139 Responses

1. Best of my week was “Stork Raving Mad” by Donna Andrews (2010). Made me happy on a bad day, made me laugh and just liked that everyone is around 8 and half month pregnant Meg as she plays hostess to a bunch of homeless students and basically takes care of everyone and they take care of her. Plus, there’s murder of course.

   Re-read Katherine Addison’s “Witness for the Dead” (2021). This is almost slice of life, plus murders and ghouls, the story all held together beautifully and I really enjoyed spending time with Celehar, who is a wonderfully kind protagonist.

   Also good was “Machine” by Elizabeth Bear (2020). The FMC is a medical rescue specialist on an ambulance ship which gives us two classic sci-fi settings – the creepy empty ship and the wonderfully multi-species hospital with its effective professionals. I also really liked that the FMC has chronic pain, which is matter-of-factedly accommodated, and doesn’t stop her in the least from being a competent professional. #2 of Bear’s loosely connected Hugo finalist White Space series but would work well as a standalone.

   Plus finished up season two of Andor and promptly dove into fanfic, which was very satisfying.

   Also read a historical romance that was pretty good, included historically plausible abduction and enslavement by Barbary pirates. But then had the absolute clanger of the MMC, who was declared dead, coming back and claiming his title as earl, ousting his cousin. I suppose that if the Committee of Privileges or the Crown didn’t feel the navy’s assessment to be sufficient proof of death, then his cousin might be using the title informally – unlikely, given it had been four years, and should have been noted if so. Moreover, how could the earldom’s lawyers, who must understand primogeniture, both not know the MMC is dead and recognise his cousin’s authority as the earl given that he couldn’t inherit if the MMC isn’t dead? And if the MMC is dead then surely his assets, including the legacy from his mother would have been distributed elsewhere! Even more frustratingly there is no reason to make him the earl or to have a formal declaration of death, the story would work just fine without it. Argh!!!

   1. That’s so annoying. In Stella Riley’s The Shadow Earl when the MMC had been held captive in a Turkish province his uncle and cousin move in to his home and start spending his funds but don’t claim his title or try to get him declared dead, presumably because he has only been missing two years. It’s a good book and handles this issue well.

      1. Particularly annoying because the rest of the book was good and I couldn’t relax and enjoy it.

         I like Stella Riley – haven’t read that one though. I really liked her Roundheads series – must go back and read more of her work.

   2. Just finished the second Retired Assassins book. It was great. Looking forward to the third in the series.

2. My best read of the week was “An Academic Affair” by Jodi McAlister: an M/F enemies to lovers story between two academics competing for employment in academia. Thanks to all the Arghers who recommended this one: it was delightful. I loved that there were no “big misunderstandings” and the MCs actually communicated. There was no sagging “middle” and the ending was satisfying even though there was lots of set up for the sequel –something that usually annoys me. I’ll read that sequel when it comes out.

   Buckeye by Patrick Ryan. This is story of the lives of two couples in a small town Ohio told over the period of a few decades. The story starts just before WWII and goes to the early 1980s. This is a long book and though I read it all the way through, there were a number of times I debated DNF’ing it. The writing was good with lots of details which worked well to set the era in which events were taking place, but there was so much set up that it took forever to get my attention. There are tons of great reviews of this book out there so it may just be me: when I got to the end all I felt was sense of relief that I’d finished a chore. YMMV.

   To “reset” I then reread Georgette Heyer’s “The Unknown Ajax” for the zillionth time. It was wonderful as always.

3. Thanks for the rec, just downloaded the Guide – I’d love to go on a trip to NZ, at least on a fictional one!

   This week, I’ve done a lot of re-reads/re-listens:
   I loved Crushed Ice by Kane/James mainly due to the narration which brought out the flirty lovely tone of the younger MC which I didn’t get on my eye-read as much.
   I loved Vampire with Benefits by EJ Russell (I just really like her cozy paranormals) – probably also due to large parts because I like the narrator so much. I followed it up with the bonus story Second First Date (novella).
   Now I’m re-listening to Five Dead Herrings, also by Russell, also narrated by Greg Boudreaux.
   Russell’s books are light and charming and a good sense of community which is just what I want right now.

   Lisa Henry and Sarah Honey’s Goose Run series are also giving you the community and found family vibe. You’ll not get a complex story (so I understand why JaneB didn’t like the first installment which I’ve skipped so far), but I like the style and the good times I have with their books (similar effect with the Bad Boyfriends Inc. series), so I gave into temptation and got the ebook directly from the authors (also to avoid amazon and support the authors). Cash Hooper saves a Life is the fourth book in the series and the one I liked the most because of the two very kind MCs – one of whom is a vet suffering from depression (although he’s not aware of it for quite a bit) which I could relate to a lot. Also, I’ve read some time ago that the suicide rate among veterinarians is quite higher than one would suspect.

   On my tbr pile for the next weeks is reading up on Shakespeare’s comedies, particularly on the topic of performance and costuming, sparked by a recent newsletter and podcast on Shakespeare. A long long time ago I had thought about focusing on costume history but was too chicken shit (and broke) to go abroad for those studies. Kiddo doing Shakespeare at school (focusing definitely not on such a topic – why do they talk about interesting stuff?) reminded me of those ideas. So now my family might have to endure listening to me raving about whatever non-fiction I’ll read next… At least better than hockey (too depressing)…

   1. correction, should have read: why do they (at school) not talk about intersting stuff like theatre performance and costuming. Yes, that’s a rhetorical question. I know they have to teach/read and analyze a bunch of Shakespeare plays and there’s no time to do anything straying from the more important stuff.

      1. Dodo, I think one of the big frustrations of education is that there is never enough time to go down the interesting byways. They dangle them tantalisingly under your nose, and then bury you in so much work that you haven’t got time to do more than glimpse them as you hurtle past.

         1. Lian, that is spot on.
            The curricula of our education system are overstuffed: ever subject expects to be the most important for each student – one constantly has the feeling of not doing nearly enough. Also, compared to when i was my kid’s age, there wasn’t this flood of “information” (media, social media, connectedness with friends and peers) but more calm to really dive into a topic (and the few books you found on this topic in your library or bookshop). Now one actively has to “make calm” which is impossible most of the time. I’m remember to still having time to do other stuff than homework and assignments and we nevertheless got so much more essential reading done (the list of required reading we did is so much longer than what my kids have the chance to do and we read the whole text, not just excerpts). And had time for discussions in class!
            Well, my rant about the school system is over now. Soap box stored (for now).

4. I’m reading a a new book by Kristy Woodson Harvey, Summer State of Mind. Traditional summer romance book, centering around an abandoned baby. Three main characters, the two protagonists and an older woman with mental issues brought on by some kind of secret. I miss the humor from my usual romcoms, but it’s well written and keeping my attention.

   On the Kindle, more books in the Mrs. Pargater series by Simon Brett.

5. •Tom Holland, Dominion, 2019.

   Holland is primarily known as a historian of the ancient world.  He explains that as a child he had been fascinated by the ferocious power of carnivore dinosaurs and this later translated into a similar fascination with the callous power of ancient empires such as Persia and Rome.  After a while, however, the ancient world came to seem a very alien place, where might unquestionably meant right and little sympathy was extended to the weak. Holland content that after the appearance of Christianity all of that gradually began to change. The powerful began to show at least a modicum of regard for the weak, even women and slaves, and on the whole and despite obvious exceptions,  the amount of regard increased over the centuries. 

   Holland attempts to depict the change with chapters that jump from one illustratative event to the next, over varying temporal gaps that average out to a century or so. He argues that the new social values originated in Christianity or in its heritage from Judaism (which latter did not much proselytize).  “Religion” in its modern meaning of something distinct from the totality of practices of a given ethnic group, originated, per the author, with Christianity, as did the church/state distinction and the concept of a religiously neutral secular realm.  This last distinction enabled values originating in Christianity, but now regarded as secular, to have spread worldwide in a post-Christian age, as for instance in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

   To me, one strong negative is Holland’s neglect of societies east of Persia, and in particular of Buddhism.  I am not well grounded myself in the development of Buddhism, and I have seen it argued that some eventual developments there were inspired by contact with Christianity, but it seems to me clear that from its early days, if perhps less effectively than Christianity,  Buddhism both proselytized to multiple ethnicities and preached compassion for the weak. Buddhist rulers were already running hospitals before the time of Christ.  If Holland was going to claim worldwide sociological uniqueness for Christianity,  I think he had to compare and contrast Buddhism, and he fails this test.  (One obvious difference was Buddhism’s tolerance of syncretism.  Another was its failure, so far as I know, to develop congregations equivalent to local synagogues or churches, or of systems of mutual support among temples and other centers across wide regions, especially ones independent of the state.)  Another Holland negative is what strikes me as an annoyingly mannered prose style.  Still, Holland kept me reading to the end of a long book, and left me with food for thought. Cautiously recommended.

   1. Interesting Patrick – I’ve been meaning to read that book since I got hooked on their podcast.

6. •Jennifer Cruise, Getting Rid of Bradley, audiobook book read by Elenna Staufer, 2006 (print version 1994).  My umpteenth relisten: by now I have chunks nearly memorized.  This time through, I did wonder, with what justification did Staufer give Lucy’s sister Tina a classic New York or New Jersey accent?  It makes it easy to distinguish Tina from Lucy and makes her sound properly sophisticated, but after all, both sisters live in southern Ohio, and if Tina had lived elsewhere in any of her various marriages, it was when she was adult enough that she would not likely retain a speech pattern temporarily acquired.  Recommended, obviously.

   1. I just noticed that autocorrect performed its usual trick of changing Crusie to Cruise. I usually catch that. Sigh.

   2. I’ve never heard the audio. That was my second novel, so you did a historical dive, Patrick. Thank you.

      How far back does a book have to go before it becomes an historical?

      1. Well, for cars, they are considered antique at 25 years!

7. •Philip Daileader, The High Middle Ages, Great Courses audiobook, 2001.  Probably a perfectly good if slightly dated survey of the period, but by now I seem to have read or listened to enough medieval history that to me this course seemed a little superficial.  The audio editing seemed a little sloppy.  Sometimes context showed that Daileader misspoke in confusing ways that went uncorrected (saying, for instance  “from three days a year to three days a year” when context showed he meant ” from three days a week…”).  Daileader makes the same claim about the Middle Ages that (as I previously noted) Ada Palmer had about the Renaissance, that Catholic laypersons were forbidden to read the Bible.  Like Palmer he cites no source, and other scholars have specifically denied this.  I think it is probably a piece of bygone Protestant calumny somehow still in circulation. (Granted, in most European languages there were no Catholic translations of the Bible, so the laypeople in question would have to be the rare ones who could read Latin.)  The course finishes with an interesting lecture on the Anglophone historiography of the period.  Recommended for what it is.

8. Jenny, I think you’ll like the second Retired Assassin book even more. I reread the date scene several times because it was so good. And now I can’t wait for the third book.

   I’m still reading Take Me To Your Leader but at the moment it’s not one of those drop everything so I can get back to it books. Maybe I have a book hangover from Retired Assassin’s Guide.

   1. Love the date scene and the scene with the cat later in the book! I’ve read both books in the series twice, enjoying how the author laid all the hints once I knew the ending. Also because they are such fun books with delightful characters. Looking forward to the third book.

      1. There are some books which have a different pleasure on the second read because we know what is being hidden. The Unknown Ajax is such a book too.

9. I read How to Fake It In Society by KJ Charles and thoroughly enjoyed it. Maybe not one of her top five but not in the basement either. All the things we love about her – a kind MC who has an interesting job, mixing paint colours of all things ,that Charles turns into interesting historical background as well as a true plot point. There was more tension than I love from the Big Secret the other MC has but I can deal.

   I read Bereket from the Tuyo series and that was as good as Rihasi! First, there’ve been a lot of morally upright characters in this series – Tuyo, Suellen, Rihasi, Esau, even Tano and Aras really – so it was great to have a bit of a rogue as the MC. Even with his reluctant tendency to right wrongs in the world he’s still tiptoeing around stealing things as he goes. Loved him. It’s also a great two-arc story, meeting at the end, difficult to pull off and a crashingly great ending too. More of a mission than a journey this time.

   I also read Sekaran, which is really a redo of the entire epic series from the pov of the prince, plus some threads in the royal family that were interesting to explore, and the character development of the prince himself over the course of his life.

   I only have Morag left; still can’t bring myself to read Nikoles and then maybe the short bits in her world-of books. She’s just going to have to write faster.

   1. I really like this kind of series where the world is coloured in in different places, little by little, not in an orderly procession.
      Morag is really good in illuminating Ryo’s dad’s character.

   2. Marag is good. And there’s a lovely, long-ish novella, Returning Hokino’s Knife, in the Tuyo World Companion.

      Also, I don’t generally read space opera, but I like her Invictus duology a lot. I think she’s finishing up a new novel in that world now, before she goes back to the next Tuyo book.

      I think I read in a newsletter that she wrote Bereket (about 200k words) in two months last year. I don’t think I could type that fast!

      1. Marag not Morag, yes!

      2. That’s good to know because I was going to ask the group about her other series.

         1. The Black dogs series is very violent and her publisher wanted her to lower the age of her protagonists which makes it a bit odd for the first book or so. You just have to think, these people are in their twenties not their late teens and it makes more sense. I like the ending but you do have to wade through some creepy stuff to get there.

   3. If you join her Patreon, she has a new draft available for her supporters. It’s called Lisig and it’s about the woman with a baby from the same tribe as Tano who was the first to ask to join another tribe.

      1. Dang, that’s a really good reason to join her Patreon – I have been trying to limit those. Sigh.

         1. Join mine. I’m cheap. Lol.

            1. They’re all cheap! But they add up!

   4. Tammy, even knowing the eventual fate that awaited Nikoles, I really enjoyed the book. It takes place quite a long time before Tuyo, so there’s no sense of impending doom or anything similar. And it fills in some good backstory.

      1. Whimper.

         1. I am going to reread it in support. You can do it Tammy!

            1. Sigh. Can I read everything else first??

10. I’ve been catching up on reading a bit this week. Enjoyed Mother Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon pretty well. Loved Platform Decay by Martha Wells (of course). Also really enjoyed Contemplation of a Murder by Susan Juby. Got a lot of Photoshop projects done while listening to the first and last. Read Platform Decay with my eyes.

11. I’ve started Mr. Penumbra’s 24 hour bookstore. It’s weird and geeky and a little fun, but I’m just barely into it.

    1. I loved the weirdness of it too!

       1. Same!

12. I read and really enjoyed Katherine Arden’s new alt-historical fantasy The Unicorn Hunters. It’s set in the1490s and reimagines the story of the young duchess Anne of Brittany as she uses her considerable ingenuity to escape a forced marriage to King Charles of France and to preserve the independence of her duchy. The first few chapters read as mostly historical but the fantastical elements really ramp up as the action moves to the korriganed (fae) stronghold in the uncanny Forest of Broceliande. By the end of the book, temporal power is spectacularly outmatched by ghosts, sorcery, chivalry, Arthurian legend, and the eponymous unicorn.

    I liked the characters, the detailed Medieval/Renaissance and fantastical world, the haunting atmosphere, and the unpredictable twisty plot. Most of all, I loved that Anne’s fictional resolution was so much better than the sorry fate she suffered IRL.

13. It’s been an interesting & educational reading week including a number of things I’ve acquired for a local education support organization that’s trying to establish its own small library.

    1. [re-reads] – my own MM novellas ‘Our Revels Now’ and ‘Make Me’ plus FM novelette ‘This Time.’

    2. 3 small books for the library: ‘Shh! We’re Writing the Constitution’ by Jean Fritz; ‘George vs. George: The American Revolution as Seen from Two Sides’ by Rosalyn Schanzer; and ‘Some of Us: A Story of Citizenship and the United States’ by Rajani Larocca. The latter is more an introduction to the concept than a story but is a nice picture book to lead into the other two, more complex books.

    3. [re-read] ‘The Rescuers’ by Margery Sharp. What a clever, inventive, entertaining little book. I had forgotten that Miss Bianca’s two heroic partners were named Nils and Bernard … names that also belonged to two of my early lovers. 🙂

    4. ‘What is the Declaration of Independence?’ by Michael C. Harris, best read in combination with the others at no. 2; also [re-read] ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ by Dr. Seuss, which is so ridiculous.

    5. ‘For Which We Stand: How Our Government Works and Why it Matters’ by Jeff Foster (2020). The author teaches at Parkland where there was one of our many horrific mass shootings. A clear and concise middle and high school treatment that would benefit just about everybody, never boring, highly recommended despite a few awkward word choices & editorials fails.

    6. [re-read] ‘Lassie Come-Home’ by Eric Knight (1940). Depression-set adventure story, Yorkshire & Scotland, cracking good; some big emotional moments + realism minus anthropomorphism.

    7. finally we get to another romance! ‘The Haunting Between Us’ by Paul Michael Winters. A very good YA MM built around a ghost story (serious, creepy, occasionally grisly, with a resolution that solves a long series of disappearances in tragic / horrific ways, plus mortal peril) set in Port Townsend, WA. The romance manages to be front and center despite the complex & harrowing mystery.

    8. ‘Exclusion and the Chinese American Story’ by Sarah-Soonling Blackburn, from the Race to the Truth series. Excellent, well documented, infuriating.

    9. [re-read] ‘Big Red’ by Jim Kjelgaard (1945). I last read this *many* years ago and had forgotten nearly everything about it, particularly the violence (bear vs dogs, man, and mule, dog vs. wolverine) and many scenes involving hunting + trapping subsistence life. Realistic and non-gratuitous. Built around insta-love between a teenager and his rich neighbor’s fancy Irish Setter. Set in a fictional wilderness in the mountains of New York State.

    10. ‘The Wizard of Oz’ by L. Frank Baum. I had never read this before. Found a really nice illustrated hardcover at the antique mall last weekend. A fun little frolic of a book, free of heartaches and nightmares, as promised in the introduction; though it does feature a few scenes of fantasy mayhem leading to violent though bloodless deaths of enemies.

    11. Another romance! ‘Pretty Fly for a Vampire Guy’ by Leslie McAdam & CD Rachels. MM, university setting, and the conceit is that 20 years ago there was a Halloween event in which large numbers of US (and, one presumes, the world) humans were changed into mythological creatures. The university used to be just for cryptids and recently started admitting humans. MC1 is a human premed student, MC2 a vampire. They are good for each other, nicely done sex scenes, abundant sweetness in the MCs’ coparenting of an injured young vampire bat. So many puns, it reminded me of Piers Anthony’s fantasy series.

    12. ‘A Young Patriot: the American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy’ by Jim Murphy (1996), a very good nonfiction account built around the 1830 memoir of Joseph Plumb Martin, who served in Washington’s army for almost the entire war, starting at age 16 and died in 1850 in Maine, at 90.

    1. I tried to make my kids green eggs and hams, and I can tell you they don’t take food coloring well, and I think it’s impossible to make the yolks green and the whites white.
       There are several sequels to the Wizard of Ox, of which I only remember the woman who had many heads and liked and therefore chose to wear the one that made her grumpy or mean.

       1. Also, speaking of children’s literature, my son shared with me this delightful podcast about Howls Moving Castle and how it uses romance tropes.
          https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eight-days-of-diana-wynne-jones/id1776735544?i=1000720415742

       2. I’m pretty sure I would never voluntarily eat green eggs and ham unless they were actually made of cake.

          1. My kids tried them cautiously having seen it was food they knew plus food coloring . I think they were around 10 and 4.
             I should maybe try cake (or cookies for the eggs?) next time I have child testers.

    2. Oh I loved Miss Bianca so much – those books (and the lovely scribbly illustrations from Garth Williams) made a huge impression on me as a kid, and my kids remember them getting read aloud when they were small.

14. Chacha1’s remarks about Big Red reminded me of my rereadings of Huckleberry Finn a few years ago: I had forgotten how much child abuse it contained, along with drunkenness, tying firecrackers to dogs’ tails, etc etc. Similarly, learned anew how dark and abusive with exhaustion, dogfights, wounds, etc Call of the Wild is. I rebought Beautiful Joe and Black Beauty but have cringed away from rereading them because don’t think I can take the descriptions of animal abuse, although I loved those books as a young person. I think after living many years, through many deaths of beloved humans and pets, and in light of horrible current events, I just don’t have the strength or stomach to read harsh books…just want humor and happy endings at this point 🙂

    1. I find the same thing, Penelope. I really shy away from violence and unhappy endings in books these days. I don’t care if it’s unrealistic, I want optimism.

       1. Seconded.
          That’s why I stick to mostly romance. I just need a guaranteed good ending these days.

          1. So much this. Cozies, too. Mild and happy endings.

             1. Or nonfiction. History and letters are just emotionally easier for me now.

       2. me, too!

15. I read a bunch of Abbi Waxman’s books, and found myself thinking affectionately of LA. these books make it feel like a small village, and we follow a handful of these people through it in the same way some writes related the doings in English villages

16. It was not a good reading week for me. More calls with protective services and with others trying to help the daughter. As far as I can tell it’s moving along as one would hope but they can’t tell us anything and the calls with others (the father’s PA, the mother’s sisters, the father’s sister who just moved him in to memory care assisted living) take a lot of time and involve a lot of sharing notes and processing trauma. The brother that has escaped the family has not seen anyone except his father for 12 years since he was 14. He hasn’t seen or talked to his father since 2019. I don’t know if he has talked to his sister since then but all the evidence indicates the young woman we are trying to help hasn’t talked to any family or friends except her mom and possibly her brothers for at least the last five years.

    Plus we went to a memorial service Sunday for a lovely man we have known for 30 years which was well done but not exactly cheering.

    And the Commerce Dept put out a new rule that would make it impossible to produce a lot of the data they do now —we are trying to figure out what that means for using data to allocate federal funds. And redistricting. And emergency services (because it means we might not get data below the state level for most states). And many other things that affect your daily life.

    So I reread Frederica, a nice close family. And the New Yorker. And listened to the podcast on Howl’s moving castle, which is with three women who are delighted by it and giggle their way through it and have some insightful things to say. And a Jane Austen letter a night. And I’m probably going to read Venetia and Bill Bryson and Howls Moving Castle to take me away from all this just so I can sleep at night.

17. Might one ask where people are finding “The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Gardening” in print form? I can only find it in audio book, and while I do not object to audiobook, I prefer print form for at least the first read through. The library does not have it in any form.

    Also talking of audio books, does anyone purchase their books through libro.fm? And do you like it? Do you find you use all your credits in a timely manner? How often do you buy audio books generally?

    1. Bookshop.org (which supports local bookstores) has it: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-retired-assassin-s-guide-to-country-gardening-naomi-kuttner/1664d8a0ddb26498?ean=9798231037476&next=t

       I think both Amazon and bn.com have it too, but if I put the link here, Jenny will have to fish this post out of moderation.

    2. I use and love Libro.fm! I buy a few audiobooks a year, and sometimes a couple more from their sales. (I also use my library’s downloadable audiobooks via the Libby app.)

    3. I’ve grown to love audiobooks bit it took me some time. I find, eye and ear reading gives different pleasure, I notice new tgings in audio that I’ve often missed in print.
       Otoh, a narrator can totally ruin a book – eg the narration of the latest Cat Sebastian just turned me off completely. The guy narrating Star Shipped csn be good, but here – just NO.

       Where I get it from: sadly, we’re still stuck with audible as I haven’t managed yet to save 15 years worth of audiobooks which would be lost if we cancelled the subscription. At least I finally got that I can listen to some audios for free with my subscription, so at least I indulged massively not long ago. I wouldn’t recommend audible though.
       Some indie authors also sell their audiobooks directly – eg Lisa Henry and Jax Calder. E/audiobooks alike get transferrwd via book funnel and you can download at least the ebooks to your computer. Works really fine.
       Others should know mire about libro which sounds a really good alternative.

       1. You should be able to access all the audio books you have in your library even if you cancel your audible subscription. I canceled and could still listen to any I had bought/spent credits on. A few years ago I switched from .com to .co.uk and I still have access to my audible US library.
          The only thing you lose if you cancel is any unspent credits.
          I think if a publisher pulls a book from audible you may lose that too but that happens even if you have a subscription.

          1. FrozenPond, that is good news!
             I should better read up what cancelling entails on the audible site and finally cut them loose after I’ve used up my credits…

18. Load of re-reads and DF’s but only one new to me book that I liked and finished – An Unhallowed Grave by Kate Ellis. Never heard of this author before so the recommendation for her must have come from Argh? Couldn’t get the first two in the series out of the library (they didn’t have them) so started with No 3 and, unusually, that was perfectly fine. Narrator is a police man in small town England who has an archaeology degree, and there is a murder and a dig going on. Good story line, clearly returning characters who I liked, small town murder mystery – just what I needed. Thank you whoever recommended this author I will definitely be reading more by her.

    1. It might be me you got the author’s name from. I recently read her latest book and commented on it here. I like Ellis’s mysteries too. I’m glad you enjoyed her too.

19. Once again, I’m still working through CS Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyr series (more than twenty books, and audio, slower than paper/digital books). The only thing different this week is that the original narrator retired, so after fourteen or so books, there’s a new narrator. And I think each of the remaining books has a different narrator, although Hoopla’s listing of the narrators is a bit sus, since the one I’m reading now is supposedly narrated by the main character, Sebastian St. Cyr.

    It’s always a bit of an adjustment, going from one narrator to another, but what’s going to be really interesting is that, despite having a male protagonist, the books so far have been narrated by women, and at least one of the next few books has a male narrator. That seems like it might require an even bigger adjustment in my brain than when it’s simply changing one female voice to another.

20. In Windows Media Player I’m stll listening to Bujold’s “Vorkosigan series.”

    MIRROR DANCE
    MEMORY (open now Chapter 10)
    KOMARR (queued up)
    A CIVIL CAMPAIGN (queued up)
    WINTERFAIR GIFTS (queued up)

    In the Kindle Ap, Michael Dalton’s DEEP DIVE: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Coastal Curves Book 2). is still open. Up to Chapter 9 of 21.

21. I read Welcome to Temptation again. The jerks are so wonderfully jerky and stupid, the main characters are so well-drawn, and the ending is so satisfying!

    A friend from college is reading Let Them, and getting some good insights from it. I was going to buy it, but when I looked on Amazon, it said I had bought it, just before I moved. Now I have an incentive to unpack and shelve the books.

22. I finished The Finder by Suzanne Palmer and enjoyed the sci-fi adventure. Fergus is the kind of reluctant hero who somehow manages to gather a diverse group of allies and, despite all odds, come out on top with keeper-friends.

    As to the Retired Assassin books, Dante has a lot in common with Murderbot, personality-wise, and that’s a big draw for me. Also the surprising paranormal angle works really well.

    1. I’m glad you enjoyed the Finder series too! I’m really looking forward to Palmer’s brand-new book (nothing to do with Fergus though, as far as I know.)

       1. Glad to hear she has another book coming.

          1. Ha Nguyen read and enjoyed it, yay! (below)

    2. Oh, that’s true. Both learning to be human.

       I think it helps that the paranormal isn’t what the book is about. I mean, I wouldn’t call it a paranormal mystery even though there are ghosts. Charlie just happens to have this problem . . .

23. A new author for me is Sarah M. Boyer with Low Country Boil. And it’s a series so summer is off to a good start. The reviews I’ve read could be a love it or hate it. So far, I’m liking it. It’s about a PI who inherits her grandmother’s property on an island in South Carolina. Liz is investigating her death without the help of her brother the Chief of police. They get along pretty well but he does not want any interference with his office. There are also a dog (Rhett) and a ghost, Liz’s late girlfriend from her teenage years who pops in every now and again. And characters galore. I’ll see how it goes.

    1. The first four or five Susan M. Boyer Low Country books are really good. The last two I didn’t find quite as compelling, but your mileage may vary.

       1. This is what happens when I don’t double check the name, I become overconfident. Thank you, Gary.

    2. I really enjoyed those books, Mary.

24. After decades of whipping off my glasses to read anything, I now have progressive lenses and I’m trying to leave the glasses on to read….and it’s frustrating, to say the least. I’m only in my first week, and it’s going ok, but I’ve given myself permission to not use them with the kindle.

    I’ve ust started this one, but it’s already making me laugh, even the chapter titles: The Irresistable Urge to Fall For Your Enemy. Obvs M/F enemy to lovers item, and yet another audio book this year. I am really enjoying the characters, but I’m finding it pretty strange to hear words and not know how they’re spelled. Instead of my usual of reading words and not being sure how they’re pronounced (esp with the scifi genre). I’m only a couple of chapters in, but it’s good company on my walks. Even if I look like a loon laughing out loud out there.

    Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes – which sadly I have to get in paper version even with 3 books in the series out, the online catalog at both libraries I use have zippo from this author, and it’s a shame. It’s a great Firefly-ish group of misfits messing up in space and getting in various amounts of trouble (varying from huge to catastrophic). Great characters, plot moves along at quite a clip, and recommended.

    What Stalks the Deep by T Kingfisher – #3 in her Sworn Soldier series, which is not my favorite, but I saw it at the library and had to bring it home. It’s so funny, and I knew it would be vaguely horror-esque, but it’s still so funny. I’m glad it was short, as Kingfisher books are as close as I get to reading horror (my Stephen King era ended in my 20s). I can read this because the characters are fabulous, and funny, and sure, there’s a monster or two, but that’s ok.

    I got a ping by the Retired Assassin’s Guide author last night regarding a kickstarter offer of a special print edition of the 1st book. I am not really buying paper books any more – or at least, I’m trying not to. But just in case people are wanting something special, you can find it on the kickstarter site as the first (of 4!) hits when you search “Retired Assassin”.

    1. In my case, the thing about progressive lenses is that I have to hold my head at specific angle to read, which never seems to be the most comfortable angle for reading a whole book.

       1. I hear that

       2. I find them great and despite dire warnings and much concern had no problem adjusting to them

          1. I find them great for everything except going to the ballet in the upper balconies. Those orchestra tix get expensive .

       3. Your prescription may not be quite right. I find when I have to tilt me head to read, it’s because I’m compensating for a prescription issue.

       4. Talk to your optometrist when they are measuring where to put the reading lenses. Mine always asks if the position the frames are on my nose are where I usually wear them. This became crucial with my present pair because they will not stay put as I wear them. So the reading lenses are in the right place when I start, but not after I’ve been reading for a while.

          1. Have you tried those bands that hold glasses in place ? We got them after losing three family members glasses in a canoeing incident but they work for many things. I know canoeing does not usually dump people in the water but the river was high…

    2. I had those, once, and I could not tell where things ended, so it was dangerous to try to use stairs and walk on uneven ground.

       1. It took my brain a while to figure out how to view stairs and such, but it did eventually work.

    3. Progressive lens are the reason I had LASIK surgery 25 years ago. It was great to get away from them. Suddenly my perennial stiff neck went away and the horrific headaches (which I later realized were caused by the stiff neck) stopped.

    4. I think you must mean varifocals (in English): within a week of getting my first pair I was back at the optician’s for reading glasses, so I could relax my eyes while reading – and read while lying down in bed.

       1. Jane, “In English” meaning “in Britspeak”? (We colonials do think we speak English, just more like Shakespeare’s. ) It occurs to me that I was wearing progressive lenses even before my cataract operation. Before the new artificial lenses improved my vision, I always needed glasses to read, and in those days reading books with progressive lenses didn’t seem much of a problem. Of course, in those days, when I was still working, I did a lot more of my reading when sitting properly upright at a desk or a table, and less leaning back in an armchair.

          They did warn me beforehand that not everyone could adjust to progressive lenses and that if I couldn’t, their cost would be nonrefundable.

    5. It took me months to adjust to my progressive lenses, but now you’d have to pry them out of my cold, dead hands. Stick with it.

       1. Yeah, one year I went from progressive lenses to standard bifocals and I almost went crazy.My eyes kept trying to find the in between views that progressives had provided and never found them. But I think Deb may be right about the prescription being off. After my first eye doctor died I looked for another opthomologist because I needed to find someone who could also deal with my eye allergies. I went to a local teaching hospital and got the worst exam ever. The glasses were absolutely useless for either reading or distance. It was a very expensive learning experience.

    6. Gotta say I like my progressives and have had no problems adjusting to them. Except for the time the prescription was messed up. I do often read without them. And, it’s important to pause and adjust your view before stepping off a curb. Just glancing down distorts that view.

25. I know I’ve been AWOL for a long time but I missed the Argh community, so I decided to at least visit from time to time (life is so busy …)

    A book I can recommend is “Bring the House Down” by Charlotte Runcie, the story of a young comedian performer at the Edinburgh Festival who plots revenge against the critic who took her to bed one night and then wrote a scathing review about her show. A very special setting and a good story.

    I also listened to Florence Knapp’s debut novel “The Names” where she deals with the question how different a boy’s life might turn out depending on the first name his mother gave him. It’s an interesting idea although I found it a little contrived, but a good read nonetheless.

    1. There have been studies of this, and, reportedly, odd first names make surprisingly little difference, at least as far as career success goes.

       Turning to surnames, there’s an Asimov story “Spell My Name with an S,” using a Polish name, but based on the fact that the surname Asimov, which has a Cyrillic Z in Russian (Азимов), got transliterated on his family’s Soviet passports in the German way (initial S before a vowel has a Z sound, while the letter Z is pronounced Ts) when they emigrated, meaning Americans tended to misspell it or mispronounce it.

       1. Huh. I have seen studies where they send the same resume with names that sound standard
          And then names that sound like people of color , or old fashioned, or women rather than men, and the same resume gets far fewer interviews.

          1. That definitely happens. There may be countervailing influences too though …

             Makes me think of that Johnny Cash song “A Boy Called Sue”

             1. Which was written by Shel Silverstein.

          2. The study that I mentioned had to do with the “what were the parents thinking?” kind of name, like Armand Hammer, or perhaps ones sounding oddly old fashioned, like Theophrastus, and not names that reflect ethnicity or gender regarded by some as undesirable.

    2. Welcome back!

26. I re-read Ann Leckie’s “Provenance” and “Translation State” in preparation for her latest in the Imperial Radch series “Radiant Star”, but I got sidetracked and read Suzanne Palmer’s latest “Ode to the Half-Broken”.

    “Ode to the Half Broken” is a story of a war robot or war mecha after the Conflict where global climate change and the rise of fascism and stupidity combined got humans warring against humans, mechas and basically destroying themselves. 9 billion humans down to 1 billion humans. 20 years after the Conflict, humans and mechas are scattered all over, trying to rebuild. The war mecha – the protaganist – who refuses to be named, has isolated itself, and is focused only on academic pursuits, when it is abducted and its leg removed by the unknown assailants. This kicks off the story which I really enjoyed. It kept me guessing until the last chapter as to who the ultimate villian was.

    I then re-read “Long Live Evil” by Sarah Rees Brennan to prepare for “All Hail Chaos” which is the latest book in her new series. I love Sarah Rees Brennan. Her characters are funny, full of pathos and fear and courage and determination.

    1. I’m really excited for the new Palmer book! Glad to hear you enjoyed it.

    2. I loved “Ode to the Half Broken”! Loved the mecha and the dog as well.

       Really looking forward to the new Leckie too.

       1. Thanks for chiming in! Double-yay!

27. Seana Kelly’s urban fantasy novelette Night Owl Books was better than I expected, but not as good as I wanted. A lonely owl-shifter bookstore owner is absorbed into a crime-fighting group of other local shape-shifters. She deals with the bad guy. She is attracted to one of the good guys – a bear-shifter. That’s all. Unlike the author, who needed 98 pages to travel from beginning to end, it took me three sentences to tell the same tale. All the same, it was a decent little story, and I (sort-of) liked it.
    I recently DNFed a book – a historical fantasy romance. I won’t divulge the author’s name, but I’ll tell you that it was extremely slow. In fact, for the first 5 chapters, nothing much happened in the story except a few trivial dialogs and some summarization. Only after chapter 6 events started moving … with the speed of a glacier. It was so slowly, it drove me nuts. I had no choice but to DNF after chapter 8. Although I know that some readers enjoy this author I can’t fathom why.
    Then I thought about the books we all love, or at least the majority of readers do. One of their common traits: none of them procrastinate to start the action until chapter 6. Most start in chapter 1, or even in the first paragraph. Let’s see.
    Jennifer Crusie’s random book – Tell Me Lies. The action starts in the first 2 sentences.
    Amanda Quick’s random book – Wicked Widow. The action starts in the first paragraph.
    Martha Wells’s first Murderbot diary All Systems Red. The action starts on the first page.
    The list could go on. So why would the author of the book I mentioned above think it was OK to wait for 6 chapters before she started her story? What was her motivation?

    1. Some people like the slow burn. Thank goodness there’s enough variety to suit everyone.

    2. I think sometimes it’s because writers want to get The Stuff The Reader Needs To Know on the page even though the reader would rather just see the characters in action. It always feels to me like there’s going to be a quiz at the end of the chapter. So I skim and then I get confused because the author assumes I remember everything I read, although I was really just looking for where the action started.

       1. I read someone – I think it was Susan Elizabeth Phillips – who was giving advice to beginning authors, and one of her comments was, Cut the first three chapters. And it’s so true. Early drafts of my first novel didn’t really get started until about chapter 5. There was all this stuff that I was SURE people needed to know.

          1. With JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book you see exactly this mistake – imo it’s incredibly slow and I couldn’t make myself read this slow start at re-reads. Nowadays I just can’t make myself read her books anymore, period. Can’t separate my opionion about the author from her books.

          2. That’s pretty standard advice. It’s what Heinlein told Niven and Pournelle in a fairly famous critique of the draft of an early novel, Mote in God’s Eye. I think the published version starts about 100 pages into the draft, with subsequent backfill as necessary.

             1. I also once had the opportunity to comment on the early part of the draft of a Robert Forward novel. The whole section that I had been given for comment ended up cut from the final novel, although I did still get a credit in the acknowledgements!

    3. I think I’ve mostly been good about starting with action, but there was one book where I’d written a first chapter including 1000 words of mopey backstory … after finishing the ms and seeing how that introduction completely misrepresented the tone of the book, out it went.

       Maybe the author in question was trying to meet a word count, maybe she had an overly indulgent editor, or maybe nobody told her all that stuff was tedious. 🙂

    4. Some of this is probably cultural conditioning, too. I think that in the 19th century readers did not mind a more leisurely opening. I’m relistening at the moment to Austen’s Persuasion, and that takes quite a while to get going.

       I once had a Russian course including a lot of movie-watching, and one drama film (it ended with a fiery car crash, if I recall aright) started with about five minutes of the camera just showing us the beauty of the Russian rural countryside in summer. We students were getting antsy, but our emigre instructor assured us that a lot of Russian movies started that slowly.

       1. On the other hand, both of Homer’s epics (6th century BC) start in medias res, and Horace coined the phrase for the technique around 13 BC.  On the third hand, if memory serves, Robinson Crusoe has a long opening section where Robinson details his family history, including the derivation of the surname Crusoe, and there’s a similarly slow start to Gulliver’s Travels.  “A Study in Scarlet” takes a while to arrive at the main action, but Watson does get from graduation from med school to being hit by the Jezail bullet by the second paragraph.  (In the shoulder, but the illustration shows Murray carrying him and the text says he loaded Watson onto a pack horse, perhaps suggesting a secondary wound and his later limp.)

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res?wprov=sfla1

       2. This made me reread the first chapter of Persuasion and I was surprised to realize that it does start slow. I so love the clever depiction of Anne’s father and sister that it never struck me as slow.
          Pride and prejudice starts in media res. Now I need to look at her other four…

28. The only book that I’ve read in the last two weeks that I can recommend is RoverPowered 5 by Drew Hayes. I’ve mentioned this series of YA novellas about Wanda, the aspiring alchemist, and her dog/familiar Wumble, before, and they continue to be a lot of fun.

29. It’s been all rereads for me this week. First, Grace Draven’s Entreat Me, which is a riff on Beauty and the Beast, with a widow who has come to the castle to protect her younger sister. Draven writes good older protagonist and excellent love stories. This one has gone into my Favourite Favourites folder.

    Joanna Bourne’s The Forbidden Rose. French Revolution, English spies. It reminded me how much I love her books. Another one that has gone straight into the Favourite Favourites folder.

    Secrets Typed In Blood by Stephen Spotswood, the third book in the Pentecost and Parker crime series. I love these books so much.

    The only new book this week was Secret Bones by Val McDermid, one of her historical crime series. Competent, interesting, but not something I’ll reread.

    1. I loved “Entreat Me” too! It was so good and I loved the FMC.

       And Joanna Bourne is so good too. Must investigate Spotswoord!

       1. Yuri, unfortunately Joanna Bourne seems to have stopped writing. I can’t find anything beyond the French Revolution series, and there’s nothing on her blog beyond 2022. A great pity, if it’s true.

          1. The wonders of AI answers…
             According to ecosia.org’s AI, Joanna Bourne has announced her retirement from writing romance novels and cites this link https://allaboutromance.com/the-askaar-whats-your-favorite-joanna-bourne-book/
             However, the AI also mentioned that Bourne’s latest published work is the novel “Flint,” which explores the mystical story of a stone through human history – but this Joanna Bourne is a totally different author (https://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/flint-book-launch/ ).
             Wikipedia tells that Bourne’s first book was published in 1983, so the retirement note might be true.

          2. I am pretty sure that she moved because she was losing her eyesight and announced she was no longer writing. I used to check her twitter feed and she would post occasionally but I no longer go on twitter.
             If anyone does and sees an update I would love to know.

             1. That’s sad. I knew she’d stopped writing, and if she’s said all she wants to say and is finding meaning elsewhere then good on her – the books she has written are magnificent.

                However if she stopped writing due to physical impairment then I really hope her health improves and/or she finds assistive technology, because I would read anything she wrote.

             2. Oh yes, that’s a horrible reason to have to stop writing. I agree, Yuri, I too would read anything she wrote.

             3. Yuri, Milton famously kept writing after going blind and Northern Irish sf author James White kept writing after being blinded or at least heavily vision impaired by diabetes. He explained (in a letter to an sf fanzine) that the vision problem was the source of a continuity error that I noticed in a late Sector General novel. Because of his poor eyesight he hadn’t gone back to check and had misremembered. (I imagine that his wife or someone else had read him the fanzine, or portions of it.) Nowadays there is much better assistive technology than even in White’s time, but it must be hard to adapt if one is already a senior. I can’t offhand find her birth date, but Bourne’s first novel was published in 1983 and she announced her retirement in 2021.

             4. I didn’t know that about Milton, Patrick. Very interesting. Presumably he had someone to write his words down or some other form of help.

                I also didn’t realise Bourne had been publishing since the 1980s – the earliest book of hers I have seen is “The Spymaster’s Lady” in 2008. I found the title being “Her Ladyship’s Companion” but out of print and not even listed on her website – a quarter century between first and second books.

             5. Milton became totally blind around the age of 44 and had various amanuensis including the poet Andrew Marvel.

                I assume Joanna Bourne could use dictation equipment and computer reading equipment if she wanted but as far as I know she hasn’t.

                She had a lengthy and adventurous career before she wrote her books (except of course the first one which probably came somewhere in the middle of her career.) “Joanna Bourne graduated from Goucher College and Georgetown University. After working as a research analyst for the Congressional Research Service in Washington, D.C., she taught English in Africa. Then she joined the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer. She has lived in England, France, Germany, Nigeria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.”
                I think her wonderful books were more or less her retirement hobby or a fourth career.

          3. Also I am enough of a Bourne groupie that I bought her first book second hand on Alibris and it had only a few touches of her later greatness. But for those who are curious Barnes and Noble has the e book for $4 and it does have Adrian.

    2. 100% with you on the Pentecost and Parker series by Stephen Spotswood.

30. Skipping everyone else’s posts, for now, to post about the “Daughter of Montague” series by Christina Dodd that I’ve been reading. The premise, which unfortunately is repeated in every story, is that Romeo and Juliet survive and have a lot of kids. Rosaline, aka Rosie, is their eldest, having been conceived the day they had secretly married. She’s twenty and a spinster by choice. The books are billed as “historical cozy mystery series with a touch of romance,” which is fair. They take place in Italy in the 1700’s, but the language is very modern. Rosie is the protagonist and narrator. She’s usually smart and is sometimes sarcastic. I liked the snark.

    Book 1: “A Daughter of Fair Verona” – I read this at the right time for me and absolutely loved it! Rosie needs to get out of being engaged to a man whose previous three wives were all poisoned. She had successfully disengaged herself before and was confident that she’d do it again. However, this time she had help. Someone murdered him on the night their engagement was announced. Also on that night, she meets her One True Love, Lysander, and makes a wager with the Prince that she can get her nemesis to call her a virgin 6 times. That was fun. Rosie is accused of the murder and has to solve who the real killer is to save her own reputation.

    Book 1.5 “What Dreams May Come” – this is a novella. I hated it. Rosie behaved very stupidly, and the Prince was borderline abusive. A detail in the story was left out, which would have had Rosie walking around with her crotch showing. This story happens on the same night that book 1 ended. It does get referenced obliquely in book 3, but not enough to matter. I would totally recommend skipping this one.

    Book 2 “Thus With a Kiss I Die” – I suspect this one was based on Hamlet. The Prince’s father shows up as a ghost who wants Rosie to solve his murder. Meanwhile, the Prince is also dealing with a weird cult in the fair city of Verona. Lysander is a creative inventor who builds a solution to a problem the Prince describes that ends up helping Rosie during a battle with a splinter of the cult followers. It was a good mystery and the romance moves in a direction that I wasn’t happy with, but makes sense, sort of. I’d be more on board if it wasn’t for book 1.5.

    Book 2.5 “Much Ado about Mistletoe” – this is another novella. I think the primary purpose was to introduce us to a new character and to show folks being noble. It was fine. It doesn’t really have a plot but shares some things that happened between book 2 and 3. Worth reading if you like the series.

    Book 3 “Teach the Torches to Burn” – Another mystery. Rosie is getting married, and it’s Christmas time. The Capulets and Montagues are coming together, which typically means bloodshed and death. This time is no exception as a person is poisoned. Rosie is kept busy trying to avoid being poisoned, finding the killer, planning her wedding, and trying to get some alone time with her future husband. It was still fun, but some of the information that gets shared in every book is starting to get really tiresome to read. I understand that it’s necessary to enable each book to stand alone, but still.

    I do think I’d get more from the stories if I knew Shakespeare’s works better. Christina Dodd has noted in the acknowledgements in at least one of the books that she consulted with Mary Bly aka Eloisa James, since she was a Shakespearean professor.

31. Gary J: “I watched a really good movie on Netflix last night.”

    Dotter: “How did it end?”

    Gary J: “Pretty much like most movies. A long list of people and companies that worked on the movie scrolled down the screen.”

    1. Thanks for the laugh Gary – such a dad joke!

       1. Appropriately, I am just such a dad. 😀

    2. I sometimes watch the credits when there are songs that have played during the movie and having to wait through all the names of such and such. I want to see who sang what. That’s when I realize that all these people are being paid even down to the dog groomer.

       1. In the old days of the studio system, all those people wouldn’t have been credited. Almost every person working on a film is now an independent contractor, except for the few actual production company employees. A credit is proof that you’ve worked on a film and thus is marketing for your next gig. 🙂

       2. Ever since FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF and the little clip of Ferris telling us the movie is over and to go home, I have tended to sit through the credits to see whether there is an Easter Egg. Some Marvel movies provide them, for example.

          1. I Love how Deadpool recreated that scene at the end of its credits!

32. Midway through The Other Bennet Sister, but I might not end up finishing it.

33. I just finished a listen of The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley, which is a time travel/portal/AU/confusing book in which the French won the battle of Trafalgar by learning how they were going to lose it and by adopting the technology from 1900-ish. Most people, especially the main character Joe (who is enslaved in Londres in the French colony of Angleterre), who pass through the portal forget their previous life. They’re trying to figure out how to keep the French from winning the entire war and Joe just wants to get home to his daughter. If she still exists.

    And I’ve just started listening to The River has Roots, in my continuing attempt to branch out into more than romance (though I mostly end up with romance in them). It’s about two sisters who grow up at the border of Arcadia (which sounds like Faerie) and who are in charge of singing to the Willow trees that guard the river and border. My very small experience with Amal El-Mohtar (co-author of This is how you lost the time war), means I was mentally prepared for it to be complicated, but I’m halfway now and am going to have to relisten. Luckily, it’s lovely so far, so that won’t be a chore. I hope!

    And I enjoyed the new Lord Julian book (by Grace Burrowes) more then the last 2 or so.

    Liked Alexis Hall’s Father Material a lot, though it felt like a lot of the same ground they’d previously covered, only now their friends are having kids.

    And read Murmuration by TJ Klune. Which is about people in an idyllic 1950s small town where everyone is happy all the time. Then one guy starts to hear voices/ see ghosts and starts to think it’s an illusion.

    1. Phyllis, I absolutely loved The Kingdoms, and how the ending suddenly illuminated the beginning. I had to go back and reread it immediately with that new knowledge. Such a poignant book.

    2. I liked that Father Material showed Luc being really good at something with Oliver being the partner who was struggling more.

       I also find that his mother’s very small storyline has been sticking with me, the part about her never quitting the music when the other characters have, and not regretting her choices because her life was happy. And being ready for a new chapter later in life, no muss, no fuss. #goals. It’s really only a small part of the story, but it loomed large in my mind.

       1. Yes! Oliver started acting like his dad and… Yikes!

34. I read as time goes by Lynn Kurland. Once upon a time, her hopes contained family trees. This one in the last one do not. I had to go to ChatGPT to refresh where the hero was on the family tree of the di Pagets and his other connections. I enjoyed the book, but I enjoyed a lot more once I placed where I had known the hero before. Then I read this somewhat wicked witch of Brigandale by CM Waggoner I loved it so much that I’m going to look up our other books and read them. Snarky and wonderful and thank you to whoever recommended it here. I plan to start the monsters we defy. By Leslye Penelope. I have no idea what it’s going to be like I thought maybe someone in your recommended to me. I know someone here recommended the retired assassin guides and I love them both whatever’s next. I plan to read it. Happy reading.

35. I started the monsters we defy tonight. And I couldn’t stop. It looks absolutely wonderful. I already strongly recommend it.