The sequel to Every Heart a Doorway, Down Among the Sticks and Bones was about Jack and Jill and their doorway “adventure.” Good story, even if it was bloody and sad. I’m not sure I’d have saved my sister if she’d done what Jill did. Jack’s a better woman than I am.
The next book will bring us back to Eleanor West’s boarding school. I’m looking forward to it.
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We did it… we finished an Overdrive audiobook before it was viciously yanked from my account by the library’s annoying rule about NO renewals of Overdrive books. Hmph. Anyway, we listened to To Die But Once and yippee, Maisie Dobbs.
In the (very long) epilogue I started feeling some anxiety about how Maisie Dobbs and Maggie Hope are crossing streams. I keep picturing Maisie as the woman in the Maggie Hope books who oversees the Prime Minister’s special project, (what is her name? It isn’t Maisie Dobbs, that’s for sure.)… and the picture just doesn’t work. I might have to just be very careful not to read the two series really close together. (Big problem since there’s a Maggie Hope book waiting for us at the library and because I’m about to reserve the next Maisie Dobbs. Ugh.)
Woot. I didn’t even know about #Readathon Bingo until I woke up this morning and loaded all of the Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon links I like to keep open when I do #Readathon, so I’m pretty pleased that I was able to adjust my TBR plan (who am I kidding, I didn’t have a plan) and get a Blackout!
To get it, I had to read the short stories/essays I mentioned earlier today and track down a book with a male protagonist… TW’s Comic Con LGBTQ Mystery Box to the rescue (thanks, Momal!) In it was The World’s Greatest Love: Vol. 1. and that fit the bill nicely!
Speaking of The World’s Greatest Love… typical Manga. I kind of wish it had been written by a man, I think it might have been slightly different… the best part was the information about the world of Manga publishing. That was really interesting.
Besides that book, I also finished Dinner Illustrated and found a lot of recipes I’d try. I’m almost tempted to buy it. I wonder what TW thinks of the book.
After that, since I was waiting for the dogs to come in, I read two children’s picture books about gender/non-binary. Both were well done. I’d recommend them: I’m a Girl and Introducing Teddy.
I finished The Bear and the Nightingale and it was excellent. (Truthfully, I started reading it, a few pages at a time, more than a month ago and only started reading it as my primary book earlier this week.) And, I just discovered it is the first book in a trilogy and now I’m psyched to read the others!
It’s a Russian fairy tale type of story. Well written, great characters, beautifully done.
I’m off to spend a half hour or so cheering other readers along, so I can fill another Bingo square (and also the community is a big part of #Readathon and I like to visit people.)
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Yep, I finished two Maggie Hope books this month. Back to back, even! (The Queen’s Accomplice and the Paris Spy.)
I ranted for a bit after the Queen’s Accomplice because it seemed like a bit of a wasted book. Did we really need that fake Jack the Ripper stuff? Also, I think it was titled poorly. In the past, the X’s _____ meant Maggie worked with or on behalf of the X. In this book, not so much really. Instead, Maggie took advantage of her relationship with the Queen to ask for favors. That’s not her being the Queen’s accomplice. That’s the Queen being HER accomplice. I didn’t hate the book, I just felt like it dragged on and the places where the storyline progressed could have been done more quickly and efficiently in other ways.
Having said that, the Paris Spy was nicely set up by the events that did happy in The Queen’s Accomplice. (Minus the fake Jack the Ripper stuff.) And I think this is one of my favorite Maggie Hope books in a long, long time. The cliffhanger is VERY CLIFFHANGERY and I need the next book ASAP. Sheesh.
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Yay! Lesbian fiction I don’t hate! LOL
Stray City was very good. I liked every one of the characters. It’s exactly how you’d picture Portland in the late 90s. The Lesbian Mafia and Family dinners are perfectly imperfect. I didn’t even mind the jump from 1999 to 2009, and I normally find that really annoying.
Awwww, a fun lesbian romance! Lesbian chick lit!! Woohoo! When Katie Met Cassidy definitely arrived on my library cart because I saw it on a lesbian fiction list during Pride month. (It’s always nice when my library has LGBTQ books and I don’t have to ask them to buy something for the library or ask them to get it for me from another library.)
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Holy heckfire was The Changeling a dark, dark, dark book or what? I mean seriously.
It was also really, really good. And, I wish I was more up on my horror genre because I’m pretty sure there were a lot of nods to horror classics that I missed. The ones I caught… a-freaking-mazing. Also, Sendak IS creepy.
You should read this, but be ready. It’s dark, dark, DARK.
We listened to Marriage of a Thousand Lies on audio. The first few minutes of the book were pretty darn depressing. Turns out the whole thing is pretty darn depressing but it’s also pretty darn good.
We don’t get a lot of decent lesbian literary fiction. We get lesbian chick lit, or lesbian erotica, or lesbian poetry, or token lesbian characters in mainstream fiction, and a ton of GAY fiction of all types, and we’re event seeing more trans fiction of all types. But literary lesbian fiction? GOOD literary lesbian fiction? Sooooo rare. Marriage of a Thousand Lies is worth reading for that reason alone. But prepare yourself for the depressing, frustrating, and not at all happy ending.
I very much hope SJ Sindu writes more books. I’ll read them.
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I’m confused about how The Paper Magician ended up in my library bag. I thought at first that it had been on my TBR list for awhile and I’d reserved it when I did a bunch of reserves a few weeks ago, but that’s not it. Then I thought it was an Amazon best seller from last year and it hit my holds when I went through another mad round of reserves, but no. So I must have picked it up from the new arrivals shelf at the library but why would it be on the new arrivals shelf when it’s several years old?
SO WEIRD. Whatever. I really, really enjoyed it and hope to goodness the library has the other books in the series. I need to know what happens to Ceony next.
Updated: hmmm, turns out the series has been optioned by Disney so that might be how the book wound up in my bag… I may have seen this info on a blog or Facebook after all. Huh. This book would make an excellent Disney movie.
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