that he’s out in the cold. So, why are they taking tea outside in winter? Is it an enclosed porch?

        1. That’s fair. I do recognize given the following scene why it’s important for them to be visible.

  4. I have just finished reading The teller of small fortunes by Julie Leong, which I enjoyed. It was recommended in the comments under Jo Walton’s latest post on her Jo Walton reads blog. She had asked for cosy fantasy (and romantasy) recs and that one cropped up a few times in the comments.
    An undemanding but agreeable read.

  5. Jenny,

    I hope your energy comes back soon.

    Curious. For me, video is mostly something I do when I have the energy to be watching, or at least listening, while I do something else too, if only folding laundry.

    If I’m too tired to read, I’m probably sleeping.

    1. So true. People are puzzlingly different. I can’t watch video unless I am in top shape, alert and energetic, (which is why I watch so little of it) and I can’t be doing anything else at the same time (even when I don’t need to be reading the captions.) I understand that some people can knit without looking at their hands, but I’m nowhere near that skilled. I can read right up until my eyes close.

      Now I get to find out what my new avatar is. I loved the old one.

      1. And I hate my new avatar. The old one looked like me! I am not a pink blob!

        2. If anything can be done to bring back our old avatars (I gather that Jenny’s daughter understands this stuff) I think most of us would be happier. If not, we will endure.

          1. I *think* you might be able to change your avatar by going to the gravatar.com website and claiming/setting up your profile. I believe all WordPress sites grab user avatars from gravatar…

          3. Ah, yes! I’ve changed my avatar image to a coy deer! If you use a photo, it has to be very low resolution. I had to export it at the lowest setting and reimport it to iPhoto.

          4. A final note to say I can’t figure out how to select a different generic gravatar image. I think you either take what they give you or upload your own image.

          5. Christine, I tried changing my avatar on there but I don’t see where to grab a cartoon avatar and now I’m stuck with TS! bleh! I tried deleting my account but now I’m in website hell with them and can’t figure out what to do.

          6. I uploaded my own avatar, it’s the one I use on Facebook, so I think this will be the new permanent look.

          7. What Christine said. I logged in to my Gravatar account. I had a choice of any of my six avatars used at one time or another or uploading a new one. The one showing now is an older one from when I had a beard and a hairline.

          9. An annoying thing about gravatar and its avatars is that the change promulgates everywhere instantly. When I made a post in this thread, I had just changed avatars from a Murderbot quote avatar to an older selfie looking over the rims of my glasses. Then someone said that change was good, especially if it was silver dollars, so I uploaded and Eisenhauer Dollar image in support. It rendered a bunch of my posts about avatars… ear-elephant. I wish the avatar in place at the time of a post stayed with that post, but they don’t.

  6. I’ve been travelling a lot and chewing through a lot of audio books. I listened to Sunrise on the Reaping, which added some interesting further layers to the Hunger Games series. I did spoiler the heck out of it for myself because I didn’t want to be surprised by any of the grim stuff I was pretty certain was lying in wait for me.
    I also finished listening to Scythe by Neal Shusterman with my fifteen year old son. We both enjoyed it enormously.
    I’ve been binging the Murder Most Unladylike kids murder mystery series.
    And I tried to read Swept Away by Beth O’Leary. I love Flatshare, so I had high hopes for this one, but had to nope out.

    1. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Swept Away.

      I loved The Flatshare and liked The Switch. I DNF’d The Road Trip because my leisure time is too limited to voluntarily spend time with a character I hated. Then I read The No-Show and resented the way O’Leary manipulated the reader.

      1. The No-Show is why I stopped reading O’Leary’s books. I felt that same resentment/annoyance.

        1. I loved the Flatshare too. I don’t remember much about the Road Trip other than I didn’t love it. And I did not appreciate the manipulation of the No-Show at all–either in the book or by its marketing team. And I was even more annoyed by the epilogue. I was hoping Swept Away would be a return to her stellar beginnings. I’ll try it from the library.

  7. I absolutely love Ludwig!! And I’m a fan of Person of Interest but haven’t watched in a while so I may have to re-watch it.

    As for reading, I feel like I’ve been in a reading slump lately but my TBR keeps growing after reading the posts in GBT. I have been re-reading a few comfort reads including Something About You by Julie James in her FBI/US Attorneys series. I love grumpy, glowering heroes.

    1. I really enjoyed Julie James’ FBI/US Attorney books, specially the early ones. Thank you for the reminder that would be a fun series to reread!

  8. I read The Honey Pot Plot on the way over from Boston to London. Loved it.

    The sympathy for the bereft mother represented a huge step forward from the treatment of the other May-infested woman in Maybe This Time. I don’t like the way the sharp-toothed woman is told that she has been temporarily possessed by dead May. The better resolved Honey Pot Plot allows empathy of a mother for another mother — even if that other mother is a cold torturer and murderer.

    Anyway, I will probably reread Maybe This Time more often tgan Honey Pot Plot, but they’re both terrific books.

    1. Elizabeth, I think it’s one thing to empathize with a nasty woman whose son has been killed, but another thing entirely to feel empathy for someone who has selfishly taken your life from you, if even temporarily.

      1. Hi Jan — I phrased my comment badly. I had some sympathy for the sharp-toothed reporter (who was brought to the haunted house by Southie) when Andi told her that she (sharp-toothed) had been taken over by May and had had sex with both Southie and the cameraman.

        Considering how awful the experience was for Andi when May took over Andi, I thought Andi could have been kinder to Sharp-tooth. Granted, Sharp-Tooth needed rough treatment to be tossed out of the house.

  9. The best book I read this week was a lovely memoir of a woman writer (journalist I think) who finds a baby leveret (like a bunny) on her English countryside property who is almost dead. She nurses the baby hare back to life and it’s a great story. Not sentimental or too sad or sweet. But this first book has a lot of warm heart. Raising Hare : a memoir by Chloe Dalton.

      1. The BBC serialized it on Radio 4; don’t know if all their content’s available overseas? It was abridged, though.

  10. The forever-continuing word opera, VARIATION ON A THEME, is up to chapter 42, 43 tomorrow. I’ve re-read Book 2, starting the Book 3 reread.

    I finished Sarah Wynde’s CICI AND THE CURATOR SEARCH FOR TREASURE. I said it was different? When I recognized the Sentient Otters from Nandi Cline in the Federation of the Hub, I recognized James Schmitz fan fiction (of DEMON BREED. Cici is a dragon magically disguised as a human female. Her universe has room for both magic and technology SO advanced as to be nearly indistinguishable from magic. Lian Tannersaid, “Oooh, there’s a new Cici book out? I loved Cici and the Curator – will definitely read the new one.” That’s when I realized for sure that I was reading the series out of order.

    Another reread: Michael Dalton’s BIKINI DAYS, an Unconventional Romance series. I’m in Book 2, BIKINI NIGHTS.

    Still watching a lot of ELEMENTARY and looking forward to SHERLOCK.

    1. There is also Watson, a medical drama, on TV now but it seems pretty remote from the Sherlockverse. There is also a new prigram, Sherlock & Daughter, which I haven’t had a chance to watch yet.

      2. Not liking the new Sherlock related series. We passed on the Watson series. Big fans of Elementary. Watched the series over and over bc not much we liked on television. Same with Numb3rs series.

        1. I absolutely hate Watson. I wanted to like it because it stars Morris Chestnut, but the writing is worse than generic. Elementary worked because it had 2 very distinct leads played by good actors and the cases were varied. House worked because the supporting characters were given different outlooks and backgrounds so that they weren’t all interchangeable and the main character did a lot more than say, “Don’t worry, MY team will get to the bottom of it!” And Hugh Laurie was amazing. But even the backstories in Watson seem like I have watched them many times over the years.

  11. I’ve been having a hard time. Even this blog has been too hard (I missed you though). Occasionally I manage to skim a main entry … “Ack, Hospital” So I had to read more. There’s being a hero to your dog and then there’s breaking out of hospital to save your dog. A story to make me smile, esp after “feeling MUCH better”.

    There was also mention of gardening and getting your money’s worth so I’d like to suggest a book, High-Value Veggies by Mel Bartholomew. I still want to grow the kind of potato I prefer instead of the kinds common at local supermarkets, though. I would, of course, need at least one potato not easily found locally.

    Last re-read [skipping to one that isn’t commonly mentioned here 🙂 ] was The Last Stand of the California Browncoats, novella by Mira Grant. Zombies and firefly fans at comic-con. Um, not a cheerful story but gripping. There are reasons Seanan McGuire uses a pen name when writing the zombie stories

    1. Good to see you posting again Clancy! I hope things get better.

      And thanks for the heads-up and warning on the Mira Grant. I did like her Feed series, but yes, not cheerful.

        1. there’s an interview where she says she kept calling the CDC, “So every time I came up with a new iteration of Kellis-Amberlee, I would call back and say, “If I did this, this, this, this, this and this, could I raise the dead?” And every single time they would say, “No.” And I’d say, “OK,” hang up, and go back to working. After about the 17th time, I called and said, “If I did this, this, this, this, this, this and this, could I raise the dead?” And got, “Don’t . . . don’t do that.”

          while I was looking for this quote I found a tumblr speculating about the CDC person getting worried about these calls about improving a zombie virus.
          especially when they stop. They end up reading low end newpapers looking for zombies and wondering about helping a supper villain.

    3. We missed you, too! I can relate to the tough being so overwhelming that even reading lovely things like Argh is not doable. Hope you’ll be in a better place soon. Please know that we’ve got your back and are all cheering you on and sending pocket-hugs!

  12. Still on my second reading of The Honey Pot Plot and then…. Well got a back log of books to get through…

  13. •Mary Lancaster,  The Deserted Heart, 2018.  Book 1 of Unmarriagable series.  In 1810 or 1811 (approximate date established in the sequel), Charlotte is an accomplished and pretty girl who is sandwiched between two beautiful sisters.  Since she seems to have the least value to the family on the marriage mart, everyone in her family has come to regard her as unmarriagable and unsuitable to have a Season.  Charlotte, for her part, is happy to miss that kind of pressure and public exposure. The youngest sister is not yet out, so it seems to be up to Thomasina, the eldest, to rescue the depressed family fortunes by nabbing a rich and preferably titled husband.  The Duke of Alvan had met Thomasina during the Season, and, in fulfillment of his obligation to his own family to produce an heir, he has belatedly decided that Thomasina is his least-bad option for a wife. He soon arrives on a visit where (despite the absence of any previous understanding) he is expected to ask for Thomasina’s hand.  But that was before Alvan laid eyes on Charlotte, and nigh-instantly fell in love.  Cue the clichés!  Because of an incident in the subplot and his naturally brusque manner, Charlotte thinks Alvan is proposing to her only because he had seemingly put her in a compromising position, although it amounted to nothing and was successfully covered up.  Between that and her feeling that she is betraying Thomasina, Charlotte refuses Alvan (cliché!).  Crushed, Alvan naturally goes off home and plunges into an alcoholic binge (cliché!).  Thus, when Alvan’s sister, not realizing that he is foxed, arranges an “accidental” meeting between Alvan and Charlotte, Alvan takes Charlotte to be a hallucination generated by his longing, and handles her roughly (cliché!) .  And so on. 

    The idea of the overlooked sandwiched middle sister is not one I have previously run across (although some prior examples are probably out there).  All of the characters who we are supposed to like are indeed likeable, with the possible exception of an innkeeper.  There is even a likeable dog.  The subplot starts interestingly (an inn is completely deserted when Charlotte and companions arrive), but unfortunately it soon sort of fades out into standard issue.  And standard issue is where things remain.

    One of my pet peeves is the use in Regencies of the word “sibling,” which as I have previously groused here, was not coined until 1900 and did not enter use outside of anthropology until about the 1980s, and hence within living memory for many readers.  (I suppose Lancaster could respond that dialog in a modern historical novel is a “translation” from what the characters would have said in a novel of their day, and it attempts only to impart a bit of flavor of the original diction.)  My other major annoyance here comes when Alvan *deliberately shoots only the hand* of a bad guy trying to kill him.  This was a repeatedly criticized cliché in the TV westerns of my childhood, but at least those cowpokes were using more accurate mass-produced rifled pistols.  Alvan is rich enough that by 1810 he could have commissioned a rare handmade rifled pistol, but we are not told that he did so.  (A rifled pistol would have been too accurate for honorable use in a duel at the time.)  Anyhow, the bad guys have been confident that Alvan is not a good shot because he neither served in the Army nor has been seen practicing at Manton’s.  We never do learn why and where he learned superhuman marksmanship.  (Manton’s smoothbore dueling pistols could be accurate at short ranges if you had time to take careful aim.)

    I found the novel readable enough to finish, and it seemed refreshingly low on historical errors. It did go to dubious lengths to avoid harsh solutions.  The would-be murderer with the hand wound is allowed to drive away free, as is the person who hired him, both still at liberty to commit further crimes.  Alas, the sample of the sequel included with The Deserted Heart looked decidedly unpromising (its heroine is almost immediately abducted by that novel’s as-yet unreformed hero), and if I ever try another Lancaster, it likely will be one of her much-later ones in the hope that with experience she grew more deft.

    •Edward Lerner, The Company Man, 2023.  (It has a 2019 copyright, and is based on material published individually in 2017–19.  I conjecture that the demise of Ring of Fire Press played a role in the delay in book publication.)

    Lerner, a former physicist and computer scientist, is an experienced sf writer.  This episodic sf mystery novel has hard-boiled aspects and a dedication to a hard-boiled literary character, Hammett’s Continental Op, but it really presents itself as more of a fair-play mystery with an amateur crimesolver.  Told in the first person, our hero is unnamed, like the Continental Op.  He lives on Ceres, where the settlers have sophisticated medical adaptations for the tiny gravity, and he is correspondingly tall and weak by Earth standards. He works for a similarly anonymous “the Company,” which mostly mines rare metals from distant asteroids and sends most of its production to Earth.  The real Asteroid Belt is nothing like the way it is presented in most movies and some written fiction: every asteroid or small asteroid cluster is separated from the next by huge distances.  This, plus drastic measures including automatic computer piloting, radio silence, and use of computer-filtered images in place of windows that would reveal astronomical information, allows the Company to act with massive secrecy to protect its assets.  Even its asteroid miners do not know where in the Belt they are. 

    Our hero is by trade not a miner but an auditor.  His highly paid job is to travel for months per trip in a computer-controlled ship to a few per voyage of the various enclosed habitats that, out of tradition, are still called “mining camps” and to check them out, mostly by examining computer logs for discrepancies.  A very minor amount of pilferage by the miners is tolerated, but fortunes could be made by diverting relatively small quantities of precious metals.  Our hero knows as little about his location as do the miners.

    As the novel opens, our hero’s ship has been diverted (it can receive radio, but cannot transmit) to an unscheduled camp stop because of an unspecified emergency.  (As our hero will later learn, a camp manager has a means of sending an SOS, but cannot be specific.)  An auditor may not be qualified to help much, but he represents the Company and our hero is the only assistance within range.  Unfortunately, the emergency turns out to be a tamper-resistant time bomb whose timer display is visibly counting down.  Despite his lack of obvious qualifications, our hero manages not to get blown up and to identify who set the bomb, but this solution raises many further questions.  Things escalate from there, and in part involve an undercover stint on Earth, where our hero requires a powered exoskeleton just to move around.  We move toward a big-scale climax where the fate of all the human race is on the line, but I can say little more without spoilers.

    If we regard the novel as a fair-play mystery, I think the ending fails.  Many but not all hard-boiled novels are also fair-play, and in any case, our inexperienced, undermuscled, and nonviolent hero is anything but hard-boiled in build or psyche and is constantly improvising while out of his depth—as in many fair-play “traditional mysteries.”  Lerner thus signals the reader to expect a conventional mystery ending, and I don’t think that the author has provided a satisfactory one.  This novel was a selection of my sf book club and others there agreed with this last point.  Still, we thought the ending was a weakness rather than something that completely sank the novel. Recommended for readers who can tolerate such flaws.

    One review more coming when proofread. I’ve got another half-written, but that will have to carry over.

    1. Interesting info about the word ‘sibling’. I never heard it when I was growing up and now it is everywhere.

      1. The people under twenty-five where I work constantly say “my sib” which is new within the last couple of years.

        1. I only use “sib” for the one of my siblings whom is non-binary. It’s a bit tricky here in The Netherlands however, because they don’t have a gender-neutral word for siblings. It’s either brother or sister, can’t be unspecified. They are trying to introduce “sib” as the alternative, but I don’t believe it’s very widespread yet. Before I did a deep-dive on Google to find that, I’d made up a word for my sib that would have to do until there is one: Brus, a combination between “broer” (brother” and “zus” (sister) so I wouldn’t have to always say: “my non-binary family member”. Now I just say sib, and if they don’t get it, I explain.

          1. That’s brilliant, Shass. Adjusting to new terminology, and identities, is an ongoing process.

        2. We used “sibs” in the late 80s – usually when we were being slangy: “Yester I hung in CW with the sibs before hitting the Tiny God” meaning “Yesterday, I spent the day in Colonial Williamsburg with my brothers before going to the Tiny Giant (convenience store) for dinner.” What can I say – college students are weird.

  14. Best thing I read this week (possibly this year) was “The Mars House” by Natasha Pulley (2024) – sci-fi queernorm romance on Mars, with a political marriage between a male ex-ballet dancer from London turned factory worker and an nb Martian politician, and all sort of complex social issues and it’s brilliant. Even better the footnotes are hilarious, and despite some serious topics, the whole thing is much less angsty than say Pulley’s Watchmaker duology. Reminds me a little of Everina Maxwell’s first book. Thanks to Mary Anne in Kentucky for the recc.

    Totally different feel was Jo Walton’s Small Change trilogy, or as she describes them “Still Life with Fascists”. She takes as her starting point that the timelines in Brat Farrer don’t make sense and constructs an alternate history where WWII ended in 1941. The first one in the trilogy “Farthing” (2006) is a delightful manor house mystery for most of the book – but I’d have the next two on hand as the real resolution comes in the third book, and it is very satisfying.

    For some light relief, I enjoyed “The Charm Offensive” by Alison Cochrun (2021), an m/m contemporary set on a dating show between a rather adorably out-of-his depth demi-sexual MMC, and his handler. It deals pretty well with the mental health issues, plus there are some lovely friendship moments in addition to the central romance.

    Plus still mostly happily reading Teen Wolf fanfic 😉

    1. I too found The Charm Offensive to be quite charming despite the issues involved. Lovely friendship moments…

    2. Thanks for the ‘Mars House’ rec. I liked your description and like Everina Maxwell so I checked it out. For those interested it is currently on offer for Kindle at €1.15 (£1, I assume) on amazon.co.uk.

      Also, (off topic) I noticed Tracy Chevalier’s The Glass Maker is on KU, It looks interesting as it is about Murano glass and covers 5 centuries. Will report back when I read it.

      2. Mars House is now full price in US, but a library has it, so it goes onto my lengthy TBR list.

        1. Random query Patrick (or anyone?), as you seem likeliest to know. Small Change is causing me issues in my book log because I can’t categorise it.

          Is there a genre tag that means alternate history without fantasy or sci-fi elements? (As distinct from alternate history where, for example, steampunk Mongols took over Europe, or WWII was fought with magic). Do historical fiction readers consider it a subset of historical fiction? Or is it sf as in speculative fiction? Hmmm …

          1. Isn’t the tag just alt history? I’ve read plenty of alt history books where there are no magic/sci fi elements – the Germans winning WWII seems to be a big one.

          2. I’ve seen alt history mean both – I was hoping there’s something more specific for the nil sff elements type.

          3. Sounds to me as if it’s the version with SF/fantasy elements that should have a different tag, if you want to sub-categorize. Plain alt-history has been around for quite a while.

          4. Yuri, The line is fuzzy. Authors who are part of the sf community such as Walton, Turtledove, Stirling, or Birmingham are generally considered to be writing sf even when their novels have no crosstime travel, time travel, or other obvious sfnal elements.

            On the other hand there are works, often written by academics of “counterfactural history” that have no plot, and are written as if actual history books. Those are still sometimes considered sf, on the grounds, I suppose, that they follow the sort of logical extrapolation from a premise that is the sf tradition. But their authors and many of their readers may not count them as sf. (Posting this much before I lose it.)

          5. Yuri, to continue, as Lian says, there is a sense in which alternate history or alt hist is not quite the same as what sf used to call alternate worlds or alternate universes, although sf too now often uses the latter. This is often written as novels or as “counterfactual history” essays or pseudo-nonfiction by folks who have little overlap with the sf community. (I’ve noticed that their ebooks tend to be about twice as expensive, possibly reflecting a smaller readership.)

            And then there are alternate versions of novels, a thriving industry. The Jane Austen ones are called “variants” by their community.

          6. Oops. “…often uses the latter” should be “often uses ‘alt hist.'” The formers and latters are too tangled there.

          7. I could add that my local sf book club, at my nomination, will eventually be reading a counterfactural history written by an academic, Sobel’s For Want of a Nail, illustrating the fuzziness of these distinctions. There are also, incidentally, pseudo-nonfiction histories of future events, such as much of the work of Olav Stapledon in the 1930s on. These are considered by sf historians to be sf, but if memory serves, Penguin published one of them in its nonfiction categary.

          8. Thanks Patrick, Lian and Jane. It’s one of those niggly things and, while I want authors to go wild with whatever they want to write, I like having good terminology to describe it 😉

      1. I think its rather wonderful we both read and enjoyed it in the same week, independently 🙂

  15. •Jack Campbell, Destiny’s Way,  2025.  Book 2 of The Doomed Earth series, coming after In Our Stars, which I discussed in the GBTh for February 27.  In 2140, Earth’s dead-wood high military commanders are still out to kill time-traveler Unified Fleet Lt. Selene Genji and her downtimer companion, Earth Guard Lt. Kayle Owen.  The leadership’s motivation seems to be in part reflexive fear of the unfamiliar, particularly since Selene has been genetically enhanced with a small proportion of alien DNA, and in part a desire to cover up the leadership’s general corruption, incompetence, and responsibility for disasters like the one for which it tried to blame Kayle’s late father.  The commanders have closed their ears to Selene’s warning that unless history is changed by social reforms, Earth will be destroyed in a civil war in 2180.  Fortunately, Selene and Kayle’s message is gradually leaking out and finding sympathetic ears.  The most highly placed of these listeners is the Special Representative of the Security Committee of the Earth Cooperation Council.  The Council is the civilian authority to which Earth Guard and the other military forces are nominally subordinated, but in recent years the civilians have allowed the military more and more of a free rein.  The civilians are now starting to take up their responsibilities again, and, fortunately, the military leadership is not yet quite in a position where it could simply launch a coup and take over.

    Most of the novel, like its predecessor, consists of chases and escapes, which by their success demonstrate how incompetent the defense forces have grown and how alienated much of Earth’s society has become from officialdom, with an off-the-books parallel economy, easily obtained fake IDs, anonymous or pseudonymous money cards, and other workarounds.  The chases also provide the occasion for various fairly blatant civics lessons, reinforcing what I said in February about The Doomed Earth’s being a YA series,  although not labeled by the publisher as such.  Campbell may presume a little too far on the naivete of his readership, such as when Kayle and Selene *just happen* to run into a car wreck and *just happen* to save there the life of the father of the boy who on Selene’s original timeline grew up to become the single most important hate-monger.  In the changed timeline, the boy is so grateful to Selene for his father’s rescue that he immediately starts using his talents to defend Selene and her cause at every opportunity.

    Perhaps realizing that he has dug himself into a hole, Campbell ends up having characters speculate that some sort of beneficent supernatural intervention may have led to Selene’s time travel and to smaller coincidences intended to give the human race a second chance to get it right.  A straight-out cringeworthy moment comes when, in order to show that the future is indeed being changed by Selene and Kayle, Campbell borrows a gimmick from the Back to the Future film series, one that to my mind lies beyond any plausible rationalization, and pretty nearly pushes the novel out of sf and into straight fantasy.  One interesting tidbit is that, in discussing the reluctance of the timeline to alter, Campbell has the characters use the term “minimum necessary change,” introduced by Asimov in the classic novel The End of Eternity (1955). 

    Enough elements are wrapped up that this second book furnishes a reasonable end to the series.  I can see room to continue it, however, if Campbell so chose.  The series should most appeal to teen readers new to sf and to dedicated Jack Campbell fans of any age, such as myself.

  16. I too am really enjoying Ludwig! Smart show.

    This week I read “Light Up the Lamp” by Kit Oliver an M/M second chance romance between a hockey player and assistant coach. It wasn’t a top tier hockey romance read but after getting through the first 4 chapters which weren’t particularly well written, it got pretty good. Fair amount of hockey in it and I enjoyed it. Might even reread it at some point.

    I started rereading the Ari Baran M/M hockey romances, starting with “Game Misconduct” — enemies to lovers romance between enforcers. Enjoying it all over again and it is getting me ready for book 4 which I am still hoarding.

    I also picked up a Jude Deveraux entitled “Velvet Promise” an M/F romance that takes place in 14 or 15th century. I found it on my TBR pile and am pretty sure I had not read it before (maybe a free “click” at some point?) It is pretty dated and has NOT withstood the test of time.

    Finally, as always when world news becomes overwhelming, I reread some Heyer. This time “The Toll Gate” and “The Corinthian” both of which helped lower my blood pressure and still amuse as well as provide all the feels.

    Hockey playoffs begin this weekend!

  17. For comfort, I reread Bookshops and Bonedust, by Travis Baldree. I like that there is an epilogue telling us what Viv has been up to since Legends and Lattes, and what another character might get up to, after moving to Murk.

    I rewatched Victor Victoria, which is a story about a woman who pretends to be a man pretending to be a woman. I’m sure Blake Edwards wrote this just for Julie Andrews, who has a vocal range of multiple octaves, and did a mostly credible job of portraying the main character. James Garner and Robert Preston, plus Alex Karras, were great counterparts to Julie’s role. Leslie Ann Warren played the annoying sexpot very well. I think the current administration would confiscate all copies of this film, if they could. It’s just that good. Hee, hee!

    2. Victor/Victoria is a remake of a 1933 German film but I totally get why Blake Edwards adapted it as a vehicle for Julie Andrews. I liked it on first viewing but *loved* it on second (decades later). Julie is A-MA-ZING. Robert Preston is fantastic in it too.

        1. Who wouldn’t want a friend like that? And Robert Ppreston was one of my all time favorite movie stars.

      2. I went with my brother to see it when it first came out. He & I both laughed through the whole thing. We were the only ones in the theatre laughing, though, which we didn’t understand.

  18. I watched Ludwig over two nights and also loved it mainly because he solves a (puzzle) murder in one episode as opposed to dragging it out over the whole series.

    Not too sure about Pulse, I can’t find any loveable characters I want to connect with.

    And then there’s A Perfect Couple. Scoundrels galore. Rich and entitled scoundrels.

    In reading I started Kristen Ashley’s Misted Pines series. Although Kindle says that I read the first book a couple of years ago. News to me. I must have given up on it and gone to the last chapter where it tells me 100 % read. I probably cheated. Anyway, I’m on the second book The Girl in the Woods, so maybe I’m in a different frame of mind.

    1. A Perfect Couple –both the book and the tv show — reminded me of another book entitled Bad People Summer by Emma Rosenblum where all the people were also rich entitled and simply appalling people. I read both (and watched the tv show!) with interest and found that I didn’t really care who ended up being “done in” or who “did it” cause they were all so awful you kept watching/reading in the hopes that the one you found the most detestable would be the victim!

  19. I’m reading Swordheart, thanks to the recommendations here, and absolutely loving it. I like some of T. Kingfishers books very much, but I don’t like horror. Anyone who has read more of her stuff have other books to recommend that I might like if I like this one?

    I’m also rereading Tamara Berry’s fake psychic series (Eleanor Wilde) and discovered that there was a fourth book I’d somehow missed the first time around. So getting to read that for the first time is a treat.

    1. All of the Paladin books. Nettle and Bone (Bonedog! Best Dog Ever!). I don’t enjoy the Clocktaur Wars books as much as the Paladins but they take place in the same universe. Bryony and Roses. Thornhedge, fairy-tale retelling that edges very close to horror.
      I read her horror, pretty much the only horror I read, but I don’t reread them. The ones above have been read multiple times and will be forever.

    2. From what I recall, T. Kingfisher also wrote Nine Goblins, and Illuminations, and Minor Mage, none of which are horror. There’s also A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking which may or may not have too many grim elements for you, but I found that the fun elements were enough to overcome the grim. T. Kingfisher also writes fairytale adaptations like Bryony and Roses (Beauty and the Beast), and The Raven and the Reindeer (Snow Queen). She also has an alter ego, Ursula Vernon, who writes and illustrates mostly MG books. I like them all. And even if you’re not into MG, you might still like Digger, which is a very long but delightful webcomic turned book about a wombat who is trying to find her way home. There’s also Nurk, a very brave shrew who sets out to rescue his aunt. And there’s also Castle Hangnail about a young dark witch who is looking for a job and a home.

      3. I’m also reading Swordheart and living it. I also like Nettle and Bone and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. I’ll have to try the others mentioned.

    3. I can not handle horror at all, so I feel you 100 %. The few horror novels I’ve read still haunt me to this day. I’m happy some good T. Kingfisher-recs have been given that are not horror, for I want to read more of hers as well.

  20. What have I read? News. Lots and lots of news. I have written to Congress 83 times since the beginning of February. I will write again this morning.
    I have read nothing new, not even to get stuck in the middle. I am reading Murderbot, because the Corporation Rim makes the US look not-so-bad.

    1. I don’t want to politicize this blog but do you have an opinion on whether calling or writing is more effective? Thanks.

      1. I’ve heard that calling is more effective, but pretty much any contact is better than none! If you’re phone phobic like I am, but you want to maximize effectiveness, you can call after hours and leave a voicemail, which is as effective as talking to a live person without, yanno, requiring you to talk to a real life person. Or if you’re too phobic even for that, either snail mail or email works (altho’ of course snail mail isn’t fast enough for some crises).

        If you’re going to email, a nifty trick I found somewhere is that if you put a dot before a contact name in gmail contacts (I assume it’s similar in other services), it is listed at the top of the contacts list. I haven’t been able to find direct email addresses for my legislators, so I have to go through their contact form (which is mildly annoying but not as annoying as making phone calls), so I put the link to their contact forms in my gmail contacts. And since they’re always at the top of the contacts list, I can find them quickly.

        1. I just put their contact links at the bottom of the document in which I draft emails (which is now 45 pages long) and start the draft just above them so they’re easy to click.
          I miscounted. After my letter today I have written 86 times, not 83. I. Am. Tired.

          I think the “calls count more” thing may be a holdover from snail mail, when calls were much more current. I hope so, anyway, because we will all go to hell in a handbasket before I will call, even after hours. I hate phones, not just talking to live people.

          1. Yeah, I think ultimately all the contacts of whatever kind just go into a database of topics and how many called and which side of the issue. At least, that’s my excuse for doing email instead of calls. Also, my reps are generally on the good side, so I’m mostly just confirming that I support their position.

          2. Speaking as someone who has lobbied and has asked Congressional staff, they serve different functions.

            Calls get tallied—the front desk keep lists of which issue people have called about and are they pro or con. The political staff ask for the tallies often several times a day. They are not a good way to deliver nuance or personal stories . They are a good way to contribute to immediate pressure.

            Emails get read but when they get read depends on the staff and on what else is going on. Emails are better if you have a compelling personal story that might change their position or, if they share your view, might get used in debate or with the press. They are also good if you want a response to learn where your legislator stands.
            If you want to call at night and leave a message make sure you tell them where you live so they know you are a constituent.

        2. I also like leaving messages. I can do it early in the morning and get on with my day. although, I do tend to use my outdoor voice…

      2. I saw a protest movement on the internet calling on like-minded folks to flood various mailboxes with snail mail as a sign of protest. It all needs to be opened, apparently and even if the representatives themselves are not processing it, it gums up the works and takes time and attention. I am thinking of mailing sympathy cards full of glitter.

        I am taking the ‘every little bit counts’ approach, since I am rather call and email averse. Plus this supports the postal service, who I very much want to survive.

    2. I glommed onto the fact that you bought 83 stamps at almost a dollar a piece. Gulp! And then yesterday I saw that the post office is getting a new series of stamps depicting the Revolutionary War and immediately I wanted to look closely at the picture of George Washington just to see if it was him or DJT in a tricorn hat. That’s my thought process for you.

      1. No, no. Emails! I don’t have that kind of money. Also my printer would just give up and die.

  21. I read Lord Julian number two (A Gentleman of Dubious Reputation). It was perfect escape and had wonderful character growth. Thanks to all the Aughers who recommended the series!

    I also read the fourth Heathcliff Lennox book (Death in Damascus). I love these books! They are typical 1920’s cozies but somehow the author (Karen Baugh Menuhin) manages a little twist or a bit of historical scene setting that is fresh to me.

    Both of these series are very slow burn romances, too. I’d like the couples to get together sooner but they are not rushing things.

  22. I liked my old Avatar better. I now look likr I need orthodontia and a better eye doctor. On a more positive note, I read Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill which is about a Jenny Greenteeth who rescues a witch that has been dumped into her pond to drown by the local intolerant religious types. Much ensues. It’s described as a cozy fantasy but there are definitely some fraught moments. Nonetheless I very much enjoyed this book. On the other end of the spectrum, I am continuing to read the Dungeon Crawler Carl series; it is still holding my interest. I am looking forward to the big showdown whenever that happens.

  23. I’ve DNFed a number of books this week, but did finish Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin. It’s a cozy mystery set in London with a chef who is roped into teaching a course at a private culinary school as the main character. It’s sort of a house party murder plot. The story gets quite improbable towards the end, but overall it held together well and I enjoyed the setting and characters for being a bit outside the norm for cozies.

  24. Reread the Blue series, (Emma Jameson), all eight stories, after reading HPP. Now back to drumming my fingers on the table, waiting for something to perk my attention. Maybe go back to one of Bob’s earlier novels.

    Yikes on the avatars. I like my lavender avatar.

  25. Having been through pneumonia last month, “I haven’t read a book, not even on my phone in 4 days”, when I got home it took a long time before I could read anything new. Luckily, I have a lot of books at home to reread. The tired feeling is lasting far longer and I have to plan for that.

  26. By the way, when I told my siblings that I wasn’t reading, my brother said “Since when”, and everyone else said, “You ARE sick”. They know me well.

  27. I’m so glad you can walk Johnny even if slowly! And yes, your job is to recover.

    Oh my gosh I finished Ludwig in two weeks, can’t wait for new episodes.

    I might rewatch Grimm, I love Silas, wolf guy. Wiederblutbad.

    I know everyone is going to hate me but I am not a fantasy other worlds person except LOTR and Witcher. So, I DNF Swordheart. Gulp.

    I read Lady Violet series’ first book by Grace Burrows and I got through it, so good enough to try the next one.

    1. I don’t anybody minds if someone doesn’t like a book other people love. That’s one of things I like so much about this place.
      🙂

      1. I don’t think anybody minds … That’s one of the things…

        I also like that most people here don’t mind when non native speakers butcher English 🙂

    2. I don’t like Kingfisher either and I am a fantasy person. Shhh. I dnfed the last several that I tried and was really unhappy with the ending of another, so I think that I am done now.

    3. 🙂 I DNFd Witcher, and although I did finish LOTR, I have never even tried to reread it. Yes, it takes all kinds.

  28. I read Molly Harper’s new mystery, her first, A Proposal to Die For, and loved it.

    I’m a big fan of her Southern Eclectic series and this new book has the same humorous, witty flavor with fun family dynamics. Not quite a cozy mystery by definition but close enough.

    I hope she continues as I appreciate her writing voice, though the majority of her work involves the supernatural which isn’t quite my cup of tea.

    Oh, and if you are a listener, Amanda Ronconi is the performer who is excellent.

  29. The site Christine gave above for changing your avatar worked for me! I used a favorite old photo. I’m not sure how it got from that site to this one, but it’s great!

    1. Yay! I’m a fan of Gravatars – I feel more connected to people here who have one, even if it’s not a picture of them.

        1. It does if you go on a website where you realize that uh, I might need to be anonymous here after all. Hence why I had to disable mine :/

  30. I am out of the comfort reread loop, temporarily. After For Real, I wanted more Alexis Hall so I put some holds on some that I hadn’t read. Mortal Follies was meh. I don’t really like his historicals and this one had too many characters and witty remarks and not enough heart. From another author I would probably say it is fine, but I have high expectations for Hall.

    So then I started Paris Delacourt is starting to Crumble. It’s definitely not a romance and his anxiety is a lot, but I was forewarned and it didn’t hit me badly. I always really appreciate Hall’s themes of ‘Having a mental illness isn’t an excuse for treating other people badly’ and ‘having a mental illness isn’t an excuse for not trying to be better.’ It’s a really nice change from “I’m abused and broken and therefore allowances must be made” ala Colleen Hoover and Fifty Shades of Gray.

    Reading wise, I am on the downhill for The Tomb of Dragons and enjoying it thoroughly. I got to Maia’s cameo and that was lovely, although it made me deeply jealous of even a fictional government that is sane and reasoned and focused on service.

  31. An appropriate cartoon for ARRESTING ANNA (or whatever her name ends up being.)

    http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff4300/fc04206.png

    TRANSCRIPT

    Helix: A painting?
    Sam: Can’t have people thinking I’m uncultured.
    Sam: I borrowed it from a modern art museum. It’s called “Unpainted canvas”.
    Helix: Don’t they want it back?
    Sam: Nah. They stopped caring when it turned out to be a forgery.

  32. I’m so encouraged by all the positivity for Ludwig. I thought it looked interesting but was waiting for the entire series to be available in case I want to binge. And now the last one is up, so I know what I’ll be watching tonight!

    Other shows have been landing flat for me, and I don’t know if it’s just me or the shows. If I love Ludwig (as I hope to), I’ll know it’s the shows and not me. I really liked the first season of Chelsea Detective, but the Christmas special (beginning of third season) didn’t work for me, and the next two were just meh. Still waiting to see if the third one is any better or if I’ll be giving up on the series (there are only three episodes plus Christmas special in this season).

    1. I ended up watching Ludwig twice (it was on the BBC in January or February). Binged it, then showed the first episode to a friend straight after, and watched it again with her. Never done that before. There’s supposed to be another series coming, but I’m guessing autumn at the earliest.

      1. Ooh, that’s really encouraging. Now I want to punt the rest of my day’s projects and go binge Ludwig!

  33. Tanya Huff, Canadian science fiction author, has a new book released this week titled “Direct Descendant.” The description of the book is “cozy horror” which is quite accurate and a new niche to me. I have read many and perhaps all of her books. This is a worthy addition to her work with similarities to the Enchantment Falls and Summoner series. It is set in rural Canada and is described as “mixing the creepy with the charming for plenty of snark, queer fun.” I really enjoyed it and would enthusiastically recommend it.

    1. Yay! The last time I looked for it the library didn’t have it. Now it does, and I am number 6 on the hold list.

    2. I’d already put DIRECT DESCENDANT on hold at my local library. I’ve been reading Huff since her 1990s vampire series. Sounds like this one is a keeper too. 😀

  34. Apart from my two Lonely Planets about Canada, I didn’t have much time to read, have been listening to Us and Him by Kennedy/Bowen and enjoyed them more than I remember (I gave them both 5 stars back then anyway).

    I hardly found time to journal but chose to look around all the new places instead: from snowy Quebec (gosh, we really needed the winter gear there!) to sunny BC. We’re now in Vancouver, all 4 of us.
    We’ve been to Stanley Park, Elglish Bay, Granville Island etc, enjoyed a Canucks game (kiddo #1 cheered silently for the Sharks who really played very well; kiddo #2 and dh, both sporting Canucks merch, rooted for the Canucks, I was conflicted because I like both). The vibes were very different to the Bell Center. Both the son and me now follow the Habs 😀.
    Kiddo #1 has to fly back home today, we’ll be off to Victoria tomorrow for 2 nights. Then dh also has to leave because his holiday was cut short by his employer. Kiddo #2 and I will continue to do tiuristy stuff in Vancouver and according to the weather forecast, I’ll also get to experience rainy Vancouver some time soon.
    All of us want to come back. There’s just sooo much to see, to explore, the nature is amazing, the people are incredibly relaxed and friendly (not used to that back at home).

    1. Did you decide to go to Seattle and if so how did the border crossing go? By the way, I highly recommend an ice cream store in Vancouver that has the world record number of 238 flavours. Some like rice or garlic are to be avoided but the rest are pretty amazing. Worth the trip to East Van.

      1. Tammy, we decided against Seattle. I don’t want to clear my phone of any stuff (techno dinosaur = me).
        The ice cream store – la casa gelato??
        We didn’t know, nut maybe we get gheir before my son has to leave – he’s the major sweet tooth.
        Any rec’s are highly welcome as our Canadian kiddo and I are staying in VAN from 20th to 24th again !!
        I’m on a digital detox this holiday as I didn’t msnage to get an eSIM card (phonf too old), so sorry to everybodx for tardy replies!!

        1. We went to the Casa del gelato!!
          Amazing place!!
          Thanks for the rec!!
          I didn’t see the rice and garlic ice cream, but was tempted by the aceto balsamico ice cream. The son chose differently tho. Death mango, oreo ube and chocolate fudge. Dh and kid 2 had white choc fudge and creme brulee.
          All of it delicious.

          Great trip on son’s last day!!

          1. Sorry I meant to include the name La Casa Gelato in my comment and didn’t but it looks like you figured it out anyway. I am so glad your son got to try it. It’s worth a second trip too…

          2. We all had a good taste of the ice cream flavours and avoided any big mistakes. Kiddo’s hostdad told us that he once tried durian fruit ice cream. His wife didn’t tell him in advance that it’s much more of an aquired taste than eg Marmite…

    2. Huh. Bavarians have the reputation of being more laid-back than Northern Germans, and I remember them as as being fairly relaxed. Certainly more so than New York City even in Munich, although I spent most of my time in smaller towns. Maybe a little less laid back than Canadians in Toronto or Winnepeg, my only visited cities other than Sault Ste. Marie in childhood. Not hugely different from the US Midwest. Perhaps Munich has gotten more uptight over the years since I was there. Possibly from more immigration?

      1. Patrick, you’re right that our we tend to be very different depending where in Germany you are.
        Munich has seen a lot of immigration, so you will hear many languages, and if German, most likely the High German, rarely my own language, ie Bavarian.
        Bavarians are stll often looked down upon (usually by other Germans immigrated to the South) which grates. Which might be the reason why some of our politicians make too much of a fuss about our Southern identity…
        Btw, we usually get along well with the conpatriots from the VERY North 😉

  35. I’m having a good time: I’m on a Jennifer Crusie reread. Just the long novels – I’m near the end of Welcome to Temptation. It’s going to be a great weekend, with Faking It & Bet Me to come.

  36. I read a couple of short story collections set in Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid universe. A couple of Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries collections, I had read the first two, Death and Honey and Canines and Cocktails, also First Dangle and Other Stories, about Owen, and Oberon’s Bathtime Stories, which are stories from his past that Atticus tells Oberon while he’s giving him baths. All fun.

    I also read Wizard Undercover by K.E. Mills (Karen Miller), which is the fourth book in a series that I really enjoyed that I somehow missed, it’s copyrighted 2012, after really enjoying the first three. It was a bit grimmer than the first three, but I still enjoyed it.

      1. The fourth book does leave an unresolved plot thread hanging out there right in your face that would seem to indicate another book was planned. But since it was apparently published in 2012 it would seem there won’t be one.

  37. I’ve been lax in reporting my recent fun reads. I doubt that I need to promote THE HONEY POT PLOT here, but I loved it as much as everyone else. Also enjoyed Orlando Murrin’s KNIFE SKILLS FOR BEGINNERS and Stephen Spotswood’s latest Pentecost and Parker mystery, DEAD IN THE FRAME. I relish Spotswood’s take on Nero Wolfe. Rex Stout is one of my all-time favorite mystery writers. Spotswood’s writing has the same energy, tackles similar issues, and views the world through a similar lens. All good things in my book. Gave up on Elle Cosimano’s latest, FINLAY DONOVAN DIGS HER OWN GRAVE, by p. 60. The writing is as sharp as ever. But like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels, the series has become too much of a muchness. I wonder if it’s a problem specific to comic mysteries. I relish humor and wit in my reads, and I can happily follow the adventures of Ashley Gardner’s, Sofie Kelly/Ryan’s, Stout’s, Spotswood’s, and other’s sleuths through 15 adventures and more. But I stall out on the slapstick if it never goes anywhere. But blessings on the heads of any writer who dishes up laughs right now. We NEED them right now.

  38. Finally, after a couple weeks of only re-reads, I moved to books new to me.
    Jonas Jonasson’s latest, The Prophet and the Idiot, was a DNF. I found it among the Comedy display books at the local library. As I read other books by this author and liked them, I decided to pick it up. But I couldn’t finish it. It was occasionally hilarious, true, but on the whole, it made me sad. Not a comedy really, but a sarcastic political commentary that stressed out how lonely we all are. I didn’t enjoy readings it, and I couldn’t sympathize with the characters, so I didn’t finish it.
    Shanna Swendson’s Enchanted, Inc., on the other hand, was sweet and charming. A chic lit with magic, this novel – #1 in a series – was about a young woman who is magically immune – can’t do magic and is impervious to any magical spell. She sees things as they are: a gargoyle is a gargoyle, and a fairy is a fairy, no matter what illusions they wear. The company she works for are good guys. They produce and sell magical spells that do no harm. But they have a competition – someone who wants power and money and has no scruples. Of course the heroine is caught in the middle of the dangerous struggle between good and evil. Plus there’s a whiff of romance there. Nothing deep. Simply a light and fluffy read.
    Shanna Swendson’s Once Upon Stilettos was #2 in the series, and I liked it much less than the first book. But still I finished it, even though it seemed colorless and mildly boring.
    The concept of magical people living among us, mundanes, in secret, is not new in urban fantasy, but I have been wondering for a while. In the later couple of decades, most minorities chose to come out of the closets, specifically homosexual people or trans. Wouldn’t magic people do the same – come out of their secret lives and live openly among us? Isn’t now a good time for such stories?

    1. I still know people who are closeted for one reason or another – in a country with marriage equality. And the paucity of active out gay athletes in men’s team sports indicates we’ve still got a long way to go in terms of acceptance. Not to mention all the hate directed towards trans folk.

      If I turned furry once a month on the full moon, I’d be keeping it very very quiet!

      1. That said there are some books with exactly that scenario, of supernatural creatures coming out of hiding

        Patricia Brigg’s “Mercy Thompson” series is the first one that comes to mind, although it takes a few books to get there and then the series deals with the aftermath.

    2. I agree with Yuri. The track record of how this country and most of the world treats minorities and outliers speaks for its self. The recent Supreme court decision regarding trans women is heartbreaking and RFK’s hateful comments about people on the autism spectrum are just plain scary. Being different is dangerous.

      My husband is Korean, so we don’t really have a choice to hide our mixed race marriage but the number of issues we have had out in public have only increased in the last 10 years.

      1. I’m so sorry to hear that Lupe, that in 2025 mixed race marriages still attract comment.

        I have a huge amount of respect for everyone who chooses to be out and proud, but I also understand the choice of someone who can pass, choosing to do so. I wish that it was choosing to be open didn’t come with an element of risk.

        1. I’m pretty disgusted myself to hear of such comments. Not too surprisingly, none have ever happened when I was with, or within hearing of, a mixed-race couple. I don’t know if the Chief Felon is himself a racist (some prominent social conservatives are themselves in mixed marriages), but he certainly promotes an atmosphere allowing racists to thrive.

    3. I loved the Swendson books when they first came out, and keep thinking about rereading them. Sadly, I loaned the first one to an out of town friend and she lost it, so I just have the other three.

  39. Okay, I set up my gravatar account with a pic of my cat Todd on some quilts. Let’s see if it worked.

    Meanwhile, I’m thinking the change of avatars is a conspiracy to get us procrastinators to set up gravatars with real pix.

    1. Ooh, it worked!

      And for anyone delaying, it really is easy to create a gravatar account. I skipped all the extra stuff, and it still worked.

    2. Ooh, it even works retroactively, so my avatars above, before I created the new one have changed to the new pic from the graphic that looks like someone who’s smiling through gritted teeth! Todd is much cuter than that.

  41. I didn’t do a lot of reading for pleasure this week. Too much work plus the dreaded (and procrastinated) taxes. Miranda James’s File M for Murder was an enjoyable read. I also read Jill Shalvis’s Better than Friends but it didn’t work for me.

  42. Best thing I read this week was Natasha Pulley’s The Mars House. She usually writes an unusual type of fantasy, and this is her first foray into science fiction. It’s set in the future when there is a fully functioning colony on Mars, and Earth is burning under the influence of climate change. A lot of people are emigrating to Mars, but due to earth’s greater gravity, they present a danger to the colonists because they are so much stronger. There is a big political push to force them to have an operation that will make them weaker – if it doesn’t kill or completely disable them. This is a story of a principal dancer (male) from earth and the politician (non-binary) who is leading the push for the operation. Wonderful, wonderful book.

    Another good one was Madam by Antonia Murphy. It’s a memoir, about her experience of trying to set up an ethical escort agency in New Zealand, where sex work has been decriminalised. I gather it has been made into a TV series, but the book is well worth reading.

    2. Snap! I can’t believe her first publisher dropped her over this book. So happy she found it another home.

      1. Natasha Pulley’s publisher dropped her over the Mars House???? Really? I mean, it’s hugely different from her previous books, but the writing is still intricate and beautiful, and the characters are wonderful.

        1. She mentions it in her afterword while she’s thanking Gollancz and her current editor for picking her up. It’s staggering frankly.

    3. I really liked the Mars House until I read a review thzt said thzt the whole premise of heavy earthers and light martians was totally unscientific.
      If I reread it, I’ll need to read it as the complete fantasy it is.

      1. Whereas I liked it for being one of the few books that recognize lighter gravity is terrible for humans 😉

        But yes, some suspension of disbelief is required.

        1. Makes me think of the Mindtouch series by Hogarth. Fortunately I don’t know enough about science to be bothered by the facts.

        2. So far I haven’t read the book,,but nothing in the basic idea seems unscientific. As was explicitly specified in the Lerner book that I reviewed above, we might need to imagine future medical advances to keep humans healthy in lower gravity, and obviously the Earth-born would lose strength over time from less exertion, but depending on how children grew their frames in lower gravity, Earth-born might still have a strength advantage from a less spindly frame. But I’m just arguing from first principles.

          1. Like Lupe, my sense of my scientific fact is pretty limited and as long as the writing interests me I can pretty much suspend disbelief. Particularly for wormholes, FTL, or “rule of cool” 😉

            The big one for me in this case is the idea that relocating to Mars would ever be more economic than fixing Earth, but it really is a very small colony. I’ve read some reviews that critique the book’s science, but as some of those reviews equate weight with force, I’m not convinced of the review’s scientific credibility. I’m also not convinced that the fears that dominate Martian society are justified, and there’s some evidence in the text for that too – which perfectly reflects how society works – we get an idea in our head and then rationalise our way around it.

          2. Yuri, With enough hand-waving FTL and wormholes are not yet ruled out by existing science, although both are highly speculative. Antigravity is pretty darn iffy as well. (Of course, in the past, even in the age of science, various things that we thought we knew have occasionally turned out to be wrong.) I’m less happy about Rule of Cool, particularly when it concerns something to all appearances happening in our own universe where the author gives no indication of knowing that the science is wrong, as in Malka Older’s series. But I’m still reading it.

            For plot purposes, I can see an offworld colony as insurance against the disappearance of humans on Earth, or as a reservoir of civilization against Earth humans surviving only as savages, or as a bolthole for the fatcats, but certainly not as a place where you can move any appreciable portion of Earth’s population, at least absent major handwaving, like a teleportation portal or humongous colony ships that would carry vast numbers in suspended animation. (Boy, did I have to fight autocorrect in this paragraph. I hope I got everything restored correctly. )

          3. Okay, so I dnf-ed and returned one book and borrowed Mars House instead. January has just decided he could survive jumping out of a point above the 57th floor, which pretty obviously on Mars would entail a harder landing than out of the 20th floor on Earth. (Does someone that dumb even deserve to survive?) I haven’t learned yet if Mars has been terraformed in the novel, but it is widely publicized that with its present atmosphere a dust storm is no big deal (except for covering up solar cells on rovers) because even a fast wind has little force in Mars’s thin atmosphere. I don’t know what the weather would be like with a thicker atmosphere: there’s a lot less solar energy to power storms than on Earth. So, yes, the novel does seem to require much suspension of disbelief. Somewhere in that borderland between badly flawed science fiction and honest fantasy.

          4. Patrick, Mars has definitely been terraformed to some extent – and some of the explanations don’t come until the near the end, and whether they’re credible is another matter. Why there’s a colony on Mars is never really explained – in my head canon it was somebody’s pet ego project, which explain a lot of things on Earth such as the Three Gorges Dam, climbing Mt Everest etc.

            The story and characters were so good I didn’t care about the hand-waviness but YMMV.

        3. Okay, a little later I came to the “resistance cage.” I suppose it is not wholly impossible that growing up on Mars could, for some now unknown reason, give you brittle bones. It wouldn’t be just the gravity. Weight goes down on Mars; mass does not. If some kid bangs into another kid, it will have the same force as on Earth. If you start something on wheels or glides moving, it will be as hard to stop it as on Earth. Maybe even a little harder, since there will be less friction with on both the wheel axles with their sockets and the soles of your feet with the ground. So one would expect kids to have bones resistant to normal banging about.

          1. I forgot to add that the cage would in fact help to keep immigrants’ muscles from losing strength from the lower gravity as quickly as they otherwise would, which is the problem you supposedly want to solve.

          2. But a few pages later, the novel says as much about the resistance of the cage (exoskeleton). That feature supposedly makes it easier to return to Earth. So never mind that point.

  43. In my review of Jack Campbell’s Destiny’s Way, I forgot to mention that one of Selene’s few weaknesses from her modified genes is that she is allergic to llamas. I doubt that the timing would allow that to be a call-out to the Rocky Start series, though.

  44. I read Abby Jimenez’s book Say You’ll Remember Me. The couple spend most of the book apart yearning to be together. Even though you watch their initial attraction depend and turn into a real partnership when they can be together, it made the book less compelling to me. Nice treatment of the hardships if caught for someone with Alzheimer’s. And great dogs.

  45. I finished “The Dragon With The Chocolate Heart” by Stephanie Burgis. Still a bit baffled by having had to turn up the playback-speed – HOW can anyone stand narration that is slower than normal speech? I’ve been reading talking- and audiobooks for as long as I can remember, and I have literally never before had to speed things up. Crazy. Anyway, I enjoyed the book very much, and thus went on to also read “The Girl with the Dragon Heart”, which I finished today and which fortunately had another narrator. Also very good. Now I want to craft dragons in various ways. Might go ahead an read the third in the series at some point.
    Except these two, there’s been very little reading, and the reading that has happened was comfort-reading. Thank goodness for comfort-reading.

    1. I have the ongoing but unstarted plan to craft dragons and other creatures out of paper clay. I have been hording egg cartons and other paper pulp materials. Maybe when it gets warmer. Also composite turkeys mimicking mid century ones, because turkeys sell like hotcakes on etsy… So many plans, so little time.

  46. Started the reading week with

    1. [re-read] my own F/F/M novel ‘Undertow,’ the one about an actor (M) who becomes the boyfriend of a married F/F couple after his own marriage implodes. Dual POV with one of the women.

    1.5 ‘The Border’ by Kim Fielding, M/M postapocalyptic cozy short story about two guards on either side of a supply-train border crossing at the end of a very long series of wars. On of them is injured during attempted home improvement, the other takes care of him, love happens. It’s very sweet and reassuring, great bedtime story.

    2. ‘The Revenge Game’ by Jax Calder, M/M contemporary in which MC1 is the high school geek / bullying victim who is now mega rich computer wizard and MC2 is one of his former bullies, now working for a sports marketing agency. They are American but in London for reasons. Author is from New Zealand. There are a few cases of “Americans do not use that word / phrase” and an inevitable Big Black Moment which is pretty much the whole point of the book given the setup: MC1 running into MC2 in a pub and being completely unrecognized has a slight mental breakdown and engineers himself an IT job in MC2’s office where he engineers a series of malfunctions but eventually stops because … MC2 is not that bad? The book is better than this recap sounds. 🙂 I gave it a generously rounded-up 5 stars because of the thorough debriefing of adolescent trauma on both sides and the mutually supportive relationship development (even within its framework of deception). There is face blindness in play as well.

    3. [re-read] my own M/M novel ‘Unmasked,’ book 4 in the Andy & Victor life story.

    4. [re-read] my own F/M novel ‘Today, Tomorrow & Forever,’ about a b-boy breaking into TV and the engineering student he falls for.

    5. ‘Davo’ by N.R. Walker, M/M contemporary set in Western Australia desert, rounded up to 4 for interesting setting and nice characters in search of a plot. 🙂 Researcher meets mining engineer, they fall fast, but it’s a short-term contract … .

    6. ‘Romance is a Drag,’ an own-voices anthology of 8 short stories. Quite uneven. One story I disliked so much I fast-clicked through it after the first chapter. Stories by Kristian Parker and M.E. Neu are quite good, but my favorite was ‘Miz Fortune’s Lonely Hearts Salon’ by J. Scott Coatsworth; M/M contemporary plus magic, set in Sacramento, featuring midlife MCs. I don’t think it’s available as a single title yet.

    6.5 [re-read] my own F/M novella ‘Revved Up,’ about a background (extras) coordinator and the actor she falls for. This is a free title (through Prolific Works) linked on the Free Reads page of the blog. https://thelastories.com/free-reads

    Obviously this was a week for low-demand reading. I have some new stuff waiting on the kindle for when I finish reading two nonfiction books-in-progress.

    1. I have been rereading the In Death series while all my New Yorkers and gift books have been piling up. I need something predictable where the bad guys lose.

    2. The purple mouse avatar is cute! Also I downloaded The Border and read it. Lovely. Wished it were longer.

  47. I’m not sure what I’ll shared as having read since the last time I posted on GBT, so in backwards order…

    The Honey Pot Plot. A great finish a the series.

    “A Daughter‘s Guide to Mothers and Murder” by Diane Freeman as well as “George and Francis Roll the Dice,” which was a short story between books 7 and 8 in the Countess of Harleigh mystery series. The short story was fun and George and Francis finally got their honeymoon. In book 8, I really enjoyed how the two of them work together. In an earlier story Francis was mostly on her own and that was not nearly as much fun.

    Goblin Hero by Jim C. Hines. I read this mostly on the plane to my vacation in Arizona where I finished it. It is booked two in a series and probably useful to read the series in order. It is rather violent, but the matter of factness that the characters express makes it easy-ish to accept. I have the third book in the series checked out from the library and will start it after I finish Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.

    1. Ooh, I also changed my avatar to match the one on IG. Both are of my very special boy, Zeppy, who passed in 2014.

  48. I just bought and downloaded Seanan McGuire’s Velveteen vs. The Early Adventures.

    I can’t find the post or notification from Marion G. Harmon that alerted me to the book, but he is a major McGuire Fan. He got permission from her to write two chapters of Teamups and Crossovers using her “Velveteen Vs.” characters. That in turn caused me to read all the stories available ONLY on her LiveJournal blog. I am very happy to add this book to my library.

    1. Years ago, I read “Velveteen Vs the Junior Super Patriots” which is a collection of nine stories. I hadn’t realised there are more available – thanks for the tip!

      1. Velveteen vs. The Early Adventures collects the stories in Velveteen vs. The Junior Super-Patriots and the 16 stories in Velveteen vs. The Seasons. The Seasons is worthwhile but I didn’t think it was as good as The Junior Super-Patriots.

  49. I just read Famous Last Words, the latest book by British author Gillian McAllister, who was a new author to me. Funny how I could mostly enjoy the read throughout but when I finished it the central device that drove the whole the story became so unbelievable that I scolded myself for having suspended belief so long. Result is, I only feel irritated. And irritated readers can be so unforgiving, n’est ce-pas?

  51. And I made an oops in my previous comment, but can’t seem to delete it. If possible, and admin could, I would appreciate it.

    1. I deleted the previous comment, but it seemed fine. Let me know if that was a mistake, please.

  52. I finished re-reading the Liz Danger books,so good.I’m now starting some of my old favourites by G A Aiken,she’s one of the few authors like JC who writes excellent snark.

  53. I frequently think of myself as a curmudgeon. A cranky old man. And it worries me.

    I watch a movie and the bad guys do bad things and I think, “Someone should shoot them between the eyes!” I took way too much satisfaction in the episode of ELIMENTARY in which Sherlock kicks a dealer to death. Let’s not even talk about REACHER, the movies or the mini-series.

    And now I’m reading FRIENDS INDEED by David Weber and Jane Lindskold. It’s one of the “prequel series” in the Honorverse series. While the Honorverse is all about Honor Harrington, her life and times, this series is about her ancestress, Stephanie Harrington, who “discovered” the sentient race of aliens she named Treecats. An abusive landowner is an ignorant, entitled antagonist. He raised his eldest son in his own image, and said son is talking about hunting Treecats for their pelts, and I am picturing the Treecats hunting him for his pelt.

    I am not normally this violent in thoughts, and never in deeds.

    1. There’s a lot of violent imagery and rhetoric around at the moment. And a lot of fiction that presents violence as the only answer. I find them cathartic and I find that worrying. I think I need more hopeful fiction right now.

      I’ve been reading “Stories are Weapons” by AnnaLee Newitz, and she quotes some research on latent authoritarianism in the wake of WWII, which found that cynicism about humanity, a belief that the strong will always prey on the weak and that conflict can only be solved by violence, are precursors to supporting authoritarian regimes.

      Holding on to democratic norms and pacifism is hard.

    2. Gary, I’m also a bit vengeful as a reader / viewer though, IRL, mostly a capable ignorer of annoying & stupid people. DH likes to watch actiony crime-focused shows (including REACHER, omg so violent) and in many of them I think (and say) of the protagonists (i.e. the crime fighters we’re supposed to believe in) “these people are bad at their jobs.” FBI INTERNATIONAL is a prime example. None of the agents on that show should still be alive.

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

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