The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

A Christmas Party (originally published as Envious Casca) Georgette Heyer, 1941 Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas Premise: When the far-flung Herriard clan comes together for Christmas, sparks fly. It's a classic locked-room mystery with the death of a wealthy patriarch and a house full of suspects. Even though this felt like deja vu, (how many times have I read/seen this plot?) I enjoyed it thoroughly, mostly because the characters were so interesting. The characters are more colorful and complex than I've found in many mysteries of this style. Joseph the affable aging actor who's masterminding the party, his stolid wife Maud and her obsession with reading biographies, Paula and the aspiring playwright she drags to the party. We spend the most time shadowing cousin Mathilde who's stylish and practical, down-to-earth and gently sardonic in the face of ludicrous situations. I spotted the murderer right away, (seriously, have I read this story before?) b...

Jingle Belle - The Whole Package Paul Dini, et al., 2016 Premise: Santa’s got a daughter, and she’s been a rebellious teenager for longer than most humans live. Apparently Paul Dini has been writing short adventures starring Jingle Belle, Santa’s spoiled teenage daughter, off and on since 1999. This thick volume collects nearly all of them: 28 short pieces according to the credits pages. I was actually pleasantly surprised by some of the early stories - despite being very slapstick on the surface, Jingle’s mix of anger, mischief, caring and defiance often felt like a fairly honest representation of a teenage girl. Jingle’s been a teenager for a long time, too. Her mother is queen of the elves and her father is Santa, so she’s been “sixteen” for many years. She doesn’t have patience for holiday sappiness, and she’s usually lazy, thoughtless and out for herself. She’s eternally frustrated that no one in the world at large knows about her. When she does try to be “good,” it oft...

Silent Night (A Raine Stockton Dog Mystery) Donna Ball, 2011 Christmas crossposting! (Note: Many of the Christmas books I am reading this year have one notable thing in common -- they were all cheap or free on Kindle some time in the last few years. No other qualifications.) Premise: Raine Stockton runs an obedience school, or she would if the contractors would finish upgrading her facility. She trains dogs, keeps dogs, and sometimes that means she follows their noses right into trouble. This is another cozy mystery that’s more what I would call romantic slice-of-life with a pinch of mystery. Raine’s friends, job, and trouble with men are, if not interchangeable with others I’ve read, certainly of a type. The mystery isn’t much of the story - someone is stealing nativity Jesuses and some puppies are abandoned. Also a teenager’s abusive father turns up mysteriously dead, but Raine and company only briefly feel like they are in any danger, and she only gets involved because ...

A Big Sky Christmas William W. Johnstone* and J.A. Johnstone, 2013 (Note: Many of the Christmas books I am reading this year have one notable thing in common -- they were all cheap or free on Kindle some time in the last few years. No other qualifications.) *As I discovered at the end of the book, this was one of many books written from notes/unfinished manuscripts by another after this author’s death. Premise: Famous frontiersman Jamie McCallister hadn’t intended to get involved, but someone had to get the pilgrims to Montana by Christmas. I told Erin I read a Western. I said it was boring. He said, “Yup, then it’s a western.” This book wasn’t terribly written, I guess, but I found it quite dull. All the characters are either good or evil. All the evil characters end up dead, mostly after surprisingly short, not-very-tense action scenes. All the obvious plot hooks are followed up with almost no surprises. It must be odd, to write a Western today. If someone’s just writi...

Murder in Christmas River Meg Muldoon, 2012 Christmas crossposting! (Note: Many of the Christmas books I am reading this year have one notable thing in common -- they were all cheap or free on Kindle some time in the last few years. No other qualifications.) Premise: Cinnamon Peters is determined to win this year’s gingerbread house competition. It’s good press for her pie shop, and showing up her rival is just icing on the proverbial cake. But when one of the judges turns up dead behind her shop and an old flame cruises back into town, she’ll have more than a contest to worry about. This is one of those cozy mysteries that’s closer to the romance end of the spectrum, but I think it works. Cinnamon is a likeable protagonist: emotional without being too sappy, short-tempered at times, snarky but overall kind. Other characters include her friend Kara, her grandfather she’s looking after, her rival in the competition, her new/old crush, her jerk ex-husband, and other townsfo...

NorthStars Volume 1: Welcome to Snowville Jim Shelley, Haigen Shelley, Anna Liisa Jones, 2016 Premise: Santa’s daughter and the princess of the yetis go on an afternoon adventure to save Christmas. This sweet comic book from Action Lab Comics is a digital-first release this year, planned to be a gift-ready hardcover next year. The story isn’t anything more than it appears to be, but it’s a cute, well-done tale. The art is clean and bright and the writing is clever. Some of the little details and tweaks on holiday lore were things I’d never seen before and quite liked. Holly Claus meets Frostina under parental pressure, but they hit it off immediately. During a quick tour of Santa’s workshop, they run into a goblin who reports (in crayon-drawing speech bubbles representing a language barrier) that Krampus is interfering with the goblins who prepare the Christmas coal. The girls travel under Snowville to investigate, facing harvest-themed straw men and a snow dragon on the w...

Ho-Ho-Homicide Kaitlyn Dunnett, 2014 Christmas crossposting! (Note: Many of the Christmas books I am reading this year have one notable thing in common -- they were all cheap or free on Kindle some time in the last few years. No other qualifications.) Premise: When Liss’ old friend Gina blows into town with a request concerning an inherited Christmas tree farm, Liss thinks it’s a good opportunity for a casual vacation. It’s been years since she stumbled into a murder investigation, after all. This is a perfectly serviceable mystery novel. The characters are fine, the writing is good, the plot is interesting even though the villains are too obvious. The best part is the fact that it is set on a Christmas tree farm. It actually takes place in late November, and Liss and her husband are tasked with figuring out whether Gina can turn a profit that year, and eventually with figuring out what happened to the previous owner and an unknown man killed on the property years ago....

The Vor Game (Vorkosigan Saga) Lois McMaster Bujold, 1990 Hugo Winner - 1991 Premise: Miles Vorkosigan graduates from the Imperial Service Academy and gets his first assignment: Weather Officer at a remote, unhappy base. Later, foiling plots and surviving the complex intrigue of interplanetary warfare should be easy. In the internal chronology of the series, this book follows The Warrior’s Apprentice (and the Hugo-winning novella The Mountains of Mourning ). However, it was written after several additional novellas and a novel which take place later. This isn’t one that I re-read as frequently as some others in this series, but reading it again now, perhaps I should revise that habit. The story mainly concerns a series of adventures and misadventures in the Hegen Hub, a crossroads in space held between four planetary powers, each jockeying for position, spying on each other, and nervous about increased tensions. The beginning isn’t the strongest part. Miles is shipped...

I have two reviews in queue, but I don't feel right posting anything yet. I'll just leave some old links here, shall I? The Handmaid's Tale Bitch Planet: Extraordinary Machine (Volume One) The Feminine Mystique Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef Gabrielle Hamilton, 2011 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a food memoir Premise: Gabrielle Hamilton has a successful restaurant in New York City, but she’s always trying to capture an experience of food that you don’t normally find in the food industry. In this memoir, she traces her life from her quirky childhood through her unconventional attempts at education to her unusual marriage and the relationship with food that runs under it all. I struggled with finding a book for this challenge. I started one and dropped it, perused a lot of lists and nothing called to me. Then I saw this book on several lists of great food memoirs, and it was available from the library as an audiobook on a day when I needed a new audiobook. It must have been fate, because I really liked this one. And it’s only partially because it contains some of the best descriptions of my alma mater I’ve ...

The Murder of Mary Russell (Mary Russell, Book 14) Laurie R. King, 2016 Premise: Mary Russell is home alone when a visitor with an old grudge comes calling. But this stranger’s issue isn’t with her, or with Holmes, but with… Mrs. Hudson? After being sometimes underwhelmed by some recent entries in this series, I put off reading this one for a while. Now that I have read it, I’d say it’s fine, but nothing outstanding. Most of the book takes place out of sequence. After a dramatic opening which sets up Russell’s possible demise, the narrative jumps into the past to tell the secret history of Mrs. Hudson, occasionally jumping briefly back to the present to follow the investigation into what happened to Russell. This series has always lived in that space between pastiche, homage, and fanwork. This volume in particular pulls more from the Holmes canon, drawing connections between various stories and slotting in an expanded dramatic backstory for a minor female character. As...

The Empress Game Rhonda Mason, 2015 Premise: Kayla and her brother have been hiding or on the run since their home planet was attacked by troops from the galactic empire. She’s made a new, bare-bones life by fighting in a backwater gladiatorial arena. Now she has the opportunity to get them either safety or in a lot more trouble when she’s asked to double for a princess competing to marry the heir to the empire. I remember seeing a strong recommendation for this book, so I picked it up when it was on sale. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The book isn’t terrible. The writing is fine, and some of the world-building (the psychic society that Kayla comes from) is intriguing. But the plot is silly on the surface and doesn’t improve with execution. This highly technical galactic empire has a physical contest where prospective empresses attempt to beat one another into submission. It makes no sense, to the point that Kayla actually attempts to lampshade the situation in-worl...

The Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam, 2010 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a nonfiction book about science Premise: “How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives.” This is a fascinating survey of research around unconscious reactions, and when they can and can’t be overridden by our conscious minds. There is a lot about bias. In some cases, no matter how tolerant and fair-minded we may be consciously, the biases we pick up from society may override our intentions. There was one particularly interesting piece of evidence that people found it easier to react without bias after having sugar. There are details about the invisible currents caused by gender biases. This section includes more detailed stories from a few prominent transgender researchers I’ve heard of before and their unique perspectives on society and privilege. There is a fascinating chapter on herd mentality, group-think, and disasters...

Hamilton: The Revolution Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jeremy McCarter, 2016 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a play (Yes, I'm cheating a little.) Premise: The complete annotated libretto of the smash musical Hamilton , along with short articles about the writing, production, and cast. I loved the cast album for Hamilton , but I wasn’t planning on reading this book anytime soon until it occurred to me that I could use it for the challenge. It does contain all the words spoken on stage, so I think it counts as a play. First: the style of the book is lovely. It’s full of photos, big color production shots and candid dressing room black and white snaps. The design of the book itself evokes the duality in the show. The articles - about hip-hop, about the writing of the show, about President Obama’s visit - are each introduced with a header in the style of a pamphlet or a newspaper from the 1780s. The book contains both photos of composer and star Lin-Ma...

Cyteen CJ Cherryh, 1988 Hugo Winner - 1989 Premise: You live, you make enemies and friends, you work, and you die. But what happens to a child who inherits your enemies. Your friends. Your work. Especially if the child is a clone... This is a hard book to talk about, particularly because I listened to it as an audiobook. A 37-hour audiobook. It was less reading a book and more drowning in 20 years of an alternate reality. At the beginning, Ariane Emory is more than a hundred and twenty years old, councilor for the Science bureau, a political power in and out of Reseune. Reseune is an independent, highly advanced science facility on the planet Cyteen. It supplies longevity treatments and cloning. Reseune also provides “azi,” people who are heavily engineered genetically and mentally to be suited to particular purposes. No one has been able to clone a “special” (exceptionally talented person) like Ariane, not in an exact way. You would have to recreate both nature ...

Summerlong Peter S. Beagle, 2016 New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. Premise: Abe and Joanna like their life. He’s retired, she’s finishing out her career. She has her place in Seattle, but they spend plenty of time at his place on Gardner Island. It’s a quiet, normal life until they meet Lioness. This is not the first book I’ve read set in Seattle since moving here, but it is the most evocative. The city and Puget Sound are beautifully and accurately described. The descriptions are the best part of this book, and they are truly lovely. The picture of the places, the feelings, the people, are all gorgeously nuanced. Lioness is a mysterious young woman who appears working at a restaurant on the island. People are drawn to her, trust her without thinking. Mysterious things happen around her, flowers bloom, animals and children react to her. Joanna’s grown daughter Lily is immediately in love. It’s a melancholy, thought...

Feed (Newsflesh Book 1) Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire), 2010 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a horror book Premise: Georgia, Shaun, and Buffy are too young to remember a world without zombies. Their job: to go out and report on it. This has been the summer of Seanan McGuire for me, as I try a little bit of everything. Here writing as Mira Grant, she’s presenting a sci-fi horror story in the aftermath of a zombie outbreak. Society changed forever, but there are still politics and conspiracies and news. And there are bloggers. The three main characters: Georgia, the narrator, her brother Shaun, and their friend Buffy are a blogging team that goes into dangerous territory and reports on what they find. They are part of a community providing both news and entertainment to a population mostly hiding in fortified homes and enclaves. The story follows them as they get a huge opportunity: follow a presidential hopeful around. They jump at the chan...

Last Night, A Superhero Saved My Life Edited by Liesa Mignogna, 2016 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a collection of essays Premise: 22 authors write about their relationships with comics and superheroes. Happily or unhappily, the worst piece in this collection is the first. I was so dismayed to read a pale, pathetic piece about how Batman inspired some well-off guy I’m not familiar with to be a writer. There’s a better piece later in the book with the same thrust - superheroes inspired me to be creative. And that’s fine. But boring. The second piece is a raw, passionate, beautifully written essay from a woman whose rage causes her to connect viscerally with the Hulk, and how she eventually walks away from an abusive, toxic family life. The essays are overall interesting and often funny, but there is a bright line between the ones that are about the creative process, or even one I quite liked about a love for Spider-Man and a love for Ma...

Rosemary and Rue (October Daye, Book 1) Seanan McGuire, 2009 Premise: Half-faerie Toby Daye has been trapped by a spell for 14 years while the world went on without her. When an acquaintance calls her for help, her first response is “no,” but Countess Winterrose is not taking no for an answer, and Toby needs help whether she wants it or not. I have been interested in reading more by McGuire since I saw her speak at Emerald City Comic Con, so I’m diving into her urban fantasy series with the first book. This was a really solid read. I really liked the world a lot: the various courts and aspects of faerie society. There’s no info-dumping, you just glimpse the edges of much larger subjects as they arise. There is one scene that deals with a formal presentation to a ruler, and the writing for that is incredibly beautiful. I liked Toby (October); she isn’t unique among paranormal/urban fantasy heroines, but she’s snarky and tough and fun to follow around. My favorite aspect...

No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished (Heartstrikers, Book 3) Rachel Aaron, 2016 Premise: Julius is on top for the moment, but political turmoil in a dragon clan brings out a lot of opportunists. Sequel to Nice Dragons Finish Last and One Good Dragon Deserves Another . Oof. I was so looking forward to this book, that I think it really suffered from my heightened expectations. It’s not bad, per se, it’s just not what I wanted. It’s still well written, in an interesting world. I liked the new characters and the new things we learned about established characters. But I also got two things I wasn’t expecting from this author: realism over story and book six syndrome. In the first case, the book is bogged down by a lot of machinations and conversations and plot points that don’t really progress the bigger plot enough. I felt like a number of the twists and happenings weren’t essential, even though they were things that would have happened in ‘reality,’ given the set-up as it was. ...

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity Julia Serano, 2007, 2016 (new edition) Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a book by or about a person that identifies as transgender Premise: Scholarship and personal perspective on the interrelationship between attitudes around femininity and discrimination against trans women. I borrowed this book from the library and got only a few chapters in before I decided that I had to buy my own copy so I could highlight all the best passages. I’ve been looking for a book like this, one that articulates so clearly the need to empower femininity. In feminist and liberal spaces, we already question the idea that women can be equal to men only if they act like men (but not too much like men). Yet somehow many of us tend to miss that so much of this attitude can be connected to dismissing girls, along with denigrating traditionally feminine attitudes, interests, and practices. ...

Every Heart a Doorway Seanan McGuire, 2016 Premise: Nancy found the place she belonged. The place she loved more than anything. But she isn’t there anymore, and her parents have sent her to this school, because they don’t believe her when she tells them where she’s been. This fantasy-horror novella is lovely, both heartbreaking and uplifting. The story is about outsiders and belonging, about ideas of good and bad, about compassion and fanaticism. All in under 200 pages. Eleanor West runs a school for children who have returned from journeying in other realms. These latter-day kin to Alice and Dorothy don’t want to adjust to “real” life, they want to go back to the fairylands and underworlds. Each character is intriguing; they each have a reason they went traveling and were changed by their experiences. The ideas and abilities that followed them back to Earth are only part of what makes them different. Nancy can go still as a statue and subsist on little food due to her tra...

The Goblin Emperor Katherine Addison, 2014 Premise: There’s been a terrible accident. Maia has never lived at court and hasn’t seen his father since the death of his mother a decade ago. And now they expect him to be emperor. The Goblin Emperor was a runner-up for the Hugo and on more than a few best-of-the-year lists. So it went onto my TBR pile, and there it sat, even months after I picked up a copy on sale last December. I finally read it, and it was marvelous - just a joy to read start to end. I think this is going to be a book I return to, to savor the little details and enjoy subtleties that escaped me on the first read. I adore Maia; he’s an honestly good person muddling through a difficult situation. I love the cast surrounding him, each feels like a real person with a complicated history and motivation. The book deals in highly complicated naming conventions, which would normally drive me up the walls. However, in this case I feel that they fit tonally wit...

The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan, 1963 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a nonfiction book about feminism or dealing with feminist themes I don’t make it easy on myself sometimes. This isn’t a perfect book, but it’s important and it’s fascinating. If you only know a little about The Feminine Mystique , you might know that it was a big catalyst for aspects of the female liberation movement in the 60s and 70s. You might know that it’s about the unhappiness of housewives: the “problem with no name.” If you haven’t read it, you might not know that it’s less a polemic than it is a dissertation. That’s not to say that it isn’t passionate and full of the anger at the forces in society that convinced a generation of women that they could only be fulfilled as a wife and mother. It’s just a balanced, banked anger that I wasn’t expecting. Friedan wasn’t sure how many people would be on her side; she backs up her points with extensive quotes and cited sour...

The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling, 1894, 1895 Disney’s The Jungle Book , 2016 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 – Read a book that was adapted into a movie, then watch the movie. Debate which is better Okay, I may have done the challenge slightly backward, in that I saw the new live-action movie and then wanted to re-read the book. I have read the book before, but it’s been a few years. Of course, years before I read the books the first time, I saw the Disney animated movie, and the Chuck Jones specials (Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, The White Seal). But I read the Just So Stories before that ... does that count? I guess the timeline is sort of a wash. Anyhow, none of that is the point. The point is that I adore these books, nearly unreservedly. I say nearly, because a few of the short stories contain slightly awkward, outdated phrasing or attitudes, but VERY few, considering when these were written. I don’t know what to cover. I guess f...

Paper Girls Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, et.al., 2016 Premise: Erin delivers the paper in the early morning, but the morning after Halloween isn’t a good time to be out on the streets. There’s teenagers causing mischief, cops looking for teens to bust, and… monsters from another time? Four paper girls team up in this comic that’s part horror, part adventure, and totally 80s. Collects Paper Girls #1-5 I was really intrigued by an excerpt from this book, and of course I’ve enjoyed Vaughan’s work before, so I snapped this up in trade. I really like how firmly set in its time period it is. The fashions, the (offensive) language, the technology, everything is right. The plot is surreal, mysterious, and potentially really screwed up - so basically what I expected. The dialogue of some of the antagonists is very cleverly written. Erin, KJ, Tiffany, and Mackenzie are an appropriately diverse group for a piece written today and loosely inspired by the boys-adventure movies of t...

Christmas vs. the Fourth of July Asenath Carver Coolidge, 1908 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a book under 100 pages Another bonus review on Mainlining Christmas ! This week, read about a weird little book from the early 1900s.

No normal review today. Instead, I have a snarky book post up over at Mainlining Christmas , as part of our Christmas in July special event! Enjoy!

The Uplift War David Brin, 1987 Hugo Winner - 1988 Premise: The inhabitants of the colony on the damaged planet of Garth know they are in danger. They don’t know why Galactic strife is focused on the species of Earth, but humans, chimps, and alien diplomats prepare to defend their colony from a larger societal struggle they barely understand. This book is technically a sequel to Startide Rising , but this is a completely separate story taking place very far away from the prior book. The events of the prior book have an impact on this one, but there is no need to read this series in order or in its entirety to comprehend the story. To recap the setting, these books take place in a future in which the sentient species of Earth (humans plus the genetically modified neo-chimps and neo-dolphins) have recently joined a greater galactic civilization. One of the major principles of this civilization is uplift. A recognized species can “uplift” a pre-sentient species into a spac...

World War Z Max Brooks, 2006 (audio edition 2007) Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Listen to an audiobook that has won an Audie Award Premise: After the end of the Zombie War, journalist Max Brooks travels around the world to collect the stories of survivors, to keep alive the memory of an unprecedented struggle. Look, I finished an audiobook! It helps that a) I have a new commute that takes a long time, and b) this book is basically ideal to record as an audiobook. The structure of multiple narrators and interviews is perfect for this full-cast format. I can also understand both why Hollywood snapped it up for a movie and why the adaptation was reportedly terrible. This would be a fantastic fictional documentary, or a series of short films. It would not work as a single-character adventure vehicle. I really enjoyed listening to this book, although I went back and forth on how realistic I felt it was. The immediacy and detail of each account was n...