Welcome November! This month sports my husband's birthday and Thanksgiving, as well as my son's 22nd birthday at the end of the month. I am so looking forward to all of this, as I love my guys, and I love Thanksgiving as a delicious meal and a way of saying thank you for all that we have and enjoyed in the past year. So what books are you thankful for, my fellow bibliophiles?
This sounds like such an exciting concept, pairing wine with books! I'm not a fan of alcohol myself, but I appreciate the fact that many book clubs are rife with wine drinkers who enjoy reading and sipping together. Plus, Phinney Ridge was where my husband and I landed when we moved to Seattle 30 years ago. We lived at 71st and Phinney, and I worked at the Phinney Neighborhood Association, while shelving books (to be paid in books) at the Couth Buzzard Bookstore in my spare time (it was across the street from our apartment complex). I would LOVE to visit this new bookstore and see what my old stomping grounds looks like nowadays.
Pairing Books and Wine, Drink Books Coming to Seattle
Drink Books https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50121695, which pairs unusual reads and natural wine, will be opening a physical store https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50121696 in Seattle, Wash., at 5817 Phinney Ave. N., next month. The Post-Intelligencer reported that Kim Kent "found a unique way to combine the two things she loves: on November 5, she and business partner Emily Schikora plan to open the doors to their Phinney Ridge natural wine and bookstore."
Each of the approximately 40 titles in the shop comes paired with a bottle of wine. The co-owners plan to increase that collection over time, continuing from Kent's previous business, Book Cru, which she ran through Molly's Bottle Shop and through which she met Schikora, who owns the nearby business Editor Consignment.
Kent selects the books, with a focus on titles by women-identifying and nonbinary writers, works in translation and books from smaller presses, with a bent toward the strange, unconventional and linguistically driven. She then pairs each book with a wine she considers someone would want to drink while reading it.
"What's the mood of the book, the atmosphere of the book, the sensation of the book? This book is dark and brooding, so I want it with a dark and brooding wine," Kent observed.
Schikora and Kent are also planning to open for pop-ups, art shows "and when they feel safe doing so, readings," the Post-Intelligencer noted, adding that in two years the building Drink Books occupies "is slated for demolition, and the pair plan to make the most of their ephemeral space while they can."
As the Drink Books website explains: "Great books have the power https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50121697 to elicit an emotional response. They get to the core of who we are; they expand our awareness; they challenge us; they can make us feel seen. Books, and how we feel about them, can change over the course of our reading; they can defy our expectations and ability to say what it is and what it's doing. Natural wine often works this way too. It changes from sip to sip. It speaks. It doesn't include chemical alterations, or commercial yeasts that mask its true qualities. Wine making and writing are both processes of transformation--there are grapes and there are words and then, if we're lucky, skilled, and possess a small amount of magic, there will be wine and there will be a story."
I loved the old Brat Pack movies of the 80s...this sounds like an excellent adaptation of one of the BP's biggest and most thoughtful stars.
Movies: Brat: An '80s Story
Network Entertainment has optioned Andrew McCarthy's memoir Brat: An '80s Story https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50169716 and will produce a documentary adaptation. Deadline reported that Brat "will follow McCarthy across the country as he goes directly to the source, seeking out other Brat Pack members, to find out what it has meant to each of them to have been a part of that famed acting group. He'll reconnect with actors he hasn't seen in years, discuss the iconic films they made from 1982 to 1989, and learn about their experiences since those days."
McCarthy will direct the film and produce it with Brian Liebman of Liebman Entertainment.
"This is a personal journey of discovery," said McCarthy. "It's been pulling at me for years. I need to know if the other members of the Brat Pack have felt like I've felt or if they've had a different experience entirely."
I didn't like this book at all, though I tried to get through it 3 times...it was just too depressing, boring and disjointed for me to get into. However, I imagine the story itself will be much easier to follow in TV miniseries format, and it's especially timely, considering we're on the far side of a COVID pandemic right now.
TV: Station Eleven
A teaser trailer has been released for Station Eleven https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50202512, the HBO Max miniseries based on Emily St. John Mandel's 2014 novel.
Entertainment Weekly reported that in series creator and showrunner Patrick Somerville's project, "the global pandemic starts quietly. A rumor here, a whisper from a doctor in an inundated emergency room there. One person panic-buys a half-dozen carts full of groceries and barricades their apartment, another person isn't quite sure what this new flu is. The situation escalates quickly and devastatingly, and the world begins to go dark."
The cast of Station Eleven, which launches December 16 on HBO Max, includes Mackenzie Davis, Himesh Patel, Matilda Lawler, Danielle Deadwyler and Gael Garcia Bernal. EW noted that even though the teaser "looks chillingly familiar 18 months into a real-life pandemic, the series began filming before Covid-19 turned the world upside-down, underscoring the story's eerie prescience."
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson is this month's Library Book Group pick, and a non fiction book about Churchill and the bombing of London (the Blitz) during WWII that I never would have read on my own. I got the Large Print edition from the library, which was nearly a thousand pages long. Fortunately, 200 of those pages were appendix materials and references, so I only had to slog my way through a little over 800 pages of meticulously researched text about Churchill and his immediate family, friends and coworkers during 1940-41. Here's the blurb: On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded
Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and
the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve
months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000
Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and
persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and
willing to fight to the end.
In The Splendid and the Vile,
Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the
British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political
brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the
backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his
wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon
is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing
Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and
once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson
provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day
experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their
youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime
protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife,
Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the
advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest
moments.
The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of
today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership,
when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage,
and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
While I enjoyed some of the "behind the scenes" wrangling in the lives of the Churchill family, I found that by providing readers with salacious life details (such as Churchill's wearing of pink silk underpants and his predilection for swanning about in a towel or in the nude, though its mentioned frequently how fat and podgy he is) Churchill comes off as ridiculous and immature/babyish. His family, particularly his daughter and daughter in law (and his horrible wastrel of a son, Randolph, who seems like a real asshat) don't come off much better, seeming both naive and stupid, while also being hedonistic and somewhat cruel. Larson's prose is vivacious and buoyant, but he rambles on too long about battles and other points of the war that stop the plot right in its tracks. There were many times when I felt that Larson was writing a history text for use in classrooms, and we all know how dull and boring those can be. All in all, a well written if too long tome that will delight history scholars and non fiction lovers of WWII tales alike. I'd give it a B, and recommend it to those mentioned above.
Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest is a paranormal cozy mystery by the vaunted author of Boneshaker. Though the prose was sterling and the plot swift and steadfast, I found myself wishing that the female protagonist (and her sidekick wastrel buddy) weren't so hard to like. They both drink to excess throughout the book and are nearly always hungover, and the protagonist, Leda, seems to have a lot of self esteem issues. Here's the blurb: A psychic travel agent and a Seattle PD detective solve a murder in
this quirky mystery in the vein of
Charlaine Harris’s Aurora Teagarden series.
Meet Leda Foley:
devoted friend, struggling travel agent, and inconsistent psychic. When
Leda, sole proprietor of Foley's Flights of Fancy, impulsively re-books
Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt’s flight, her life changes in ways
she couldn’t have predicted.
After watching his original plane
blow up from the safety of the airport, Grady realizes that Leda’s
special abilities could help him with a cold case he just can’t crack.
Despite her scattershot premonitions, she agrees for a secret reason:
her fiancé’s murder remains unsolved. Leda’s psychic abilities couldn’t
help the case several years before, but she’s been honing her skills and
drawing a crowd at her favorite bar’s open-mic nights, where she
performs Klairvoyant Karaoke—singing whatever song comes to mind when
she holds people’s personal effects. Now joined by a rag-tag group of
bar patrons and pals alike, Leda and Grady set out to catch a killer—and
learn how the two cases that haunt them have more in common than they
ever suspected.
Once again, women are portrayed as immature, frivolous and impulsive to the point of ruin, which doesn't endear them at all to me as a reader (probably because I don't know any women business owners who are like that). The women, especially Leda, would never really get anything accomplished if it weren't for the men in their lives, and in this case, the long-suffering Grady manages to keep his case from imploding only by dint of being an adult and forcing Leda beyond her whiny self pity to realize that her powers, when focused, can be of more use than as a stage act in a bar. The HEA was satisfying, and the PNW makes a great background for this fast-paced whodunnit. I'd give it a B+, and recommend it to anyone who likes oddball paranormal mysteries.
The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse by Alan Bradley was a short story ebook that I managed to get for a low price, and as I've read all of the Flavia deLuce mysteries, it was quite a treat to see her in action once more. Here's the blurb: Fans of Flavia de Luce rejoice—here’s a special eBook original short
story, in which the eleven-year-old connoisseur of chemistry is immersed
in her element: solving a mystery!
Murder! the letter says, Come at once. Anson House, Greyminster, Staircase No. 3. How
can Flavia de Luce resist such an urgent plea? After all, examining a
dead body sounds like a perfectly splendid way to spend a Sunday. So
Flavia hops upon her trusted bicycle, Gladys, whose rubber tires hiss
happily along the rainy road, and arrives at her father’s mist-shrouded
old school. There, a terrified boy leads her to the loo where, sitting
in a bathtub, is what appears to be a statue. But, no: To Flavia’s
surprise, the thing is in fact a naked dead man. Save his face, he seems
to have been carved out of copper. Never one to shy away from the
macabre, Flavia gets to work—only to find that when an investigation
begins with a metallic cadaver, ever more curious twists are to be
expected.
“If ever there were a sleuth who’s bold, brilliant, and, yes, adorable, it’s Flavia de Luce.”—USA Today
For once, I agree with USA Today, it's always a pleasure to read about Flavia and her trusty steed Gladys the bicycle hot on the heels of a mystery. Bradley's prose is wonderful, his characters sparkling and his plots sail along beautifully. Here Flavia is asked to solve the mystery of who killed the headmaster with chemicals that turned his skin copper in a bathtub. Being a huge fan of science and a brilliant chemist herself, this mystery is right up Flavia's alley, and she solves it with alacrity. So many female protagonists could learn a thing or two from the redoubtable Flavia, whose faith in her talents as a scientist and a sleuth never waver. I can't say much more without spoiling the whole story, so I will just give this splendid short tale an A, and recommend it to anyone who has read any of the books in this series. This short story will leave you wanting more!
Double Sided Magic by McKenzie Hunter is a YA urban fantasy/romance that I bought in ebook format for my Kindle Paperwhite. I've never read anything by this author before, so I was pleasantly surprised at the clean and crisp prose and the zippy plot. The characters were somewhat stock/standard fantasy characters, with the deadly vampires and shapeshifters being menacing and vicious, while the protagonist struggles to hide her magic powers because her people tried to commit magic genocide decades ago and were hunted down and killed for their evil ways. Here's the blurb: I am Levy Michaels. Once my kind were the hunters—now we are the hunted.
Supernaturals
are out of the closet but I have to stay hidden because of the type of
magic I possess. I’m a Legacy. It sounds like the title should come with
reverence, a trust fund, or at the very least a cool backstory—instead
it comes with a death sentence.
I have to hide in plain sight and
pretend to be just human. I’m pretty good at it. I live a simple and
somewhat normal life, and I work in antique acquisitions. Everything’s
going fine until a dangerous and enchanted dagger that was once in my
possession is stolen. I didn’t think things could get any worse until I
woke up next to a dead shifter, fae, and mage, without any memory of the
past twenty-four hours.
Considered guilty of murder by most of
the magical community and humans, I must work with Gareth, the sexy and
dangerous leader of the Supernatural Guild. If he’s as good as rumored,
it’s only a matter of time until he discovers the truth about me—then
being found guilty of murder is the least of my worries.
This series is perfect for readers looking for edge-of-your-seat
action, mystery with unexpected twists, a witty, kick-butt heroine, and a
flirty slow-burn romance.
Though I appreciate the fact that Levy is an expert sai wielder, it just seems incongruous to me that she can barely control herself around a handsome cougar shapeshifter named Gareth. Gareth comes off as a smarmy, smug and narcissistic asshat, and though she knows this, Levy still drools over him and nearly faints when he finally corners her for a kiss that is non consensual. For some reason this makes her like him more, not less, which makes no sense for a strong character like Levy, who should want to kick his ass for taking liberties without her permission. So as per usual, women are weak in the presence of good looking men, and suddenly lose all their common sense and rational thought process. I find this sexist representation total BS, and I really wish writers of paranormal and YA romance would stop undermining women's agency with these ridiculous (and false) cliches/stereotypes. So that frustration is what leads me to give this novel a B-, and I would only recommend it to those who are really into supernatural romances, ala Sookie Stackhouse (A series of paranormal romances by Charlaine Harris).
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