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The Night Watch

1 Comment / 2006, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, GLBT /

I really do like Sarah Waters and her books, except for Affinity. The Night Watch started slowly, as her books tend to start, but just as I start to wonder if she’s written a dud I realize I’ve been lured in and need to read, all the way through without stopping.

The only complaint I have about The Night Watch is that I really wish she hadn’t written it backwards. I think I would have enjoyed it more if the stories had been a progression, rather than moving backwards through time. I’m not sure why she moved backwards in this story, I don’t see the point, I don’t think anything was gained by the reader. I don’t think anything would have been lost if she had started in 1941 and moved forward. I’ve read some reviews and people either loved or hated the reverse.

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Four and Twenty Blackbirds

2006, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Mystery, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

It’s official. I’m back to avoiding my Summer Reading Challenge list and doing a darn good job of it. Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest was an excellent read.

I believe this was recommended to me by someone I know at work who recently moved to Florida. She was compiling a stack of books set in Florida and this was one of them. I think that’s how I discovered it. I certainly had never been to the author’s blog, I would have remembered that.

I thought this was a young adult book, for some reason. Probably the cover art, which is interesting but with the blackbird and the headless women, just feels like a kid book, ya know? Well it isn’t, though I am betting there are some teens around here who would enjoy it.

The reviews on the back suggested this was a really creepy read and it would give you goosebumps. Well, I didn’t find it that scarey. (Why do reviewers feel the need to exagerate?

So, the story, let’s see… a line of women, they “have magic on them”, voodoo or sorcery (whichever you prefer), John Gray and the St Augustine priests. A bad guy named Malachi who wasn’t so much bad as misled and a wee bit nuts. Chattanooga, Macon, St Augustine and the swamps of south Florida. Go read it.

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Adam & Eve

5 Comments / 2006, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

Thank you Sassymonkey! Thank you for choosing such a good book for me to “steal” from your Summer Reading Challenge.

I like Mark Twain but have never read The Diaries of Adam & Eve before. I loved it all and cannot believe I have never read it. What was I waiting for? Very amusing, very Twain-like, very sweet. Very good. I even enjoyed the foreword and afterword and that never happens.
This was the fourth book from my Summer Reading Challenge, now onto number five!
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Here Be Dragons

2006, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites /

We listened to Book 2 of the Muddle Earth series, Here Be Dragons, on the way down to Miami and we enjoyed it very much. Some of the kids had listened to it or parts of it before but they all enjoyed it again (well except RJ, who listened to her mp3 player as usual).

Muddle Earth is fun – dragons and warrior heroes, flying wardrobes and wizards, evil in the form of Dr Cuddles. Great family fun, particularly on audio.

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Bullshit

4 Comments / 2006, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

When I was a kid, I didn’t hear much profanity at home. I had to learn my profanity at school like a good 70’s child. I was always fascinated when I’d come across adults who used “those words” and felt I had been born to the wrong family – I needed cool parents who cursed a blue streak, not my geeky, boring parents. Oh sure, my mom let a ‘damn’ slip every now and then, (and as TW says, she’s grown up to be a woman who can, and does, say FUCK – much to the horror of me and my siblings), and she always seemed shocked at her behavior when that happened. There was one tiny exception to this profanity-free household.

Bullshit.

My father said this. He said it a lot and I believe he learned it from his father since my family often tells about how I said “bullshit pappaw” to my grandfather when I was two – and that I learned the word from him…. In fact he said it so often and not really in the way I was used to hearing profanity used. He said it laughingly, mostly at himself, or if he was teasing someone about something. He still says it at least once everytime I talk to him on the phone.

Bullshit.

I don’t know how or why this tiny little book, On Bullshit, appeared on my library list. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing TW would pick up on a whim. I don’t remember reserving it but I guess I must have. It is here and I read half yesterday because I was too exhausted to read a “real book” and finished it today while recovering from an annoying phone call – a bullshit phone call, actually.

What IS bullshit? You probably know it when you hear it – but maybe not. Some people are good at spewing bullshit and making you believe it’s the honest to goodness truth. On Bullshit was a little dry, a little boring, but also just a wee bit interesting.

On Bullshit … my father’s Christmas gift this year. I hope he likes it.

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Traditionally Built Women ROCK!

7 Comments / 2006, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

I love the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books. I really like listening to them on audio more than reading them. I think they’re the perfect audio book. (If you haven’t tried it, check one out from your library on cd or cassette. I bet you’ll like it.)

Blue Shoes and Happiness is my favorite in the series. Feminism! Shoes! Cobras! Ostriches! Diets! Lots and lots of feminism. Heh.

When is the next installment coming out? I don’t want to wait a year (or more? gasp!) for the next one. Get to work Dr McCall Smith!

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The Moonstone

8 Comments / 2006, Books in Bed, Don't Read This, Favorites, Fiction, Mystery, The Moonstone /

Well ladies, and gentlemen (surely there are some men lurking), I did it. Finally. It took me 10 years and many, MANY false starts but I did it. I. Finished. The. Moonstone.

I didn’t ever think I’d be able to say that. But now that I have said it, I’m quite pleased with myself. I’m not really pleased with my mother who purchased the book for my daughter 10 years ago. I’m not really pleased with my mother who rambled about how much she loved the book when she was a teenager. I’m also not pleased with my mother who has generally recommended really fantastic books in the past. I’m also not pleased with my mother who on one other occasion recommended a book in a similar way, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, and that recommendation was so RIGHT that it led me to believe that any such recommendation would also be RIGHT.

The Moonstone. Not right.

I like Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White is a very good book. I’ve actually read it two or three times and enjoyed it everytime. I would happily recommend that book to you. The Moonstone. Not so much. In fact, except for 3 pages very near the end, I wouldn’t really recommend it at all. Except of course, there’s my mom. She loved it when she was a teen (or so she said, 10 years ago – she’s waivered a bit on that over the years – that’s the dementia though, so we expect that from her now).

Anyway, I’ve finished it. I’m proud of myself for having finished it. I’m proud of myself for being able to cross book #1 off of my summer reading challenge.

Now onto bigger and better things…. The Day My Butt Went Psycho… gotta be bigger and better than The Moonstone, right?

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More Triggers From Picoult

4 Comments / 2006, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

I have been a Jodi Picoult fan for many, many years (thanks Ky, wherever you are – certainly not in the 10th Circle…). The Pact was the first book I read and The Tenth Circle, the most recent. I haven’t loved all of her books but I haven’t truly hated any of them either. Tenth Circle, right up there with The Pact.

I think the comics between chapters was a nice touch. (I didn’t search for the secret message, did you??) I like the tie in to Dante. I always like the lack of totally happy endings in her books and this one was no different. There are a ton of triggers in this, for people with their own experience with rape so beware if you trigger easily. The only thing I’d change would be the date rape drug stuff. I don’t think it was necessary at all and particularly not the almost ridiculous buyer/seller twist. The book didn’t need that in order to keep you twisting along with the characters.

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Sexy Novels

3 Comments / Favorites, Fiction /

Susie Bright linked to The 25 Sexiest Novels Ever Written and has posted some interesting comments and ideas of her own. This topic is giving me a good reason to avoid the non-fiction I’m still avoiding – I’m trying to think of my own list of 25 Sexiest Novels…. I feel like “pure erotica” isn’t going to come close to making it onto my list.


What would make your list? Do you like Susie’s ideas? Agree with the books in the article? Is it wrong to think about sexy novels on Memorial Day?


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Michelle Tea – Fiction!

2006, Books in Bed, Bookstores, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction /

michelles.jpgIf you read the Daily Dose then you know the picture in this entry comes from the reading/signing at Wild Iris with Michelle Tea. You also know we bought Rose of No Man’s Land, Tea’s first attempt at “fiction”. I read it yesterday and loved it.

Tea said at the reading that it was hard to write fiction, compared to memoirs, I can understand that. She also said she worried that she’d written characters nobody would care about or a narrator who was so obnoxious you wouldn’t want to read the story, this I don’t understand. I thought Trisha was terrific. And Rose, ah Rose, she wasn’t bad herself.

I can totally see this as a film. A cult classic for wild and alternative teen girls. Sort of like Virgin Suicides and Thirteen. Stuff parents do not want to see because it would give them nightmares about their daughters. What it ought to give them is nightmares about what men and boys do to girls everyday and what effect that has on girls.

No, it’s not one of those male-bashing feminist books. Not really. Tea did a nice job of putting across the mesage without slamming it down your throat. And, she gave her female characters the power to deal with the BS men dish out to them. Excellent.

This isn’t going to be any adult’s favorite book of all time. The writing just isn’t that great and the story is bouncey. It might, however, become your daughter’s favorite book – if she’s a fan of The Virgin Suicides, or Thirteen or anything by Francesca Leah Block.

I look forward to Tea’s next work of fiction – well not the comic book. Maybe the further adventures of Trisha and Rose (Trisha should be on Real World, imagine THAT!) or just a story about Rose? Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure I’ll smile my way through it – just like I smiled my way through Rose of No Man’s Land.

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