Another great Maisie Dobbs, on audio. I love these. An Incomplete Revenge was awesome — I loved the setting, hop picking in Kent (fascinating) and the Roma. I also loved B.T. Drummond. I love the way the book ended. I just plain loved everything about it.
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I wasn’t in the mood to start a new book on Sunday morning (which turned out to be a good thing since we ended up at the ER) and The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays was due back at the library soon so I figured I’d just relax with that for awhile til I was ready to start something else. Very good choice since it was the perfect thing to enjoy last night after the ER exhaustion.
The thing about Ree’s books … they always make me want to cook, which is ridiculous since I never want to cook. I also tend to say things like “mmmmm, I want to eat that right now” which leads TW to say “but you don’t like…” and I have to say “yes I do” which leads us to argue about the foods I do and don’t like.
Anyway. That’s what happened here. I want black-eyed peas salsa and alllllllll of the potato skins and allllllll of the different french toast casseroles and I want the red velvet pancakes even though TW hates that idea and I want grilled corn in eleventy different ways.
Yum.
PS. The photos in the book are also awesome. Gosh the kids are getting so big. How did that happen (which is what we said when we saw them in person earlier this year. Kids should not grow so quickly, should they?)
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I’m not a fan of “boy” YA and when the boy YA is also sportscentric, I know it’s either going to be a total snoozer for me OR it’s going to be one of the best books ever.
Boy21 — one of the best books ever.
I was worried, particularly at the beginning, but right about the time Finley met “Boy21” I had settled in and was hooked. I read the book straight through after that. Now I’m left wondering what happened to Finley, Erin and Russ. I hope they all three had good, happy lives.
I hadn’t planned on reading The Prayer Box but TW said it was good and nothing else looked very appealing so… I read it. Great chick lit. I enjoyed it. It was just the right easy, feel good, read for a busy few days.
Now I’m tempted to reserve The Sea Glass Sisters (a prequel to The Prayer Box…)
When TW started reading The Shambling Guide to New York City I noticed the author name on the book and I thought to myself, “that name is familiar, have we read other books that she’s written?” and then I promptly forgot about it until I started reading the book.
Then, all the way through it I wondered WHY that name was so familiar but I didn’t do anything to figure it out. I just kept reading and enjoying the book. A lot.
When I finished, I looked at the back cover. Huh. The books aren’t super familiar but… podcaster. Duh.
Mur Lafferty spoke at BlogHer many years ago and she wrote the Dear Daughter post that I really really like.
Duh.
If you like zombies and vampires and other demons as well strong female characters — read this one (and look for more Shambling Guides in the future… I will be.)
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I’m caught up with book blogging — and with reading the books from the Cybil short list. Thankfully since December is almost here giving me just a few very busy weeks to read three books. I can do this. Assuming those books are on my shelf… I should check, shouldn’t I?
Anyway, about these three. Some surprises, good surprises.
I expected to like The Theory of Everything. I like YA problem books and I’d seen some good reviews of this one. It was good. I liked the drawn journal type entries (the theories) — those were well done. Smart. I liked the happy ending where everyone cried. (And when I say happy I don’t really mean happy happy.)
The Storyteller. Oy. German. A lot of people die. And we’re supposed to maybe be confused by who was doing the killing. We’re also supposed to feel sympathy for the killer (which I did) and I think we’re also supposed to like Anna but I did not. Not one little bit. Which made it hard for me to really care about the rest of the characters as much as I should have.
Last but not least, the book I thought would be toward the bottom of my favorites list is now squarely in the top quarter – Endagndered. I didn’t expect to like Endangered nearly as much as I did. But I couldn’t help it. I liked Sophie and Otto (who is a bonobo). There were moments when I wanted to hate the book because NO WAY Sophie could have managed those things. NO WAY IN HELL. But I couldn’t help it — I liked her anyway and I cheered every time she made it past another obstacle.
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I didn’t have any books on my library cart that I really wanted to read enough to commit to them — not when I’ve got a dozen waiting for me at the library that I really want to red before the end of the year. And, I also want to put in a lot of hours on JMP’s Christmas stocking this month so… what to do last night when I wanted to read something but didn’t have anything I really wanted to spend a lot of time on.
I discovered I did have a very old version of Quick Escapes Chicago sitting on the library cart (huh, I thought I’d read all of the travel guides I reserved back in October but I guess not.) Quick, easy read and now I can move onto stuff that I really want/need to read. And, it was one of the best “beyond Chicago” travel books I’ve read. Outdated, certainly, but a good set of excursion recommendations. It made me want to pack up and head out for a day or three.
I’ll remember that for the next time we decide to take a mini vacation.
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I didn’t have a book that I had to read waiting for me on the library cart so I went with The Bookman’s Tale, something I picked up for TW because it sounded like something she’d like. She did like it and said she thought I would, too. She was right — I read it pretty much straight through yesterday.
Who do YOU think wrote the works of Shakespeare? Always a good story to tell, right?
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TW was right, I really liked My Notorious Life. A lot.
Really good historical fiction. Fictionalized story, in part, about Madame Restell.
Late 1800s. Orphan becomes midwife who also performs abortions and provides contraception. Comstock, obviously, is out to get her. Victorian morality my ass. Hmph.
I really loved Looking for Me — it had everything the nature loving, Charlestonian, chick lit, junk collecting parts of me appreciates.
And to think, I almost didn’t bother reading it because it was due back to the library in two days and it didn’t seem worth it when compared to all of the other books on my shelf. I cannot believe TW never mentioned it was set in Charleston. Sheesh.