I am still trying to finish Anna, although my TBR pile has some excellent stuff in it, and it calls to me daily. Some day, I may even be able to watch TV again.
Enough of my whining. What did you read this week?
I am still trying to finish Anna, although my TBR pile has some excellent stuff in it, and it calls to me daily. Some day, I may even be able to watch TV again.
Enough of my whining. What did you read this week?
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
76 Responses
The siren call of Mount TBR 🙂
Best thing I (re)read this week was “The Parfit Knight” by Stella Riley (1986; 2012), a delightful m/f Georgian romance, which this time around I was really able to relax into. I enjoy MCs who like to laugh, even though it causes the MMC some problems when people think he isn’t taking things seriously enough.
“Jefferson Blythe, Esquire” by Josh Lanyon (2015) was a fun m/m adventure, with an MMC being mistaken for a thief and yanked into the world of criminals, while trying to come to terms with his own sexuality and reconnecting with an old friend. There’s a cross-over character with “The French have a Word for It” – so moved that up my tbr.
“A Shore Thing” by Joanna Lowell (2024) is a queer Victorian romance and I liked it despite the bicycles ;-). Interesting history and setting and digging into some of the gender stuff in a gentle way. I also particularly liked the rare romancelandia acknowledgment that it might be reasonable not to share something deeply personal when has one only just a met a person.
On the short story front, finished up Jo Walton’s collection “Starlings” (2018). Mixed, with standouts including the gorgeous “Three Twilight Tales”, the funny “Remember the Allosaur”, the play “Three Shouts on a Hill” which I’d love to see IRL, “What Joseph Felt” (as in Mary), “Sleeper” (free at https://reactormag.com/sleeper-jo-walton/), the stunning fairy tale twist “On the Wall” (Free at Strange Horizons), and her Small Change story “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction” was devastating and left me shaking (also at Reactor mag).
I’ve also really been enjoying listening to Worldcon catch-up sessions and my tbr has exploded – again!
I like the Parfit knight but the mesalliance remains my favourite of Stella Riley alongside Garland of Straw. Still, I like them all!
I really liked “Garland of Straw”, and “A Splendid Defiance” is my favourite so far. Haven’t read “The Mésalliance” yet. Maybe after I finish the Rockcliffe books 🙂
It is the book where Rockliffe meets his wife so you should start with that one!
Yup, belatedly realised its the next in my list 🙂
I read Jefferson Blythe before reading The French Have a Word For It (a constant reread of mine) and missed that there was a cross-over character! This moves Jefferson Blythe to the top of my reread pile. Thanks for that tip!
I read Lindsey Devin’s ‘Nobody told me Thrift shops sell stolen dragon heirlooms’. It was a lot of fun. Lots of wisecracks but some real emotions. Thank you to whoever recommended it here. It is a little gem. I read others by the same collective but that one was definitely the best by far.
For my book club, I read ‘The Names’. It was very good despite it’s truly harrowing depiction of the consequences of domestic violence. The three story strands were really well done and I got invested in all three versions of the hero. It was also quite hopeful about human nature and uplifting in a way this type of book usually isn’t.
Otherwise, a lot of lovely rereads, mainly Celia Lake.
Gary H. Was the first to recomend it the Thrift Shops novel.
All rereads this week: Coaching the Nerd by Eli Easton & Tara Lain (m/m college romance), then started a Georgette Heyer detective novels reread – Why Shoot a Butler, The Unfinished Clue, Death in the Stocks. Then theundiagnosable completed the second book in the Leafs Are Haunted trilogy (Cross the Line – https://archiveofourown.org/works/90738081/chapters/241372076), so I’m now rereading the first book, In the Blue, before devouring the new one.
I’ve never tried Georgette Heyer’s detective novels, but I do love her Romances, and this sent me on a hunt for Why Shoot A Butler. I found it on Amazon in a nice Kindle collection of 15 Heyer books for $1.99 🙂
There are a dozen of them, but I’d skip the first, Footsteps in the Dark, and also Penhallow, which she wrote under duress & is depressing.
I’ve found the Carola Dunn series of Daisy Dalrymple is also nice and light and so rated PG if there weren’t murders it could be done by happy muppet actors…. but that’s kind of what I’m into right now.
Apparently, Heyer’s husband, who was a vicar, supplied the mystery plots.
One of my favourites, as I have said here before, is “Behold, here is poison”, for that excellent character, Randall, the amiable snake 🙂
Not a vicar. First a mining engineer who traveled internationally, then after Heyer insisted on returning to England before starting a family, a businessman, evidently not very successfully, then a successful lawyer. Heyer’s income was the reason he could change careers.
Ah, I should have checked. That was a dim, clearly wrong, memory 🙂
That’s Anne Stuart’s fave, too, because of Randall, who is delightfully snarky and still manages to save his family while insulting most of them and falling in love with one of them.
My fave is No Wind of Blame because it has my favorite kind of romance, two smart (in very different ways) people who realize they belong together after a lot of snappy patter. The murder I would think would be pretty much impossible, but I don’t care. And their families are lovely. I should read that again, I have so much fun with it.
Envious Casca is a great Christmas mystery, too. She’s so great with her mystery casts, all people that it’s fun to read about
I’m also all over the undiagnosable’s latest book!
The AO3 The Leafs are Haunted part 2?
I’ve downloaded both parts but somehow never come manage to read the pdfs.
Do you have an ereader Dodo? I think you can get an epub version too.
Yes – I download the epub then choose to ‘share’ the file (on my iPad) with Kindle, so it’s then available there on all my devices, and reads like any book I buy for the Kindle.
Thanks for the recommendation! I’ve got a Kindle that I misplaced recently and a kobo which I have handy. Must try the epub format asap!!
PDF’s can be shared with Kindle also.
Death in the Stocks is my favorite – Antonia is so fun!
I read the second in the Linesman series, Alliance. I still love Ean Lambert, the main character who is the hedge witch of linesmen. This time I also noticed how much I enjoyed the various ship captains with their relationships to the semi-sentient lines on their ships.s
If you like the Linesmen, you might also like Suzanne Palmer’s Finder books!
I finished the Nora Roberts one, Second Nature, and was totally annoyed at the end. The premise of the story was that the heroine was a journalist trying to write a story about the “world’s most successful horror writer” and also the most reclusive. She tracks him down and he agrees to an exclusive interview if she accompanies him on a two-week camping trip. Yeah, I know but it’s romance and it’s NR so I kept reading. Of course they fall in love but she returns to her life in the “city” and writes her article. She turns in the article knowing it’s the “best thing she’s ever written.” She quits her job to write novels (as one does) and they get back together for the HEA. My question is what about the damn article? Did it make the cover of the magazine? Did he read it? Was he thankful she kept his young daughter a secret? I’m sorry but the entire premise of the story was this article, and it was totally dropped and not mentioned again. He didn’t even say “I see you wrote the article” when they got back together. It’s like it never existed. Okay, end of rant!
I’m now reading Cold Rage by Toni Anderson, a romantic suspense. Funnily enough the H/h are tracking a bad guy in the snowy wilds of Montana. I guess reading about camping is okay as long as I’m not required to participate except from the comfort of my couch.
Nora Roberts never struck me as a particularly careful writer, although I will admit that I had not encountered anything quite that bad in any one novel of hers that I’ve read. Novel to novel, the J.D. Robb books are replete with inconsistencies. In the the first book the United Nations is gone and replaced with a new international organization. Then it’s back. The currency is dollars, then credits, then a halfhearted and inconsistent effort to explain using both. Vehicles sometimes need someone in the driver’s seat even when on automatic, and sometimes not. The Catholic Church has got back to Latin, and then it hasn’t. And on and on. One of the reasons I stopped reading the series.
That sort of thing drives me nuts! Sympathies Carrie.
•S.K. Dunstall, Linesman, 2015; Alliance, 2016; Confluence, 2016 (Linesman series)
I had missed these books when they first appeared. I don’t think they made much of a splash and Dunstall, despite five published print books, to this day lacks even an entry in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia. I had ignored several recommendations for the series on this site but I finally gave in, and I ended up binging the series during an illness. I now think they’re superior space opera that for some reason were never fully appreciated by the readership.
In sf history, the basic setup—of alien technology barely distinguishable from magic and that can be manipulated only by certain talented humans— goes back a while. The nearest approximation that I know of to the setup here comes in Glynn Stewart’s series staring with Starship’s Mage (2013), which began slightly before the Linesman books and continued long afterward. (I may want to reread the early volumes of that series.)
Euan comes across as a guy who is always reacting, never forcing events, even though he reportely took rather drastic steps to climb out of the slums and become a linesman before the action begins, and even though he repeatedly finds his way out of very sticky situations once pushed into a corner. The passivity could be rationalized as still being unsure of his ground in the new environment. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that in a viewpoint character, but I find it somehow makes him less appealing. I also had the feeling that the series got wrapped up (to the extent that it does) in a big hurry in Confluence, for instance in the hurried resolution of the Big Romantic Misunderstanding. There are a virtually endless number of loose ends left dangling.
I am guessing that something may have happened in the personal lives of the two coauthors, possibly compounded by their print publisher, since they dropped the series here, wrote only two books in a new series (so far unread by me) and have not been heard from since. But they have left their author website up. I could make other criticisms, but it seems pointless after so long. I did enjoy the three books for what they are.
That’s a great summation of Ean. I think Dunstall were trying not to create him as a ‘hero’ character, which would definitely have turned this into a space oater. I love that he’s not a hero character: he’s the protagonist. That’s not a passive role. He moves the action forward. He’s just not forceful about it.
That’s all I’ve got written up for this week, but I just finished a long nonfiction print book and I’m almost done with an audiobook, so I’ve already got material for next time. I’m now mentally searching my print shelves trying to think of another print book to read, preferably light sf and one that’s not in tiny print and has pages sturdy enough to be read easily. Sometimes I do want print, but I may have to settle for another genre or do an actual shelf search, possibly more than I want to try while still convalescent. Ah, well.
Do you know James White Sector General series? Or James H. Smiths Telzey books?
I greatly enjoyed the Sector General books. (And it’s interesting to watch him expand the role for women in the later books, despite the hole he had dug for himself in the initial setup.)
The Schmitz Telzey books, and the rest of Schmitz’s work, most of which has strong female protagonists, also continues to have a strong following, and I have enjoyed it, but less so. I think the one I liked best was Agent of Vega, probably just because it was the first one of his I read as a kid. Schmitz, although born a US citizen, spent much of his pre-WWII life in Germany, so it’s interesting how little direct use he ever made of that background, in sharp contrast to some more recent sf/f writers who are squeezing every last microgram out of their ethnic heritages.
Even Schmitz’s near contemporary Poul Anderson, although more moderate in his ethnicity than some recent writers, made more use of his Danish heritage that Schmitz did of his German one. Although I suppose Germany was less exotic and was tainted by WWII.
H. Beam Piper, both the Fuzzy series and Lord Kalvan? Juanita Coulson? John Brunner, both Shockwave Rider and The Whole Man?
Anette, If this is a response to my mentioning finding something new to read, a lot of the current problem (given my current post-flu lack of vigor) is which shelves I can get to without a lot of climbing over stuff or moving same, and which of the classic books I have a) in print vs ebooks; and b) in non-tiny print and on reasonably sturdy paper (that generally is, not in my oldest editions). I might reread Piper’s Paratime series. I think I’ve been through Fuzzy too recently, and Kalvan is possibly my least favorite part of the Paratimes. Juanita Coulson is known to me, but I’ve read little of her. I like some Brunner but neither of the works you mention. In many Brunner works he’s also obnoxiously leftist and anti US, and he handles it less well than other lefty authors who do not annoy me (or not nearly as much, most of the time), such as Eric Flint, Charles Stross, or Mac Reynolds.
For some reason I cannot reply directly, but yes I was at least partly trying to recommend some of my old – less known – favorite light SF. I shifted to mainly fantasy a few decades ago, but find it nice to be reminded of old favorites from time to time. 🙂
Anette, I had noticed before that there seemed to be a great deal of overlap between your favorite oldies and mine. Keith Laumer and Gordon Dickson would also have been on my early list. Van Vogt. Some Clarke, although he was never a huge favorite. Even a few of Philip K. Dick’s earlier and least spaced-out works, such as Man in a High Castle. We’ve already mentioned Norton and early Heinlein.
I did find a print book to read, but it’s more nonfiction. When I regain the energy to get into my less accessible shelves, I’ll have more selection of light fiction print books.
You might like Suzanne Palmer’s Finder books – sf, space opera-y but personal ways I liked a lot.
Back in LA, it was commonplace to hear sirens all day. Now, it’s noteworthy. 🙁
1. ‘Scud Missile Blues’ by Amal Kassir, a Syrian American poet hosted by my employer recently. This small book of poems is explicitly about Bashar al-Assad and Putin’s war in Syria; it is enraging and sad.
2. ‘Falling’ by Sean Ashcroft, latest in their MM Otter Bay series. MC1 is the town’s new librarian; MC2 is the owner of the friendly neighborhood gay bar. The only real obstacle is whether MC1 will land an objectively better, academic library job (even as he comes to love the small-town version). Then MC2 has a no-self-esteem crisis that feels shoehorned in. A pleasant read but not a standout.
3. ‘Winging It’ by Mike Lawson, a career flight attendant writing about a career flight attendant. This England-set MM is billed as a romcom and it is indeed funny if you have a high tolerance for blackout drinking, unprotected sex, and love interests who punish a person when their relationship PTSD is triggered. I was invested enough to finish and I did have some faith in the HEA, plus many in-flight and flight-adjacent incidents felt extremely lived.
4. ‘How to Love’ by Alex Norris. Y’all, EVERYBODY should get this, read and enjoy it, and share with a young person. It’s a hilarious yet substantive “guide to feelings and relationships for everyone.”
5. ‘On Your Six’ by Eleanora Larsen. MM with two career military MCs who meet during Selection for special forces. It’s set after don’t ask don’t tell was repealed but Selection is explicitly No Fraternization so they’re risking a lot from day one. MC1 aspires to be an Army pilot (SOAR), which he achieves. MC2 is the high-achieving son of a General (I hate that guy) contending with being deeply closeted, also subject to what reads as chronic depression (understandable). The falling in love is all on the page during Selection. The relationship then takes years to develop. Bad things happen; a key ally appears at a key moment. Editing could have been a smidge tighter but I was really impressed with this and eagerly await the sequel (no cliffhangers).
6. ‘Playing By Ear’ by Avery Cockburn. Last, so they say, in their Glasgow Lads series. Older MCs than some in the series. MC1 is a musician (whom we repeatedly see being a musician) scratching a living as a busker while dodging publicity because he’s the son of a notorious gangster. MC2 is a freelance journalist (whom we repeatedly see being a writer) with a side gig as a cam boy because he’s losing his vision to retinitis pigmentosa and it’s not easy making a living as a writer in any case. Relative high conflict due to the gangster angle, but it’s mostly not conflict between the men; communication is good and caring is ample. They also bond over soccer. A strong finish for this batch of stories.
On Your Six also has a lovely cover, doesn’t it? It stands out -and sometimes the cover illustration is a hook for me to read it.
Same here: I really liked it though I don’t usually like military books/MCs. I couldn’t put it down and suffered the lack of sleep afterwards. I’m looking forward to book 2.
Also, I liked a lot that this is no celibate yearning from afar story.
Argh, I really like books with lived experience antecedents but unfortunately have a very low tolerance for blackout drinking and unsafe sex. *Sigh*
might try to find Mike Lawson’s blog 🙂 I’ll bet it’s funny!
https://www.mikelawsonwrites.co.uk/
I’m waiting for my hold on Sherry Thomas’s latest in the Lady Sherlock series to come up, and in the meantime, I’m dong a re-read of Martha Wells’s Ile Rien and Fall of Ile Rien series. I’d forgotten a lot of plot points, which made for a pleasant re-read, but I’d also forgotten that I wasn’t wild about the two narrators (I mostly like the narrator for the first two books, except for his pronunciation of Ile-Rien — not like it would be pronounced in French — and of ingenue — four syllables, rhyming with ooh-ay).
I read The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett which caused me to laugh out loud more than once. The story of an oddball assortment of loosely related family members who come together in ways both humorous and tragic to go on a cross country road trip. I thought the ending was a little too neat but otherwise found it to be delightful.
My long post was just lost in the ether, grrr.
Re-listened to Sarina Bowen’s Rookie Move, now listening to her Hard Hitter – book 1 and 2 of her Brooklyn Bruiser series. I liked them the first time round, like them even better the second time.
Decent men who treat their LIs – all of them capable women – as partners and equals, what’s not to like?
Read the Bonus story in The Unlikely Dilemma volume, the omnibus of Jax Calder’s three Unlikely books. Lovely and kind as are the MCs in all three books.
Not sure what to read next as my tbr ebook files are equally overflowing as my tbr shelves. I’ll likely consciously choose books by male authors because of the very strange discourse in the social media book corner (male authors and readers not welcome in the mm romance? bonkers idea!).
The common denominator of my preferred books: decent and kind people as MCs.
Reflecting the kind of people that I’m used to be around.
I guess I’m very lucky that most men I know and have to deal with are really decent, nice people, so I take this for granted.
The algorithm of Social Media floods my feed with horror stories and I wonder if I’m just going through life blindly or if life for the most part is not *that* brutal where I live?
But I’ll definitely pick up my unwilling teenage kid after her outing to the Oktoberfest (where bad things tend to happen to women, too).
Dodo, Sympathies on the lost post. After some disasters, I generally tend to compose anything long in a notepad (in my case, Samsung Notes) and copy it over, just in case. Occasionally I get caught out when a “short” comment runs longer than I had originally intended, though.
Patrick, that’s nice of you to say!
Composing a proper review somewhere safer makes sense. However, I tend to write more “from the belly instead of the head”. And too often my texts are too longwinded anyway and not nearly composed enough. So this time, I took it as an exercise in having a second chance in being more concise. The loss was that of time but not of a quality text. Your book reports are of another level!
I finished up the Astral Library by Kate Quinn. It was lovely, and the ending was satisfying. When I was done I decided that I didn’t need to save it for a reread – it should go to the sell pile.
Now I’m working on T Kingfisher’s Daggerbound. I’m enjoying the characters and I’m looking forward to how they move through the story.
I’m nearly finished listening to the first in Linesman series and am enjoying it a lot. Thanks Tammy (and Lupe?) for the recommendation.
I am alternating this with Sarina Bowen’s ‘Roommate’ and MM which i read before and recently realized is connected to her True North Series, so this time i recognize some of the other characters. Free on audible at the moment.
In actual reading i finished ‘Bountiful’ Sarina Bowen, which is also in the True North series. it was free earlier this week but i had bought it previously. M/F. A hockey player (no hockey in this) and a bartender have a fling for the summer. Later she finds out she is pregnant but never knew his full name and could not find him. Two years later they meet up. There was a bit of a saggy middle but generally i enjoyed this and it addressed the issues of a single mother trying to work and the dilemma of bringing the father into the child’s life when he might not stay. Didn’t like it as much as Steadfast but it was good and not too cutesy (in other words it didn’t overly romanticise Vermont and the issues of running a coffee shop… though obviously both seem lovely, it’s a romance after all).
Then I read a few Dramione fan fics. I like Dramione as Hermione is unapologetically intelligent, brave and very direct. The better authors don’t try and soften those characteristics to make her more ‘acceptable’, though she has lots of flaws they relate to her character and are not just inserted so we don’t get intimidated by her. Draco is usually a complicated character too, so it works. Some of them are very funny. These are the kind of MF characters I like, but they are not easy to find.
A couple of recent reads (not a particularly curated list but i liked them): ‘Divorce_Me_Darling’ by tomesandscrolls, The_Darkwood_Wand by ThebeMoon (this one is funny, especially the depiction of the Ravenclaws). Currently reading ‘Dancer_Adjusting_Her’ by adathoroughgood2018 which has lots of good snark. I’m enjoying it, but I am not yet 50% so can’t give a full rec on it yet.
I liked “Bountiful” – it has to be the most adult secret baby story I’ve ever read: FMC tries to find MMC when she realises their affair created a baby, MMC doesn’t blame her when he finds out, and FMC reacts appropriately. Love that.
And thanks for the fanfic reccs 🙂
I agree. I also like the fact that the heroine’s attitude and aptitude 🙂 to sex.
I meant to say I liked the heroine’s attitude to and aptitude for sex.
I am a fan of Bountiful too and Yuri put her finger on one of the big reasons why.
I reread all of the Mischief in Mayfair books, because they are like popcorn, and now I can’t settle to anything, and it is weirdly itchy in my brain. I hope this settles out soon?
I added 4 books to my TBR pile from a new-to-me author my lurker brother recommended. I read Strawberry Fields for Never, by Kate Watson, and the next one in the series, Baby Llama Drama. Both were complex and intriguing love stories with great character building. I have the next ones, now, in the Sugar Maple Farms group.
Then I started a reread of Nora Roberts’ Three Sisters Island trilogy about witches who formed an island as a refuge from “the persecutions” in the early years of New England. The present sisters are not related. One has endured domestic abuse, one is a deputy sheriff, and one is a bookstore owner. The storyline is a bit dark, but the women, and the men they love, are great characters. It’s a good read for October.
After reading Freya Marske’s “Bodies of Magic” which I liked so much, I read some of her other works – “Swordcrossed” and “Cinder House”. “Swordcrossed” is the story of Matti – the heir to a house in trouble – and Luca – a swordsman for hire. I also really liked this story; especially the wedding. That was hilarious. “Cinder House” was not as good to me. It was shorter and involved more torture.
I also re-read “For My Lady’s Heart” by Laura Kinsale after someone on Reddit mentioned it. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed this book, especially the gyrfalcon!
I am stalled on “Shadowheart” the sequel to “For My Lady’s Heart”. Elena who is the heroine of “Shadowheart” is not all that interesting, especially when compared to Melanthe who is the heroine of “For My Lady’s Heart”. She’s not even as interesting as Cora who is her sister.
I’m now reading “Baldur’s Gate 3: Asturion” even though I never played Baldur’s Gate, purely because T. Kingfisher wrote this story. Bah!
Much as I like Ursula Vernon’s books, I find I sometimes need a break between her average-person protagonists. I like them in single-book quantities, but two (or more) in a row, and I tend to crave someone more kick-ass. And after I read the kick-ass story, then I’m ready for something more low-key again.
Maybe I should reread some Kinsale. They were absorbing books that have stayed with me but I haven’t reread most of them.
Kinsale was my gateway to genre? romance [besides Heyer, Austen, Bronte, etc.]. Some of hers I can’t bear to read again, even after all this time. Sob/sigh. Flowers from the Heart, the cover alone stille sends a twinge to my heart. I also remember with equal force Penelope Williamson (Once in a Blue Moon). Anyone have some top, top favourites to add?
Personally I prefer “Cinder House” to “Swordheart”, even though I agree with you that the latter is more fun.
However I absolutely agree re the Kinsales – “For My Lady’s Heart” is so good, whereas the “Shadowheart” FMC doesn’t work for me at all and both of them are a bit too martyr complex-ish, although I do like that Kinsale treats the excommunication seriously.
How is the Baldur’s Gate book? I bought a tie in novel last year because I loved the author, but was disappointed in the story so now I am wary.
Mimi Matthews’s latest, Miss Beresford and the Beast, was a nice, quiet historical romance, with the only villain being a vile gossip. I enjoyed this book, as I enjoy nearly everything by this writer. Most of the book is about a growing affection between Charlotte and Magnus (Miss Beresford and the beast from the title), and I smiled faintly almost the entire time I read it. The pacing was decent, both leads sympathetic, their chemistry obvious, and the writing professional.
My only complaint was the timing. The majority of the story consisted of the protagonists’ original meeting and the next week or so afterwards, to let their relationship develop. Then, in the chapter before last, Charlotte’s father arrived and ordered our lovers to make a clean break for 6 months, so they would be sure of their feelings. Magnus promptly agreed, and nobody asked Charlotte. Well, it was a Victorian romance, and in those times, nobody asked women anything. The last chapter and the epilogue (and the inevitable HEA) happened 6 months later.
It was a strange decision on the writer’s part to leave all the transformations Magnus experienced during those 6 months, all the changes in his life and fortune, off the pages of the novel. Frustrating doesn’t even cover it. I would really want to know what actually happened to him during those 6 months. How he dealt with the village gossip. How he overcame his father’s disturbing actions. But even that profound lack didn’t dim the pleasure of reading this short and sweet novel.
Olga, That does sound odd, if a lot of character transformation happens offstage.
As you say, in Victorian times, unless some male in the upper or upper middle class was rich enough to risk losing any dowry (and possibly to be obliged to emigrate or perhaps at least move to Scotland to avoid court action in England), no such male was going to marry without permission from the head of the bride’s family, which made the prospective bride’s view irrelevant unless the couple agreed to an engagement beforehand, and even that was good only for moral support. I know of a number of real-world cases of such enforced waiting periods, including the slightly post-Victorian one of Tolkien, but none included a change of personality in the interval. They were more to test fixity of purpose.
As a Canadian, you may or may not have run across the American version of an old British folk song, Frog Went a-Courting. The version I learned has Miss Mouse saying, “Without my Uncle Rat’s consent / I would not marry the Presidént.”
I listened to Jacinda Ardern’s autobiography, read by the author. It was an enjoyable read. She was a great leader and seems like a truly nice human.
Also, not gbt related:
Congratulations, Shass, to getting married!!!
Saw it on instagram – what a beautiful couple you are!
I wish you all the very best for your life and future together <3
Thanks for letting us know, dodo! I have missed her.
I’ve been sick and struggled to get into a book, but finally settled on a re-read of Rocky Start. Enjoying it even more this time around.
Over the last 2 weeks, I’ve been reading Crusie books from the early 2000s: Temptation, Faking It, Bet Me, Crazy for You. I’m on Lie to Me right now. So it’s been a really great couple of weeks for reading!
I’m listening to The Everlasting right now and I’m really impressed by it. I’m about 2/3rds of the way through and have just learned what’s going on for real. Now they have to figure out how to win.
Thank you! I ran into somebody who lives near me now and had just found out I’m a writer (I don’t tend to mention it to people) and she said, “I read one of your books, Getting Rid of Bradley.” I said, “Thank you, I wrote that thirty years ago, I’m better now.” On the one hand, it’s great people are still reading me and I truly am grateful. On the other hand, I’m like that guy in the cart in Monty Python’s Holy Grail: “I’m much better now.” I think.
We’re all here because we like your books: past, present, and future!
I finished listening to the Everlasting and really enjoyed it. It’s time travel, living lives over and over again with slight changes, plus romance.
Some people said it was confusing, so I was expecting chaos like This is How You Lose the Time War, but it’s not that confusing.
I finished “The Ministry of Time,” And want to do a re-read to try to unlock more of the puzzling things now that I’ve gone through once.
Hurray! We have the 10 most recent comments versus 5. Thanks, Mollie!
I read the latest Richard Osman, We Solve Murders. For me, it didn’t really get going until near the end. Plus I have very negative feelings about all the criminal characters.
I’ve started a non-fiction book written by a man who kayaked down the West coast of the UK and Ireland. It’s interesting but something feels a bit bleak, so I decided I needed a light read for bathtime and picked out Charlie All Night. I’ve always loved this story but this time it felt like a snack rather than a full meal, so I turned to Strange Bedpersons which was very satisfying.