"Whatever shall I do? I’m powerless against the wiles of my mighty Southron captor." You know a book is good when the heroine can say that and the dialogue tags don't even have to tell you she's laughing when she says it ( Read more... )

Lex got me a thing for my birthday. (I mean aside from an lj post.) She got me a Basque dictionary that was printed sometime around 1985 in Idaho. It is currently my favorite dictionary even though it has not helped me with my online class much so far. For example, I needed to look up the word "dessert" to translate a sentence about some ( Read more... )

The last one was a good book, so it's the turn of a not-so-good book. I did finish, but halfway through the climactic chase scene I got distracted and did a Basque lesson ( Read more... )

I picked this up at Common Good Books because it was by a Basque author; I bought it because I liked the first few pages. In general it is sort of the same as Homage to Catalonia: the fascists are obviously evil, the communists are deviously evil, and the protagonists end up expatriates for trying to protect what they love, in a political world ( Read more... )

I dreamed I was Vlad, infiltrating a corporation in disguise, trying to figure out whether the incompetent assassin they hired at a meeting (with me present) to kill me was really that incompetent or was Mario in disguise. Then tried to figure out whether Mario would actually accept a contract to kill me, or someone had found leverage on him. I ( Read more... )

Dear diary.

Christmas Eve service was lovely. Sang until it hurt (not enough water), and all the choir numbers were amazing and John Stevens played O Holy Night on his tuba* to open and it was just generally amazing. I got soberer the longer it went; I had two cups of wine and an hour nap right before.

It hasn't sunk in that I'm moving. That I ( Read more... )

I snapped this up from the ARC shelf at that place I still sometimes work. I'm usually not interested in anything we get, the romance is usually REALLY bad paranormal (like, writing too yucky for me to bother with), and I actually liked Devil Wears Plaid (same author, Teresa Medeiros; very different book ( Read more... )

I have to admit, I skimmed about a quarter of this book. It's just not that good. The hero is cardboard, the word "masculine" is hilariously overused, the writing, plotting, and pacing are all pretty eh ( Read more... )

I just tried reading something called "Marked" about a waitress at a strip club and a descendant of Heracles, and stopped after something like ten pages. The "hero" uses mind-control magic on the "heroine." He also intends to marry, for political reasons, a lesbian. He doesn't treat her sneaking out to strip clubs with sympathy. The writing ( Read more... )

Fade the Heat, by Colleen Thompson. I'm pretty sure this thing is romantic suspense. It's not my subsection so I'm not a hundred percent sure, but there's fires and mangled dead bodies and kidnappings and stuff. He's a doctor, she's a firefighter. It's set in Houston and race--Hispanic versus Anglo--is a central issue. I'm not pleased that she ( Read more... )