Elliott Bay Books at Sea-Tac Airport, Advice from a Bookstore Cat, Travel Mug Library, Quote of the Day, Queen Bee by Dorothea Benton Frank, Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes, Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, and Will My Cat Eat my Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty

It's almost Halloween, and I am excited for the start of holiday season, not to mention birthday season for myself and my family, all of whom have winter birthdays. Outside, it's time for what Seattlites call "The Great Dark," where we get lots of cold rain, hail and every now and then a dusting of snow. That's okay with me, as I am a big fan of settling in a cozy chair or bed with a cup of hot tea and a few good books. Speaking of good books and procurement thereof, it would appear that Elliott Bay Bookstore has decided to expand their operations to Sea-Tac airport, which will be a godsend to weary travelers in search of some distraction during long flights.

Elliott Bay Book Company Arrives at Sea-Tac Airport

Elliott Bay Book Company http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42105343 in Seattle, Wash., has opened a bookstore in Sea-Tac Airport http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42105344 in association with the Hudson Group. The store is located in Concourse C and features staff picks, bestsellers and plenty of books by writers from Seattle and the greater Pacific Northwest.

The Hudson Group has launched similar airport ventures with other indie bookstores, including Vroman's in Pasadena, Calif., Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Colo., and Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tenn. Hudson has locations in more than 80 airports and transportation hubs around the U.S.

I love it when cats speak out via their human servants, LOL. This looks like a fun bit of advice from a Hawaiian kitty.

Advice from a Bookstore Cat

Posted on Facebook by Talk Story Bookstore http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42105362, Hanapepe, Hawaii: "Dear All Bookstore Cats: If I 'Meow' ten times while my servant is dealing with our customers, I get carried to the back room to have my lunch. It always works. I don't even need to walk there anymore. Try it--trust me, it works."

This is a great idea that I wish more coffee or tea stands would adopt. It would save on so much plastic/cardboard waste from mugs and stirring straws.

Cool Idea of the Day: 'Travel Mug Library'

Canadian bookseller NovelTea Bookstore Café http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42105367 in Truro, N.S., is launching a "new 'Travel Mug Library! We are asking our customers to bring us a few of the many travel mugs that so many of us have stored in our cupboards. Our NovelTea team will then inspect, wash & sanitize them, and then the various travel mugs will be available for our customers to borrow as needed, and hopefully return--so that each mug can be used again and again!"This new initiative is in addition to: dine-in option with washable cups, plates and cutlery; 5% discount for bringing your own reusable travel mug with you; encouraging customers to bring their own reusable take-out containers; offering compostable cutlery, take-out containers and trays; offering a great selection of reusable straws, and cups for purchase #ReduceSingleUseOctober." 

I totally agree with Tom Mole here. Nothing can replace an actual bookstore for enjoyment

Quotation of the Day

"Bookshops are machines for serendipity--opportunities to discover the books you didn't know you wanted. The algorithmic recommendations served up by online booksellers can't compete with the pleasure of finding something unexpected on the shelves of a bookshop, reading a dozen pages standing up and knowing, as you shift your weight from foot to foot, that you've got to take it home. And no online search engine can match the knowledge of booksellers, who have an almost superhuman ability to locate the book you're looking for, even if you can only remember the color of the cover.... Whether we think of bookshops as places we can escape the pressures of the world, or spaces in which to imagine its transformation, a world without them would be infinitely poorer."--Tom Mole, author of The Secret Life of Books, in a column for The Big Issue.

Queen Bee by Dorothea Benton Frank is the last book published by the author, who died recently. I decided to pick up a copy in memory of other books of hers that I'd read and enjoyed in the past. Unfortunately, this book was a "paint by the numbers" cliche-ridden tome that fulfilled every trope about Southern women and romance novels that exists. That said, there were still the funny, weird/quirky and warm characters that Frank is known for, they just were given a tired script to work with. Though Frank employs a Southern take on transvestite and transgender men who become drag queens, I found the motivations of the female characters to be murky and half-hearted when it came to accepting those on the LBGTQ spectrum. Here's the blurb: 

Beekeeper Holly McNee Jensen quietly lives in a world of her own on Sullivans Island, tending her hives and working at the local island library. Holly calls her mother The Queen Bee because she’s a demanding hulk of a woman. Her mother, a devoted hypochondriac, might be unaware that she’s quite ill but that doesn’t stop her from tormenting Holly. To escape the drama, Holly’s sister Leslie married and moved away, wanting little to do with island life. Holly’s escape is to submerge herself in the lives of the two young boys next door and their widowed father, Archie.

Her world is upended when the more flamboyant Leslie returns and both sisters, polar opposites, fixate on what’s happening in their neighbor’s home. Is Archie really in love with that awful ice queen of a woman? If Archie marries her, what will become of his little boys? Restless Leslie is desperate for validation after her imploded marriage, squandering her favors on any and all takers. Their mother ups her game in an uproarious and theatrical downward spiral. Scandalized Holly is talking to her honey bees a mile a minute, as though they’ll give her a solution to all the chaos. Maybe they will.
Queen Bee is a classic Lowcountry Tale—warm, wise and hilarious, it roars with humanity and a dropperful of whodunit added for good measure by an unseen hand. In her twentieth novel, Dorothea Benton Frank brings us back to her beloved island with an unforgettable story where the Lowcountry magic of the natural world collides with the beat of the human heart.

I found the mother's falling in love with a heterosexual transvestite man who likes to dress as a pirate somewhat disingenuous, and Holly's total domination by her cruel mother (who suddenly becomes lovely and kind when she falls in love with the pirate, who they keep mentioning is ex-military, for some reason) and shy caregiving of the mother and loutish neighbor and his children also rang false, or a bit too good to be true, with me. The prose was smooth, but the plot was much too easy and the characters much too stereotypical for my taste. Still,  I'd give the book a B, and recommend it to fans of DBF's other works.

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes is a YA science fiction novel recommended on a Barnes and Noble list of new  and diverse YA fiction that you should read. Because I always think there is room for diversity of every kind in science fiction and fantasy, I picked it up at the library, and though the prose was a bit too amateurish for my tastes, I'm glad that I read it. Here's the blurb:

A hilarious, offbeat debut space opera that skewers everything from pop culture to video games and features an irresistible foul-mouthed captain and her motley crew, strange life forms, exciting twists, and a galaxy full of fun and adventure. 
Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.
But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead after she rejects his advances, and her sweet engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family.
To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.

SPOILER ALERT: It didn't surprise me at all that Eva's sister Mari actually staged her kidnapping herself, as she's some kind of intergalactic spy, but I was surprised by how easy it seemed for Eva to forgive her after all her lies and deceit get Eva and her crew into trouble. Her weird boyfriend Vakar seems like a bizarre choice, but apparently Eva has a translator that tells her how he's feeling by how he smells, so readers are regaled in every chapter with a run down of what he smells like, which becomes tedious after the first few times, especially since the author seems to have a penchant for the smell of licorice. The so called psychic cats really don't do much but sit on people's laps and purr, or hiss at those they don't like. They don't seem to have any real stake in the plot, nor do they show any psychic powers other than once at the outset of the tale. That said, this is a farcical story that is a fun distraction if you like science fiction/romance hybrids. My only other problem with this book is that the author doesn't translate the Spanish language phrases or chapter titles used throughout the book. So I'd give this novel a B-, and recommend it to anyone fluent in Spanish who also likes science fiction and female protagonists.

Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is the third book in the Beautiful Creatures series, and probably the last book of theirs that I will read. The main male protagonist, Ethan, is just too sexist, possessive and whiny for me to read any more about his obsessive love of  magical "caster" girl Lena. I know it's set in the South, and that prejudice and discrimination and sexism run deep there, however, since this book is fantasy, and the authors female, they could have overthrown those tropes and made the female characters who have their own agency seem more than pitiful weaklings brought down by the powerful male magic workers and their evil female counterparts. Because if you have a handle on your abilities, and you aren't fawning over a guy, then of course you must be evil! Here's the blurb:

Ethan Wate thought he was getting used to the strange, impossible events happening in Gatlin, his small Southern town. But now that Ethan and Lena have returned home, strange and impossible have taken on new meanings. Swarms of locusts, record-breaking heat, and devastating storms ravage Gatlin as Ethan and Lena struggle to understand the impact of Lena's Claiming. Even Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals is affected - and their abilities begin to dangerously misfire. As time passes, one question becomes clear: What - or who - will need to be sacrificed to save Gatlin?
For Ethan, the chaos is a frightening but welcome distraction. He's being haunted in his dreams again, but this time it isn't by Lena - and whatever is haunting him is following him out of his dreams and into his everyday life. Even worse, Ethan is gradually losing pieces of himself - forgetting names, phone numbers, even memories. He doesn't know why, and most days he's too afraid to ask.
Sometimes there isn't just one answer or one choice. Sometimes there's no going back. And this time there won't be a happy ending.

SPOILER, it becomes clear about halfway through the book that Ethan is going to have to sacrifice himself to save his hometown and all his family and friends from total annihilation. What's sad is that by that point, I was actually hoping for his demise, because Ethan and his newly-incubus-powered douchebag friend Link are such jerks that they're almost unbearable. All either thinks about is having sex with the caster girls they're "in love" with, and readers are treated to yet another sexist description of how little they wear and how "third degree burn hot" they are. Yuck. I struggled to finish this YA book, because it was redundant and boring, with the characters frittering away their time on stupid romance cliches. While the prose is decent, the plot is too simplistic, and you can see the ending coming a mile away. I'd give this Southern paranormal fantasy novel a C+, and only recommend it to those who have read the first two books. 

Will my Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions From Tiny Mortals About Death, by Caitlin Doughty is a somewhat macabre non fiction book filled with gallows humor and a lot of interesting information on death and dead bodies. It's Q&A format keeps the chapters focused, on topic and fascinating, even if you're a bit squeamish. Here's the blurb: 

Best-selling author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers real questions from kids about death, dead bodies, and decomposition. 
Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. The best questions come from kids. What would happen to an astronaut’s body if it were pushed out of a space shuttle? Do people poop when they die? Can Grandma have a Viking funeral?
In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Doughty blends her mortician’s knowledge of the body and the intriguing history behind common misconceptions about corpses to offer factual, hilarious, and candid answers to thirty-five distinctive questions posed by her youngest fans. In her inimitable voice, Doughty details lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn colors during decomposition? And why do hair and nails appear longer after death? Readers will learn the best soil for mummifying your body, whether you can preserve your best friend’s skull as a keepsake, and what happens when you die on a plane.
Beautifully illustrated by Dianné Ruz, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? shows us that death is science and art, and only by asking questions can we begin to embrace it.

Turns out that cats (and dogs) will eventually eat their owners if they are hungry enough and haven't been fed their kibble for awhile. The questions, though somewhat morbid, are all answered with good humor and sincerity by Doughty, with odd illustrations of an Asian girl and an Asian skeleton are presented at the beginning of each chapter, for some reason that I couldn't discern. But I think what Doughty is doing here is important, in that she's trying to de-stigmatize death and help children (and adults) come to terms with the end of life that is part and parcel of being mortal. Her witty answers to each question keep the book from getting too gross or dark, so it keeps the attention of the reader all the way through. While it's short (200 pages) its well worth the price for Doughty's charming walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I'd give it an A, and I would recommend this book to anyone who wonders about what happens to our bodies after death, and those who are looking for frank discussions of some end of life choices.