Bookish Thoughts

This was an absolutely lovely little paranormal romance. The heroine is a witch who was raised on a vineyard. She uses her magic to take care of the grapes and produce an exceptional vintage. Until someone turns her into a toad. The book opens as she's finally breaking the curse. She returns home to discover that many years have passed and that a new man has bought the vineyard. This new guy is willing to let her stay, but he believes in science not magic, and he doesn't want her casting any spells or other nonsense. But of course the two of them find a way to meet in the middle, figure out who cursed the witch in the first place, and raise the vineyard back up to its former glory with an exceptional vintage of wine. And they kiss and fall in love, too. Really, this whole book was just a wonderful bit of escapism.

But things change as time passes; nothing lasts, not even stone, not even happiness.  This book came highly recommended. At Thanksgiving a few years ago, a friend mentioned really liking it, which put in on my radar. Later, someone else said it was one of their favorites, which always pushes something higher up my to-read list. And then I discovered that the board game Terraforming Mars was based on this trilogy, and I knew I had to read it. I'm not sure I'd call this book a favorite, though it was interesting. Sending people to Mars, establishing a colony, eventually transforming it to support life is an incredibly exciting and compelling idea. And these books do it well. The science is in depth, though outdated, and the challenges humanity faces are real and hard. This is a very interesting book. But it's also a very dense and occasionally dry book. It took me a really long time to get through, and I had to skim a few passages that I found too boring. Then again, sometime...

I picked this one up again because I needed something light and quick and happy. It is still all of those things while also being wonderful and fun. This could easily become one of those go-to books whenever I need a bit of a pick-me-up

After taking several months off, I finally made it back to my book club the month we read The Library Book . This one took me a while to get through. It was a little bit dry, but it ended up being interesting. This book is about the central library in LA. It takes as it's entry point the time the library burned down and the arson investigation that happened after, digging in to the main suspect's life. The author also looks at the deeper history of the library - how it grew and changed under varying leadership through the decades. And she follows around the current staff to get a sense of how the library operates today. These three threads are all woven together in a way that got frustrating at times. The various threads meant that this book wandered and jumped around a lot. It worked for me, because I was having trouble focusing at that point anyway. Each chapter is pretty self-contained, so I was able to follow those. But I had a hard time putting it all together and remember...

This was a wonderfully cozy little story about hanging out in the woods and falling in love unexpectedly. Then it got really sad. But then it got really happy again. I enjoyed reading it. It sent me through a delightful emotional journey and wrung out some of my grief. I'll definitely be picking up the sequel at some point. Probably.

This was another book about doing what little you can and letting that be enough. It follows a group of nuns living aboard a biological space ship (more slug than ship really) and administering what help they can at the edges of civilization. They perform happy deeds, like marriages and baptisms. They also perform harder deeds, like quarantining planets when plagues break out. They make hard decisions and they each struggle with their relationship with God and the church in their own way. But they all want to help as much as they can, even though they know that they can't change the whole world (or universe as the case may be).

With this book, Winston Graham jumps forward in time ten years and shifts the focus to the next generation. I wasn't expecting it, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Ross and Demelza and the rest are all still in the books, but the bulk of them is about their kids. In a way I'm happy because I like Ross and Demelza and the lack of stories about them means that they're basically happy. There isn't that much drama in their life. But I also care a lot more about them than I do about their kids. It might just take a few books for me to be as interested in Jeremy and Clowance. Hopefully I'll get there, though.