Saturday, March 30, 2019

Oprahs New Book Club for Apple, Best Bookstores in the USA, Princess Bride Musical, Tarot by Marissa Kennerson,The Beast's Heart by Leife Shallcross, Mahimata by Rati Mehrotra and Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott


Here we are another 10 days after I posted last time, and we're already at the end of March, coming up hard on spring (yay allergy season...not) I've managed to read four books this time, though my reading schedule has been thrown off by a lot of things this month, including streaming the new show (based on Lindy West's book) Shrill, starring an SNL alum and chubby gal Aidy, who does a decent, if mousey job of portraying Lindy West, who is far more confident and competent as a journalist for Seattle's Stranger newspaper than her TV counterpart is at a weekly paper in Portland, Oregon. Several other SNL comics appear in the show, but there were only 6 episodes and other than a kick ass pool party, or "chunky dunk" as they call it in Portland, there wasn't a lot of strong and powerful fat babes taking charge scenes, it was mostly the main character, Anne, being pushed around and being a wimp. Definitely disappointing and not worth the price of Hulu. In other streaming news, Star Trek Discovery's second season has been a smash hit, engaging and totally worth the price of admission on CBS All Access. I can hardly wait for season 3! This 
This looks pretty exciting, and I hope that it takes off, as Oprah can help authors get their books noticed and put them on society's radar.
Revamped Version' of Oprah's Book Club for Apple
During Apple's "It's Showtime" event yesterday in Cupertino, Calif., Oprah Winfrey "was the last show biz personality to take the stage [about the 1:40:00 mark http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40168779 in the confab's section about the new AppleTV+ streaming service," Deadline reported. Almost a year after she signed a multi-year deal with Apple for original content, Winfrey introduced several new projects and "put a brief spotlight on a revamped version of her successful book club http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40168780"
"For me there is nothing more thrilling than being transported by a brilliant book," she said. "The only other thing more gratifying than an extraordinary read is being able to share that experience with others, and we're going to do just that by building the biggest, the most vibrant, the most stimulating book club on the planet."
Vulture noted that "details are scarce http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40168781 as to how exactly Apple TV+ will be arranging the various threads of the club, so in the meantime, please allow Winfrey to be her own hypewoman while teasing what to expect."
Winfrey said, "This is a club, imagine, where Apple stores stream a conversation with the author and me across all the devices, across all borders, uniting people to stories that remind us that no matter who you are or where you're from, every man, woman, and child looks up with awe at the same sky. So I want to literally convene a meeting of the minds through books."
I have been to many of these bookstores, and I would like to visit them all, of course. I think that would make a wonderful bucket list, visiting a bookstore in every state, and then visiting great bookstores all over Europe and New Zealand and Iceland.
'Best Bookstores in All 50 States'
In honor of Independent Bookstore Day http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40168810>, Mental Floss has picked "the best bookshop in every state http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40168811--plus a few others we loved," noting: "From their resident cats to that old book smell, there's something about wandering up and down the aisles of a brick-and-mortar bookstore that online merchants could never replicate."
I would dearly love to see this, being a huge fan of musicals and the Princess Bride book and movie. BTW, I saw The Light in the Piazza's premier in Seattle at the Intiman Theater years ago, and it was wonderful.

On Stage: The Princess Bride Musical

Disney Theatrical Productions has confirmed that a new musical based on
the late William Goldman's 1973 novel The Princess Bride
as well as the 1987 film, is in development "from a trio of writers
currently lighting up Broadway," Playbill reported. Tony Award winner
David Yazbek (The Band's Visit) will write the score, while Tony winner
Bob Martin (The Prom, The Drowsy Chaperone) and Rick Elice (The Cher
Show, Jersey Boys) collaborate on the book. There is no information yet
on a production timeline or additional creative team members.

The project's journey to Broadway has been a long one. Playbill noted
that Goldman "had initially teamed up with The Light in the Piazza's
Adam Guettel on an adaptation, though the two parted ways in 2007. Rob
Reiner, who directed the movie, subsequently approached a host of
songwriters from theatre and beyond. Disney Theatrical announced its
continued commitment to bringing the story to life, in collaboration
with Walt Disney Studios' Alan Horn, in 2013."

Tarot by Marissa Kennerson is a magical YA romance that is based on the major arcana of tarot cards, which have been used for predicting the future for hundreds of years. While I have been a fan of using tarot cards for entertainment, I have never really come upon a book with characters based on the cards. Though the characters were interesting, the prose was simplistic and a bit stiff/formal, which made this seem like a book written for a younger, middle grade audience, though the subject matter was too violent to be appropriate for them. It was like reading Grimms fairy tales, or an old translation of them. Here's the blurb: Her fate is so much more than the cards she was dealt.

Born of a forbidden union between the Queen and the tyrannical King's archnemesis, Anna is forced to live out her days isolated in the Tower, with only her mentors and friends the Hermit, the Fool, and the Magician to keep her company. To pass the time, Anna imagines unique worlds populated by creatives and dreamers—the exact opposite of the King's land of fixed fates and rigid rules—and weaves them into four glorious tapestries.

But on the eve of her sixteenth birthday and her promised release from the Tower, Anna discovers her true lineage: She's the daughter of Marco, a powerful magician, and the King is worried that his magical gifts are starting to surface in Anna. Fearing for her life, Anna flees the Tower and finds herself in Cups, a lush, tropical land full of all the adventure, free-spiritedness, and creativity she imagined while weaving.

Anna thinks she's found paradise in this world of beachside parties, endless food and drink, and exhilarating romance. But when the fabric of Cups begins to unravel, Anna discovers that her tapestries are more than just forbidden expression. They're the foundation for a new world that she is destined to create—as long as the terrors from the old world don't catch up with her first.
The plot of this book was clear and easy to follow, while the conclusion was almost too HEA, though the author didn't resolve the love triangle she set up in the last few chapters. That said, I enjoyed the books inventive premise and the pretty world building. I'd give Tarot a B, and recommend it to anyone interested in astrology, tarot or fairy tale reboots.

The Beast's Heart by Leife Shallcross is another fairy tale reboot, this time a retelling of Beauty and the Beast,mostly from the viewpoint of the tormented beast in his lonely castle.If you are a fan of the old French film La Belle et Le Bette, which was filmed in black and white and has some decent special effects for the time, you will probably love this lushly French retelling of a nobleman cursed to be a beast until he finds someone to fall in love with him and agree to marry him as he is. Here's the blurb: A luxuriously magical retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in seventeenth-century France—and told from the point of view of the Beast himself.

I am neither monster nor man—yet I am both. I am the Beast.

He is a broken, wild thing, his heart’s nature exposed by his beastly form. Long ago cursed with a wretched existence, the Beast prowls the dusty hallways of his ruined château with only magical, unseen servants to keep him company—until a weary traveler disturbs his isolation.
Bewitched by the man’s dreams of his beautiful daughter, the Beast devises a plan to lure her to the château. There, Isabeau courageously exchanges her father’s life for her own and agrees to remain with the Beast for a year. But even as their time together weaves its own spell, the Beast finds winning Isabeau’s love is only the first impossible step in breaking free from the curse.

While I loved knowing how the Beast felt about everything, I wish readers would have had more insight into Isabeau's thoughts and fears. That said, the viewing (via magic mirror) of her sisters and father's family growing and changing and adapting to their new life, and the letters that one of her sisters sends to Isabeau are very satisfying and keep the reader engaged with Isabeau's side of the story. The prose is poignant and pretty, and the plot flows gracefully along to a lovely conclusion. The only thing missing from this adaptation is the household servants turned into animated objects, like teapots and lamps. Here the servants are all invisible and part of the house and the weather, so they react to Isabeau and the Beasts moods and state of mind. I'd give this engaging, clever fantasy a B+, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys fairy tale reboots with heart.

Mahimata by Rati Mehrotra is the sequel to Markswoman, and the final book in a duology. 
I remember enjoying Markswoman, but having a few reservations about the need for the trope of the strong female protagonist having a romance with someone inappropriate. It seems to be a tired trope of romantic fantasy novels, and YA fantasy in particular (though this book is not billed as a YA novel, I maintain that it should be, as the protagonists are both in their late teens, early 20s) that the young women have to be paired up, because being alone and strong is somehow out of the realm of possibility for a woman. Here's the blurb from Publisher's Weekly: Both making love and making war bring problems in Mehrotra’s emotional roller coaster of a sequel to 2018’s science fantasy Markswoman. Eight hundred and fifty years after a Great War in an altered Asia, peace is maintained by religious orders of women armed with psychic daggers. Threatening them is the renegade Kai Tau, who equips his loyalists with corrupted telepathic rifles (“kalashiks”). Kyra Veer, only survivor of a Tau massacre and now head of the Order of Kali, builds an unorthodox alliance with the wild wyr-wolves as well as with the solely male Order—and especially its charming weapons trainer, Rustan. Still guilt-stricken from taking an innocent life, Rustan heads out on pilgrimage to a legendary monastery, where monks guard the secrets of the aliens who brought mind-reading metal and teleportation hubs to Asiana. Together and apart, Kyra and Rustan unite the quarreling powers of their world to stop Kai Tau. Mehrotra spends some time developing the setting, but her focus is on the romantic issues of her two fate-driven protagonists. Readers who enjoyed the first Asiana volume will be rewarded by this amorous wallow amid the battles and mountain treks.
I agree with the reviewer from PW that there is a great deal of emotional wallowing in guilt and pain and love with Rustan and Kyra in this book, almost to the point of insanity. However, the alliance with the wolves and the discovery of the spaceship on the mountain (and the ancient guardians set to protect it) save the novel from becoming too maudlin. The prose was rather melodramatic, but it served the plot, which moved along at a measured pace, fairly well. I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to anyone who read the first book and wants to find out what happens two the protagonists...warning, it's not what you think.

Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott is a YA novel that is basically this year's "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green with an added soupcon of the TV show Red Band Society. It's the usual Romeo and Juliet with cancer tale of two young people with Cystic Fibrosis, trying to survive long enough to get lung transplants. Unfortunately, the handsome Romeo has a medicine resistant bacterial infection in his lungs that prevents him from getting a transplant and significantly shortens his lifespan. That's why he can't give this contagion to his Juliet, because she is on track for a long-awaited pair of clean lungs and she wants to actually breathe and have a shot at making it to adulthood. Thus the duo must remain 6 feet apart at all times, except the female protagonist flouts this rule by finding a pool cue that is only 5 feet long and she believes that will satisfy her need for rebellion while still keeping her from catching his lung infection. Here's the blurb: Now a major motion picture starring Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson!

In this #1 New York Times bestselling novel that’s perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, two teens fall in love with just one minor complication—they can’t get within a few feet of each other without risking their lives.

Can you love someone you can never touch?

Stella Grant likes to be in control—even though her totally out of control lungs have sent her in and out of the hospital most of her life. At this point, what Stella needs to control most is keeping herself away from anyone or anything that might pass along an infection and jeopardize the possibility of a lung transplant. Six feet apart. No exceptions.
The only thing Will Newman wants to be in control of is getting out of this hospital. He couldn’t care less about his treatments, or a fancy new clinical drug trial. Soon, he’ll turn eighteen and then he’ll be able to unplug all these machines and actually go see the world, not just its hospitals.
Will’s exactly what Stella needs to stay away from. If he so much as breathes on Stella she could lose her spot on the transplant list. Either one of them could die. The only way to stay alive is to stay apart. But suddenly six feet doesn’t feel like safety. It feels like punishment.
What if they could steal back just a little bit of the space their broken lungs have stolen from them? Would five feet apart really be so dangerous if it stops their hearts from breaking too? 

The prose is straightforward and clean, and keeps the plot moving briskly, while also keeping the story from becoming a bit too precious. Though I am normally not a fan of OCD stories, Stella's need for control and precision in her environment somehow comes off as playful and inventive, while Will often seems too grim and dark, wanting to die on his own terms but not really caring about those who love him and how they will feel when he's gone. That said, Will finally grows up enough to realize that he needs to stay away from Stella,so that she can get her new lungs and start her life over, so he leaves her to travel he world, and of course they meet up again almost a year later, with Stella healthy and Will still battling CF and carrying around an oxygen tank. We are left with the couple five feet apart, still caring for each other, but unable to do anything about it. So no real HEA to be had, however, I feel that the book did a great job of highlighting the hell that is CF, and the fact that there still is no cure on the horizon. As someone who has dealt with severe asthma and allergies since age 5, I have never taken a breath for granted, so I can empathize, in a small way, with these teenagers with lungs full of mucus that eventually drowns them. It is a hellish way to live, to struggle for air all day, every day. So I'd give this book an A-, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys medical YA romances, or anyone who struggles with, or knows someone who struggles with, Cystic Fibrosis.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Margaret Atwood Live, RIP Dan Jenkins and WS Merwin, Devil Wears Prada Musical, Gentleman Jack TV Show, Today I Am Carey by Martin Shoemaker, King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo, and Courting Darkness by Robin LaFevers


Again, it has been 10 days since my last post, dear readers, and I lament that I am so overwhelmed by emotion that there are days, like this past Tuesday, when I can't even bring myself to turn on my computer and read my emails or check Facebook and it's messages, for fear of being caught in another tsunami of grief and laughter in remembering my dad, and in remembering, on St Patrick's Day, my friend Muff Larson's joy in all things Celtic and Irish, prior to her untimely demise 10 years ago. One of the obituary notes below is for an author my dad loved, Dan Jenkins and his sports books, especially Semi-Tough, which was made into a movie that dad insisted the whole family watch with him, as he shouted with laughter and recalled his college football glory days. I was 17 when the movie came out, and I remember dad sharing popcorn and jujubees with me as we watched Burt Reynolds, always a favorite of my mothers (he was quite a hunk back then) smirk his way through Billy Clyde Puckett's lines. I bought dad a copy of Dead Solid Perfect for Christmas that year, and he insisted that I read it with him, which surprised me, as it was hardly appropriate reading material for someone just barely 18. Still, here I am, doing my best to catch up.
I watched season 1 of The Handmaid's Take on Hulu this past week, and on watching the first three episodes of the second season, it finally occurred to me that I couldn't take any more of this grim, horrific and painful serial based on Atwood's magnificent classic book, which I read in my early 20s. There are a number of things that have been "updated" about the story arc to more clearly reflect the horrible political environment of the last two years under the reign of right-wing Christian republican white men who seem bent on making this fascist vision of the future of America a reality. It's terrifying how much is true today about this fictional future world of Gilead, and I'm not in an emotional place right now where I can do much about it except pray that people like my parents and the young women of today fight hard to save us all from the Handmaid's fate.
Margaret Atwood: Live in Cinemas
The highly anticipated publication next fall of The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, will include a launch event featuring a live interview with author Margaret Atwood that will be broadcast globally to more than 1,000 cinemas. Deadline reported that Margaret Atwood: Live in Cinemas  http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40018567, presented September 10 as a live-stream in some venues and tape-delayed in others, "will originate from London's National Theatre, where BBC journalist Samira Ahmed will interview the author about her career and her reasons for returning to the Handmaid story after 34 years."Expressing delight that the novel's launch event will take place worldwide, Atwood said, "I can't be in all the places at once in my analogue body, but I look forward to being with so many readers via the big screen."
Obituary Note: Dan Jenkins

"a sportswriter whose rollicking irreverence enlivened Sports
Illustrated's pages for nearly 25 years and animated several novels,
including Semi-Tough, a sendup of the steroidal appetites, attitudes and
hype in pro football that became a classic of sports lit," died March 7,
the New York Times reported. He was 90. Semi-Tough was ranked #7 on SI's
2002 list of the top 100 sports books of all time and was adapted into a
1978 movie starring Burt Reynolds as Billy Clyde Puckett.

Joining the magazine in 1962, Jenkins was one of a select group of
writers, including Roy Blount Jr., Mark Kram and Frank Deford, recruited
by managing editor Andre Laguerre, "who oversaw the magazine's
emergence as a leader in literate, and occasionally literary, sports
journalism as well as a powerhouse in the Time Inc. stable," the Times
wrote, adding that his main beats were golf and college football, sports
he grew up with in Fort Worth, Tex.

Jenkins's other books include His Ownself: A Semi-Memoir (2014), Dead
Solid Perfect (1974), You Gotta Play Hurt (1991), and Baja Oklahoma
(1981). The Times noted that none of his novels after the first had the
same impact, "partly because the bawdy audacity that characterized
Semi-Tough seemed less audacious in later books, and partly because the
characters espousing the attitudes and employing the language favored by
Billy Clyde and friends struck many readers as much less appealing as
public attitudes changed," a "societal swivel" that Jenkins openly
criticized.

In a tribute to her father, Sally Jenkins
a sports columnist for the Washington Post, wrote: "A new manuscript of
a novel my father just finished is still open on his desk--he was
working on it on his last day at home before he fell and broke his hip
and the congestive heart failure had its final say, from all the bacon
and cigarettes. The novel, titled The Reunion at Herb's Café,
tells readers where his major fictional characters ended up. (It will be
published by TCU Press.) His most famous and true creation was Billy
Clyde Puckett, a sort of composite of all the dashing NFLers he knew. I
stood over the manuscript this morning in tears, then read a line and
almost spit my coffee."

I loved this book, and the movie with Meryl Streep was iconic and fabulous. (I always hear Stanley Tucci in my head saying "Gird your loins, everyone" before Streep's editor makes her appearance.) I think the musical version will be even better, especially with Elton John on board for the score.
On Stage: The Devil Wears Prada Musical
Anna D. Shapiro, a 2008 Tony winner for her direction of August: Osage County, will direct the musical version of The Devil Wears Prada http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40074037, based on Lauren Weisberger's bestselling 2003 novel and the 2006 film, Playbill reported. The production features music by Sir Elton John, lyrics by Shaina Taub, and book by Paul Rudnick. A production timeline and casting will be announced at a later date.
"I am truly honored to be a part of this incredible project," Shapiro said, "Working with Shaina, Paul, and Sir Elton has already proven to be one of the great thrills of my career, and I look forward to bringing Lauren's beloved world to the stage."
I loved this man's poetry. RIP to a hardcore wordsmith.
Obituary Note: W.S. Merwin
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40103006, "a formidable American poet who for more than 60 years labored under a formidable poetic yoke: the imperative of using language--an inescapably concrete presence on the printed page--to conjure absence, silence and nothingness," died March 15, the New York Times reported. He was 91. Merwin "was equally known for his work as a conservationist--in particular for his painstaking restoration of depleted flora, including hundreds of species of palm, on the remote former pineapple plantation in Hawaii where he made his home."
One of the "most highly decorated poets in the nation, and very likely the world," Merwin was the U.S. poet laureate from 2010 to 2011; won two Pulitzer Prizes; a National Book Award; the inaugural Tanning Prize from the Academy of American Poets; the Bollingen Prize for Poetry; the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award; the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation; and the PEN Translation Prize, the Times noted.In a tribute posted on the Paris Review blog, Edward Hirsch wrote http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40103008
that Merwin was "a poet, a prose writer, and a translator. He was completely sure about his vocation. He was the most international of American poets, and the most down to earth, literally: he knew more about the natural world than anyone else I've ever known.... He was over 50 when he moved to Hawaii. He discovered it and it discovered something in him. He found a place, a way of being to believe in. I found the landscape too overwhelming to write in. He dug in--tending the land, tending his poetry.... William Merwin was an American original. He is like a great pine tree that has fallen. His work is going to live on, but I can't get over his loss."
From Merwin's poem "For the Anniversary of My Death 
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40103011
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what.

I have watched this trailer several times, and each time I yearn to see more of what will prove to be a classic series in the making. Unfortunately, we do not have HBO at our house, so I can only hope that Netflix or Xfinity picks it up.
TV: Gentleman Jack
A trailer has been released for the HBO/BBC series Gentleman Jack http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz40133008, based on the diaries of 19th century landowner and social rebel Anne Lister. Indiewire reported that Suranne Jones "plays the black-clad
businesswoman, who not only sought to develop industrial projects on her family's land, but made her intentions known to marry a wife in the process. The series combines a central romance between Lister and her intended, Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle), and Lister's attempts to reinvigorate the coal-mining efforts on her family property at Shibden Hall."
The series is from Sally Wainwright, who also wrote and created the hit British police drama Happy Valley. The cast includes Gemma Whelan, Gemma  Jones, Timothy West, and Peter Davison. The eight-episode season premieres April 22 on HBO.
Today I am Carey by Martin L Shoemaker is one of those rare books that moves me so profoundly that I can't read anything else for at least two days afterward. It's not just the gentle, "soft as a kitten's belly" prose, or the engaging characters that reel you into the book, but the brilliant storytelling that follows a classic journey of personal growth that kept me turning pages all day and into the evening. I was unable to put this book down, and I read it in one fell swoop. Somehow, though the protagonist, Carey, is an android who becomes sentient and self aware, he becomes more human the longer he functions as a home care assistant to a family whose matriarch is dying of dementia. That I read this after learning that my own father had just died of Lewy Body Dementia only made it more poignant. 
Here's the blurb via Publisher'sWeekly: In this meditative debut, Shoemaker unravels the story of Carey, a medical droid who gains sentience over the course of living with three generations of the Owens family. Carey begins life as a nameless caretaker android for elderly Mildred Owens, but soon finds itself repurposed when Mildred dies and Carey is assigned to stay on with her family. Carey is special; it is the only android to ever display sentience, and soon the Owenses consider it family. Carey is tasked with caring for Mildred’s granddaughter, Millie, a rambunctious girl who has an abiding obsession with frogs. Through Carey’s eyes, the Owens family can be seen traversing the milestones of life: empty nest syndrome, marriage, and, always, the inevitable creep of death. Some minor pacing issues and redundancies do little to take away from the fully developed cast of characters that drive the novel to its heartbreaking ending. Kindness, love, and compassion make Carey an empathetic character through which to view Shoemaker’s complex, beautiful world. 
The ending was, indeed, heartbreaking, and yet somehow, I found it soothing my own grief and broken heart over dad's death. The book reminded me of Flowers For Algernon, another novel that had me crying for days about its heartbreaking protagonist. This novel deserves an A, and I would recommend it to anyone dealing with grief, dementia or the inevitable questions of what makes us human, and the role of memory in keeping our loved ones alive. I will keep this book on my permanent "books I love down to my soul" shelf, and treasure it forever.
King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo is the first book in a new series by the author of the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology (all of which I've read with great interest).  Though it started slowly, the book gained momentum after the first 50 pages and rushed to a satisfactory conclusion. Bardugo's prose is always military-precision clean, while her plots, once they get going, don't flag at all. Here's the blurb:
Face your demons...or feed them.
Nikolai Lantsov has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country’s bloody civil war—and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, the young king must find a way to refill Ravka’s coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army.
Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha Squaller, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren’t meant to stay buried—and some wounds aren’t meant to heal.
This novel of the Grishaverse is not really a stand-alone, so if you haven't read any of her other series, it won't make any sense to you. While I realize we're all meant to swoon over poor King Nikolai, I found him to be kind of a egotistical dick. Zoya, his loyal guard and assistant was much more interesting, as was Nina with her powers to see and hear the souls of the dead. Bardugo's kick-ass women are where the money lies in her novels, and I was not surprised that the only female "goddess" in evidence turned out to be evil, but brilliant. Still, this was a novel that could have used just a bit of an editorial trimming. The plot had some bumps that didn't need to be there, and we don't need to know protagonist's every insecure thought. That said, I'd give the book a B, and recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed Bardugo's other Grisha novels.
Courting Darkeness by Robin Lafevers is also a new series based in her "My Fair Assassin" universe (Grave Mercy, Dark Triumph, Mortal Heart). Still focused on the Daughters of Mortain (the God of Death), who grow up in his convent and learn to deal with the various magical "gifts" bestowed by their father (as well as training to be assassins), this story revolves around the appointments of Sybella and Genevieve  to various French courts, where they are both caught up in political schemes and machinations surrounding the king and queen of France in the 15th century. 
Here's the blurb: First in a duology, this darkly thrilling page-turner is set in the world of the best-selling His Fair Assassin series. Told in alternating perspectives, when Sybella discovers there is another trained assassin from St. Mortain’s convent deep undercover in the French court, she must use every skill in her arsenal to navigate the deadly royal politics and find her sister in arms before her time—and that of the newly crowned queen—runs out. 

When Sybella accompanies the Duchess to France, she expects trouble, but she isn’t expecting a deadly trap. Surrounded by enemies both known and unknown, Sybella searches for the undercover assassins from the convent of St. Mortain who were placed in the French court years ago.

Genevieve has been undercover for so many years, she no longer knows who she is or what she’s supposed to be fighting for. When she discovers a hidden prisoner who may be of importance, she takes matters into her own hands. As these two worlds collide, the fate of the Duchess, Brittany, and everything Sybella and Genevieve have come to love hangs in the balance. 
While again, this book took about 25 pages to get moving, once it the plot began to glide along there was no stopping it. The prose was silky and beautifully wrought, and the characters utterly fascinating, particularly Sybella and her beloved "Beast," a massive, ugly soldier whose rough exterior belies his gloriously romantic and sweet soul. He loves and accepts Sybella for her strength as a warrior and assassin, and he understands her need to connect with him in a positive, life affirming way to keep her from the darker aspects of Mortain's gift to her of seeing souls and hearing heartbeats.  I eagerly await the next installment of this series, as we are left with something of an abrupt ending to this book. Still, it deserves a B+, and I would recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed her previous books, and those intrigued by young women trained at a convent dedicated to the deadly arts.

Sunday, March 10, 2019

RIP To My Father and Ron Van Winkle, Quote of the Day, S French Bookshop Vandalized, The Last Ship Off Polaris-G by Carol Van Natta, The Look of Love by Sarah Jio, Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman, and The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner


My sincere apologies for not posting during the first 10 days of March, but my father, Henry Duane Semler, died on March 3, and I have been dealing with grief, relatives and friends, obituaries and phone calls to Iowa and sympathy cards full of photos. I am glad that my dad is at peace and not in pain or confusion any longer, but I do miss him and his larger than life personality. He loved laughter and chaos and politics and parties. He loved digging in the dirt and making things grow. He loved his two remaining children and his only grandchild, my son Nick. He loved food and a good (big) cup of coffee, and he loved to "doodle" on paper and sing in church. He loved his siblings. He enjoyed reading and he loved that I was a lifelong learner like he was. He was loud, proud, crude, gullible and terrible with money, but he was also the most open-hearted man you'd ever want to meet...he believed everyone deserved a second, third and fourth chance. He was optimistic and told awful off-color jokes. He was a big man, and yet he was the kind of father who would stay up all night rubbing my back when I had an asthma attack, much as his mother stayed up for 24 hours straight rubbing his back when he had an asthma attack as a toddler (he grew out of his asthma). I will miss him for as long as I live. Rest in peace, Daddy. 

Only in Seattle would a gay man named Ron Van Winkle be a bookseller and sales rep for Avon books. Fairytales come alive in the Pacific Northwest!

Obituary Note: Ron Van Winkle

Ron Van Winkle
Former bookseller and sales rep Ron (Clair Ronald) Van Winkle died
February 26. He was 69. In a tribute, his longtime friend John Hall
wrote: "You may remember Ron from the book business, first at Elliott
Bay Book Company in Seattle, and then at Raymar Books in Bellevue, Wash.
in the '70s. He went on to become Avon Books' sales representative in
the Pacific Northwest, before being named their national sales manager
and moving to New York City in 1979.

After moving back to the Pacific Northwest in 1983, Van Winkle took a
position in computer sales and bought a home in Kirkland, Wash., with
Hall, where they lived until they separated in the '90s. Van Winkle
returned to the book business in 1986 to work for Warner Books as
Western regional manager.

"Unfortunately, his position was made 'redundant' by Warner's
'down-sizing' in the late '90s," Hall noted, adding that Van Winkle
returned to computer sales until his health forced his retirement in
2010.

Hall wrote that he, along with Van Winkle and his partner Janet Huston,
"shared a great friend in Ron Whiteaker, once owner of Beyond the Closet
Bookstore in Seattle. He and his husband, Alex Ludecke, became close to
Ron and Janet through the past decade or more, and it was from Ron
Whiteaker that I received the news of Ron's passing."


Hilarious!
Book Trailer of the Day: Feck Perfuction
Feck Perfuction: Dangerous Ideas on the Business of Life
(Chronicle Books).

This hits the nail on the head about why we need independent bookstores, actual brick and mortar places of business for booklovers everywhere. Real people, real interaction, real, not digital, books!

Quotation of the Day

'To the Readers of Denver: #ChooseIndie'

"Algorithms are great, but staff that has gone on your reading
adventures with you and your kid over the years is better. Four-star
reviews are helpful, but a colorful spine catching your eye is joyful.
Amazon Books is conveniently located, but Tattered Cover has been around
for almost 50 years. Amazon Books is cool, but BookBar has wine. Amazon
Books has perfectly designed shelves, but Kilgore Books is as
fantastically nerdy as you are. Amazon Books has great advertising, but
The Bookies has experts in education. Amazon Books can ship within a
day, but Hermitage Books just around the corner can help you find that
rare title you've been wanting.

"Denver--you've got at least 10 bookstores helping shape your
communities, and being shaped by community. You've got a choice here,
and we ask that if you're able, you make the choice that will strengthen
that connection. Choose Indie Bookstores."

--From a letter to the readers of Denver
children's bookstore Second Star on the Right
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz39989492, following the opening of Amazon Books in Denver on Wednesday.

I think this is horrible! Who would vandalize a bookstore when its down?

Samuel French L.A. Bookshop Vandalized

Samuel French Theatre & Film Bookshop in
Hollywood, Calif., which recently announced it would be closing
forced to close earlier this week after being broken into and vandalized
The store will not reopen.

In a statement posted on Facebook, the store wrote: "The plan had been
for the bookshop to shutter at the end of this month, however on the
night of Monday, March 5, it was broken into and seriously vandalized.
And earlier that day, several men deliberately intimidated a beloved
member of our staff on the premises. The police require us to close the
store pending their investigation and with our staff's safety in mind,
we are unable to reopen it."


The Last Ship Off Polaris-G by Carol Van Natta was billed as a book in the burgeoning science fiction romance genre, when in reality it is more military/political science fiction with a little bit of romance thrown in as a way to keep readers interested between paragraph after boring paragraph about the political and military minutia of this star system. YAWN.  Had I known that this was a tiny mass-market paperback that looks to be self published, I would NOT have wasted 10 dollars on it. Here's the blurb: A bureaucrat and an interstellar trader must overcome treachery and their broken past to save the last inhabitants of a dying planet.
Frontier planet Polaris-Gamma is dying, afflicted by a suspiciously-timed blight that destroys all crops. Worse, the whole system is now under military quarantine by the Central Galactic Concordance to prevent the catastrophic blight from spreading. The settlers must escape--or perish.
Caught behind the blockade, independent trader Gavril Danilovich finds his interstellar trading ship commandeered in the desperate plan to escape. He tells himself that's the only reason he stays, and not because he's worried about the woman he walked out on two years ago--who still lives on Pol-G.
Supply depot manager Anitra Helden races to gather the last of Pol-G's assets. Her plan to launch a mothballed freighter off Pol-G may be crazy--but it can work, if she can talk Gavril into helping. Their precious cargo? Four thousand stranded colonists.
Can Anitra and Gavril, and their ragtag crew get past the deadly military blockade?
Series note: The events in Last Ship Off Polaris-G take place several years before Overload Flux (Central Galactic Concordance, Book 1). Think of it as an introduction to the series, and a foreshadowing of things--and people--to come.
If only the author had kept to the plotted story listed in the blurb, I might have enjoyed the book, but alas, she goes on and on with technobabble and political or engineering jargon that reads like the dullest textbook you've ever seen. Though the book is only 205 pages long, at times it feels like an 800 page manuscript that will never end. Snore. The prose is fair, but the plot freezes up and stops every time the author goes into one of her jargon filled rants. I'd give the book a C, and only recommend it to someone who finds starship technical specs thrilling.

The Look of Love by Sarah Jio is the 6th of her books that I've read, and frankly, it's not her best. The idea of the book is a good one, of a woman who has been gifted with the ability to "see" real love between two people. Unfortunately, Jio mucks up a good thing by trotting out every single romance trope and cliche she can find, and repeating them over and over during the course of the book. It didn't help that I kept hearing that annoying ABC tune from the 80s, called Look of Love, in my head every time I saw the cover of the novel. (Ugh, I hate earworms!) Here's the blurb: Born during a Christmas blizzard, Jane Williams receives a rare gift: the ability to see true love. In spite of her unique talent, Jane has emerged from an ailing childhood a lonely, hopeless romantic without love on her life.

On her twenty-ninth birthday, a mysterious greeting card arrives. The card specifies that Jane must identify the six types of love before the full moon following her thirtieth birthday—or face grave consequences. But when Jane at last falls for a science writer who doesn’t believe in love, she fears that she may never accomplish her task—and that her loveless fate may be sealed...

So Jio uses 6 couples to outline the various types of love, but the problem is that they are not really outlined well enough at all. They all seem to have typical roadblocks to love that are similar enough that they don't make the classical descriptions seem appropriate. The married women are all in love with someone who isn't their spouse, or in love with a married man, and Jane, who is single, can't seem to use her gift to find her own lifelong love. Things end, or continue, in the usual ways for all the couples, and the book draws to its inevitable conclusion, with Jane passing along her gift to some poor unsuspecting baby. I'd give this lackluster novel a C, and only recommend it to the most rabid Jio fans.

Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman was a fast paced, odd novel full of Lipman's trademark unlikable heroines and heroes, and bizarre, pathetic villains. Full disclosure, Lipman was a mentor of mine during grad school in 1984-85, and was actually the one who pointed me in the direction of journalism as a career. She was a graceful and honest mentor, and I owe her a debt of gratitude for my 33 years as an award-winning journalist/reporter.
Here's the blurb: The delightful new romantic comedy from Elinor Lipman, in which one woman’s trash becomes another woman’s treasure, with deliriously entertaining results.

Daphne Maritch doesn't quite know what to make of the heavily annotated high school yearbook she inherits from her mother, who held this relic dear. Too dear. The late June Winter Maritch was the teacher to whom the class of '68 had dedicated its yearbook, and in turn she went on to attend every reunion, scribbling notes and observations after each one—not always charitably—and noting who overstepped boundaries of many kinds.

In a fit of decluttering (the yearbook did not, Daphne concluded, "spark joy"), she discards it when she moves to a small New York City apartment. But when it's found in the recycling bin by a busybody neighbor/documentary filmmaker, the yearbook's mysteries—not to mention her own family's—take on a whole new urgency, and Daphne finds herself entangled in a series of events both poignant and absurd.

Good Riddance is a pitch-perfect, whip-smart new novel from an "enchanting, infinitely witty yet serious, exceptionally intelligent, wholly original, and Austen-like stylist" (Washington Post). 
I agree with the blurb that this is an original and funny book, full of bizarre characters and a few twists and turns.  I found the protagonist, Daphne, to be way too melodramatic and neurotic, but I liked the fact that when push came to shove, she made the decision to protect and defend the father who raised her, regardless of the cost. Lipman's prose is so clean you could eat off of it, and her plot is a roller coaster of misadventure. I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to those who like weird family stories set in New York City.

The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner is a refurbished Jewish fairy tale full of shape shifters, magic and Christina Rossetti's Goblins from her famous Goblin Market poem. Despite it's size and heft, it's a fast read, with long form poems interspersing the prose of every other chapter.  Here's the blurb: In a remote village surrounded by vast forests on the border of Moldova and Ukraine, sisters Liba and Laya have been raised on the honeyed scent of their Mami's babka and the low rumble of their Tati's prayers. But when a troupe of mysterious men arrives, Laya falls under their spell - despite their mother's warning to be wary of strangers. And this is not the only danger lurking in the woods.

As dark forces close in on their village, Liba and Laya discover a family secret passed down through generations. Faced with a magical heritage they never knew existed, the sisters realize the old fairy tales are true...and could save them all. Publisher's Weekly:

Rossner’s intricately crafted, gorgeously rendered debut alternates perspectives between teenage sisters Liba and Laya Leib, who narrate in prose and verse, respectively. They are left to fend for themselves in the mysterious woods that border the town of Dubossary while their parents are away on urgent business. Before their parents leave, the sisters learn the family secret: their father can transform into a bear, a gift Liba will inherit, and their mother into a swan, as Laya will. The pair disagree on how to enjoy their newfound independence: where Laya longs for freedom, Liba craves stability, worrying constantly for her younger sister’s safety. People are going missing from the town, there are rumors of a bear in the woods, and anti-Semitic sentiment is on the rise. All of these strange occurrences coincide with the arrival of the Hovlins, a seductive band of fruit-peddling brothers whose otherworldly appeal Laya cannot resist. To save her sister and her people, Liba must learn to accept her bear-like nature. Drawing on true events, folklore, and Christina Rosetti’s classic The Goblin Market, Rossner’s fairy tale is creepy and moving by turn, full of heart, history, and enchantment.
I really felt for the wild Laya and the stalwart Liba, who never gives up fighting for her sister, and I also enjoyed the peek into Jewish life in centuries past in the Ukraine. Though it is a folk tale/fairy tale, I have to say that the book read like a YA romance, with all the attendant hormonal yearning between the sisters and their various boys who wish to marry/conquor/use them in nefarious ways. The prose is luxurious and the plot slides along like silk on the edge of a sharp knife.I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who likes romantic fairy tales retold in unique ways.