evelyn_b took me up on my offer to write fic in exchange for ACLU donations. She started of with the suggestion of writing a Molly McIntire fic - Molly McIntire is the World War II girl from American Girl - and then I realized that I have consumed approximately nine thousand canons set in the mid-twentieth century, AND THEN I realized that one of those ( Read more... )

I have been feeling despondent about the news, as indeed who has not, and then I had a brainstorm of a way I could raise some money for the ACLU: writing ficlets ( Read more... )

American Girl has a new series out, Melody Ellison in 1964 Detroit, which I read with some trepidation because I was so very disappointed last year by their 1950s series about Maryellen ( Read more... )

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

No Ordinary Sound, which is the first book (of two) in the newest American Girl series, Melody Ellison in 1964. I’m going to write about it at more length once I’ve finished the series; for now I will just note that it’s better than the Maryellen books (although that doesn’t say much), but there are still no ( Read more... )

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, which might also be called “the book where Philip Marlowe never gets paid.” People keep offering him money, practically shoving it in his hands to make him take it, and he refuses and refuses and refuses, because… Well, it’s not quite clear why he does, which is part of what ( Read more... )

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished Eva Ibbotson’s Madensky Square, and I enjoyed it so much that I nearly flung myself headlong into The Star of Kazan, which is the other Ibbotson book that I own, but then I decided to restrain myself and save The Star of Kazan for the next time I need a feel-good book. Most of Ibbotson’s books are quite ( Read more... )

What I’ve Just Finished ReadingI finished the second Maryellen book, which, probably because my expectations had dropped about about negative two, seemed more enjoyable than the first one. But I still deplore their decision to cram six books into two (and it feels really, really obvious that these were originally intended to be six books; each book ( Read more... )

What I've Just Finished Reading

Maryellen: The One and Only, the first book of the new American Girl series, which never did transcend its lack of illustrations, alas. The illustrations aren't the only change they made with the format this time around: there are also only two books instead of six, which might have worked better if the first book ( Read more... )

I have acquired the first of the new American Girl series from the library! The first of...two books, because they'd decided to move away from the six book pattern for some reason ( Read more... )

What I've Just Finished Reading

Lauren Esker's Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, which is a shifter romance (werewolves and weresheep, in this case), and very cute, although probably moreso if the tropes of shifter romance are your thing. Unfortunately the tropes that the genre focuses on seem to be the ones that don't do much for me, but that is a ( Read more... )