RIP Jane Juska, Building Libraries into Luxury Homes, Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper, Reckoning by Lili St Crow, and A Scandal in Battersea by Mercedes Lackey

I remember reading an article about Jane J, and then reading her memoir, which I found slightly disturbing and fascinating at the same time. It sparked some debate in a used bookstore I once frequented, and the co-owner eventually felt that Juska's approach might help her grab a guy of her own. So the bookstore gal, an older woman, put an ad in the local newspaper that read "Tall ugly woman over 50 seeks man for romping and beer. If you want to talk first, Steinbeck works for me." She apparently had at least a dozen serious responses. Since I found my own guy through a personal ad in a magazine in the 80s, I certainly felt that Juska was on to something. May she rest in peace.

Obituary Note: Jane Juska

Jane Juska

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz34916047,

whose bestselling 2003 memoir A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life

Adventures in Sex and Romance, "followed her from her prudish Midwestern

roots to her liberated flings and brought her to Oprah Winfrey and

Charlie Rose's television talk shows to tell her story," died October

24, the New York Times reported. She was 84.

After watching Eric Rohmer's film Autumn Tale in 1999 at a theater in

Berkeley, Calif., Juska "bought an ad in the personals section of The

New York Review of Books. Not wishing to overspend on the ad, she

winnowed her piquant message to these memorable words, which cost her

$4.55 each: 'Before I turn 67--next March--I would like a lot of sex

with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me,' "

the Times noted. More than 60 letters arrived and Juska's subsequent

encounters formed the basis of the book.

A play based on A Round-Heeled Woman was written by Jane Prowse and

performed in several cities. Juska also wrote Unaccompanied Women (2006)

and Mrs. Bennet Has Her Say (2015).

This has always been a dream of mine, to have a home with many built in bookshelves and at least one room dedicated to being a library and a study. 

Cool Idea of the Day: Luxury Building Libraries

Some luxury building developers are adding a library "to the mix of

common spaces where residents can gather or find a quiet corner away

from their unit," the Washington Post reported, adding that while some

buildings include libraries with carefully selected books residents can

borrow, others offer residents the benefits of a partnership with a

bookstore http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz34950857.

For example, in partnership with New York City's Strand

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz34950858 bookstore, developers of the

rental building at 525 West 52nd St. "offer residents a library filled

with books chosen by Strand staff members along with resident-only book

signings, poetry readings, creative writing classes and a

Strand-sponsored book club," the Post wrote.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper was recommended to me as being similar in tone and content to Fredrik Bachman's works (A Man Called Ove), which I've loved. Unfortunately, this book's uneven prose and meandering plot with a completely nonsensical ending put it well below Bachman's, in terms of quality. Here's the blurb:

Eighty-three-year-old Etta has never seen the ocean. So early one morning she takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots and begins walking the 3,232 kilometers from rural Saskatchewan, Canada eastward to the sea. As Etta walks further toward the crashing waves, the lines among memory, illusion, and reality blur.
Otto wakes to a note left on the kitchen table. “I will try to remember to come back,” Etta writes to her husband. Otto has seen the ocean, having crossed the Atlantic years ago to fight in a far-away war. He understands. But with Etta gone, the memories come crowding in and Otto struggles to keep them at bay. Meanwhile, their neighbor Russell has spent his whole life trying to keep up with Otto and loving Etta from afar. Russell insists on finding Etta, wherever she’s gone. Leaving his own farm will be the first act of defiance in his life.
Moving from the hot and dry present of a quiet Canadian farm to a dusty, burnt past of hunger, war, and passion, from trying to remember to trying to forget, Etta and Otto and Russell and James is an astounding literary debut “of deep longing, for reinvention and self-discovery, as well as for the past and for love and for the boundless unknown” (San Francisco Chronicle). “In this haunting debut, set in a starkly beautiful landscape, Hooper delineates the stories of Etta and the men she loved (Otto and Russell) as they intertwine through youth and wartime and into old age. It’s a lovely book you’ll want to linger over” (People).

First of all, Etta appears to be suffering from dementia and/or Alzheimers, and she should never have been allowed to wander off by herself. There are several places in the book where we're shown that she gets robbed and beaten and cut up, but then those are placed in such a way in the text that the reader isn't sure if they are hallucinations or reality. Then, for some bizarre reason, 3/4 of the way through the book, the author decides to get surreal and makes it appear that Otto and Etta are the same person. The book just ends, without any decent resolution or explanations, not long after that. So readers will feel confused and angry, and wonder, as I did, where the hell the editor for this manuscript was, that he or she let this book slide into babble and nonsense. It's also very hard to believe that Etta would have so many 'fans' when she's just walking around aimlessly, not really knowing if she's headed for the ocean or not. And we're never sure if her coyote companion, James, is real or another figment of her imagination. This book left me shaking my head in bewilderment and dissatisfaction. I'd give it a C, and only recommend it to those who like to try and find meaning in nonsense.

Reckoning by Lili St Crow is the fifth and final book in her Strange Angels YA series. Having been disappointed that Lilith Saintcrow seemed to be following a set of well-worn YA tropes and cliches in writing this series, I wasn't too keen on this book from the outset, but I was at least slightly surprised that it was better than the previous novels in the series, at least in terms of the fast-action plot and the smooth prose. Here's the blurb:

Nobody expected Dru Anderson to survive this long. Not Graves. Not Christophe. Not even Dru. She's battled killer zombies, jealous djamphirs, and bloodthirsty suckers straight out of her worst nightmares. But now that Dru has bloomed into a full-fledged svetocha - rare, beautiful, and toxic to all vampires - the worst is yet to come.
Because getting out alive is going to cost more than she's ever imagined. And in the end, is survival really worth the sacrifice?
DRU ANDERSON'S NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK.
BUT SHE SHOULD BE.

So Dru faces down the big bad, Sergj, Christophe's evil father the vampire, in order to rescue Graves, who has become broken courtesy of Sergj,and she's also got to rescue Christophe who is being drained by his father and slowly killed. We learn that this ancient evil has designs on Dru's blood, too, as now that she's "bloomed" she has power that will make him able to walk in the daylight and take over the world, as big bads are wont to do.  Of course, things don't go his way, and Dru manages to whack his head off after Christophe the pretentious tries to drink him dry. Later, when Dru's life hangs in the balance, Christophe insists that she receive a blood transfusion from him, and he wants her to have all his blood in a grand 'romantic' gesture, because he makes it clear that he has the hots for her and won't stop foisting himself on her until they're together. This doesn't make him sexy, in my mind, it makes him a pedophile and a stalker, somewhat like Edward from the horrific Twilight series. I don't really get why he's so determined to have Dru, when he's hundreds of years old and she's still underage and illegal at 16, but somehow we, as readers, are supposed to forgive all his creepyness because he looks young and acts protective of Dru (though he also acts like a possessive jerk most of the time). Graves has been broken, so it will take awhile for him to return to being boyfriend material, but Dru has already explained to Graves that she loves him and needs him by her side. Still, Christophe asks Dru if there is any hope that she might accept his romantic/sexual advances, and yet again, she doesn't tell him no (WHY is beyond me...she already has Graves, so why keep this European douchebag on the line, when she knows he tried to make time with her mother as well...ewwwww), but says instead that she's "not ready" for any kind of sexual relationship. So Christophe says he will wait. Yuck. Still so creepy. But while the romance in the book was horrible, the action was decent, and I enjoyed watching Dru come in to her own. Clean and clear prose keep a well paced plot going in this book, so I'd give it a B-, and recommend it to those who have read the other books in the Strange Angels series.

A Scandal in Battersea by Mercedes Lackey is the 12th book in the Elemental Mages series, and highly anticipated by those who have read all the preceding volumes, as I have. Lackey never fails to tell a ripping good yarn, with characters that are full bodied and a plot that is full of interesting twists and turns. Here's the blurb:

The twelfth novel in Mercedes Lackey's magical Elemental Masters series reimagines Sherlock Holmes in a richly-detailed alternate 20th-century EnglandChristmas is a very special time of year.  It is special for Psychic Nan Killian and Medium Sarah Lyon-White and their ward Suki, who are determined to celebrate it properly.  It is special for their friends, Doctor John Watson, and his wife Mary, both Elemental Masters, who have found great delight in the season seeing it through young Suki’s eyes.   It is also special to others...for very different reasons.
For Christmas Eve is also hallowed to dark forces, powers older than mankind, powers that come awake on this, the Longest Night.  Powers best left alone.  Powers that could shake the foundations of London and beyond.
It begins slowly.  Women disappearing in the dark of night, women only missed by those of their own kind.  The whispers only begin when they start to reappear—because when they do, they are no longer sane.  And when Nan and Sarah and the Watsons are called on to examine these victims, they discover that it was no ordinary horror of the streets that drove them mad.
But then, the shadows reach for other victims—girls of good, even exalted families, who vanish from concerts, lectures, and evening balls.  And it will take the combined forces of Magic, Psychic Powers, and the world's greatest detective to stop the darkness before it can conquer all.

Nana, Sarah and Suki have all appeared in previous Elemental Mages books, so it was a delight to see them again, though they were put through their paces here, with a plot that never slows down for a moment, riding along the rails of the nearly flawless prose that is typical of Lackey. One of the things that I love about Lackey's series is that you know the big bad shadowy octopus of doom cannot win, and will not win, when all the mages band together to destroy it. The addition of a horrible pedophile who feels no remorse in killing little girls only adds to the satisfaction of his demise later in the novel. The fact that his cynical and evil assistant ends up free and with no consequences of his actions was bothersome, but I have a feeling that his turn of good luck will sour soon enough. Sherlock Holmes makes another appearance in this novel, and though he is a skeptic, his logic and reasoning end up helping the group solve the mystery and save more than a few people from a miserable death. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who has read the other Elemental Mage books.This is a book you can curl up with near a nice fire and with a hot cup of tea or coffee and while away an entire afternoon.