January is almost over, already, bookish buddies! I can't believe how swiftly this month has gone, and now many books I've already gone through in my TBR stack, which was getting a bit out of hand, with all the book gifts from my birthday and Christmas. We've had lots of icy rain and gray skies, which is perfect book reading weather, because there's nothing more cozy than curling up under a warm blanket with a hot beverage and a good book to make one's day/evening go well. There's been some great new shows to stream, too, from the wonderful "Echo" to the second season of "Reacher," I've cleansed my reading palate, so to speak, by watching shows that are skillfully written and enacted. But, at any rate, here's the latest tidbits and reviews on tap.
All I can say to Philip Pullman is AMEN, brother! PREACH!
Quotation of the Day
"The school library is without question the most important room in the entire school, because it contains--or used to contain, or should contain--books that are not required for examination purposes. Books that no one might expect to find. Books on every subject under the sun. Books that some teachers don't even know are there....
"But the library should be the heart, the soul, the mind, the source, the spring, the gold-bearing seam, the engine room, the treasure chamber, the priceless inheritance, the joy and the pride of the school. Every school."--Author Philip Pullman, calling on government to legislate immediately to ensure all schools in Britain have libraries
This scrappy little bookstore in Marion, Iowa, is moving to a bigger, better space! Congratulations Swamp Fox! THIS is what Iowa really needs, more access to books of all kinds and less censorship from a corrupt, ignorant Governor and fascist so-called "Christians" who think that getting rid of books with even a hint of sexuality will somehow prevent them from discovering the realities of life on their own...believe me, it won't. The more you try to censor a book, the higher the demand will be among the young people you think you're "protecting."
Iowa's Swamp Fox Bookstore Moving
Swamp Fox Bookstore https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQSKlusI6a9iIEh1Gw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nDWJejpoMLg-gVdw, Marion, Iowa is closing its current location this Friday, January 26, and reopening in a new spot at 1375 7th Avenue on Wednesday, February 7. The new location will give the store more space for gatherings and consolidate all operations. A grand reopening event is planned for Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday, April 27, which is also the third anniversary of Swamp Fox's original opening celebration.
"We are so excited that the community has supported us and showed us they want a locally owned bookstore in their backyard!" said Terri LeBlanc, who owns the store with Amanda Zhorne and Ursla Lanphea. The three opened the tiny shop featuring books from their personal collection and from another bookstore that closed. The store added Swamp Fox Kids, a children's store, in 2021 and merged the two in 2022 when a larger unit became available. Swamp Fox has had retail space in Marion's West End since July 2020. "Now, with 1,150 square feet to work with, our inventory and hours may expand a little, but our goal is for the store to feel cozy, like you're walking into someone's living room," LeBlanc added. "We want to be a gathering space for book lovers so everyone can learn about new authors and discover books they might like."
I can't wait to see what this third incarnation of Highsmith's book looks like, especially with Andrew Scott in the title role.
TV: Ripley
Netflix has released a teaser trailer for its upcoming series Ripley https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQSKlusI6a9iIEhyTg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nDWJejpoMLg-gVdw, based on Patricia Highsmith's novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. The adaptation was originally set up at Showtime, but was acquired by Netflix in a sale between the companies, Variety reported.
Directed and written by Steven Zaillian (The Irishman), Ripley stars Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers) in the title role, along with Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf and Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood. The series premieres April 4, with all eight episodes available on Netflix. Previously, Matt Damon played Tom Ripley in the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, co-starring with Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. The movie was nominated for five Academy Awards.
This is another streaming series that I'm looking forward to viewing, as I've long been a fan of Sam Neill and Annette Bening.
TV: Apples Never Fall
A teaser trailer has been released for Apples Never Fall https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQSLku0I6a9iJhhyHw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nDWZOlpoMLg-gVdw, the Peacock limited series based on Liane Moriarty's 2021 novel. IndieWire reported that in the adaptation, "Annette Bening and Sam Neill portray the seemingly ideal parents, whose four adult children (Jake Lacy, Alison Brie, Conor Merrigan-Turner, Essie Randles) lead perfect lives. Yet all of that comes crashing down as a stranger enters their lives and Bening's character disappears."
Melanie Marnich (The OA, The Affair) is the writer, showrunner, and executive producer of the series, with David Heyman (Wonka, Barbie) also serving as an executive producer. Apples Never Fall premieres March 14 on Peacock.
I remember reading my first Sinclair Lewis book (the Jungle) way back when I was 14 years old, 50 years ago. I love this speech, and agree that regular paper books will be around for a long time. They are timeless treasures. BTW, he's also right about insurance salesmen.
Sinclair Lewis's Speech Promoting Books
In May 1936, the New York Times reported that author and Nobel Prize laureate Sinclair Lewis had given a speech titled "Enemies of the Book," at the American Booksellers Association's annual convention dinner.
Lewis predicted that no form of radio broadcast, television included, would ever threaten the demand for good books. He began by pointing out that all writers were members of the same guild--booksellers. "We bookmen sell security in life," he suggested, as opposed to life insurance salesmen who sell security in death.
"I do not believe that anything will altogether supplant the old-fashioned printed book, which has changed so very little since Gutenberg finished printing the first book, a Bible, back in 1455," Lewis observed. "I do not believe that any nimble television apparatus, any series of phonograph records, any ingenious microscopic gadget whereby you can carry the entire works of Balzac in your cigarette case, will ever take the place of books, just as we know them. It is obvious that people listen to the radio and go to the motion pictures instead of reading books, but there are plenty of other Cossacks on our trail, the automobile, the bridge table and night clubs.
"It may be that we are all--publishers, writers, and dealers--in permanently for smaller profits, but there is one merit in this situation. It means we belong to a profession which must become increasingly skilled.... I do not believe that the public will always be completely satisfied with the glaring screen, or that they will forever prefer the unctuous verbal caresses of radio announcers to the many-colored pages of Dickens."
Here are the latest reviews:
The Burnout by Sophie Kinsella, is a delightful, funny romantic comedy with just the right amount of spice interwoven throughout the plot to make for an un-put-downable read. Here's the blurb:
This book has some of the same characteristics that I love about "cozy" mysteries, ie the oddball background characters, the run-down setting, the little mystery of who has been leaving messages on the beach, written in sand for Sasha and Finn (it's never who you think it is, either...it's always the person you least suspect!) and the delicious witty dialog between the main characters that keeps the reader turning pages into the wee hours. My only problem with Kinsella and her female protagonists (this isn't the first book of hers that I've read), is that they are always such doormats for everyone, especially those in charge, who are usually men, to walk all over, that I become impatient with their lack of spine before I am halfway through the book. In this case, Sasha is such a huge wimp, so self-effacing that she tries to join a convent and nearly offs herself running into a wall to get away from the heinous HR person, who is about as stupid and worthless to her employees as possible. Yet no one at Sasha's start up firm gets fired for their horrible incompetence, and Sasha is too "well mannered" and polite to use the word NO to set up boundaries that could save her sanity. Seriously, she'd rather die of overwork and stress than tell people to piss off. Unbelievable. Still, after some time away and much needed recreation and rest, with the help of another sad sack who can't set boundaries to save his life, Sasha finally quits her job and tells the company what they're doing wrong. This leads to a satisfying HEA for her, though I felt that Sasha really didn't need a man to help her understand herself and her worth to her employer and the world at large. There are lots of fun and weird side characters here for the oddball in you to enjoy as well. I'd give this book a strong B+, and recommend it to anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed and under-appreciated.
Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci is a delicious non fiction memoir about Tucci's life before and after becoming a successful actor, and before and after having cancer on his tongue and throat, and losing his ability to taste all the good food that he had grown up eating and preparing for himself and others. Here's the blurb: From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen.
Stanley
Tucci grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night
around the kitchen table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the savory recipes and into the compelling stories behind them.
Taste is
a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with
anecdotes about his growing up in Westchester, New York; preparing for
and shooting the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia;
falling in love over dinner; and teaming up with his wife to create
meals for a multitude of children. Each morsel of this gastronomic
journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burned dishes,
is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.
Written with Stanley’s signature wry humor, Taste is for fans of Bill Buford, Gabrielle Hamilton, and Ruth Reichl—and anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.
This book is the February pick for my Tuesday night book group, and I must confess that I bought this book two years ago and never got around to reading farther than the first 20 pages, before being distracted by some shiny new volume that came my way. I know, shame on me for sidelining the wonderful Stanley Tucci. I've been watching his show on the History channel, in which he eats his way around Italy, communing with ancient nonnas in their kitchens that haven't changed since the 1930s or 40s. Most of the dishes make me drool, though due to food allergies and lactose intolerance, I can't eat most of them anymore, sadly. But it is toward the end, when Tucci delineates his struggle with mouth cancer and the debilitating effects of treatment, that I truly felt a connection with this sophisticated connoisseur of a man. For someone so steeped in food culture, to have everything taste terrible, and not being able to chew and swallow something as simple as pasta with sauce must have been torture. Due to all my food allergies, I am familiar with this torture, of wanting to enjoy foods that I cannot have. Fortunately, Tucci recovers his sense of smell and taste, and goes on to host these foodie travelogues for the rest of us to enjoy. The rich foods and even wealthier cultural context of each show is a priceless window into a part of the world that many long to, but few will ever be able to, visit. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys Italian food and the journey of ingredients to nourishment.
The Song of the Marked and A Twist of the Blade by G.M. Gaither are books 1 and 2 of the Shadows and Crowns YA series. This (much later YA, as in 18+) adventure fantasy series reminds me of Sarah Maas's works crossed with Karen Marie Moning's magical fae series with a splash of Vespertine for good measure. I've read a lot of this particular sub-genre of fantasy, which involves young women who are either orphans or abandoned by their parents (or they escape because their parent(s) are completely evil), who learn to fight with swords and either become thieves or assassins for a living. Here's the blurb for Song of the Marked:
The old gods are growing restless. An ancient evil is stirring. Can they stop the coming storm?
Mercenary Casia Greythorne cares about two things: Completing whatever her latest job is, and earning enough coin to buy the expensive medicine that’s keeping her mentor alive.
So when the king himself offers her a job, she can’t resist the massive reward he offers—even if it means working with Captain Elander, the arrogant, mysterious right-hand to that king.
Her partner may be infuriating, but at least their mission seems simple and quick enough: Investigate the origins of the strange plague that’s been ravaging their empire, help find a cure, and then call it a day.
But in a land brimming with old magic and meddling gods, nothing is ever that simple, and nothing is ever what it seems.
As the bodies pile up and strange monsters begin to wreak havoc throughout the realms, Cas and Elander will have to work together to protect their world whether they like it or not. Because one thing is clear: Something ancient and evil is stirring in the shadows of that world.
And their empire will not survive its full unleashing.
A Twist of the Blade:
Mercenary. Survivor. Queen.
Who is Casia Greythorne?
Still reeling from an unimaginable loss and the revelation of an identity she isn’t sure she wants to embrace, Casia has one plan: Try to control something. Something like the strange magic awakening inside of her. Mastering that magic will take her and her friends on a quest through cursed lands, into the dwellings of old gods, and deep into a southern empire filled with deadly foes and unlikely allies.
Meanwhile, the foundations of the Kethran Empire continue to crumble. The king-emperor clings to his crown with increasingly bloodied hands. Monsters and soldiers alike stalk Casia's every step, determined not to let her return to claim a throne that is rightfully hers. Still, the greatest threat to her possible rule may not lie in the king-emperor, but in a former captain of his army—a man that she came dangerously close to falling in love with.
Elander Revenmar thought he knew who he was. He had a mission, a plan, a god he was content to serve. Then came Casia. A woman as mysterious as she is dangerous. One he should have stayed away from, and whose life he never should have saved.
Because salvation always comes with a cost.
I feel somewhat similar about these two fantasy/adventure/romance novels as I did about Sarah Maas's works, in that the female character was just too noble and self-sacrificing, even unto death, that she comes off, oddly enough, as rather stupid. She's also got the trademark trope of self-loathing down to a science, and, as usual, all it takes is the love of a man (in this case a fallen god) to make her realize that she has actual worth as a human being. I can only take so much of the "here I go into an impossible battle by myself, against impossible odds and gigantic magical nightmares, where I will get beaten to within an inch of my life, but I'll be miraculously saved at the last possible moment by the man/god who has fallen hopelessly in love with my anorexic, but still beautiful self." I just get tired of all the self-righteous battles and the miraculous saves with Casia's powers suddenly growing stronger and saving the day, again at the last moment....long enough for people to die so she can feel tremendous guilt and can add it to her self-loathing baggage. Insert eye rolling here. I stopped reading Maas for this reason, and also because her books became a little too much like soft porn wrapped in a fantasy setting....now they're calling that "spicy" romance, which I find amusing. The writing is intricate and luminous, but the plot tends to sag and slow for info-dumps about background of gods and others that aren't necessary. I'd give these two books a collective B+, and recommend them to those who like female characters who are so noble that they bathe in the blood of their adversaries every other chapter.
