Bookish Thoughts

This was my favorite John Scalzi book yet, and it's likely to be my favorite of the entire series. A lot of that is due to the protagonist/narrator. Zoe has a fantastic voice, and it was so much fun to read about this smart, sarcastic girl coming of age. But I also think Scalzi is starting to get the hang of the book writing thing. This novel is paced much better than any of the previous ones and there are fewer dangling threads left at the end of it. Zoe's Tale is actually a retelling of The Last Colony , but from Zoe's point of view instead of her father's. This is one of my favorite author tricks. I love revisiting a story from a different perspective. Scalzi did this to fill in gaps and soothe angry fans after the previous book, which was supposed to be the end of the series. Honestly, I would have been madder about that one if I'd thought it was the end. There were so many unanswered questions. But with this one he does a stellar job of redressing his mistak

This was a book club pick, otherwise I wouldn't have finished it. I'm still a little mad that I did finish it. I could have been reading other, better books in that time. Not that this was really bad. But it was incredibly frustrating. At least some of that was probably my expectations. I went into this expecting a biography of Hedy Lamarr, or at least something closer to a biography than this ended up being. It bills itself as a fictionalized version of her life. So that's on me for expecting more from it. But the author took so many liberties with Lamarr's life that I had a hard time trusting her. It was like she'd built up a version of Hedy Lamarr that she wanted and changed to facts to fit that woman. Which does the real woman a huge disservice. On top of that, the second half of the book felt phoned in. It read more like an outline than a novel. There wasn't nearly enough focus on the relationships Lamarr built up or on what must have been a difficult a

I will start this by saying that when you name your two protagonists Lizzie and Darcy, you create certain expectations. Even if one of them is a character in a book written by the other one. But especially when one is revealed to be bisexual early on and the other one is, as I said, her creation. And especially when the book is billed as a paranormal romance. So this wasn't the book I was expecting or hoping it would be. Darcy is an eighteen year old who miraculously sells her first novel as part of a two-book deal and moves to NYC for a year to work on revisions, write her second book, and figure out if she can make it as an author. Lizzie is the protagonist of her book, a high school kid who discovers that she's a psycho pomp and falls in love with the God of Death. Sadly, their worlds never cross. This is basically two books, told in alternating chapters. And while the events of the "real world" inform the shape of Darcy's novel to some extent, there's

This book was a ton of fun. I loved the couple, especially Lady Penelope and her huge, caring heart. The two leads went from frustration to attraction a tad to quickly to be really believable, and Penelope overcame a metric ton of trauma without any outside help or support. But I don't read these books for the realism. I read them for the happy, in-love couple and the crackling chemistry and the sizzling sex scenes. And there were plenty of those. I actually prefer it when the couple gets together earlier. Slow burns are definitely enjoyable, but I like being able to actually watch the couple be happy together for a while on the page. And this book definitely had that. The issues keeping them apart were almost non-existent and easily dealt with. It was more just a matter of these two finding their way to each other and then letting themselves be happy. Which they both very much wanted to do. I'm excited for the last book in this series now. It's a lot of fun to follow a

Years ago I read and loved Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian . So I didn't think too hard when I saw this book at the library book sale. It just went straight into my bag. I guess I assumed that it would be about vampires, too. And I was mildly disappointed to discover that there was nothing at all supernatural here. This is the story of a woman who travels to Bulgaria. She accidentally takes the bag of a family when she helps them into a taxi, and when she discovers that the bag contains a man's ashes she vows to return it to the family. Her own taxi driver agrees with this, frankly insane, decision and they spend the next several days driving all over the country, slowly learning about the life of the man whose ashes they carry. The man's life story is told in parallel through flashbacks and stories. His story was the more interesting of the two, and finding out what happened to him is what propelled me through the book. I learned a lot about Bulgarian history tha

This is one of those stories that imprinted on me. I was slowly becoming obsessed with Neil Gaiman when I first read it, and I hadn't quite realized that you could do stuff like this, yet. Remix fairy tales, mix and match genres, change the perspective and the story so completely and yet leave it wholly recognizable. It helps that I've always loved vampires. But really, Snow White as a vampire just makes so much sense. When I first read this story, I couldn't believe that I hadn't thought of it first. And I loved and hated Neil Gaiman a bit in equal measure giving me this beautiful, horrifying tale. This is about the recent graphic novel version of this story, though. It's gorgeous. The art is amazing and the perfect complement to this lovely story about a demon and the woman who tried and failed to save her kingdom. It's always haunted me, and now it can haunt me in technicolor.

This book is brutal, even moreso than the first one. But it has more hope, too. It's the book that made me fall in love with Octavia Butler, the book I think everyone should read, the book I want to get tattooed on my body. Does that make it my favorite book? I suppose it's a strong contender. Although it isn't a comfort read the way so many of my favorites can be classified, so I can't re-read it quite as often. But it's a book that I know I'll continue to come back to and get more out of each time. I really appreciate that this book is told in more than Lauren's voice. Her daughter offers a strong counterpoint to her and really elevates everything. The tension between them hurts so much, especially as more of their history is revealed. I actually wish the book had a little bit more of Asha Vere, especially after she met her mother. I suppose that would have gone in the next book, though. The one Butler didn't have time to write.

This was a lovely little story about love and identity with just a hint of magic sprinkled over the top for flavoring. The bulk of it takes place in San Francisco in the 1940s, where several women are living and making art on the fringes of society. When two of them fall in love, it's almost too good to be true. And when their relationship is inevitably threatened, the two have to find a way to stay together. There were so many elements of this story that I loved - the history, the art, the love story. Klages clearly did a lot of research and her setting comes to life on the page. She examines both the queer experience and the immigrant experience at this particular place and time and the incredible specificity is a great illustration of what this was like in general. I wish there had been a hint more magic, but what was there was a nice bit of seasoning for what was, at it's core, historical fiction. I was just expecting something that leaned a bit more heavily towards fan

This book has one of the strongest openings of any book I've read in recent memory. I fell in love with it from the second sentence and never looked back. The entire book was atmospheric and lyrical and I can't wait to read it again. Unfortunately, one of the reasons I'm going to need to read it again is that I felt like I missed a lot the first time through. That's more my fault than the book's. It demanded more focus than I could give it. When I tried to read it five minutes at a time between my kids' demands, I kept losing the thread. I had to go back and re-read sections, sure I'd missed stuff, only to discover that the book was simply too subtle for my sleep-deprived and kid-distracted brain. But man, was it beautiful. Hopefully next year I'll have a chance to revisit it, to really sit down and give it the attention it deserves.