2018

Marriage of a Thousand Lies

2018, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Queer, Women /

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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The Paper Magician

2018, Books in Bed, Favorites, Mystery, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Women /

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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The Witch of Painted Sorrows

2018, Books in Bed, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Women /

You may remember that I read all/most/some(?) of the Daughters of La Lune series and was troubled when I realized I hadn’t read the first book… so I read the first book and now I kind of wish I hadn’t read The Witch of Painted Sorrows. The end was rushed and left more questions than it answered. Worse yet, those questions were NOT answered in the follow up books.

SO ANNOYING.

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The Children of Blood and Bone

2018, Books in Bed, Favorites, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Huh. I thought The Children of Blood and Bone was a Cybil. I wonder why it isn’t a Cybil. It’s very Cybil-like. Oh, published in 2018, that’s why it’s not a Cybil. Next year! 😉

The very beginning of the book reminded me of something else. I don’t know what, but something… but then the three kids went off to save magic and I was no longer strongly reminded of another story. Except, later in the book when the Prince begins to figure out his magic and there’s that whole magical dreaming thing with Zélie – that reminded me of another story. I can’t quite put my finger on the title/series but there’s something about this one that just feels familiar and that distracted me from this story more than I would have liked.

I’m definitely looking forward to reading the next book in the series. Will Amari really be queen? I am guessing there will be obstacles there.

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Noir

2 Comments / 2018, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Queer, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

Woot! A new Christopher Moore book! (Sure was a long time coming, wasn’t it?) Noir was a lot of fun but not so much funny. That’s not to say it wasn’t good, because it was. I liked it a lot, more than Sacre Bleu and Serpent of Venice. He did a good job with the genre and didn’t let the humor overshadow the genre or the story. I’m not sure I loved the Moonman story line but it worked well enough that it didn’t annoy me.

I’m definitely a fan and wouldn’t be opposed to seeing Sammy and Stilton again, someday. (Or Lone, or Jimmy, or Moo Shoes, either.)

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The Best Things in Life are Free

2 Comments / 2018, Books in Bed, Don't Read This, Non-Fiction /

Total impulse pick from the library, The Best Things in Life are Free is a travel book with a bunch of ideas of free (or really cheap) travel experiences around the world.

I’m not really planning on doing much traveling any time in the next couple of years but I thought it would be fun to flip through. And it was, until I got to Chicago and it’s listing for the Logan Hardware Arcade Museum. It was completely 100% wrong. I was going to let that go, thinking maybe the book was older than I’d thought… but no, it was written in 2016 and the info they provided would have been completely WRONG for a very long time. I would guess that they just grabbed some info from some old Chicago travel guide and didn’t bother to check to see if it was accurate. Whatever. At that point, I pretty much just quit the book.

For the record… Logan Hardware Arcade, in Chicago, is an amazing place. But it’s a Barcade, not a museum. The games are not free to play. You don’t have to buy anything in order to play them. They have awesome and relatively inexpensive (for Chicago) drinks (I recommend the Gin & Chronic). You should visit but you should know what you’re visiting. Also important to note, the vinyl record store that used to be Logan Hardware and DID (at one point, before the Logan Hardware Arcade opened) have a back room of pinball machines has also closed down. (That actually happened pretty recently, and it’s too bad.)

Nothing worse than a relatively newish travel guide with old (very old) info. Really bad that it’s a Lonely Planet publication.

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Love and Other Consolation Prizes

2018, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Fiction /

A few weeks ago, Jamie Ford was coming to our library so his books were sitting right at the top of the stairs. Love and Other Consolation Prizes caught my eye and I was surprised that not only had we not read it, I’d never even heard that he had another book out. Since I needed an audiobook at the moment, I grabbed the audio version and… it took us forever to finish it. I know I say this a lot but it wasn’t the fault of the book, sometimes shit happens in my life that cause me to not feel like listening to audiobooks. There was a good bit of that in May. Anyway, the book…

Pretty good! I don’t think it was as good as Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet but it was pretty darn good. I liked all three of the main characters. I liked the setting. The way the story wrapped up let me down a little. I’m not sure what I’d have rather had happen, it just felt like not quite the right ending.

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Reading in May

2018, Books in Bed, Reading /

As expected, May was a horrible month for reading. OK maybe not horrible, since I’ve certainly had worse, but it wasn’t good. How could it have been, with all of that travel and all of that stress? Whatever.. June’s going to be awesome!

I read six books, total.
Three were non-fiction (including one cookbook.)
Three were from the Cybils shortlist.

*One was written by a POC (male).

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Capital Gaines

2018, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction /

I didn’t plan to read Chip Gaines’ book, Capital Gaines. Heck, I haven’t even read the main Magnola book yet. But, it was just sitting on the shelf at the library and I didn’t have any books in my bag so what the heck, right?

Then, when I had finished a book a couple of days ago and this one was right next to me and I didn’t have to go downstairs to get a new book… it was fate.

It was also not a great book. I was enjoying it in the beginning, the very beginning. But about the time Chip had to get his ass back to Texas instead of staying in Mexico to learn Spanish is about the time I found myself bored and doing a lot of eyerolling. The best part of the book was the end, the extras, the sections written by Chip’s personal assistants. They should write a book and Chip should just stick to doing the stuff that he does that’s not writing.

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