The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York Alex Palmer, 2015 Premise: In the early 1900s, more children began to write letters to Santa, and the Post Office asked for help. Enter John Duval Gluck Jr. and his creation: The Santa Claus Association. This was an interesting book overall, although the payoff is smaller than I would have preferred. The book paints a complex and intriguing picture of New York in the first few decades of the twentieth century, particularly around Christmas. The specific story of Gluck and his various "charities" is only the largest thread; the book also explores early influences on the image of Santa, how various staples of Christmas (public tree-lightings, parades, etc.) started or became notable in New York City. Read the full review on Mainlining Christmas

Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus Edited by Kate Wolford, 2014 Premise: Twelve short stories about Krampus. Variously known as the Christmas demon, the punisher of naughty children, and the star of several recent horror movies, Krampus has been having a bit of a moment recently. Anthologies are generally hit and miss, and in attempting to please many tastes, this one definitely had some misses for me. Read the full review on Mainlining Christmas

The Silence of the Elves Meg Muldoon, 2016 Premise: Holly's been demoted right out of the North Pole through no fault of her own, but she'll need more than hope to get her life back on track. You may recall that I kind of liked another one of Meg Muldoon's holiday-themed cozy mysteries , so when I saw she had a new series that was explicitly about Christmas elves, I had to try it. Read the full review on Mainlining Christmas

Holidays on Ice David Sedaris, 2008 I haven't been subjected to this unpleasant an attempt at "humor" in some time. I thought I knew what I was getting into with this, and I expected it to be mixed. Erin spoke in the past about how much he disliked most of the Sedaris segments on This American Life . Read the whole review on Mainlining Christmas

Dreaming of a White Wolf Christmas Terry Spear, 2017 New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. I sort of hate that I'm spending any more time and energy on this godforsaken turd of a book. The heroine starts out on a camping trip, where she's bitten by what honestly sounds like a fluffy puppy. After some terrible description and confusion on my part, I guess that must have been a wolf because now she's a werewolf. She sees a mysterious wolf across a river. And that's the set-up. Two years later, she has abandoned her friends and family to live alone and write paranormal romance. The author spends endless pages introducing the male lead by recapping what sounds like at least a dozen earlier books, none of which have any bearing on the events of THIS book. The male lead is a PI who's been hired to find her because her adoptive parents died and left her money. It's mentioned a few times that the heroine is a...

If the Fates Allow Edited by Annie Harper, 2017 New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. Premise: Five stories of love, hope, and forgiveness at the holidays. Do you need some warm and fuzzy holiday cheer? Do you love love? This new collection features five LGBTQ holiday romances that make your heart feel full of sugarplums. I smiled and sighed and giggled. It's seriously sweet, without being too sweet. Read the full review on Mainlining Christmas

Murder, She Wrote: Manhattans and Murder (1994) and Murder, She Wrote: A Little Yuletide Murder (1998) By Donald Bain The Christmas episode of the show was fairly lackluster , so I suppose it's fair that the novels match. These two brief books are part of a long-running spin-off series that apparently someone will continue to write until society crumbles. (Seriously, Book 47 is available for preorder.) The two books have a few things in common. The author can write passable lines of dialogue and narration, but there's no build from scene to scene and the story as a whole is utterly forgettable. Both books seem determined to raise but refuse to sensitively address social issues (drug addiction and teenage pregnancy, respectively). Most bizarrely, both books feature a minor subplot about someone asking Jessica to write a true-crime novel about the events going on. Unless this was a running gag in all the books, it seems strange not to reference the first event, given...

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holidays Spirits Les Standiford, 2008 Premise: The story behind the story of A Christmas Carol. This historical Christmas book included both some really interesting parts and a few things that I've read a dozen times by now. Overall it was pretty enjoyable. If you are a literary type and you want to read only one Christmas history, this would be a great choice. Read the whole review on Mainlining Christmas

Indexing Seanan McGuire, 2014 Premise: Fairy tales don't stay on the page, but only the agents from one secret organization are protecting the public from their dangerous impact. Does police procedural/urban fantasy/fairy tale sound like the best mash-up genre? Then this is the book for you. I really liked the world, although I'm hoping there's more about how "the narrative" interacts with "the real world" in the sequel. The short premise is that fairy tales are real, and anyone who skirts too close to an archetype (abusive stepparents, etc.) can be effectively controlled by it, driven to carry out the tale. All of the main characters have narrowly avoided being drawn in or found a way to cope with fairy tales in their lives. For example, the first thing we learn about the main character, Henrietta "Henry" Marchen, is that she hangs netting over her windows in an attempt to prevent bluebirds from smashing into them trying to reac...

Sins of the Cities (An Unseen Attraction, An Unnatural Vice, An Unsuitable Heir) K. J. Charles, 2017 Premise: A lodging-keeper, a taxidermist, a crusading journalist, a scheming medium, an enquiry agent, and an acrobat. Six people find romance after being brought together in London by lies and murder. I'm quite a fan of this author's period romances, and these are particularly nice. I like the balance between romance, sex, and action. I don't read enough romance to know whether this is common, but I also really like the way this trilogy solves the potential contradiction of writing a romance series. Each book ends with its requisite happy ending, but each features a different couple in a set of interlocking stories. The background story (involving a secret marriage, blackmail, and murder), which affects each of the three couples differently, isn't solved until the third book. This series also features a high number of untraditional traits in the leads, ev...

Bird Box Josh Malerman, 2014 Premise: Malorie is finally bringing the children to what she hopes is safety. The only problem is, she can't look. I remember there being a good amount of buzz for this book early on, and then some backlash. So I know I'm not saying anything new when I say this book was rather disappointing. The idea is intriguing. Something mysterious is causing people to go mad, and you can only protect yourself by not looking, so people are barricading themselves in buildings and learning to navigate by sound. The book is intercut between Malorie's journey trying to bring two young children to possible safety, with all of them blindfolded, and how she came to be alone in a house with two children. The story is interesting and tense, but not especially scary until near the end. Of course this leads to a situation in which humans are worse to each other than the monsters are and some sections that were unnecessarily gross in my opinion. I unders...

Sunshine Robin McKinley, 2003 Premise: Rae is a baker with a career, a boyfriend, and a community. She knows not to go through the bad part of town alone. The lake near where her grandmother had lived should have been safe. There shouldn't have been vampires anywhere near there. This is one of the best damn vampire books I've ever read. It takes place in a fascinating world that is revealed only slowly and naturally. It's in first person, and there is almost zero info-dumping. Very little is revealed until it comes up directly, including important facts about the world and the characters' history. I loved the language in this book. Slang and conversation casually reflects the presence of everyday magic and myth. The world, as alluded to above, is a complex one. Vampires are the most dangerous paranormal critter, but not the only one. It's unclear how long they've been openly coexisting with humanity, only that there was a major conflict within livi...

I would have liked this book more. Archivist Wasp Nicole Kornher-Stace, 2015 Premise: Every year, Wasp fights to keep the position of Archivist, the chosen one who researches ghosts. She will fall sooner or later, but first she finds a ghost unlike any she has seen before. I feel some guilt about this review. This book was on my list because I'd read strongly positive reviews, but I didn't remember anything about the premise when I started. The beginning grabbed me. We're dropped into the middle of a fight to the death, and only catch glimpses of the culture and world until Wasp wakes later, recovering from her wounds. I also liked the ending. I liked some aspects of the story in between, but I felt as though it didn't earn its implied emotional impacts. It didn't explain enough for me to care when twists came along to upend things. I didn't feel the payoff of the ending as much as I should have because I never fully understood the characters or...

Darth Vader Volume 1: Vader and Volume 2: Shadows and Secrets Kieron Gillen, 2015, 2016 Premise: After the destruction of the first Death Star, Vader has to rebuild his power and influence within a changed Empire. Collects Darth Vader #1-6 and #7-12. This is a lot of fun, but I might advise people to hold out for the whole run. So, I know a lot of people who loved the end Vader scene in Rogue One. Myself, I didn't quite get it. I've been told that it was satisfying to see Vader be a threatening, unstoppable force. I say it felt pandering. (I had already kind of checked out of this movie by that point, to be fair.) I say, if you want to see Vader be Vader, read this comic. What I think is really well done here is the balance between comic-book conventions and cinematic conventions. Vader is a quiet, menacing figure. He doesn't get thought balloons or narration, which keeps him slightly aloof and cryptic. We see full panel images when we need a clue to what m...

Elite (Hunter, Book 2) Mercedes Lackey, 2017 Premise: Sequel to Hunter . Joy is part of the elite squad now, so she's under less public scrutiny but even more private pressure. She doesn't know who else might be behind the attempts on her life, or whether she might be targeted by political enemies of her uncle. Meanwhile, the Othersiders' attacks on the city are increasing... The first book in this series was a lot of fun, and this one followed suit. We learn a little more about the psychic cops and more about how human magic works. We don't learn much more about why Othersiders (aka, beings of myth and legend, apparently from another dimension) are attacking humans, or why Hounds have allied with humans to fight them. The book is simply more concerned with Joy's relationships with the other hunters and her status and life as a hunter than about metaphysics or interdimensional politics. White Knight, her "Christer" friend, plays a big role, as ...

Parable of the Sower Octavia Butler, 1993 Premise: The world outside is getting worse. Their neighborhood is safe for now, but it won't be forever. But who will listen to a young girl with a diary and some profound ideas? Wow. Now I completely understand why I've seen people referencing this book recently. The society in the novel isn't the society we have now, but it's a very plausible future on the way to a total breakdown. Corporate profit above all else, vast poverty, violence, and dangerous drug abuse, no infrastructure that individuals don't pay for, no social safety net for anyone but the wealthy. The main character lives in a walled neighborhood and records her thoughts in a diary. She is a teenager, but she recognizes that the world is not "going back to the way it was," the way the adults in her life hope. They have to figure out how to live in the world that will come. Part of her insight is practical, and part is religious. Th...

A Dragon of a Different Color (Heartstrikers, Book 4) Rachel Aaron, 2017 Premise: Julius finally has some pull in his clan and an alliance with the Three Sisters. Of course, that was before his favorite brother killed his favorite sister, the girl he loved apparently died, and the entire clan of Chinese dragons set forth to conquer the American clan, ostensibly to protect them all from the rage of a powerful lake spirit. Follows No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished After I was somewhat disappointed with Book 3, I'm happy to report that I loved this installment. I think there's only one more book in the series, but this managed to raise the stakes in a way that felt organic, set up for a grand finale, and deal with all the fallout of the last book at a breakneck pace that kept me reading. In case it's at all possible that the premise above wasn't clear enough, this would not be a good jumping-on point. The networks of character relationships are key to this one. W...

Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Non-Violent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World Srdja Popovic, Matthew Miller, 2015 Premise: The principles of nonviolent resistance, illustrated by practical examples of every scale from all over the world. I have been frustrated trying to read books about the current moment in politics. Popular politicians' hottest takes on how we should react to the darkening timeline we seem to find ourselves in leave me cold. But this. This is the book I needed. Maybe it is the book you need as well? It's not about dealing with today specifically. It's about changing the world. It's about overthrowing dictators, resisting oppression, fighting corporate policies, improving societies, and building social movements. It's also incredibly friendly and readable and has Tolkien references. The book lays out the principles that the people from the ...

The Girl with All the Gifts M. R. Carey, 2014 Premise: Melanie goes to class with a group of other kids. She likes their teachers, one in particular. She learns a lot in class, but she doesn't learn why she and her classmates live in cells on the base, or why no one is allowed to touch them, or why they only eat once a week... This book suffered a little for me from expectations that were one hundred percent not the book's fault. I had heard a lot of hype about this book, but on reflection, I only knew two things about it - it's about a little girl who is a zombie, but she doesn't know it, and it was really popular. I extrapolated from there that it would be a psychological book, full of unreliable narration, twists, and theories. I thought it would be entirely or mostly from her perspective, that the adults around the character might not know what was going on, that there would be a slow-burn reveal, and maybe she was the beginning of an outbreak. It...

Patsy Walker, A.K.A Hellcat: Vol. 1: Hooked On A Feline, Vol. 2: Don't Stop Me-ow, Vol 3: Careless Whisker(s) Kate Leth, Brittney Williams, 2016, 2017 Premise: Patsy has been through a lot. She's been an Avenger. She's been to Hell. Now she just wants to figure out how to make enough money for rent, and help other people out along the way. Collects Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat #1-17 (complete run). Aww. Shelve this book next to Squirrel Girl, they're both great examples of friendly comics with diverse casts of interesting characters that deal with emotion and action without losing a sense of hope and camaraderie. Patsy Walker is a really interesting character in a meta sense. She was created as a teen humor comic that turned to romance as the characters aged. (There were many of these comics in the 40s and 50s; the Archie comics are nearly the only surviving example of the type.) A cameo in an superhero title established that the characters might exist in the...

Final Girls Seanan McGuire, writing as Mira Grant, 2017 Premise: A new technology for completely immersive VR promises extremely effective therapy by causing the patient to feel as though they lived through a specific traumatic experience. A reporter is determined to determine whether it's a hoax. I've liked all of McGuire's novellas so far, and this didn't break the streak. It's interesting that this was released under her horror pen name; it does fit that paradigm. The world created by the VR technology is less intriguing than the magic and ghosts in Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day  and a lot less inventive than the world of Every Heart a Doorway  (which just won a Hugo!), but it's enjoyable nonetheless. This one is a tense, short thriller in which, after everything predictably goes wrong, the main characters are trapped in an unreal dream that is trying to really kill them. It's more compelling than most spins on this premise, partially because it ...

A Fire Upon the Deep Vernor Vinge, 1992 Hugo Winner - 1993 Premise: The galaxy is a big place, full of old civilizations, ancient powers, and ancient traps. What are the lives of two children and a librarian worth in all the universe? It took me a while to get through this book, and I'm not 100 percent sure what I think of it. I was thrown off at the start, as it takes a lot of pages to introduce all the characters, factions, and situations. I started expecting one kind of story and ended up in quite another. I think overall it's a good book, and an interesting one, but it's much more about world building than characters, so how much you enjoy that type of thing will probably dictate how much you enjoy this book. To be fair, the worldbuilding is really neat. It questions the breadth of consciousness that might be possible across a diverse and strange galaxy. The major alien races include one who is more or less a plant augmented by technology, and a race...

Thor: The Goddess of Thunder and Thor: Who Holds the Hammer? Jason Aaron, Russell Dauterman, Jorge Molina, 2015 Premise: The son of Odin is no longer worthy to wield Mjolnir, and the only one who can lift the hammer is an unknown woman who takes on the power and the responsibility of being Thor. Collects Thor #1-5 and Thor #6-8 and Annual. The nice thing about waiting and catching up on comic books later is that you tend to only read the good stuff. The less nice thing is that sometimes you know the ending. Happily, the fact that I went in knowing the reveal at the end of the second volume (the identity of the new Thor) did not diminish my enjoyment in this case. For me, these issues had just about the perfect balance of humor and drama. The art and writing take the larger-than-life characters and plot seriously, but it never gets too dour or bleak. It wouldn't be a perfect jumping-on point for someone who's not used to sprawling comic universes and stories that ...

My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag... and Other Things You Can't Ask Martha Jolie Kerr, 2014 Premise: Learn how to clean all your things, with a dollop of motivation and a side dose of humor. I wish I'd had this book years ago. As an aspiring Clean Person (to use the author's somewhat tongue-in-cheek terminology), I had to muddle through figuring out how, how often, and with what to clean various surfaces and appliances over my adult life. (Seriously, there was way more trial and error in those early days than there should have been.) I do okay these days, but I still found good tips and knowledge here. I especially like the balance between basics and exceptions. She features some of the wild questions she received as an advice columnist, but the solutions to most of them build on the fundamental advice about types of stains, types of methods, and types of cleansers. The book also features the same mix of gentle shame and funny encouragement that I loved in h...

Swordspoint Ellen Kushner, 1987 Premise: Richard St. Vier is a sword for hire, a skilled duelist who calls out nobles on request when the situation and the price are right. But the politics of the city is larger than any one man. I don't think I'd ever heard of this book until I saw some excitement about a new book that returns to this world. I can see why it is beloved by some and enjoyed by others. Unfortunately, it just didn't grab me. Today, the city of this type is a fantasy archetype - the scheming nobles on the hill contrasted with the fighters and thieves in the slums. I don't know how prevalent it was when this book was first written. The relatively unique thing about this book is that many or most of the male characters are bisexual. It's not commented on until near the very end, and it seems normal to most characters that St. Vier has taken up with Alec, a troubled scholar with a secret past. Having a gay couple at the center of the intr...

Princess Leia (Marvel Mini-Series) Mark Waid, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson, 2015 Premise: After the destruction of the first Death Star, Leia is at loose ends when she hears that the Empire is targeting Alderaan citizens on other planets. Collects Princess Leia #1-5. I have heard nothing but good things about most of the Marvel-branded Star Wars comics, and after some recent sales, I'm finally getting around to them. This one I found enjoyable, but not amazing. I really liked the premise. Leia sets out to collect and protect as many survivors from Alderaan as she can. She feels a personal responsibility, not just because she's their leader, but because she suspects Alderaan would not have been targeted if she hadn't been working with the Rebellion. I really liked the characters. Evaan is a brash Rebellion pilot who respects the royalty that Leia can claim but doubts her commitment. Tula is a girl they pick up early on who doesn't know her sister is workin...

The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal K.J. Charles, 2015 Premise: Journalist Robert Caldwell has told the world about the exploits of famous ghost hunter Simon Feximal for years, but he has never before revealed how they met, or their true relationship. In the spectrum of works inspired by other works, there is more than enough room for delightful books like this one. You can see from the very premise that something is owed to Holmes and his ilk, but it is not as simple as a Holmes story with a paranormal/LGBT overlay. It turns out to be a love letter to Victorian adventure and occult stories. The book itself is structured as a series of linked short tales. Characters from works of the time come in and out like Easter eggs for the reader, but not being familiar with them doesn't detract anything from the experience. There is a list of references in the back of the book for the curious. As always, this author crafts her characters to feel incredibly accurate to their ti...