Happy Holidays to all my blog readers, and Happy 60th birthday to me, a couple of days ago on the 12th! It's gotten chilly outside, which is a great excuse to stay indoors by a warm fire with a blanket, a hot beverage and a book!
This is what it means to love your fellow peeps during the quarantine holidays:
Cool idea of the day: "Socially-Distanced Mistletoe."
British bookseller Kenilworth Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz46705054 posted: "We've a tradition of hanging mistletoe outside the bookshop, and we didn't want to break it. So this year we have two bunches of mistletoe, 2 meters apart. No actual kissing of strangers please. Socially distanced 'Mwah's only." --Robert Gray
This is taking place near where I went to school in Ankeny, Iowa, which is a community right next to Des Moines.
Image of the Day: Storyhouse Bookpub's Holiday Market
Storyhouse Bookpub in Des Moines, Iowa, held its first sales event over the weekend: an open-air Holiday Book Market. Owner Abigail J. Paxton reported that "the Des Moines community came out wearing masks for distanced holiday shopping and brought their kids for a storytime in the yard. The event included a local bakery, coffee shop and bookmark artist." Paxton plans to host two more Holiday Book Markets this month. The local news, WHO-13, featured a report on the event http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz46705070.
Paxton established Storyhouse Bookpub in March, just as the pandemic arrived. Since then, she's worked with local gift shop MoMere to set up a mini children's bookstore in its children's section, hosted a Little Free Library launch party book swap, and begun building a community of local readers online. Her plan is to continue creating community events for readers in Des Moines and eventually open a bricks-and-mortar store.
I think it's wonderful that stars like Sir Ian McKellen are trying to save the birthplace of Tolkien to turn it into a literary center. I sincerely hope they're successful.
Tolkien Movie Stars Seek Dominion over Author's Birthplace
Several actors who starred in movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are waging a PR battle "to claim dominion over the birthplace http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz46705095 of Middle-earth--though nothing as dramatic as the war against Sauron," Entertainment Weekly reported.
Tolkien's Oxford home is up for sale, and the celebrities are calling on fans to help a charity organization purchase the property to create a literary center dedicated to the author. Project Northmoor http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz46705096, a $6 million fundraising campaign, launched December 2. Author Julia Golding, one of the organizers, negotiated a three-month fundraising window with the current owner.
Participating celebrities include Ian McKellen (Gandalf) and John Rhys-Davies (Gimli, Treebeard) from The Lord of the Rings trilogy; Martin Freeman (Bilbo) from The Hobbit; and Annie Lennox (singer of the Oscar-winning "Into the West" from the Return of the King soundtrack).
"We cannot achieve this without the support of the worldwide community of Tolkien fans, our fellowship of funders," McKellen said.
Rhys-Davies added: "Unbelievably, considering his importance, there is no center devoted to Tolkien anywhere in the world. The vision is to make Tolkien's house into a literary hub that will inspire new generations of writers, artists, and filmmakers for many years to come."
LOL! This is sad and funny at the same time.
Bad Sex in Fiction Awards Canceled Because 2020
The Bad Sex in Fiction Award http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz46733982, which recognizes "the year's most outstandingly awful scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel," has been canceled by the Literary Review. After weeks of deliberation, the judges said they felt the public had been subjected to too many bad things this year to justify exposing it to bad sex as well. They warned, however, that the cancellation of the 2020 awards should not be taken as a license to write bad sex.
"With lockdown regulations giving rise to all manner of novel sexual practices, the judges anticipate a rash of entries next year," a spokesperson said. "Authors are reminded that cybersex and other forms of home entertainment fall within the purview of this award. Scenes set in fields, parks or back yards, or indoors with the windows open and fewer than six people present will not be exempt from scrutiny either."
RIP to another great author. I read several of his novels, though I am not generally a fan of the spy/thriller genre. But le Carre's writing was so superb, you could overlook genre just for those perfectly-crafted sentences and paragraphs that make up his novels. He lived a long and fascinating life, and his like will never be seen again.
Obituary Note: John le Carré
John le Carre; http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz46771903, the master of Cold War spy novels that were thoughtful, densely plotted, elegantly written and explored ideology, history, language, and the interplay between politics and psychology, died on Saturday of pneumonia. He was 89.
His Cold War thrillers "elevated the spy novel to high art by presenting both Western and Soviet spies as morally compromised cogs in a rotten system full of treachery, betrayal and personal tragedy," the New York Times wrote. He "portrayed British intelligence operations as cesspools of ambiguity in which right and wrong are too close to call and in which it is rarely obvious whether the ends, even if the ends are clear, justify the means."
Born David Cornwell, le Carre worked in MI6, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, and its domestic version, MI5, for 16 years. For a time he was a spy in West Germany, with the cover of a diplomat, running agents and more--all of which became fertile ground for his burgeoning career as a spy novel writer.
The best known of his more than two dozen books were set in Britain's MI6, "the Circus," forever at war with its Soviet counterpart, "Moscow Centre," with many of their battles played out in divided Germany. Most of the titles starred George Smiley, a taciturn, brilliant, methodical, dour, honorable, unassuming spymaster, betrayed by colleagues and his wife, and an aficionado of German literature and language; his Centre nemesis was Karla, who in many ways was more like Smiley than any other le Carre character.
Le Carre created a world in which, the Times wrote, "agents were 'joes,' operations involving seduction were 'honeytraps' and agents deeply embedded inside the enemy were 'moles,' a word he is credited with bringing into wide use if not inventing it. Such expressions were taken up by real British spies to describe their work, much as the Mafia absorbed the language of The Godfather into their mythology."
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, published in 1963 and le Carre's third novel, became an international bestseller, and was followed by, among others, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People, also known as the Karla Trilogy. One of Sir Alec Guinness's most memorable roles was as Smiley in the BBC TV miniseries of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982). Sadly for fans, le Carre said that Guinness played Smiley so well, taking over the character, that he could no longer write books featuring Smiley in the same way--and Smiley appeared only tangentially in several later books.
With the semi-retirement of the character Smiley and the end of the Cold War, le Carre developed new characters, set his books in different places, including Africa, post-Soviet Russia, and Central America, and investigated big pharma, money laundering and more. Among those titles were The Constant Gardener, Our Kind of Traitor, The Night Manager and The Tailor of Panama. In addition, The Little Drummer Girl, published in 1983, was, the Times wrote, "about an undercover operation by a passionate young actress-turned spy; the book performs the seemingly impossible trick of evoking genuine sympathy for both the Israeli and Palestinian points of view."
A Perfect Spy (1986), "le Carre's most autobiographical work, tells the story of Magnus Pym, a double agent with a con man father modeled after le Carre's own, and how the two deceive and are deceived by each other in an intricate skein of lies," the Times observed.
In later years, le Carre and his books became more straightforwardly political. He was vehemently against spy agency torture, the post-9/11 "war on terror" and Brexit. His most recent titles, both published in the U.S. by Viking, were The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life (2016), an autobiography, and Agent Running in the Field (2019), a spy thriller set in the world of the Circus in the present day.
Although le Carre refused to let his books be considered for literary awards, this year he accepted the Olof Palme Prize for his "extraordinary contribution to the necessary fight for freedom, democracy and social justice" and donated his $100,000 award to Medecins Sans Frontires. And in 2011, he accepted the Goethe Medal given to non-Germans who "have performed outstanding service for the German language and international cultural dialogue."The Goethe Institut also called le Carre "Great Britain's most famous German speaker" and said he "has always been convinced that language learning is the key to understanding foreign cultures."
This is a hilarious holiday photo from some of my all time favorite booksellers at my favorite bookstore in Washington, Island Books.
'Most Feared Words of Booksellers This Time of Year' Posted by Island Books, Mercer Island, Wash.: "The most feared words of booksellers http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz46771914 all over the country this time of year.... I have a book on hold."
Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet by Charlie N Holmberg (who is a woman) is a strange and unsatisfying fantasy novel from the author of the Paper Magician series. I hate to make an assumption here, but as Holmberg is from Utah, and that is the seat of the Mormon/Church of Latter Day Saints religion, I'm going to posit that this weird "angels" story is based on the Book of Mormon and all their bizarre religious beliefs. At any rate, though Holmberg's prose is generally clean and precise, I couldn't make heads or tails of the plot, and the ending was weird and unsettling. Here's the blurb:
Maire is a baker with an extraordinary gift: she can infuse her treats with emotions and abilities, which are then passed on to those who eat them. She doesn’t know why she can do this and remembers nothing of who she is or where she came from.
When marauders raid her town, Maire is captured and sold to the eccentric Allemas, who enslaves her and demands that she produce sinister confections, including a witch’s gingerbread cottage, a living cookie boy, and size-altering cakes.
During her captivity, Maire is visited by Fyel, a ghostly being who is reluctant to reveal his connection to her. The more often they meet, the more her memories return, and she begins to piece together who and what she really is—as well as past mistakes that yield cosmic consequences.
From the author of The Paper Magician series comes a haunting and otherworldly tale of folly and consequence, forgiveness and redemption.
The whole "enslavement by a vile being" who turns out to be a Frankenstein-like monster of her own creation, just didn't make a lot of sense until you get to the end and Maire realizes who she really is (and readers will have seen this coming at least a third of the way through this nightmarish book). I really did not like the whole premise, nor did I like how the main characters behaved. This was more of a misogynistic horror fantasy than it was a regular fantasy novel, and therefore I found it a tough read. I'd give it a C-, and I can't think of anyone who I would recommend it to, other than horror fans who like stories of slavery and angels.
Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade is a delightful YA modern romance novel that grabbed me from the first sentence and never let go. I read the whole book in one afternoon/evening, and actually forgot the world around me, I was so immersed in the story. Here's the blurb:
Olivia Dade bursts onto the scene in this delightfully fun romantic comedy set in the world of fanfiction, in which a devoted fan goes on an unexpected date with her celebrity crush, who’s secretly posting fanfiction of his own.
Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. The world may know him as Aeneas, star of the biggest show on television, but fanfiction readers call him something else: Book!AeneasWouldNever. Marcus gets out his frustrations with the show through anonymous stories about the internet’s favorite couple, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone discovered his online persona, he’d be finished in Hollywood.
April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s long hidden her fanfic and cosplay hobbies from her “real life”—but not anymore. When she dares to post her latest costume creation on Twitter, her plus-size take goes viral. And when Marcus asks her out to spite her internet critics, truth officially becomes stranger than fanfiction.
On their date, Marcus quickly realizes he wants more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. But when he discovers she’s Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to keep from her.
With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?
Dade's prose was clever and crisp, and her plot flew along on the wings of a dove. I loved the fact that April was a zaftig/larger gal who was unapologetic about her curves and chubby thighs. She also made it clear that she wasn't up for being "changed" by any boyfriends or relatives, and she drew her boundaries in the sand with her boyfriend and her horrible parents, which took guts and grit, IMO. I wish more young women would follow her example and quit trying to be small and invisible because of the pervasive misogyny in our society that dictates what women are "supposed" to look like. The billion dollar diet industry makes their money off the body dismorphia of nearly all the women and girls in our society, and we pay the price by so many young women having eating disorders and destroying their health over what is essentially prejudice. There is a great ending here, and lots of insight into the fan fiction community. I'd give this delightful novel an A, and recommend it to every teenage girl out there, as well as older gals who have struggled with self acceptance and love.
Jolene by Mercedes Lackey is the latest in her Elemental Masters series (I've read them all) and a romantic fairy tale based on a Dolly Parton song from the 70s. Lackey's prose is sterling, as usual, and her plot swift and sure. But it's the characters who really shine in this delightful novel, with our young mage Anna May Jones undergoing a brilliant journey from her filthy and impoverished mining town to the village where her Aunt Jinny lives and works, and teaches Anna to control her powers. Here's the blurb: The beloved Elemental Masters series moves to America for the first
time in a rich retelling of The Queen of the Copper Mountain, set
against the backdrop of Tennessee coal country.
Anna May
Jones is the daughter of a coal miner, but a sickly constitution (editors note: she's underfed/starving and therefore hasn't grown properly) has
kept her confined to the house for most of her life. Hoping to improve
her daughter’s health—and lessen the burden on their family—Anna's
mother sends her to live with her Aunt Jinny, a witchy-woman and an
Elemental Master, in a holler outside of Ducktown.
As she
settles into her new life, Anna learns new skills at Aunt Jinny’s side
and discovers that she, too, has a gift for Elemental magic that Jinny
calls “the Glory”. She also receives lessons from a mysterious and
bewitching woman named Jolene, who assures her that, with time, Anna
could become even more powerful than her aunt.
But with
Anna’s increasing power comes increasing notice. Billie McDaran, the
foreman of the Ducktown mine, begins to take an interest in Anna and her
abilities—even though Anna has already fallen in love with a young man
with a talent for stonecarving.
If she wants to preserve the
life she has come to love, Anna must use her newfound powers to oppose
the foreman and protect those around her.
Anna's journey is inspiring, and all the descriptions of delicious homemade meals made my mouth water. I also enjoyed the outlining of what constitutes "earth magic" and how magic can be used for good or twisted and used for evil. Jolene, though never fully labeled as such, seems to be a fae/fairy person of great power whose interest in Anna gives the book a lot of charm. I'd give this riveting tale an A, and I wonder if Lackey has sent a copy to Dolly Parton? I somehow think that Ms Parton would love this take on her famous song.
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