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This is a Good Book Thursday: Getting Carter

I’m reading “Getting Carter,” the second story, first novella, in the ATF series. The change in my brain since the first time I wrote my stuff to now is remarkable. I can write again. (Bob’s stuff was always good.). Very happy making.

So what did you read this week?

93 Responses

  1. So happy you can write again 🙂

    Best thing I read this week was urban fantasy “Burn Bright” by Patricia Briggs (2018). Although it has a sad start as they’re trying to solve a murder, Anna & Charles are so good together, and that ending made me chuckle and made me happy. Plus really nice to see more of the wildings and Leah.

    The first half of “Can I Steal You for a Second?” by Jodi McAlister (2023), #2 in her reality dating show series, was really enjoyable. I really liked FMC1 who is a petite blonde bi auto mechanic, however I would have liked FMC2’s perspective as well – I find close 3rd POV romances often suffer from being one-sided. Nonetheless I liked where it ended and I’m impressed by McAlister’s ability to weave these three simultaneous romances together over three books while giving them each proper weight.

    “Taking the Leap” by Kristen Ashley (2022) was a solidly enjoyable m/f contemporary. It starts with a pretty big misunderstanding over how the FMC sees the MMC’s double amputee status but I like how fast they get over it and how well they work together. Plus some nice moments with the extended River Rain family.

    I was a bit puzzled by “A Room with a View” by E. M. Forster (1908). I wasn’t really sure if it was a social satire, and while I liked the gentleness with which Forster describes human foibles, it wasn’t quite satisfying. I can’t help feel I’m missing something.

    Best of the short fiction was “The Very Important Case of Rami & the Rainbow Bird” by Marlene Jo Baquiran (2026) which entered nicely into the children’s fantasy world. Free at https://grist.org/climate-fiction/imagine2200-very-important-case-of-rami-and-the-rainbow-bird/

    1. I really enjoyed Burn Bright, but fair warning, if you haven’t read the next one yet, Wild Sign, it’s very dark. Closer to the early Mercy books. Hopefully the next Alpha and Omega book will be out soon!

      2. I didn’t like Wild Sign at all. I hated it when the baddy took away Anna’s will and memories. I hope the next book in the series will be lighter.

    2. I liked the book Room with a View – but I loved the movie. You might try that. Helena Bonham Carter in her great pulchritude in her youth as was Julian Sand. And an early role for Daniel Day Lewis. Plus Rupert Graves and Maggie Smith. It’s a marvellous movie. The movie clarifies or focuses on that gentle prodding you describe, without any real social satire.

      1. I think maybe the voice, the context, in which one reads ARWAV would really matter. Glad to have your positive review of the film – I looked for it as soon as I finished, but it’s disappeared from my streaming service. Might see if the library has it.

        I do like early Helena Bonham-Carter – the first thing I saw her in was this gothic romance thing called “A Hazard of Hearts”. It wasn’t a good movie, but she was good in it, just captured your attention.

        1. I saw the movie long before I was the book and liked the movie better. It does feel like Forster is leaving stuff out, almost. Or including too much? (It’s been a while and I’m not tempted to reread the book, but would like to see the movie again)

        1. Agreed!
          Haven’t read the book, but loved the movie.
          Back in the day when I watched absolutely everything with DDL in it.

  2. The only non-reread I read this week was Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez. New author to me and I think I must have got the recommendation here. Really good story about a couple who meet, have a perfect first date, and she moves thousands of miles away the next morning. A love story, about different kinds of love – friendship, family, love of a job, a place. Some great pets, including a dog in witness protection. Emotion, life affirming and fun. Thanks to whoever gave the recommendation (I really should record who gave them but am not that mentally together!)

    The rest were re-reads or DF’s from the library.

    1. Maybe I’ll try Say You’ll Remember Me. I read Yours Truly and finished it but wasn’t impressed enough to read another. But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to try again.

  3. I’m reading Paper Ghosts, the new book by Sarah Addison Allen. I have loved her previous books, and I was really disappointed by this one. I almost DNF’d it multiple times. I’m almost at the end, and it is finally getting pretty good, but that’s literally the last many 15% of the book. All her others are periodic rereads. This one, I’m just glad I got it from the library instead of buying it. I thought all the characters were unappealing, there was very little magic in the magical realism, and it was all just depressing as hell. YMMV, and I hope it does.

    1. I didn’t really like the Birds one from a few years ago, either. Disappointing to hear from a few different people that this one doesn’t really work, either.

  4. I’m in the middle of the Astral Library by Kate Quinn, and really enjoying it. The tag line is “have you ever wanted to live in a book?” The MC stumbles upon the library and finds that it offers refuge for those who need it – maybe escaping from abusive relationships and the like. Meanwhile, the Librarian is beset by nefarious forces, so instead of escaping into a book, the MC volunteers to assist. I’m not quite finished, so don’t know if there is a satisfying ending, but I have suspicions.

  5. •Lindsey Devin, Somebody Framed My Witch, 2025.

    A noir-ish fantasy detective story and a romance between Declan McClintoc, a 41-year old human retired from detection within the magical community and Veronica Paolo, age 25, a student witch. McClintoc retired because of the sad consequences of a previous case, but gets back into the saddle when Veronica shows up at his house and explains her plight, namely being framed both for the murder of a beloved teacher and mentor and for the kidnapping of a little girl, who remains unrescued. Romance ensues, rather too easily to make that subplot interesting. (Veronica has always had a thing for older men.) Although non-magical himself, McClintoc has an armory of magic weapons and a wide range of contacts in magical Chicago. And he’s pretty quick on the trigger, so the novel has a high body count. Pretty routine and formulaic, both as noir and as romance.  But readable, so mildly recommended. I think I’ve had enough of Devin for a while.

  6. I’m so happy you’re enjoying writing again, Jenny!!

    I read Richard Osman’s new one, We Chase Shadows, and enjoyed it but don’t find myself thinking about it the way I do some books that I really loved. Like 10 Things That Never Happened or all of Jenny’s books. I’m now attempting to get into Second Nature, an old Nora Roberts. I’ll probably finish it but it doesn’t call to me when I set it down.

    1. I liked We Chase Shadows. The characters are developing and it brought the found family connections closer. Osman’s humor appeals to me.

  7. •Thomas F. Madden, The Medieval World II: Society, Economy, and Culture, Modern Scholar audio course on CDs, 2009. (I’m pretty sure I listened some time ago to Part I, on political history, but I did recently take it out again, intending to relisten. Part II works well independently.)

    This, one of a number of Madden’s audio courses, seems to constitute a pretty good introductory survey of the topics in the subtitle.  I was particularly struck by a few points that stood out for me even though I have long held an amateur interest in the period. 

    Madden clearly distinguishes the medieval Inquisition from the Spanish Inquisition, which latter lay outside the Middle Ages (generally considered to end in about 1500), and notes that, bad as it seems to modern eyes, the medieval Inquisition was not as hideous as it is often pictured, preferred a recantation to a conviction, and was complained of by secular rulers for letting too many suspects off. At the same time, Madden never really gets me into the mindset of sincere churchmen of the period. It is one thing to see how secular rulers might believe that religious uniformity contributed to the stability of the state. Also, if one holds that God engages in collective punishment, causing the innocent group members to suffer along with the offenders, which is a pagan belief also seeming to have explicit support in portions of the Old Testament, and which seems to have been unquestioned by Christians of the period, one can even see a justification for rooting out moral and doctrinal nonconformity through judicial means in order to protect society from divine wrath.  But it is far less clear to me why stamping out the “contagion” of heresy was thought to save individual souls. If heresy could be “caught” like a disease, how could the individual heretic be morally responsible for it? Would it not be a kind of insanity? Granted, preaching was also tried, with the founding of the Franciscan and Dominican orders that went out into the world rather than remaining in monastaries.

    In Tom Holland’s Dominion, which I discussed here earlier, Holland, without citing sources, argues that Catharism was a much less organized and codified movement than it is presented in the Catholic documents of the period.  (Evidently few relevant Cathar documents survive.)  The Wikipedia says that this revisionist view started to be advanced in scholarship in “the 2000s,” but Madden never mentions it in these 2009 lectures; he assumes that codified Catharism actually existed.

    On the other hand, Madden does mention, while not supporting, the revisionist theory that the cause of the Black Plague was not Yersinia pestis. Shortly after this course was published, however, DNA analysis of plague victims in multiple locations demolished the revisionist position by consistently finding Yersinia pestis, just as in modern bubonic plague.

    I was also struck by the fact that medieval Christianity, which had not yet permitted the practice of lending money at interest to others Christians, did permit something like modern Islamic banking, arguing that it was not usury if the investor shared a risk.

    I like Madden’s lecture style and the general moderation of his judgments on controversial topics. Despite lagging a bit behind current scholarship, the course is recommended.

    1. Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie’s book on Montaillou studies Catharism by using the records of the inquisition. That book which came out in 1975 definitely makes it seem very disorganized. The book has been criticized for presenting the views of the “heretics” through the words of the inquisition. But it’s hard to imagine that if there was a formal cathar text the inquisition records would hide it.

  8. I finished the Linesman series by Dunstal and enjoyed them, although I don’t think that these will be rereads for me. Too much plot, not enough character to dig into for later revisits. Plus in my opinion, the author fumbled the ending. Not terrible, but definitely some storylines that felt like they came out of nowhere.

    Now I am listening to This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews. I have been hesitant to start this one and the first couple of chapters are a slog of info dump. I’m not sure if this is because of the format, which I think is based off of video games, or they just haven’t started a new series in years and dumped all the world building lore at the beginning. Maybe they always do this and I haven’t read the start of a series from them in a long time and just forgot. It’s a big book, 21 hours of listening time, so I will be here for a while.

    I also started Baby and the Late Night Howlers last night. I picked up a pretty physical copy at the book store and it’s nice to be reading something not on the screen. Reverse harem Omega verse, but billed as cozy, so I am interested. The beginning was good. We will see.

    1. Keep us posted on the reverse harem book. So far my dipping into these occasionally has produced only lots of predictable sex and no real character or story.

      1. I have high hopes. The opening is a lot more specific and well written. Plus the primary alpha is in a m/m relationship with his beta that he isn’t willing to give up… Swords will cross.

    2. I just read that one and I can see why it’s so info-dump-y: she has to inform us of the world of alt-Game-of-Thrones and how it operates. I did find it interesting when she’d red flag something and then have to explain later why it was a red flag to her, if nobody else.

  9. •Martha Wells, “Rapport” (novelette), 2025, audio version read by Kevin R. Freed. I reviewed the text version of this Murderbot series contribution in July 2025.  I liked the audio version a bit more, no doubt aided by Freed’s voice acting. But the piece is still a mere fragment and has no real business being sold unattached to any conclusion of the mission that the Perihelion crew is here engaged in. I am surprised that the word count makes this a novelette, since it took just under an hour to play in audio form, meaning the text version would take 20 minutes or less to read. (The Hugo minimum word count for a novelette is 7500 words, and this can’t run much longer.) Not worth paying money for. Murderbot completists may want to borrow it from the library or to read the free text version on reactormag.com.

    2. I bought the text and while the story is nice, it wasn’t worth 1.99 as it was extremely short. I didn’t know they’d done the audio of it.

  10. I read Even The Good Girls Will Cry by Melissa Auf der Maur, the bassist in who joined Hole just after Kurt Cobain committed suicide and the previous bassist died of a drug overdose. It’s one of the few rock autobiographies I’ve read where the writer wasn’t a drug addict so although we do follow the addiction paths of both Courtney the grieving widow and Patty the drummer, it’s from an observer’s perspective. And a keen perspective it is. Melissa who is Canadian (although she describes herself as a Montrealer more than a Canadian and yeah, that’s a thing) is the daughter of a one-night stand between a hippie mother and a writer father so she has both an unique upbringing, an artist’s eye and the ability to articulate what she observes (although there is a hidden acknowledgement to the ghost writer so she is no Bruce Springsteen who’s got to be the only rock and roller who wrote his own autobiography word for word). Anyway, a worthwhile read.

    Lupe got me re-reading Linesman again. What I love about this series is its premise, which is that alien semi-sentient ‘lines’ of energy were discovered centuries ago and are now used by mankind to power all its doings, including space travel which requires ten lines, each one unique in its purpose, per spacecraft. Since they break down regularly, a guild of craftspeople has developed called linesmen who somehow psychically push at the lines to fix them. Ean Lambert, the MC of this series, is the hedge witch of the guild. His singular technique is to sing to the lines, a technique sneered at by his peers, although he develops an actual telepathic connection with the lines. Mix in a bunch of political machinations and you’ve got a reasonably complex narrative. Lupe is right though – the sister writing team called SK Dunstall focuses too much on action and fumbles the end of the series. Still, I listened to the series once and now am thoroughly engrossed in a physical re-read of it.

    I also read the undiagnosable’s new hockey MM short story Take the Over, which was fun.

    1. I read Cyndi Lauper’s autobiography. It felt like she wrote it herself, band wasn’t an addict. She really needed an editor or meds for ADD, possibly both, I say that as somebody with ADD who really,really loves run on sentences.

      1. I should have read Cyndi’s autobiography – I have always loved her. Both as a musician and as a person.

  11. I finished Daggerbound and loved it. So much fun seeing Sarkis and Halla and Zale again. Plus, I loved Edmund and Dog Violet, and especially the Dervish’s relationship with scholar Edmund. Quite an adventure and love story. Halla gets to use her superpower again. Yay!

  12. I listened to 10 Things That Never Happened and though it’s still far from my favorite Alexis Hall, I liked it better than the first time I read it.

    Then I listened to Adib Khorram’s new YA, One Word, Six Letters, about a high schooler who tells the F slur at an assembly on a dare and how he’s a pariah to his old friends so his new “friends” are all assholes and bigots. The second POV character is an Iranian-American kid who is spiraling about his sexuality and funneling that into working out and learning boxing. The only thing I disliked about this book was that it’s written in 2nd person present. I sort of forgot about it from time to time as I listened, but mostly it intruded on the story. “You walk down the hall….”

    I’m most of the way through an historical…. mystery? Not sure where they shelve this? The Kindness of Strangers about a post WW2 boarding house in London where a lodger dies and everyone else is somehow involved. There is too much head-hopping and time-hopping but the audio narrator just reads it all in the same voice without noticable breaks between pov shifts, so maybe the text version makes more sense. I did stick with it and it’s making more sense now as I approach the end and I need to know how the guy died, so I’m going to finish.

  13. I’ve been listening to Theo of Golden. A lot of people, including my daughter whose tastes generally align with mine, recommended it. It has lovely language and interesting characters, but I’m hoping something resembling a plot manifests at some point.

    1. I’ll be interested in your perspective. I’ve heard very polarizing things about this novel, including that it’s simply boring, but also that it’s very white male and veers into being racist.

    2. There’s not really a plot, no. Though the last little bit could be sort of one? One of the people in my book club said she found it “white savior-y,” and I think she was trying to not call it racist. It veered that direction, but since he’s white savioring everyone of all races, I didn’t think it was awful.

      On the other hand, another book group member loved how he listened to people and got them to tell their stories. She’s read it several times and thinks it’s amazing.

      My biggest takeaway was that if you’re everyone’s friend but never tell your own story, then you’re not really anyone’s friend, are you?

  14. It poured this morning! So, no morning walk today.

    I read almost a third of Dungeon Crawler Carl before I put it down. It reads like someone’s nightmares. I’m so glad I only bought the first one. It reminds me of when The Da Vinci Code came out. I read the book, and it was like a travelogue with a scary mystery behind it. Tom Hanks may have saved the movie.

    I read Jayne Castle’s Midnight Crystal, set in her SciFi world. I’ve read all of the series, now. They are enthralling, and the dust bunnies are such fun.

    The rest are rereads: Midnight at the Blackbird cafe, The Honey Pot Plot, and The Cinderella Deal. That was interesting to read, now, since my news feed has reports about a new TV show on the Lizzie Borden story. Daisy has a painting showing Lizzie and the bodies of her father and stepmother. Some of the commentary on the TV production mentions her defense, which was simplistic, but evidently swayed the jury. It was believed that a fine Christian woman would not do something that evil.

    The other two rereads above have intricate plots and people with twisted pasts. Both great reads.

    I still have double vision up close, as my eyes are not aligned, well. I hope it resolves. It takes the brain about a month to adjust, after surgery. It’s been just over a week.

    2. Jan, good luck.

      I’m not sure how up close “up close” is, but I’ve had double vision up close, out to maybe seven inches, my entire life. Evidently keeping it from getting worse was why I had to wear a patch over one eye while watching TV as a child. (Lazy eye or amblyopia.) It’s never bothered me.

      1. How do you read, Patrick? That’s where I’m having trouble now, plus re-learning to look out of both eyes, when I wore those goggles with tape over one side for a year.

        1. Jan, My reading is normally okay because it’s almost entirely done at a longer distance (at least a foot, more often two feet), where my double vision has gone away. Looks like “up close” is presently farther away for you, although I hope it improves as it’s supposed to. If I have to read really small print at a closer range, where my finger shows double vision, it seems as if I mostly ignore the signal from the farther eye, and I get a reasonably clear image of the small print, although that doesn’t work as well if I hold up a finger at the same distance. A trick for reading that my brain has picked up?

    3. I’m not sure what to make of Dungeon Crawler Carl. A lot of people rave about it (I’ve read the first two books), but it’s really By A Gamer, For Gamers, and I am NOT a gamer. I get liking the snark and jokes, and the second book branched out in some interesting ways, but it is just a lot of fighting, fighting, fighting incessantly, for an upcoming what, 20 levels? Tiring. And I’ve just read the first two, the other books in the bookstore are GIANT TOMES.

  15. This week I reread “Tell Me Lies” which for I hadn’t read in years. Three times during this read I stopped and thought “This is so much fun!” It is definitely fighting for one of the top spots on my favorite Jennifer Crusie books.
    I DNF’d the latest Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James book “Playing His Game” — an M/M hockey romance between a star forward and the NHL team owner’s son. It must be me and my mood but I find it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief with the fake boyfriend/fake dating trope. I’ve never met anyone in real life – ever – who has had this experience so I know I start out being pretty skeptical. This one just was so unlikely and so NOT 2026, that I abandoned it at the 35% mark. Maybe it was a matter of timing and I can return to it in the future.
    Because I was really in the mood for some hockey romance, and there are so many terrible hockey-romance-wannabe books out there, I decided I just needed to reread the authors that I loved first time around. I reread Avon Gale’s “Breakaway” : M/M romance between hockey players from rival teams in the minors, one MMC who is at the beginning of his career and the other at the end of his. It is fun and romantic and I find that I’d forgotten most of it so it’s like reading a new book. This one stays on the reread loop.

    2. Christine, after just finishing Rocky Start, I see some parallels. The sheriffs in Frog Point and Rocky Start both say that they take care of their own. Everybody has secrets in both towns. The MC women decide to become liberated from their good girl images. And on and on. Maybe it’s the small town vibe, more than copying the plot points. .

    5. I am on book 5 of Dungeon Crawler Carl, it’s so good! If I was reading a hard copy on a train I might hide that cover in a magazine (ha) but in terms of rage, fighting against powerlessness, everyone trapped in a system, the best and worst of humanity, comfort, generational resistance… I’m a big fan. And yeah I miss most of the RPG jokes too I’m sure. But if it’s not for you then it’s not for you!

    7. I always think “Tell Me Lies” is a morality tale about the importance of securing the family assets if planning a divorce! 😉

  16. Our overnight low was in the 50s which is an “aaahh” of relief for me.

    1. ‘The Bones Beneath My Skin’ by TJ Klune, an action movie on the page, loved this. Slow-burn and non-explicit MM suspicion to lovers story woven into adventure in which an AWOL Marine is trying to save an extraterrestrial, who’s embodied as a ten-year-old girl, from dark government forces who’ve kept her imprisoned for over fifty years. The POV character is a disgraced journalist who finds the runaways in his family’s Oregon cabin.

    2. [re-read] ‘Bet Me’ by Jennifer Crusie, still loved this, and maybe because I am so disgusted with the behavior of American cisgender straight men as a group right now, I found the male friendship in this book really vital.

    3. ‘When the Tides Held the Moon’ by Venessa Vida Kelley, MM historical fantasy starring a Puerto Rican ironworker and the merman he unwittingly helps capture and imprison. This is a (much) less dark version of Alexis Hall’s novelette ‘Sand and Ruin and Gold,’ which I also re-read this week. ‘Tides’ is very well researched in terms of 1911 New York and the relationship between the US and Puerto Rico at the time, employment discrimination, Coney Island, and sweatshoppery. I really loved it and am glad I acquired the beautiful hardcover as well as the ebook.

    4. ‘His Truest Role’ by Kieran Lamour, MM set in Barcelona starring a theater writer/director and his leading man, soapy insta-love with too much sex and not enough thought about the HR nightmare and the shit these guys put their production collaborators through.

    5. ‘Laser Visions’ by Kaje Harper, an MM spec-fic novel she wrote for the Goodreads MM group a few years back. MC1 is a rich tech guy whose cop sister, post water wars in around 2040, is in kidney failure; they are working with the FBI on a sting involving off-books organ transplant scheme in which people have been abducted, killed, and harvested. MC2 is a scientist who’s been abducted and is being kept in a coma pending conditions for harvest, but he discovers he can ‘spirit walk’ and makes contact with MC1. High stakes, high tension, some violence, other nonconsenting donors die, but MC2 is saved in time and the conclusion is HFN and hopeful. Really unusual book, well structured and maintains internal logic, plus the MCs are both credible and sympathetic characters. I got a link to this through Kaje’s newsletter.

    6. [re-read, though I wasn’t sure about that till 2/3 through] ‘Wear it Like a Crown’ by Zarah Detand. I knocked off a point of rating for the duplication. Because it’s a republication under new publisher, may or may not have been revised, with the same title, and yet AMZ did not tell me I already had this. Grrr. It’s a royal/commoner MM where the royal decides to come out after a blackmail attempt, and the love interest is on the fixer team. Knocked off another point for using the living person Ed Sheeran as a character, meaning not just a reference but actually in a scene putting words in his mouth, with no indication he gave permission.

    7. ‘White Hot Light: Twenty-five Years in Emergency Medicine’ by Frank Huyler. Meditative, occasionally almost stream of consciousness essays drawn from his life as an ER doctor in New Mexico. Very good.

    8. ‘The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram’ by Ethelene Whitmire, fascinating though sad biography of a 1935 Harvard graduate (one of very few Black men who were allowed to enroll) and post-grad who managed to get funding for doctoral research in Europe … in 1937-38 … where he fell in love with a Danish man. They spent the next 7 years trying to stay together and stay alive. Both escaped from an Italian POW camp and were rescued by American Buffalo Soldiers, but were then separated. Peggram was sent back to the US and promptly institutionalized, eventually underwent electroshock therapy and, apparently, a lobotomy. Released after four years to live with his mother, then niece, and died in 1982 having never returned to Europe and never recovered to the point of resuming his academic career. This would make fantastic material for a happier MM fiction treatment.

    9. ‘The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, the World’s Greatest Traveler,’ by Giles Milton. Thoroughly enjoyed this. It’s history plus travelogue plus context-clarifying biographical sketch (the best anyone can do for a person who died in the 14th century).

    2. This answers your question from when I originally posted about When the Tides Held the Moon – I thought it was depressing all the way through and you were worried because it was on your TBR list. Clearly if I’d read the Alexis Hall version I wouldn’t have been so depressed by it! Definitely not reading that now.

      1. I shouldn’t have said “version” because I don’t think for a second that Kelley, if she read Hall’s story at all, used it for more than a ‘what if’ jumping-off point. There are several other human/merman romances out there, after all. 🙂 The Hall story does not have a happy ending except that the merman is freed from captivity. The Kelley book does have a happy ending and it’s credible enough, given the human MC’s back story.

        I didn’t find ‘Tides’ depressing, obviously, though I would certainly caution interested readers who might be triggered by any of the abundant and varied instances of abuse.

        1. So glad someone else likes “When the Tides Held the Moon”! I read an ARC of it and really enjoyed it, especially the specificity of the setting as well as the love story.

  17. I read (in audio) a T Kingfisher book from a few years ago, Illuminations, and really enjoyed it despite being a bit hesitant, since it’s got a really young protagonist (10 yo). It sounds like (and is, in some respects) a MG story, with MG plot threads of friendship and jealousy and wanting to be grown up, which is probably why I missed it originally. They’re just not really issues that resonate with me. But I really enjoyed it.

    The world is fun, as expected in a Kingfisher book, focused on a family of artists who paint “illuminations,” which are magical images that do things like scare away mice from the pantry or keep food from spoiling. If you don’t know, Ursula started out as an author/illustrator, so she has real insight into what life is like for a professional artist.

    Highly recommend. It reminds me of the Tiffany Aching series by Pratchett, not in the writing itself, but in the way it transcends the usual reader-age boundaries. Also, the narrator is good, for anyone who might read it in audio.

    1. There is a new MG Ursula Vernon coming out next year. I’m looking forward to reading it but am disappointed the illustrations are by another artist because I love Vernon’s artwork.

  18. I read “Bodies of Magic” from Freya Marske which is about a cohort of students, attempting to pass a series of magical tests which would allow them to continue onto the next year, but are distracted by finding a body of a another student on their first day of testing. I really enjoyed this book. I would not mind reading another story set in this universe.

    I then read “Massif” which is the latest from Garth Nix and his first foray into science fiction. In the year 2096, a little girl from somewhere in Africa/Asia goes missing and shortly thereafter a massif breaks free and goes into an orbit around Earth. When humans investigate, they find the avatar of the massif – who happens to resemble the missing girl. Turns out there lots and lots of these massifs in outer space, some of which are friendly to humans. So this is how humans manage to create their interstellar polities, which, of course, involve war. The book “Massif” is about a crew from a space corvette who are involved in one of these wars. I need to post a warning, though, this is the first book in a series and, while it ends on a lull in the action, there are still lots of things unresolved. I like Garth Nix so this was an autobuy from me.

    I’m reading “Strong Medicine”, the latest in Steve Hockensmith’s series about Big Red (Otto) and Old Red (Gustav) who used to be cowboys, but then became detectives due to sheer determination from Old Red to emulate his hero, Sherlock Holmes. I really like the characters and the plot of these books. I’m glad Hockensmith is continuing to publish them via Kindle.

  19. I finally retrieved The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion from my TBR, and just finished reading them. Loved them; thank you so much for the recommendation, Argh! I have already preordered book 9 coming out next year.

  20. I finished K. J. Charles’ Society of Gentlemen series – enjoyed it as much as ever. Looked through my Kindle and found Tribute Act, m/m contemporary by Joanna Chambers, which I’d forgotten. Not bad, but I can see why I’d forgotten it. Then looked at my Amazon wish list & found Jodi McAllister’s A Study in Sparkling, the next in the series after An Academic Affair (both self-contained, but related characters) was on special offer. Like the first book, I liked much of it, but it somehow didn’t completely gel for me in the end. I think she stretched the story too much; it would have been better edited a bit more. But I do enjoy the Tasmanian setting, and the characters are attractive.
    Back to rereads.

    1. I too thought An Academic Affair was too drawn out — it was a good story and the MCs were attractive characters — but it was way too long. A good editor would have made it a true winner.

    2. I just put the McAlister (one L) on my hold queue at the library, but I’m in for a wait. One can’t go on the hold list until one of my libraries has at least ordered the book, and one can’t even go on the Notify Me list until Libby has put the book into their system, which seems to have happened since the last time I checked, since I knew a sequel was coming. Oh, well. Plenty of other reading available in the meantime.

  22. One new book from the library didn’t work for me. It was a DNF. So I went back to the stories I knew I would enjoy and reread Jessie Mihalik’s earlier self-published novellas The Queen’s Gambit and The Queen’s Advantage. Nice sci-fi flicks, both – violent, quick-paced, and simple. No deep thinking required. I enjoyed them as much now as I did on my first read. There is the third novella in that series, but its reviews were unflattering, so I didn’t read it then, and I didn’t read it now. Maybe I should…

  23. On my trip up North /UK I read Stephanie Alves The Risk Taker (book 3 in her Colton U hockey series) and The Hrart Breaker (book 4). I wouldn’t actually recommend it, the hockey os a bit strange and really only a gate into the romances. Book 3 is MM and 4 FM, all books are rather interconnected whichvis why I gave 4 a try as I wanted to know if MC of 3 reached his goal.
    4 is drama baby and reminded me why I switched to MM. 3 is surprisingly tender. But well, I like less drama and more relatable MCs. I skimmed a lot of book 4 so it was fun enough. And too much procrastination.

  24. I had previously mentioned being several days behind on my daily reading quota for an Alistair Reynolds for my October book club meeting. I’ve now made that up, although partly by skipping some particularly disagreeable scenes centered on two fairly minor characters.  If those folks turn out to be important to the plot, I may have to go back and read the scenes.  Other parts of the novel have got me hunting for a phrase to describe the mental torpor or stubbornness of characters who refuse to draw a conclusion because if they did so the novel would be over before the author wants it to be. That kind of plot is known as an “idiot plot,” but I can’t find a term to describe what is afflicting the characters. “Plot blindness”? “Plot idiocy”? “Extradiegetic stupidity”? Full details to come after the October meeting.

  25. I did like Paper Ghosts by Sarah Addison Allen. It’s definitely darker than other works of hers as was Other Birds which I also liked.
    I stumbled upon a 2 book series by Jayne Ann Krentz that I had read so long ago I’d almost forgotten them entirely. Copper Beach and Dream Eyes were both good.

  26. I reread all thr mysteries by Judith Flanders. The narrator is a competent middle-aged woman editor with a snarky interior voice. She has great women characters of many different ages, including an amusing and basically positive mother-daughter relationship between the narrator and her mother and a great Goth assistant who is also highly competent. Her plots are unusual and she always has a second plot line about publishing. I really think most Argh folk would like her.
    Like so many mysteries, she doesn’t have a good reason for the main character to encounter so many murders (despite the fact that she picks up a policeman boyfriend in the first book), and there are a few too many coincidences. But those are minor flaws.

  27. I read Badb: The Morrigan by Corina Douglas. It was good enough that I was up super late reading it, at least the first day, and then the second day I started to notice some weird errors. Needs an editor (or a better one), but the writing and story were overall good.
    I could not get over everyone riding in on a stead, though. Steed, milady. Horses are steeds.

    2. “Steed” is one of those words that, if used often, lead you to suspect something is going on. Horses are horses. Steeds are tame dinosaurs or dragons or thoats.

  28. Speaking of Martha Wells, there is a kickstarter campaign for a graphic novel adaptation of Murderbot

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmic-lighthouse/murderbot-the-first-graphic-novel-multi-award-winning-sf?ref=9t3fy3&utm_id=97757_v0_s00_e0_tv2_a1dennhb4tfasa&fbclid=IwY2xjawUiavNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mBWJyaWQRMXE4UGkxZXJ3YUdTSmNqNjJzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeBF30em1S80KIvsQ4CZbg1oTzYRJmcSagNIAtjhQwkgeMwiZfDvkFtO1xXqw_aem_WRv-GlKiBhkGTuqVQzbwhA

  29. In support of my earlier remark that a post on Friday tends to dampen further discussion from GBTh, I note that the latter got only 5 comments yesterday and none so far today. My impression is that that is far less than normal.

  30. I’m just getting back to posts. I do like the Friday posts. I usually have to catch up every couple of days. I haven’t posted on the blog in general much recently, and I haven’t read any new fiction in several weeks because of the start of teaching, but I have been enjoying the comments and making notes.
    My husband and I have been listening to the audio version of Dungeon Crawler Carl. We really think the reader is excellent. However, book three is in suspended mode until we have a long car ride, and I don’t see that happening again until the end of the month.

  31. I am thrilled you’re liking loving writing again, Jennie.
    I read the extraordinary dreams of Cynthia Peabody by Lynne Marshall and liked it very much. It’s very different. A 75 year-old woman is grieving her husband and takes meditation course and somehow her dreams become real. She also has a found family. Also the little shop of gentle magics by Jessica Rosenberg. She needed a beta reader so I said yes. I enjoyed it. It’s a sweet book.
    Then I read the village of slightly magical people by John McDonnell and it gave me a lovely feeling. A Happy feeling. If I can close a book and feel good when it’s done well sometimes that’s what I need.

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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