Hey Summer beach readers and basking sun book dragons! Here's the latest of my gathered tidbits about the book world and reviews of four books and a novella by Alice Hoffman! It's been hot this past week so I've not wanted to risk sunburn and I've stayed indoors reading like crazy. There's been good books, mediocre books and some awkward bad novels that I am embarrassed to say that I wasted money on. Yet I can't imagine not reading for even a day, as books and stories are my happy place. So dig in, fellow readers! Enjoy some sunshine and wordsmithing.
I LOLed at the title of this piece from book riot, especially as I read all of Martha Wells Murderbot books and am now enjoying the streaming series starring Alexander Skarsgård as the dry and wry Murderbot himself.
It’s
Getting Bot in Here, So Take Off All Your Clones: 5 Great Robot
Sci-Fi Books
Hello,
my cutie cyborgs! Have you been watching Murderbot?
Since I really
love the Murderbot
Diaries ,
I was apprehensive about watching it. I have been let down so many
times by adaptations before. But the source material is so good, and
I adore Alexander Skarsgård, so I went for it, and I am glad that I
did. I love it! It looks very similar to how I imagined it as I read
the first book. It’s a really funny space adventure that’s
touching and exciting, and sometimes almost campy. I am already sad that there are only ten episodes.
So,
in honor of the fun show about a self-aware security droid, I chose a
few sci-fi books that feature robots of some kind. Whether they have
AI, cyborgs, or clones, sentient or not, these five titles are a mech
of a good time! And be sure you pick up the
excellent Murderbot series by Martha Wells, if you haven’t already.
Or read it again—that’s never against protocol.
Del Toro's Adaptation of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Thursday Murder Club trailer is out!
Netflix
has released a first look trailer
for Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming adaptation of the classic novel
Frankenstein
by
Mary Shelley. The film stars Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and
Jacob Elordi as Frankenstein’s monster. Mia Goth, Felix
Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, David Bradley, Christian Convery, Charles
Dance, and Christoph Waltz also star. Frankenstein
will
be available to stream on Netflix in November of this year.
We’ve
also gotten a trailer for The
Thursday Murder Club
!
The film, directed by Chris Columbus, is based on the novel by
Richard Osman. The story centers around four senior sleuths living
together in a retirement home. It stars Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan,
Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie, Naomi Ackie, Jonathan Pryce, Richard
E. Grant, and Henry Lloyd-Hughes. The
Thursday Murder Club
is set to premiere on Netflix on August 28.
Sad but true, that our rights as citizens of the USA are being deteriorated or removed every day. Current orange idiot POTUS is trying to be king and undermines the constitution at every turn.
Quotation
of the Day
"Democracy is under attack.
Democracies are not to be taken for granted.
And the institutions that support
democracy should not be taken for
granted. And so, that's what the
concern is about libraries and museums.
It's part of a fabric. Think of it as
an infrastructure that holds
up--the libraries have been called one
of the pillars of democracy, that
you have these institutions in every
community that allow anyone to come
in and access knowledge." --Carla
Hayden, the former Librarian of Congress who was abruptly fired last
month via email from Donald Trump
A prolific and iconic thriller writer has passed, sadly. RIP FF!
Obituary Note: Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, who "used his
early experience as a British foreign correspondent and occasional
intelligence operative as fodder for a series of
swashbuckling, bestselling thrillers in
the 1970s and '80s," died June
9, the New York Times reported. He was
86. Forsyth wrote 24 books,
including 14 novels, and sold more than
75 million copies of his works.
In 2012, he was honored with the Crime
Writers' Association's Diamond
Dagger Award for lifetime contribution
to crime writing in the English
language.
"His stories often juxtapose a
single individual against sprawling
networks of power and money--an unnamed
assassin against the French
government" in The Day of the
Jackal (1971), a lone British reporter
against a shadowy conspiracy to protect
ex-Nazi officers in The Odessa
File (1972), the Times noted.
His other novels include The Devil's
Alternative (1979), The Fourth
Protocol (1984), The Fist of God
(1994), Icon (1996), The Veteran
(2001), Avenger (2003), The Afghan
(2006), The Cobra (2010), The Kill
List (2013). He also wrote two short
story collections and two works of
nonfiction, including his memoir, The
Outsider: My Life in intrigue
(2015).
Many of his books were adapted into
movies within a few years of their
publication. A film version of The Day
of the Jackal, starring Edward
Fox, appeared in 1973, just two years
after the novel's publication. A
second movie version, with Bruce Willis
and Sidney Poitier, was released
in 1997 as The Jackal; and a TV series
based on the novel, starring
Eddie Redmayne, aired last year. Other
adaptations include The Odessa
File, The Dogs of War, and The Fourth
Protocol. Icon was made into a TV
mini-series, and a major film based on
The Kill List has been optioned.
I was so relieved to read that this school board in Minnesota refused to allow fascism and its group of idiots to ban books from their school libraries! Fight the good fight, Minny Apple!
Lawsuit
Returns Banned Books to This School District’s Shelves
The
St.
Francis school district is returning banned books to
shelves after a lawsuit filed by Education Minnesota-St. Francis and
the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota was settled. The
school district banned books, including The
Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison, The
Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini, and Brave
New World by
Aldous Huxley, after replacing librarians and teachers from the book
approval process with the now-defunct Book Looks book rating site run
by conservative group Moms for Liberty. The "logic" used to
make that decision is beyond me and, apparently, didn’t hold up to
scrutiny because the school board’s new book policy includes input
from teachers, librarians, and student reps. Education Minnesota-St.
Francis President Ryan Fiereck said of the journey to achieving the
settlement, "The students’ stories and commitment to fixing
this terrible policy were particularly inspiring," while St.
Francis Area School Board Chair Nathan Burr made a statement devoid
of accountability for the school board’s actions.
This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and like many, many women I can quote nearly all the main characters in the film (especially Stanley Tucci's "GIRD YOUR LOINS, PEOPLE!" when Miranda P is about to come into the office!) so I was thrilled to read that there's a sequel starring the same actors/actresses as the original. Gird your loins!
The
Devil Wears Prada Again
And
we’re not calling it faux pas. Emily Blunt spilled
the tea
on The
Devil Wears Prada 2,
revealing that it goes into production in July. The 2006 adaptation
of Lauren Weisberger’s novel, The
Devil Wears Prada,
featuring Hollywood heavies Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Blunt,
was a commercial success. I found it deeply entertaining and can’t
wait for the sequel even though I–we–know next to nothing about
it. The original follows Andy (played by Hathaway) who lands a job as
assistant to worst
boss ever
Miranda Priestley, editor-in-chief of one of the biggest fashion
magazines in the industry. Weisberger, who worked a stint assisting
none other than Anna Wintour before writing her bestseller (Wintour
is unbothered),
does have a sequel, Revenge
Wears Prada: The Devil Returns,
upon which the second film may or may not be based. We’ll find out
some time before it premieres on May 1, 2026.
My Friends by Fredrik Backman (who wrote the much lauded "A Man Called Ove" that I loved) is a bizarre novel about offbeat characters who go back and forth in time and who all had horrific childhoods full of abuse. It was unfathomable to me that no one did anything about these men beating their wives and children nearly to death. WHY? Even the police are ineffective in preventing further attacks and removing children at risk from the households. Here's the blurb: Bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns
with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose
friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete
stranger’s life twenty-five years later.
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.
I get that art can be powerful enough to change lives with its inherent beauty, but what I don't get is how this group of severely poor and abused and angry/strange/gay/neurodivergent children survived repeated brutality and were still able to find enough to eat and places to stay to sleep and grow up. None of the children were normal, all of their fathers were brutes and all of their mothers were cowering/weak/ignorant nutcases who could not seem to find it in themselves to leave the abusers or to get their children to somewhere safe away from the alcoholism and strife of everyday life. There's a ton of swearing, so if F-bombs bother you, this isn't the book for you. The prose, as with all of Backman's books (and I've read most of them) is beautiful and evocative, while the plot meanders and is difficult to follow a few times. Here's a lovely quote from the book about art: "Art is a fragile enough light as it is. It can be blown out by a single sigh. Art needs friends, with our bodies against the wind and our hands cupped around the flame, until it's strong enough to burn brightly with its own power. Until it's an inferno--unstoppable." And this truth about addiction. "You can't love someone out of addiction, all the oceans are the tears of those who have tried. We're not allowed to die for our children, the universe won't let us, because then there wouldn't be any mothers left." It's hard to grade this book, because there are wonderful moments and terrible chapters, so I will just give it a B+ and recommend it to anyone who loves art in any form.
Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack is a fun, ridiculous and often hilarious mystery beach read that, despite having a protagonist who is immature and vain, is still a page turner that will keep you grinning. Here's the blurb: Ten days, eight suspects, six cities, five authors, three bodies . . . one trip to die for.
All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series―is that too much to ask?
Clearly it is, because when an attempt is made to kill the real Connor―the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can’t get out of her life―Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case.
Contending with literary competitors, rabid fans, a stalker―and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly―theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder?
Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies is an irresistible and hilarious series debut from Catherine Mack, introducing bestselling fictional author Eleanor Dash on her Italian book tour where life starts to imitate the world in her books when she’s caught up in a real-life murder mystery.
Eleanor is probably one of the most annoying immature and stupid protagonists I have every read about, yet her antics somehow make her seem smart enough to be a bestselling mystery novelist. The prose is dazzling and moves along the fast and glittery plot. All in all, a ripping good yarn that grips you from the first page and doesn't let you go until the last. If you can ignore the teenage girl b*tchyness and the off color remarks and tired tropes, you will do just fine with this Las Vegas of a book. I'd give it a B, and recommend it to anyone who wants something fun to read at poolside while sipping a cocktail with an umbrella in it.
At The Water's Edge by Sara Gruen is a historical British fiction work that, unlike Water for Elephants, doesn't charm its way into your heart, but casts a pall over your life until you've finished it. Here's the blurb: A daring story of adventure, friendship, and love in the shadow of WWII
“Gripping, compelling . . . Gruen’s characters are vividly drawn and her scenes are perfectly paced.”—The Boston Globe
In January 1945, when Madeline Hyde and her husband, Ellis, are cut off financially by his father, a retired army colonel who is ashamed of his son’s inability to serve, Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father’s favor is to succeed where the Colonel very publicly failed—by hunting down the famous Loch Ness monster. Leaving her sheltered world behind, Maddie reluctantly follows Ellis and his best friend, Hank, to a remote village in the Scottish Highlands. Gradually, the friendships Maddie forms with the townspeople open her up to a larger world than she knew existed. Maddie begins to see that nothing is as it first appears, and as she embraces a fuller sense of who she might be, she becomes aware not only of darker forces around her but of life’s surprising possibilities.
“Gripping, compelling . . . Gruen’s characters are vividly drawn and her scenes are perfectly paced.”—The Boston Globe
In January 1945, when Madeline Hyde and her husband, Ellis, are cut off financially by his father, a retired army colonel who is ashamed of his son’s inability to serve, Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father’s favor is to succeed where the Colonel very publicly failed—by hunting down the famous Loch Ness monster. Leaving her sheltered world behind, Maddie reluctantly follows Ellis and his best friend, Hank, to a remote village in the Scottish Highlands. Gradually, the friendships Maddie forms with the townspeople open her up to a larger world than she knew existed. Maddie begins to see that nothing is as it first appears, and as she embraces a fuller sense of who she might be, she becomes aware not only of darker forces around her but of life’s surprising possibilities.
While the prose is well turned out, the plot lags in more than one spot, as the same thing keeps happening over and over to the female protagonist, wee fearful cowering Maddie, who is amazed to discover that her husband lied and cheated his way out of being drafted as a soldier in WWII, which was social suicide in those days. She also allows Hank and Ellis to go off "Monster Hunting" without her, and there's an undercurrent that will make most readers believe that the two men are lovers, which is why they're gone so long and remain drunk so often, as they can't face up to their true natures. I knew Ellis was evil right from the get-go, and I wasn't surprised at all when he met with a bad end. Hank, though they were extremely close, is somehow oblivious to all of this, and a real sad sack of a person, as spineless as Maddie, though she does grow into herself the more that she works at the Inn. I would give this dissipated novel a B-, and recommend it to anyone curious about those who hunted the Loch Ness Monster back in the early part of the 20th century.
A Web of Obsidian by Lydia M Hawke is a paranormal fantasy that is rare because it's protagonist is a senior-aged woman (69) who can still kick arse and take names, and is a retired nun who runs a shelter for battered and displaced women. My kind of gal! Strong and smart, with enough of a sense of self to not require a man to help her solve mysteries or protect her friends and found family. In fact, this book easily passes the Bechtel test, which is rare in fantasy that is often romance (Cis Het, mostly) oriented, with the muscular, tall, soulful and handsome guy always on hand to get the female protagonist out of trouble with the big bad villains. Blech. Here's the blurb: Hawke's prose is sterling, and her plot swift and fearless. This was a book that was actually too short, which is rare in this day and age of 400 page minimum tomes full of on again off again romance, gory battles and standard descriptions that make the surroundings all sound like Ireland in the summer. I loved Monica and her sincere desire to protect all the women around her, and her befuddlement at the fast way the men murder and destroy all the places that are safe spots for the nuns or the abused women in recovery. It's historically accurate that men have used violence and murder to get whatever power or women that they want, and it is sad that this patriarchal BS continues to this day. At any rate, I devoured this book in one afternoon, and I'm hoping to find a way to read the sequels. I'd give this fast-paced adventure with many smart female characters an A, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is tired of the "men saving petite women and falling in love" trope that abounds in fantasy these days.
The Bookstore Family by Alice Hoffman is a novella of magical women's fiction that is part of a series of 4 novellas that Hoffman wrote to flesh out some characters in her Practical Magic Universe. Here's the blurb: Hoffman's prose is nearly perfect, and her short plot is just tense enough to keep you reading for the hour or two it will take to read through the whole novella. I loved it, and I'd give it an A, along with the other three in the series. If you're a Practical Magic fan, you won't want to miss these sparkling novellas!
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