I try to take fiction breaks between non-fiction book, or every couple of non-fiction books, and this time I picked up The Ring and the Crown by Melissa de la Cruz, a YA novel set in a world where magic is real, Merlin is borderline immortal and helped England win the Hundred Years War, and in 1900 the heir to the Anglo-French Empire is being ( Read more... )

Finished Sorcerer to the Crown, time to update my analysis! (Very spoilery.)

( Definitely liking it more than I was halfway through )

Time for my traditional halfway-through-review, when I write about the book I'm currently reading because even though it's not finished, I have a lot of thoughts!

( Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho )

( The Spanish Queen )

I forced myself to finish reading this book, because I wanted to really lambaste it here and would feel bad if it had some major twists near the end that gave it surprising complexity. It did not, btw.

( Read more... )

Finished The Haunting of Hill House last night! ( thoughts )

Made myself crepes after dinner and put some lemon curd on them. Shrove Tuesday! Britaboo level: increased! (They were delicious.)

I am watching Saving Mr Banks this evening and it is just ... why did I not realize how adorable this movie is? Emma Thompson is such a delight. She made me laugh out loud multiple times before I was halfway into it. ( ( Read more... )

So yesterday I went to see Isn't It Romantic, and at the climax I was thinking, "Oh, this is a lot like what I get out of Sophie Kinsella," which reminded me that the book I just read was I Owe You One by SK! I find her books comforting because (apart from the Shopaholic ones, ironically) they always start with the heroine being picked on and ( Read more... )

So today I finally read (much but not all of) Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease to write an answer on the topic, and I'm ... pretty annoyed at the way it was titled and marketed and written about following publication?? (To be clear, I'm annoyed with someone at Bloomsbury and the people who wrote about it in the ( Read more... )

So I sewed both sleeves, and gathered one and set it in, cut out the skirt panels, cut into the bottom of skirt panels and sewed them up again, cut into the top to form the apron-front, ironed the plackets that will go on the sides of the apron into shape, cut out the bib, and ironed down three edges on bib to mark where to hem. Not bad for a ( Read more... )