Favorites

Flavia de Luce (x1 1/2)

2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, short stories /

I’m a big Flavia fan and I loved As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust. Excellent. Most excellent. I was a little worried, since Flavia was all by herself (I mean not with her family and the regulars from Bishop Lacey) in Canada but I needn’t have worried. It went well. Flavia did well. It all turned out as it should have. Every bit.

While reading it, I discovered there was a short story published last year for Kindle, so I grabbed The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse and read it right after I finished Chimney Sweepeers. It was good — cool death (lol) but I don’t love short stories. I wanted more Flavia, darn it.

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St. Nick (x2)

2015, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

Do you find yourself reading books that are completely unrelated but have odd connections between them? It doesn’t just happen to us, does it?

Like the audio book, St. Nick, that I grabbed from Amazon just because I didn’t have any other audio books and it seemed like it would be a fun listen in the car (even though Christmas just ended) and the Sandman Slim #6, The Getaway God, with the very evil Saint Nick character. Never in a million years would have expected a connection between those two books but there you go. It was also a little disconcerting to be reading them both at the same time. One St Nick was super good and the other so very not good. Very weird.

Anyway, I loved both books…

St Nick — a depressed and struggling cop turned mall Santa is just as you’d expect. The magic of Christmas etc. etc. etc. It was awesome.

The Getaway God, #6 in the Sandman Slim series, was just as awesome (maybe more awesome than some of the other books in the middle of the series) as you’d expect. Stark saves the world (again) and sorts out all of the broken Gods (and Lucifers, for that matter.) The only downside for me with a Sandman Slim novel is the lack of chapters. I need chapters. Why does Kadrey hate chapters? Hmph.

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Maplecroft: The Borden Dispatches

2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Women /

I love Cherie Priest. Loved Maplecroft: The Borden Dispatches. It was excellent. Creepy, but excellent. I’m interested in the fact that I keep seeing it as “book one” — what the heck is going to be book two? I guess I’ll find out, eventually, right? Oh, I see — not a sequel, Chapelwood. Nice. Can’t wait!

If you love Cthulhu, you’ll want to read this.

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The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns

2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

Margaret Dilloway is awesome. Totally. I sort of fan-girlled all over her at BH14. I never do that sort of thing. I think I scared her. lol. Anyway, I absolutely loved The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns.

Gal is my kind of woman. I liked her. Such a great character. I also really liked the relationship between her and Riley. And, shockingly (if you know me), I loved the ending.

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Three Non-Fiction Art Books

1 Comment / 2014, Art, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I’m so bad at reading over the holidays so I made sure to have some easy flip through art books on hand and I’m extra glad I did because I was feeling a little reading withdrawal by the time Christmas was over but family was still here to hang out with.

The one I loved, loved, loved was The Art of Whimsical Lettering. Have you noticed I generally like any books about lettering? I’ve noticed. I’m taking that as a sign that I should spend more time playing with lettering in 2015.

Next was Mixed-Media Self Portraits and it was interesting. I liked it. I might check it out again in a few months and try some of the projects.

Least favorite, Wise Craft. It’s divided into seasons and I found maybe one project for each season that I was interested in. The rest was pretty ho-hum. I did really love her zombie Barbies. JMP and I will do this some day.

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Neverhome

2014, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

Neverhome was a beautifully written book. I was surprised by just how wonderful it was.

A woman heads off to fight for the Union in the civil war, leaving her husband behind, because she was better suited for fighting than he was. She was a good soldier but of course, bad things happen and, well, it was beautiful. You should read this one.

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The Boy at the End of the World

2014, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I have no idea how The Boy at the End of the World ended up in my library bag. So weird. It’s an older book, so it wasn’t from me just randomly surfing the new arrivals stack or anything like that. I can’t remember seeing it mentioned in a recent blog post. It just… randomly made its way to me and that’s awesome.

It was really good. I didn’t want to put it down. And, that was only in part due to the appearance of mutant prairie dogs. MUTANT PRAIRIE DOGS.

I really enjoyed it and the only sad thing is that there’s no sequel. Wah! I wanted more stories about Fisher, Protein, Click, and Zapper!

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7 Non-Fiction Children’s Books from the Cybils

2014, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I think this means I’ve wrapped up my Cybils shortlist challenge but I should double check…

Locomotive was pretty good. Not great but not bad. Lots of technical info about steam engines.

Look Up! Backyard Bird Watching In Your Own Backyard was awesome. I loved it.

How Big Were Dinosaurs was a little boring — I’ve read quite a few that are better than this one.

Barbed Wire Baseball was excellent. Interesting person that a lot of kids will never have heard of. Nice illustrations.

Volcano Rising was ok, not great. Unless you have a kid really into volcanoes or a kid who has never thought about volcanoes at all.

The Boy Who Loved Math was pretty good, though oddly enough I felt like I’d already read it. Which is weird but there you go. Is there another children’s book about Paul Erdos? That would seem odd but of course it must be possible. The whole Paul didn’t know how to take care of himself and everyone helped him — that part, seemed awfully familiar. Even the illustrations of him trying to butter bread — very familiar. Anyway — it was good. I liked it.

Anubis Speaks was… I’m torn. I was bored, which is saying something since the stories shouldn’t have been boring. I think this one could have been better. Should have been better. It just wasn’t and I wanted it to be.

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