It's "Whatcha Been Readin'?" Wednesday Again
Going backwards, I just finished Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I really enjoyed it. As a recluse an introvert myself, I got a kick out of matching up just how much applies. And she maintains what I have long suspected: multi-tasking is not real. People start and stop multiple things, but they make more errors than if they focused on one thing at a time. I also got a kick that we introverts don't even have to go to a library to check this out. I checked it out as an ebook from the Northern California Digital Library and transferred it to my old Sony (not a wireless one) at home. Woo-hoo! I'm a hermit!
I had dug into my boxes of unread books and picked out a mystery: Aunt Dimity's Good Deed by Nancy Atherton. It's the fourth of the series but the first I'd read. I'd bought it years ago. I had no idea Aunt Dimity was a ghost. I was thinking she would be like Miss Marple. Anyway, a lot of fun.
Also from my stash of unreads I pulled out my re-entry to Darkover, as that's one of my vacation spots this year. (Hey, when you can't get away much, you take your vacations between the pages of a book.) It was Deborah J. Ross's (and MZB's, but mostly Ross') The Fall of Neskaya, book one of the Clingfire trilogy. I thought I had the second one as well, but I don't. I recall when I bought them that only 2 of the 3 had been published. They're big enough physically that I will probably get the other books as ebooks, which are easier on my hands. I have a bunch of the older (hopefully most or all of them) in my closet. I plan to eventually reread those, although I recall some of them were stinkers. I never much cared for Darkover Landfall and some of the others were just bad. Hmm, maybe I'll just reread the ones I liked best. Or skim the bad parts. It has been decades since I read them.
I'm always happy to get my genre fix from the library. They had the latest Patricia Briggs Mercy book, Frost Burned, as well as Rochelle Mead's The Indigo Spell, the third book in her spin off series from the Vampire Academy series. This series' main character is Sydney (a female), born into the Alchemist tradition. These are the people who work to hide the existence of vampires in our society, even as they despise them. Sydney is interesting and I like how Mead is getting more into body issues with the character. Sydney is one of those icy blondes with perfect bodies who basically starves herself because her family makes her think she's fat. As she breaks out more of the Alchemist mold, she is starting to wise up about body issues as well: she's not fat, and the people who are making her feel inferior really do not have her best interests at heart.
I read two recent gifts from the hubby, both ebooks: Susan Palwick's Mending the Moon and Madeleine Robins' Sold for Endless Rue. Palwick is an excellent writer, but I find her books a little darker than I like. Of course, this is the woman whose first novel was Flying in Place, about sexual child abuse. (That was in the year we seemed to have a flood of them. McKinley's Deerskin came out around the same time. They were good books, but very difficult to read. I prefer happy and light to dark and brooding.) So Mending the Moon is a good book, it's a thoughtful book, but it's not terribly genre - I wouldn't nominate it for the MFA (Mythopoeic Fantasy Award). Basic summary: a college woman is killed while vacationing in Mexico. Her killer is a college student who is a fan of this comic. The dead woman had an adopted son from Mexico, and this son is also a fan of the comic. The dead woman's friends and son try to make sense of her death and eventually connect with the killer's parents.
The Robins was too long and a bit of a disappointment to me: I had heard it was a retelling of Rapunzel, and ultimately it was, but not in a particularly mythic manner and she sure took a long time getting there. It wasn't bad; it just wasn't the book I wanted her to write.
Since I am avidly reading Seanan McGuire's Kindle serial, Indexing, I also tried another Kindle serial, Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: the Thirteenth Rib by David J. Schwartz. It was supposed to be a sort of paranormal X-Files type thing. Let's just say it is nowhere near as good as the McGuire and leave it at that.
I am not a big fan of Amazon, but I'm a sucker for McGuire's writing. Besides Indexing, she also has some of the zombie novellas that she writes as Mira Grant out for the Kindle for very cheap. I thought that once she had finished the trilogy she'd started with Feed, she would be done or I would lose interest. (As I am not a zombie lover.) She's still writing good stuff about zombies. Some are from the viewpoint of Mohir, the British citizen who George had appointed as her successor. Another is the last stand of the Browncoats, the story of the first wave of attacks during a ComicCon and the Firefly fans who did their best to limit the damage. She's my kind of fan girl.
I read the new Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and probably so did everyone else. I'm going to nominate it for the MFA - so will many other people.
At Mythcon, I met Rebecca Anderson, who writes YA as R.J. Anderson. She has a trilogy out, and I liked it - enough to nominate it for next year's children's MFA - but the publishing mess will most likely knock it off the long list. The first two volumes were in my local library. They have different titles from the British editions. (At Mythcon, she had bookmarks about the trilogy with the British titles only as they were from that publisher.) The third book is out in Britain and Canada and there is a version for Kindle, but there are no plans to publish it in the US. This is a pity. I thought the second book was stronger than the first, and it leads into the third book so if you can't get that, it leaves you hanging. I bought the Kindle edition of the third book and enjoyed it. (Titles are Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter (aka Knife), Wayfarer (aka Rebel), and Arrow. I have to say that the British titles make a lot more sense when reading the books.)
So that's the book news from Lake Woebegone Silicon Valley.
I had dug into my boxes of unread books and picked out a mystery: Aunt Dimity's Good Deed by Nancy Atherton. It's the fourth of the series but the first I'd read. I'd bought it years ago. I had no idea Aunt Dimity was a ghost. I was thinking she would be like Miss Marple. Anyway, a lot of fun.
Also from my stash of unreads I pulled out my re-entry to Darkover, as that's one of my vacation spots this year. (Hey, when you can't get away much, you take your vacations between the pages of a book.) It was Deborah J. Ross's (and MZB's, but mostly Ross') The Fall of Neskaya, book one of the Clingfire trilogy. I thought I had the second one as well, but I don't. I recall when I bought them that only 2 of the 3 had been published. They're big enough physically that I will probably get the other books as ebooks, which are easier on my hands. I have a bunch of the older (hopefully most or all of them) in my closet. I plan to eventually reread those, although I recall some of them were stinkers. I never much cared for Darkover Landfall and some of the others were just bad. Hmm, maybe I'll just reread the ones I liked best. Or skim the bad parts. It has been decades since I read them.
I'm always happy to get my genre fix from the library. They had the latest Patricia Briggs Mercy book, Frost Burned, as well as Rochelle Mead's The Indigo Spell, the third book in her spin off series from the Vampire Academy series. This series' main character is Sydney (a female), born into the Alchemist tradition. These are the people who work to hide the existence of vampires in our society, even as they despise them. Sydney is interesting and I like how Mead is getting more into body issues with the character. Sydney is one of those icy blondes with perfect bodies who basically starves herself because her family makes her think she's fat. As she breaks out more of the Alchemist mold, she is starting to wise up about body issues as well: she's not fat, and the people who are making her feel inferior really do not have her best interests at heart.
I read two recent gifts from the hubby, both ebooks: Susan Palwick's Mending the Moon and Madeleine Robins' Sold for Endless Rue. Palwick is an excellent writer, but I find her books a little darker than I like. Of course, this is the woman whose first novel was Flying in Place, about sexual child abuse. (That was in the year we seemed to have a flood of them. McKinley's Deerskin came out around the same time. They were good books, but very difficult to read. I prefer happy and light to dark and brooding.) So Mending the Moon is a good book, it's a thoughtful book, but it's not terribly genre - I wouldn't nominate it for the MFA (Mythopoeic Fantasy Award). Basic summary: a college woman is killed while vacationing in Mexico. Her killer is a college student who is a fan of this comic. The dead woman had an adopted son from Mexico, and this son is also a fan of the comic. The dead woman's friends and son try to make sense of her death and eventually connect with the killer's parents.
The Robins was too long and a bit of a disappointment to me: I had heard it was a retelling of Rapunzel, and ultimately it was, but not in a particularly mythic manner and she sure took a long time getting there. It wasn't bad; it just wasn't the book I wanted her to write.
Since I am avidly reading Seanan McGuire's Kindle serial, Indexing, I also tried another Kindle serial, Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: the Thirteenth Rib by David J. Schwartz. It was supposed to be a sort of paranormal X-Files type thing. Let's just say it is nowhere near as good as the McGuire and leave it at that.
I am not a big fan of Amazon, but I'm a sucker for McGuire's writing. Besides Indexing, she also has some of the zombie novellas that she writes as Mira Grant out for the Kindle for very cheap. I thought that once she had finished the trilogy she'd started with Feed, she would be done or I would lose interest. (As I am not a zombie lover.) She's still writing good stuff about zombies. Some are from the viewpoint of Mohir, the British citizen who George had appointed as her successor. Another is the last stand of the Browncoats, the story of the first wave of attacks during a ComicCon and the Firefly fans who did their best to limit the damage. She's my kind of fan girl.
I read the new Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and probably so did everyone else. I'm going to nominate it for the MFA - so will many other people.
At Mythcon, I met Rebecca Anderson, who writes YA as R.J. Anderson. She has a trilogy out, and I liked it - enough to nominate it for next year's children's MFA - but the publishing mess will most likely knock it off the long list. The first two volumes were in my local library. They have different titles from the British editions. (At Mythcon, she had bookmarks about the trilogy with the British titles only as they were from that publisher.) The third book is out in Britain and Canada and there is a version for Kindle, but there are no plans to publish it in the US. This is a pity. I thought the second book was stronger than the first, and it leads into the third book so if you can't get that, it leaves you hanging. I bought the Kindle edition of the third book and enjoyed it. (Titles are Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter (aka Knife), Wayfarer (aka Rebel), and Arrow. I have to say that the British titles make a lot more sense when reading the books.)
So that's the book news from Lake Woebegone Silicon Valley.