What’s hanging around on your Kindle?

(… or other e-reader?)

A copy of Jane Eyre; Persuasion; Northanger Abbey; Carmilla; Middlemarch; Barchester Towers; a Jeeves book.  Father Brown mysteries by G. K. Chesterton.

Several books from the Liaden universe by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (Fledgling).  Lots of short stories by Seanan McGuire.

Almost everything K. J. Charles has ever published!  Romancing the Werewolf by Gail Carriger.  Amethyst by Lauren Royal.  (#2 thinks she deleted Amethyst, but she loves the Temptation series, especially the Consent is Sexy parts of Tempting Juiliana, even if sometimes that heroine is pretty silly– note that the first in that series is still 100% free for kindle and a good read/reread)

Serpentine by Cindy Pon.  At least 1 collection by John Scalzi.  The Corpse Reader by Antonio Garrido.

Random fantasy novels that I got a deal on:  The Native Star by M. K. Hobson; Not Dark Yet by Berit Ellingsen (I don’t remember reading this but apparently I did; I have no memory of it); The Final Formula by Becca Andre (tried to read further in this series but petered out); Ghosts of Tsavo by Vered Ehsani.  Here’s me talking about some of this before.

The Amsterdam Assassin series by Martyn V. Halm.

Several books by Martha Wells (Wheel of the Infinite; City of Bones; etc.). (#2 has all of these in paperback because her hardbacks from high school disappeared for some reason… maybe her BIL ended up with them?)

Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk.  A romance novel I haven’t read yet that I heard about on a podcast.  Novellas by Tiffany Reisz.

Most of Sarah McLean’s Rule of Scoundrels series (A Rogue by Any Other Name), plus some Courtney Milan.  (Some of the Milan has nifty behind the scenes commentary throughout!)

Assorted detritus, short story collections, un-great romance novels, terribly-written fantasy (although I’m trying to delete most of this stuff).  [#2 only keeps very good and great romance novels on hers– even the sub-par Heyer got deleted.]

A couple of the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold; I have most of them in paper books instead.

Here’s some earlier posts on this topic, with links to mostly free or in a few cases inexpensive stuff.  (#2 has literally hundreds of books on her kindle– btw, did you know you could get Shellabarger and Sabatini books for free on your kindle?  #2 had no idea that Sabatini wrote so many boring terrible books in addition to classics like Captain Blood, Scaramouche, and The Sea Hawk.)  (#1 still prefers paper books.) (#2 does too except for traveling which she does a lot of, thus the need for more ebooks.  I’m pretty sure my sister ended up with my Sabatini hardbacks.)

We’re gearing up for holiday reading [and conference trips]… be sure to click our “books” tag to see all kinds of things we’ve read and loved in 2018 (and before).

That oughta keep me occupied for a while!  Whatcha got, Grumpeteers?

Ask the readers: Help! DH stepped on my oldschool Kindle 3

We didn’t have an ask the grumpies thing queued this week because it has been a crazy insane week, but I have an emergency question!

#1 asks:

DH stepped on my old school Kindle 3– the kind with the side page turners (which I love) and the keyboard.  If money is no object, should I get the Voyage, the Paperwhite, the currently-offered no frills kind, or a used ebay replacement?  (Amazon no longer sells refurbished Kindle 3s and the replacement screens are no longer available for sale anywhere.  We tried all the recommended kindle rebooting things and they erased the stuck picture but it still no longer shows new text.)  If money is an object, what would you get?  Anybody have personal experience with multiple kindles?

I don’t have an answer to this.  The replacement kindle 3 is $35 (including S+H) but sold “as-is” from a 99.4% satisfaction store that has sold 45 of them so far.  The no-frills is $99 without ads.  The Paperwhite is $139.  The Voyage is $219.

Like I said, I really like the side page turners, but I haven’t tried reading with the screen touch, so it might be fine.  I am also skeptical of lighting, but again, haven’t tried it so it might be fine.  I don’t want to see how much time the kindle things I have left– I liked the percentage left options, but I might get used to it.  Basically I’m scared of changing up something I like for something that might irritate me.  But it might be fine!  Is it fine?

Thanks in advance for your help.  I need to keep reading She (free on kindle!– also the origin of the honorific “She who must be obeyed”).  Analysis paralysis is not fun at all.

Kindle stuff besides Regencies that we mostly enjoyed

Here are some (mostly) free things we’ve enjoyed reading on the kindle.

Tyger Tyger: A Goblin Wars Book book by Kersten Hamilton (interesting; Celtic mythology)

Cobweb Bride by Vera Nazarian (fairy tale)

BECOME (Desolation #1) by Ali Cross (fantasy YA)

(In none of the above 3 cases was I inspired to pick up the sequel, however.)

I enjoyed The Corpse Reader by Antonio Garrido (which wasn’t free).

I really enjoyed Fledgling (Liaden Universe) by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.  Thanks, Baen Free Library!  This one “worked” for them in that it got me really interested in the universe and now I will buy more books in the series.

Another fun (free!) find was Anna Katherine Green.  Her work is strongly reminiscent of Poe and Doyle. I was entranced with the first paragraph of The Mayor’s Wife which is well worth the read.  Subsequent novels of hers haven’t really been keepers (and there’s been some antisemitism and other assorted racism that make for immediate deletion).  Still, I haven’t tried everything I’ve downloaded yet.  Amazon thinks we should read her Amelia Butterworth mysteries.  [Update, the first is a good mystery so far, but man, had to take a break when I hit racism… this time anti-Chinese-American.]

Ooh, the 2014 Campbellian Anthology of Campbell Award nominees.

I also have some other free stuff (incl. Cory Doctorow) that I haven’t read yet.

Have you found any good free Kindle gems since our last post on the topic?

 

Authors I have been enjoying on my Kindle

Free books and you don’t even have to go to the library to get them! Yay Project Gutenberg.

Maria Thompson Daviess: The Melting of Molly is delightfully tongue in cheek. And has a lovely ending.

A. A. Milne:  He didn’t just write books about Christopher Robin.  I’ve been enjoying his very silly plays.  Belinda, for example.

Mary Roberts Reinhart:  Lovely romantic suspense, lovely romance, lovely suspense.  Fun all around.

Raphael Sabatini:  Sadly not all of his stuff is good; he was prolific.  But they’ve got his best: Captain Blood, Scaramouche, The Sea-Hawk.  Mmmm swashbuckling romance!  I don’t think they have Master at Arms, which is a shame (also titled The Marquis of Carabas… under which you can get it for cash money as a paperback).

Booth Tarkington:  I loved the Penrod books growing up.  (So did my mom!)  They’re like a lower key Tom Sawyer set in a slightly later time period.

Carolyn Wells: The Patty books are so very silly.  So much like brain candy.  Quite soothing!  Even if women’s best career ambition is to be a homemaker. (Ptuii!)

Oscar Wilde:  The Canterbury Ghost, plays, so soothing, so wickedly funny.

P.G. Wodehouse:  There are at least two Jeeves books.  And assorted crap not worth reading (juvenalia, stuff that is a bit racist and just not very good in other ways).  There may be some non crap stuff too but I haven’t gone through it all yet.  Jeeves and Wooster are soothing my anxious soul.  I like hearing Steven Fry and Hugh Laurie in my head as I reread them.  It adds another dimension.

I say!

What are your recommendations for free kindle books?

Books!

What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama.  This is one of the best books I have read in a long while.  It is like a warm hug.  It’s in the Pippa Passes tradition (h/t Connie Willis introducing me to this poem via Bellweather, another excellent novel).  It’s five loosely connected short stories, each its own warm hug, where people just … get better after visiting a community center library and talking to the research librarian.  I read a chapter a day and savored each one.  DC2 devoured it.  DH isn’t quite as enamored of it as the two of us, but is fine with reading it.  If you’d like a book where not much happens, but there’s growth and love… this is the definition of cozy, and not a single murder.  I’m buying a copy in hardcover, because it’s that kind of book. (DC1 found my hard cover copy to be a pleasant Spring Break read.)

The ad copy says if you would like the above book if you liked Before the Coffee Gets Cold…but that’s not actually true.  I DNF Before the Coffee Gets Cold after checking it out in the hopes that it was also a sweet book.  Nope.  Really awful misogynist swill.  Also… just kind of dumb?  So if you hated Before the Coffee Gets Cold, you will probably like the feminist What you are looking for is in the library where the characters are understandable and believable instead of TSTL.

DNF The borrow a boyfriend club.  About halfway through I decided it was dragging and I didn’t like the second hero very much.  We much prefer Ouran High School Host Club (though Haruhi seems much more a-gender, and there’s some bad messages about consent and female fragility in part of it and I really think she should have ended up with one of the other guys) and Boys run the Riot (though so far there hasn’t been any romance).

Tried the Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron.  I am convinced from it that I’m a highly sensitive person.  But other than that I did not find it very helpful and also I think it’s pretty tone deaf for something supposedly for sensitive people given all the content warnings that were needed but not given.  Like, I don’t need to know the beyond awful upbringings that some of her (fictionalized) clients had, particularly not with details.

DNF A Strange and Stubborn Endurance.  DNF The Fake Mate and I don’t remember why but it was something very turnoffy.  DNF The wisteria society of lady scoundrels by india holton, though I got through more of it than I did the other two in the series.  I think she’s just not for me.

School Trip: A Graphic Novel by Jerry Craft was awesome!

A Matter of Secrets and Spies by Honor Raconteur (Henri Davenforth #10) was really disappointing.  It was like half a book.  A novella but without a satisfying conclusion.

The Worst Best Man by Lucy Score was a lot of fun.  If you like romances and don’t mind the f-word (most of the Amazon one star reviews complain about the heroine’s language) this is a fun one.  I do wish they did more talking than sex on screen, but they do have serious conversations … off screen.  We’re told they do anyway.  I very much liked the resolution of the brief third act breakup.

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske was better than the second book in the series.  I did skim bits, but not huge bits.

Got bored with Never Met a Duke Like You by Amalie Howard.  The heroine was kind of annoying.

Finally read the last Agatha Christie book I hadn’t reread during my last go-through of all her stuff.  I’m not sure why The Sittaford Mystery had gone out of print.  It’s fine.  It’s not amazing, and I figured it out right away, but it also wasn’t deadly dull like the second to last one (which I can’t even remember the name of) that had also been out of print.  I’m trying to figure out what to do with the paperback.  Maybe just give it to the library for their booksales.  It’s back in print again, though I’m glad my sister bought me a used copy as it’s really not worth $13 for the paperback, and certainly not $15 for the kindle version.

Emily Wilde’s Encylopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett was excellent.  I had actually checked it out before but by the time it came off the holds list, I thought it was for DC2 instead of for me, so didn’t read it the first time.  DC2 greatly enjoyed it.  I look forward to the second book!

Have you read anything good lately?

Children’s books that are even better as adults

This is a draft from 2013!  Back when we were reading children’s classics to DC1, I think.

Lots of books that you read as a child have suffered from a visit by the suck fairy.  Either they really were aimed for little kids only, or they had awful bigoted parts that either went over your head or your parents omitted when reading to you.

But that’s not true for all children’s books.

Some children’s books are even better than you remember.  Some books have hilarious jokes in them that go straight over kids’ heads because they’re aimed at the adults reading the book.  And when you’re the adult reading the book they add an extra layer on top of the nostalgia.

Here’s three sets of books to try rereading as a grown-up (amazon links are affiliate, though they don’t pay very well, so we’d prefer you just use your favorite bookstore):

Anne of Green Gables

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler (though this also comes with a dose of parental terror if you have children– those poor worried parents!)

Anything by Edward Eager (these are fun and very funny magic books– start with Seven Day Magic or Half Magic– at the time of this writing there’s a $1.99 kindle sale, though I don’t know if it is still going on when this posts.)

What children’s books do you find have gotten better as an adult?

Books

Finally got around to reading the Murderbot series by Martha Wells.  It goes down easy.  All of them are 5 star reads, but Network Effect is truly something special on many levels– a masterpiece that deserved to win all the awards it won.   The next book, Fugitive Telemetry, is kind of out of order chronologically– you should probably read books 1-4 in chronological order but you can read book 6 before book 5 (it may even be before book 4 chronologically, I’m not sure, but not before then).

The Baker’s Daughter by DE Stevenson was a pleasant read– does a good job with not making falling in love with a married man (and dealing with a divorce in the 1930s!) not seem squicky.  Miss Buncle Married was also fun.

Based on anaturalscientist’s recommendation, I too have been reading all of the Ashley Weaver books (historical mystery novels) I can get my hands on.  Some of them are clever, a few of them don’t tell you what you need to know until the last chapter, but they’ve all been fun reads.  I did find A Dangerous Engagement to drag a bit, but it was stil ok.

Also based on your recommendations, I have been enjoying the Perveen Mistry series by Sujata Massey.  Haha, just realized her last name in these murder mysteries is mistry.  Cute.  The Bombay Prince is more sordid and has less humor than the previous two books, so I didn’t like it as much.

I read one of the Abir Mukherjee Wyndham and Banerjee books (Death in the East), but I’m not sure I will read anymore– it takes until the fourth book for the protagonist to stop calling his Sergeant “Surrender-not” instead of his actual name.  I’m not sure I want to read the first three books.

Enjoyed the first two books by Caroline O’Donoghue in The Gifts series.  I’d like to read the third, but the library doesn’t have it and I don’t think I liked it enough to buy.

Daughter of the pirate king by Tricia Levenseller was ok, but I skipped big chunks.

Greatly enjoyed A Newlywed’s Guide to Fortune and Murder by Dianne Freeman.

The Matchmaker’s Gift by Lynda Cohen Loigman was nice.

Skipped large chunks of Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee.  It doesn’t follow the formula, which could be good or bad, depending on your view.  (SPOILER:  Good here, I guess, because the guy you think is the second hero is kind of a jerk.)

I bought and read If Found Return to Hell by Em X. Liu because a couple of authors who I trust gushed about how amazing it is.  But like, it was ok?  If I’d checked it out of the library I would have enjoyed reading it but not felt the need to buy it.  It was cute and fine and twisted some tropes, but not really gushworthy.

After reading a ton of Emily Hendrickson books when I had nothing better to read (and DNF a couple that were just terrible), I finally found one that I liked enough to put on my wishlist!  The Wicked Proposal is worth a read.  : )  It is silly, but also fun.

Tried to read The Crow Trap by Ann Cleves but found the narrator too know-it-all irritating.

The Secret Service of Tea and Treason by India Holton started out really promising.  It’s a farce, so not really deep, and kind of in the style of Gail Carriger but even more farcical.  But… several chapters in the middle were just boring repeats of themselves.  Like, the first time was funny.  The second time might have been funny that it happened again.  But the third through I dunno, 6th time didn’t each need a full chapter.  A lot shorter repetition would have gotten the joke across better, and it wasn’t *that* good a joke.  I skipped a LOT.

I’m going to need to stop buying things just because KJ Charles recommends them.  The Build Up by Tati Richardson and its instalust dragged like crazy.  Instalust at work is not my favorite.  Also skipped large chunks of A Rulebook for Restless Rogues by Jess Everlee.  Though it’s possible I’m libeling KJ Charles here, and it’s actually amazon recommending things to me that I should be ignoring.  I’m not sure in these two instances.  Should stick to what the library has, I guess.

The Corpse at Ravenholm Castle by Jessica Baker was poorly written and dull.  Lots of telling.  Solution to the mystery not very clever.  I didn’t particularly like the heroine.

Hi Honey, I’m Homo! by Matt Baume was very good and a much easier read than his book on Marriage Equality, Defining Marriage (that I still haven’t finished, but it’s good, I swear!)  But if you’ve watched his youtube channel regularly, there’s no new info in it.

Barbara Hambly has a number of short stories that follow on her Spec Fic from the 90s.  I’m not sure how I felt about Castle of Horror (in particular how she handles colorism), but I do think I want to get more of them… except not at $4.99 each (I think it was less when I got it).  But I was a huge fan of these series.  (#2 prefers her Benjamin January mysteries.)  Update:  Just learned that delagar has never read Barbara Hambly.  If you have never read Barbara Hambly, go see what your library has of hers and check something out.  She’s got a few different genres, so there’s something for everyone.  If you’re one of our readers who is only here for the romantic suspense, I recommend Stranger at the Wedding (currently $1.99 on Kindle) and Bride of the Rat God.  For everyone else, she’s got a vampire series (not my fav, but very popular), multiple good fantasy series (in a similar vein to Martha Wells’ early stuff, though also different… like easier to read but less all-absorbing?), some Star Wars stuff, and that extremely popular Benjamin January mystery series.  I have a full shelf of her spec fic, though I haven’t reread any except Stranger at the Wedding and Bride of the Rat God (both comfort reads for me) since having my second kid.  I’m fairly confident the suck fairy has not visited the rest.  Let us know if it has or hasn’t!

Mary Balogh’s books have gotten really repetitive.  Is she forgetting?  Are they trying to dumb down for an audience that has trouble with reading comprehension or with remembering from one chapter to the next?  Does she need filler because of lack of substance?  Is her editor just no good?  These were the questions going through my head as I skipped paragraphs of Remember me:  A Ravenswood novel.  Her earlier stuff is so much tighter.  (Though don’t read anything she wrote published before 1990, or indeed before 2000 if you want to be completely safe.)

What have you been reading?  Any recent must-read recommendations?

Thoughts on Witch King by Martha Wells

We at Grumpy Nation have been huge Martha Wells fans since high school.  She was a must buy for #1 and an occasional read for #2 (who grumbled “sausage fest” about Death of a Necromancer).  I checked hardbacks out of the library as soon as they came available and bought the paperbacks (and occasional hardback!) as soon as I could and read and reread.

At the time she was writing really interesting fantasy, generally new and different fantasy not set in Lord of the Rings fan fic worlds.  There were vast deserts and lush riverlands.  Time spun differently.  Sometimes it wasn’t clear what was magic and what wasn’t.  She was sometimes similar to Zelazny in good ways — you were always thrown in the world (no need for an American to be transported there) and you generally didn’t figure everything out until the very end.

Death of the Necromancer was a bit different in that it was set in a standard Steampunk universe (though note from the link there it’s an early Steampunk book)… though also, as we find out in the Raksura trilogy, it’s actually much larger.  (Also I’m still annoyed about who she killed off and how between those books.  Makes Death of a Necromancer a true sausage fest.)

These books (with the exception of Death of a Necromancer) are generally not easy reads.  They require thinking and memory and probably some level of intelligence.

I bought, but did not read, The Cloud Roads series which was her last series before she went silent, re-emerging as the best-selling Murderbot author.  They looked hard, and they were about dragons and I’m not really into dragon books (and at the time the US markets weren’t either– they were into Vampires, dragons having finally gone out of fashion a few years prior).  DH read the first one for me and said I probably wouldn’t enjoy it so I didn’t make it a priority.

I’ve reread Death of a Necromancer several times since having children, but haven’t actually reread the other dusty Martha Wells novels on my shelf.  (It doesn’t help that I loaned a few to DH in college and he gave them to his brother so I no longer have the full set that I used to have.)  I’ve only read the Raksura books once, and only while traveling.  They’re just to hard to read and keep up with everything else going on in my life.  I read crappy romance novels that follow tropes where it’s obvious what is going on, everyone knows how they’re going to end before they start, and I’m so familiar with the shared trope-ic setting that my brain can fill in any missing pieces.

(I admit, I have not read Murderbot either.  DH has read them all.  #2 has read them all.  I will probably get around to reading them, but DH says they’re not really my thing and he’s usually right.  My understanding is that as novellas, they’re a bit easier on the brain than her usual fare.  Which is possibly why they took off to stratospheric heights while her earlier work was just popular.  More accessible, though not necessarily actually better.)

But Witch King is her first new fantasy book in years and I had to get it.  I actually got it from the library since Christmas is 6 months away and I wasn’t sure what format I wanted it in (all of my Martha Wells books except The Cloud Roads are in paper, not kindle).  It took about a week, but I have finished it.  And I have Thoughts.

First off:  I don’t think it’s a good idea to get the kindle version.  They didn’t include X-ray, so it is pretty clunky to get to the first pages of the book where it lists the dramatis personae.  You may have a better memory than I do, but I really needed that list.  X-ray where I could easily skip to the last time we saw that person would have been even better.

Some minor spoilers below:

The book is actually two novellas that have been interlaced with each other.  One is about the past.  One is set in the present.

What really doesn’t work for me is the interlacing generally happens at cliff-hangers rather than natural stopping points.  You’ll get to a really exciting part and then BAM suddenly you’re back to the present time and trying to remember what the cliffhanger a chapter ago was, OR you’re in the present and hit a cliff-hanger and need to remember what the cliffhanger in the past was 3-5 chapters ago.  It is unnecessarily hard on my brain.  [DH notes that sometimes the present has a chapter that ends in a cliffhanger and then the next chapter doesn’t pick up from the cliff! He’s like here’s what you were complaining about but it’s on the next page.]

I don’t think the book would actually be improved by reading all of the past chapters first and then all the present chapters next.  The past chapters are much more thrilling than the present chapters [DH notes that the first two past chapters are contained prologues and not that exciting, and I will agree they are not as exciting], and I think that ordering would be a bit of a let-down.  I do plan to try this in the future, however.

The book has the standard Martha Wells compelling characters, exciting scenes, being thrown directly into the world, and not really knowing what was going on until the end.  Unfortunately, for the present-day storyline I’m not 100% sure I really got what happened in the end.  DH is checking the hardback out from the library (huge lines for the audio version and the ebook, but their single paper copy was actually in stock) and he will read it and explain it to me to see if I got it right.  (If I got it right, the present day ending is a bit of an out-of-nowhere let-down.  If not, then it’s probably cool and interesting.)

It’s shorter than most pre-Murderbot novels.  I think she could have easily made an epic fantasy trilogy with this world, these events, and the events that happened between the two novellas (which could have been your standard Star Wars style: battle/empire strikes back/victory, though the events in the present time are actually post-victory).  But I don’t think that would have sold well with the Murderbot audience.  And it’s risky to try.  It’s not clear to me that there’s another obvious book in this series, so it may be a one-off, like so many of her earlier works.  Though there are a lot of unanswered questions leftover, including one that seems like a teaser.

Also:  The Witch King is definitely not a sausage-fest.  The world is at least 50% female, maybe more.  And gender is a spectrum.  Gay marriage is normal and important for the book’s plot (in fact, is part of the present-day MacGuffin).

Are you a Martha Wells fan?  Have you tried Witch King?  How do you like your fantasy?

Books!

Whoops, I returned a bunch of books without writing about them.  Oh well!

Tried to read A Duke for Diana by Sabrina Jeffries.  The concept was great.  The first half was great.  And about halfway through it was dumb with dumb tropes (probably not a spoiler to say he thinks his dad committed suicide and shouldn’t marry because of it since it’s hinted to so broadly early on, at least I think that’s why he thinks he can’t marry given the broad hints) that don’t really follow from anything and are like she couldn’t figure out anything new or related to the concept to cause tension in the story.  Like, why not go with the concept which has its own tensions and move from there?  DNF.  So I don’t know if he finds out that his father didn’t commit suicide or that he’s a bastard.  I don’t think he finds out his dad was murdered, which is the interesting solution in other books with this trope (bastard is less interesting, “I’m the son of a sea-cook!”… best is when they get a little lecture on the sins of the fathers not transmitting to the sons, but it’s still a dumb trope with a dumb hero believing dumb things). Maybe the books with the other two sisters will be less dumb-troped.

I really liked The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry by C. M. Waggoner.  Much better than the first book in the series (and about the next generation).  Much more cohesive in all respects, and no dumb tropes.

DNF Murder Most Actual by Alexis Hall.

Surprisingly, Extra Witchy by Ann Aguirre was better than the first two books in the series!

For some reason I have given Drunk on Love by Jasmine Guillory 2 stars to remind myself never to try to read it again.  That means it had something awful in it.  Ah, it’s a creepy employer/employee relationship that did not manage to be not creepy even though it probably could have been (like if he had let her know he didn’t need her job).  I think that was it?  But maybe it was something else.  Maybe how he lied to his mom for no good reason except to attempt to have plot?  I don’t remember.  I think it was the mom thing.

DNF What if It’s Us by Adam Silvera.  Too much boy loses boy.  Not enough boy spends time to get to know boy.  So much angst.

Somehow missed the latest Henri Davenforth book by Honor Raconteur, This Potion is Da Bomb.  It was very good.  These procedurals are so readable.

A little late this year, but I read Lady Osbaldestone’s Christmas Intrigue by Stephanie Laurens.  It was readable.  I was a bit skeeved by this 20-something guy moping because a 14  year old girl had been sent away since they seemed to be in love and she was too young.  (Seriously TOO YOUNG.)  But apparently they don’t meet again for another 10 years, and 24/30 seems like a much healthier age gap.  Just, in real life, any 20-something into any 14  year old is not going to be into a 24 year old ever, because 20-somethings into 14 year olds are not looking for a healthy relationship.  UGH.

Enjoyed more books by Stella Riley.  I think I will end up buying her entire backlist eventually.  I just noticed that The Parfit Knight is only 99 cents on kindle if you want to give her a try.  It took a little bit for me to keep all the characters separate in my head, but after I got the hang of it, that series was very good.  (I also didn’t read that one first– they can be read in any order… at some point I’ll read them in the intended order– I think I read them most stars to least stars when I started out.)

Skipped through to the unsatisfying ending of Death at Wentwater Court— the slang was really overused and irritating.  I’ve read a lot of bright young things books written at the actual time and while the slang is accurate, the use is not— young women trying to be respectful to older men don’t use it even if they use it with young men their own age.  Maids don’t use it with employers until after WWII when they’re getting paid more!  My kids don’t talk about rizz to me but the applying to college Reddit is full of it.  It’s just really jarring…I don’t normally complain about misuse of language in historical fiction but here I think the misuse isn’t the time period but all the signals the use or disuse of slang sends during interactions.  It reads like the author is trying to be clever with look at all the 1920s/30s slang I know but not really thinking about its use.  Also the end was dumb.

Finally read (and returned to DC2) The Triumphant Tale of Pippa North by Temre Beltz, while not quite as amazing as the first book in the series, it was still pretty fantastic, and I wish the author would write more!

Also finally finished Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie.  It dragged, which is possibly why it’s not in print (or at least wasn’t when I picked up a used copy).  Two books down in my bedside pile…

The Care and Feeding of Books

This draft is from 2012:

Here’s the part I’m not really sure what we were talking about:

largely inspired by Anne Fadiman (this post)

Gladstone’s quotes

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books – even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.

buying new bookshelves for fancy books

should we reorganize?

And here’s a part that I think deserves its own post:

Are you a courtly lover or a carnal lover of books?

#1 is a carnal lover.  Anne Fadiman is as well (if #2 recalls correctly).  #1 dog-ears and writes and highlights and outlines.  She experiences the books. (She doesn’t do this to other people’s books or library books, just her own, of which she has many.)  She also dislikes the kindle.

#2 often uses bookmarks, though usually repurposed things— hair bands, receipts, etc.  She will occasionally leave a book open flat, but the only book she ever dogears is a paper conference catalogue.  She doesn’t usually write in fiction books.  She loves the kindle, especially for travel but hates its notes feature because it will often create a note when she just wanted a translation or a definition.  She does write in things for work.  It’s easier to process non-fiction when one is allowed to underline and star and write in the margins.  But fiction is pleasantly forgotten to be picked up and enjoyed once more almost as new, but with the familiar knowledge that everything is going to be ok.  She is not quite a courtly lover, but is much closer to that ideal.

Which are you, Grumpeteers?