AP Ends Weekly Book Reviews, New Class of Critics Announced, Audiobook Walk, Kirkus Fall Books Preview, The Rise of On Tyranny, Obituary for Greg Iles, Ghostwritten Memoirs Are The New Status Symbol, Worldcon Returns to Seattle, Dear Miss Lake by AJ Pearce, The Medicine Woman of Galveston by Amanda Skenandore, Story of My Life by Lucy Score,A Tale of Mirth and Magic by Kristen Vale, and The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker

Hey there, bibliophiles and other bookish friends! August is almost over (hurrah!) and I'm hoping that September brings cooler temps and more rain, so all the dried up plants and grass will revive and the Emerald City will once again be green. Meanwhile, I've been reading up a storm, and I've got 5 books to review today, along with a few choice bookish tidbits. Enjoy!

 

This is such a bummer! The AP has really gone downhill in the past 10-15 years. 

 

Associated Press to End Weekly Book Reviews

In a note to reviewers, the AP said that as of September, the AP will no longer be in the regular book review business . The reasoning at this point is both familiar, disheartening, and intransigent: book reviews as a business proposition are extremely tough. This will greatly decrease the number of book reviews across the hundreds of papers the AP services. Celebrity book clubs, book influencers, Goodreads, and a just generally crappy market for traditional media have eroded the attention paid to regular reviews. I would say this is a real loss (and it is) but maybe the more depressing and honest read is that these reviews weren’t being read very much anyone, so maybe not that many will even notice.

So they've gotten a bunch of critics no one has ever heard of to write reviews, which are a dying art. And only the last few papers of record will be featuring book reviews. This just makes me sad.

 

New Class of NBCC Emerging Critics Announced

And yet people are still going to write about books. I cannot say I recognize any of these emerging critics (that is sort of the point), but in looking through their bios, the array of publications they have written for is wide, even if the titles may not be familiar. There are so many smaller publications that remain dedicated to writing about books and so many people who want to write about them, that there will be a sort of eternal flame for criticism. But criticism as something that routinely appears in for-profit enterprises at scale? Only the titans (The NYT, New York Mag, The Atlantic, etc) are likely to continue.

Audiobook Walk...a Great Idea

"Introverts unite!" Gibson's Bookstore, Concord, N.H., posted on social media to promote an "audiobook walk" the shop is hosting on Saturday, August 23. "RAIN OR SHINE! Bring an umbrella if it looks like rain!" the bookseller added. "Get your headphones and cue up your audiobooks, we're going for an audiobook walk... meet us outside of Gibson's Bookstore at 10 a.m. We'll head out on a one-mile loop around downtown Concord (walkers can choose to do an additional loop or two, if they'd like!) and will end back at Gibson's! If you don't already have a Libro.fm membership, you can sign up at libro.fm/gibsonsbookstore. Hope to see you there!"

I used to write reviews for Kirkus, and they were a real pain in the tuchas. I spent so many hours reading and re-reading the books, and then tailoring specific reviews that the 50 dollars I was paid to complete them became completely meaningless.

 

Kirkus’ Fall Books Preview

Some look forward to leaves turning. Other to the return of football or pumpkin spice. Me? I am a "fall books preview" guy. Give me 300 books I want to read. Add another 200 that I would never read but just like to know about. And a few hundred "man humans are a range" titles that are simply beyond me. I want it all. And sometimes, I want to see the handful of titles that someone who is really in it is excited about. Tom Beer, Editor-in-Chief of Kirkus, is definitely in it, so looking at his short(ish) list carries extra weight with me.

With the rise of Cheeto Hitler in the White House and Fascists in the Legislature, it's not surprising people are searching for books to help make sense of it all. 

 

The Irresistible Rise of On Tyranny

1.4 million copies sold. A quarter million of those in 2025. Left-leaning people process their political feeling by buying books (1984 & The Handmaid’s Tale  in 2016, a mini-course worth of books about racism in the wake of George Floyd). The latest to cash-in is Timothy Snyder’s slender, easy-to-digest On Tyranny. If you have been in an indie bookstore lately, you probably (as Laura Miller wisely observes) have been it near the cash register. An impulse-buy for the doomscrolling set. Unsurprisingly, it has been all over social media, but the harder question to answer is this: did social media make it or is social media just reflecting that people are buying it? The answer is somewhere in the messy middle.

 

I've read maybe two of Iles books in my lifetime, but I recall that he was an excellent prose stylist, and I'm sorry to see that he's my age and passed of cancer. RIP.

 

Obituary Note: Greg Iles

Greg Iles,the bestselling author of the Natchez Burning trilogy (Natchez Burning,

The Bone Tree, and Mississippi Blood) and other works, died August 15

after a decades-long battle with the blood cancer multiple myeloma, the

Associated Press reported. He was 65. Born in Germany, Iles moved to

Natchez, Miss., with his family when he was three and developed a deep

connection with the region, the AP noted, adding that many of his

stories are set in the state, including historical fiction suspense

novels exploring race and class in the 1960s Jim Crow South.

His other books include Cemetery Road (2019), The Death Factory (2014),

The Devil's Punchbowl (2009), Third Degree (2007), True Evil (2006),

Turning Angel (2005), Blood Memory (2005), The Footprints of God (2003), The Quiet Game (1999), and Spandau Phoenix (1993).

In a social media post announcing Iles's death, Dan Conaway, his agent,

described the author as "warm, funny, fearless, and completely sui

generis. To be on the other end of the phone as he talked through character and plot, problem-solving on the fly, was to be witness to genius at work,

plain and simple. As a writer he fused story-craft, bone-deep humanity,

and a growing sense of moral and political responsibility with the

ferocious precisions of a whirling dervish or a master watchmaker.... I

also want to express my profound gratitude to Caroline, his wife, for

her friendship, and my sorrow and sympathy to the whole Iles family for

this impossible loss."

This doesn't surprise me, though my cynical side is disgusted with these one percenters who are trying to make themselves seem like "self-made men" when most inherited their wealth and had significant advantages growing up and a lot of support to get them started in business. This is an insult to those who struggle to survive and their parents who have done the same, without all the advantages of old white racist men, who profited off the poor. I hope that their books crash and burn and are never heard from again. Most, if not all, of these privileged asshats have never worked a day in their lives.

 

Ghostwritten Memoirs Are the New Wealth Status Symbol

Wealthy retirees, many of whom "just want the kids to know how hard they had it," are spending up to $100,000 to commission ghost-written memoirs. Oh, the irony. The trend is popular enough that a cottage industry has sprung up to support it, with some older folks use all-inclusive services that pair them with interviewers who sit with them for multiple sessions before passing the transcripts to a ghostwriter who pulls them into a cohesive story. Those lucky enough to have $10 million or more with a Cleveland-based wealth management firm receive a "free" ghostwritten memoir as a perk offered "to ease clients’ fears that their heirs won’t understand the value of hard work." If I resist the urge to roll my eyes all the way to the back of my head while muttering about how boomers really did ruin it for the rest of us, I can find some sympathy for the end-of-life concern about leaving a legacy. We all want to be seen, after all. But a hundred grand? Sure feels excessive. And exploitative?! Probably that, too. Storyworth will do this for you for $99, and, dare I say it, this might actually be a great use-case for AI.

I wish to heck I could have attended, but with my crappy immune system that wasn't a possibility, unfortunately. Sounds like a good time was had by all. I especially regret missing John Scalzi, a favorite author of mine.

 

All Things Science Fiction: WorldCon Returns to Seattle

Seattle WorldCon 2025 took place August 13-17, the first time the World Science Fiction Convention was back in Seattle, Wash., since 1961. World Science Fiction Society members attended in person and online, celebrating the past, present, and future of SF and fantasy creators and fans. Attendees had a pick of panels, readings, discussion groups, and workshops in 44 tracks, with topics that included academics, comics, fandoms, costume, editing/publishing, non-Western literature, genre history, and more.

Hundreds of attendees filled the Friday session "A Genre in Conversation

with Itself" to hear Isabel Kim (Sublimation), John Scalzi (When the

Moon Hits Your Eye), Becky Chambers (Monk and Robot series), George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire series), and Neil Clarke (editor,

Clarkesworld magazine) discuss science fiction's proclivity for tributes

and critiques. Clarke said, "We're looking for things that add to the

conversation... something that does something different or brings it to

relevance to the next generation."

Scalzi quipped that the science fiction genre itself is like free-form

jazz and added that not every response text is addressed to a previous

written work. "It can be about a trend that you see going on or about a

trope you see people using uncritically... all is up for response,

criticism or commentary."

Dear Miss Lake by AJ Pearce is an historical romance novel that was truly a delight to read. I've read the other three books in this series, and I'm so sad to think this is the last one, though it ends with an HEA that is very satisfying. Here's the blurb: Plucky wartime advice columnist Emmy Lake discovers that sometimes it takes losing everything to find what we need most.

London, July 1944. After nearly five years of war, the readers of Woman’s Friend magazine are relying on the support of Emmy Lake and her team more than ever. With the city under attack, the magazine staff decamps to the countryside for the summer. Determined to help the women of Britain carry on, Emmy and friends are hard at work finding new ways to inspire resilience.

With her army officer husband Charles posted close to home, and best friend Bunty by her side, Emmy happily throws herself into rural life, juggling children, magazine assignments, and plans for a very important wedding. And then a call comes that means she may finally fulfill her long-held dream of becoming a war correspondent.

But when disaster strikes, Emmy needs her friends, her community, and her readers more than ever. Filled with courage and compassion, a lovable cast of characters, and winning wartime details, Dear Miss Lake is an enormously uplifting testament to the power of friendship and hope.  

 I loved that Emmy and Charles made it through the war intact, and were able to be together, and that the gang was also able to carry on and live their lives after the horrors of WWII were nearly behind them. This book puts WWII British women on the homefront directly in the spotlight and includes childrens perspective, while also delving into the frustrations of finding lost men and POWs via the Red Cross and the government. The prose, as always, is sterling, full of wit and warmth, while the plot whizzes by so fast that its hard to keep up. I'd give this marvelous novel of the end of the second World War an A, and recommend it highly to anyone who has read Pearce's other 3 novels.

 

The Medicine Woman of Galveston by Amanda Skenandore is a historical adventure with a through-line of romance that takes place at the turn of the 20th century. Here's the blurb: 

The author of The Nurse’s Secret delivers a haunting new book based on true history perfect for readers of Kristin Hannah. This spellbinding story of a determined female doctor pushed into life as part of a menacing swindler’s traveling medicine show in order to support her son is rife with unflinching prose and set against the backdrop of the devastating Galveston Hurricane of 1900.

Once a trailblazer in the field of medicine, Dr. Tucia Hatherley hasn’t touched a scalpel or stethoscope since she made a fatal mistake in the operating theater. Instead, she works in a corset factory, striving to earn enough to support her disabled son. When even that livelihood is threatened, Tucia is left with one option—to join a wily, charismatic showman named Huey and become part of his traveling medicine show.

Her medical license lends the show a pretense of credibility, but the cures and tonics Tucia is forced to peddle are little more than purgatives and bathwater. Loathing the duplicity, even as she finds uneasy kinship with the other misfit performers, Tucia vows to leave as soon as her debts are paid and start a new life with her son—if Huey will ever let her go.

When the show reaches Galveston, Texas, Tucia tries to break free from Huey, only to be pulled even deeper into his schemes. But there is a far greater reckoning ahead, as a September storm becomes a devastating hurricane that will decimate the Gulf Coast—and challenge Tucia to recover her belief in medicine, in the goodness of others—and in herself.

I've read The Nurses Secret, so I'm somewhat familiar with this author's work, and I appreciate her attention to historical detail, though at times it slows down the plot considerably. I also appreciated that the author focused on Tucia, a female doctor, struggling to find acceptance at a time of great misogyny in society when women were treated to every kind of sexual harassment and rape if they attempted to live a life outside the bounds of convention, especially as single mothers. Considering that Tucia was traumatized during her residency by a professor who raped her and then worked to get her fired from her position, I had expected her to be slightly mentally unstable, (and her son was born with Down's Syndrome, which was then called idiocy or mongoloidism, both purjorative terms, wherein society expected the mothers of said children to lock them away in horrible asylums), but Tucia wasn't even able to tolerate the sight of blood or injury, and was prone to vomiting and fainting for a majority of the novel, which seemed weak and pathetic to me. She finally gets ahold of herself and is able to act like a doctor and surgeon for the last part of the book, but it's largely due to a huge emergency when she's the only medical person around who can save anyone. Having been a sexual harassment survivor myself, I always felt that if you didn't get on with your life and show some mettle, you let the rapist male asshats win, and that won't do. Tucia also was smothering her son, and not disciplining him or teaching him right from wrong could only lead to many behavioral problems in the future. I detest spinelessness in women, though I understand women throughout history have had little choice in dealing with men who had total control over their lives and livelihoods. I'd give this engrossing tale, which takes place across the south, not just in Texas, a B- and recommend it to those interested in pioneering women in the early 20th century.

 

Story Of My Life by Lucy Score is a utterly delicious and hilarious rom-com, full of spicy/steamy love scenes and witty dialog. I couldn't put it down, though it was a hefty tome weighing in at over 500 pages. Here's the blurb: 

A Gilmore Girls meets Schitt's Creek redemption romcom. What's more inspiring to a romcom author than a hot, grumpy contractor literally knocking down walls?

Hazel Hart was a successful romance novelist until a breakup drives her straight into writer's block. Having failed (and failed some more) to deliver her new manuscript, she's hiding from the world behind a wall of old takeout containers until her publisher lays down the law. If she misses her next deadline it's The End.

Desperate for inspiration, Hazel impulse-buys a historic home online and flees Manhattan to tiny Story Lake, PA. Upon her dramatic arrival―involving an incident with a bald eagle―she discovers the charm of her new home may have been slightly exaggerated.

The house is a wreck and the town is struggling after their biggest employer shut down. Also, since her raccoon-infested home came with a seat on the town council our introverted heroine is stuck with a front row seat to all the small-town shenanigans.

But Hazel isn't worried. Not since all six-feet-three inches of grouchy contractor Campbell Bishop slapped a bandage on her forehead and unintentionally inspired the heck out of her. There's only one thing to do: Hire Cam and his equally gorgeous brothers to renovate her new spider museum…er…house.

Okay two things. A fake date for "research purposes" will really put her work-in-progress on track. Before Hazel knows it, she's writing a romance novel and living one. At least until the drywall dust settles, the town she's falling in love with faces bankruptcy, and growly Cam remembers why he can't live happily ever after.

I loved Hazel and, though he's a tropish/cliche of a leading man, I adored Campbell, too. The cozy romance setting, along with the whole "fish out of water" NYC woman visits gossipy small town a few states away, had me laughing out loud and wishing that I could find a place that was untouched by time and technology like Story Lake. I grew up in a series of small towns in Iowa, and though they seemed boring to a child, (and they no longer exist, unfortunately), I would give anything to time travel back to them and spend time with all the old gossipy ladies at the church or senior home, or attend the oddball fair (called, I kid you not, The Old Thresher's Reunion), held every year in a huge pasture, where you could smell the sorghum cooking in a kettle over the fire and the corn dogs frying or the sweet dough cooking with cinnamon and sugar. Such great memories that today's kids will be deprived of, because most small towns like Story Lake haven't survived. Still, the prose sparkled with wit and romance, and the plot was fast as lightening. I'd give it an A, and recommend it as an engrossing page-turner to take with you on a long airplane flight or trip to some exotic locale.

 

A Tale of Mirth And Magic by Kristen Vale is a cozy magical romantasy that pulls readers in from page one and doesn't let them go until the wonderful HEA. I loved the inclusiveness of this book, and the contrast between the big purple giant and the chubby, self-confident elf whose magic brings mayhem with it. Here's the blurb: 

A maker of magical jewelry finds her life turned upside down when she ends up on the run with a half-giant in this spicy and cozy fantasy romance—perfect for fans of Legends & Lattes and The Spellshop. 

Elikki may not have a family, but she has her fierce independence, boundless charm, and enough talent as a jewelry artisan to make a living on the road. Unfortunately for some, she also can’t yet manage to control her chaotic magic. . . and her temper. Sweet, soft Barra lives a quiet life with his mas and three sisters, managing the books for his family’s business. All he wants is to blend in and not make waves—a bit tricky, as a nearly eight-foot-tall purple half-giant. 
 
When Elikki lands in hot water after dealing with a particularly rude customer, Barra finds himself helping her flee the constables. With a bounty on her back—and a severe crush forming on his end—they decide to travel together to the next town. So begins a journey filled with cozy inns, delicious meals, heaps of excellent sex, and a sprinkling of danger.  As their adventures bring them closer together and the threat of capture rises they find themselves changing in surprising ways. He’s given up on finding love. She’s always refused to try. But traveling together, they may discover unexpected, powerful romance and stronger self-identities—if the bounty hunters don’t get them first. 

Though the blurb makes it sound spicier than it actually is, I loved the romance between the shy giant and the bright and bubbly elf who loves herself just as she is, regardless of the circumstances. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the fabulous meals and food that they encounter on their journey, and I loved the way El manages to put magic into each of her jeweled creations. That she also gets the better of a sleazeball guy who tries to sexually harass her and steal her work, is just icing on the cake. Vale's prose is mesmerizing and her plot never stalls or slows, even for long descriptions of people, places, or meals. I'd give this fantastic read an A, and recommend it to fans of TJ Klune or Legends and Lattes. 

 

The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker is an inappropriately titled fantasy novel for multiple reasons, the first of which is that the female protagonist, Nora, isn't a thinking woman at all. She's a gullible idiot who keeps making the same mistakes over and over, and doesn't get a handle on even the simplest magic until the last third of the book, and even then, she still sucks because she falls in love with her much older teacher for reasons we're never fully clued in on.  Because love apparently makes fools of us all, Nora can't focus on her magic and continues to be pathetic as an apprentice and a person in this pseudo-medieval world. Also, the magic is only "real" in this pre-industrial world, and one of the main problems Nora has is that there is no "guide" to how magic works at all. Here's the blurb: An imaginative story of a woman caught in an alternate world—where she will need to learn the skills of magic to survive

Nora Fischer’s dissertation is stalled and her boyfriend is about to marry another woman.  During a miserable weekend at a friend’s wedding, Nora wanders off and walks through a portal into a different world where she’s transformed from a drab grad student into a stunning beauty.  Before long, she has a set of glamorous new friends and her romance with gorgeous, masterful Raclin is heating up. It’s almost too good to be true.

Then the elegant veneer shatters. Nora’s new fantasy world turns darker, a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. Making it here will take skills Nora never learned in graduate school. Her only real ally—and a reluctant one at that—is the magician Aruendiel, a grim, reclusive figure with a biting tongue and a shrouded past. And it will take her becoming Aruendiel’s student—and learning magic herself—to survive. When a passage home finally opens, Nora must weigh her “real life” against the dangerous power of love and magic. 

It just seemed amazing (and strained my credulity) that a woman of this day and age had never heard the cautionary tales of the Fae/Fairies that most of us grew up on. The tales that tell you to never make a bargain with a fairy, that they set glamors on everything to make it look beautiful, when in reality, under the illusion, they're hideously ugly creatures whose environs are dirty woodlands and whose food is rotten acorns and twigs and fungus. They can't reproduce well, so they steal human children from their cribs and replace them with magical stick creatures who are nasty and evil. They've also been known to try and breed with human women, but it doesn't work out most times because the Fae are a different species than humans. We're also told never to eat or drink anything offered in fairyland, because its magicked to twist your mind into thinking everything is beautiful, when these beings don't care whether you live or die. But Nora has gotten through her whole life apparently completely ignorant of these evil tricksters, so she falls for every single fairy cliche and nearly dies because of it. What an idiot. Then she finds she yearns to go back to them, even after all the glamors and charms are removed...again, what an idiot! I kept waiting for Nora to smarten up, but she never does...she just falls for the head magician, though he's a nasty piece of work and crushes her flirtations, making it clear he's not interested in her (she doesn't listen and continues to pursue him...ugh! Idiocy!) Though it was over 550 pages long, this poorly written, dully plotted novel seemed like a thousand pages of dreadfulness. I'd give it a D, and I can't think of anyone to recommend it to, it's misogynistic and depressing. Blech.