Happy All-Hallows Eve, (and Halloween) to all my book loving friends! I will be close to 900 posts by the end of the year (888) So, I'm thinking that next year will be my final year of posting reviews to my Butterfly Books Blog. As a caregiver and the household cooking/cleaning/laundry drudge, I don't have time for as much reading as I'd like, let alone time to write up reviews for the blog that I started in 2005. I know that I should probably wait until 2025, when the blog turns 20, to call it quits, but I don't know if I can make it that far, I'm just exhausted and discouraged so much of the time that it is a major effort to get out of bed most days. Still, I fight on, but this whole horrible year has taken a toll on my mental and physical health. At any rate, here's the last post of October, please keep reading and enjoy!
I would love to see this movie, but I'm still not fond of going into a germ0-riddled movie theater without a mask and risking getting a COVID variant. Hopefully, it will come to a streaming service next year.
Movies:
Eileen; This Time Next Year
A trailer
has been released for Eileen https://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQOIxeQI6ag0cht3Tg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nEWsSspoMLg-gVdw,
director William Oldroyd's adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh's 2015
novel. IndieWire
reported that the "1960s-set noir, which played out of competition
way back in January at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, stars Anne
Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie in career-topping turns." Neon
will open the film in limited release on December 1 before a general
release on December 8.
If this movie is even half as good as Notting Hill, Love Actually or the Kingsmen, then I really want to see it, preferably on a streaming service.
This Time
Next Year Movie
Deadline
featured an official first look at This Time Next Yearhttps://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQOIxeQI6ag0cht3Tw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nEWsSspoMLg-gVdw,
a film adaptation of Sophie Cousens's novel. Directed by Nick Moore
(editor of Love Actually, Notting Hill, and The Full Monty, among
others) from a screenplay by Cousens, the project stars Sophie
Cookson (Kingsman: The Golden Circle) and Lucien Laviscount (Emily in
Paris). The cast
also includes Golda Rosheuvel (Bridgerton, Dune), John Hannah (Four
Weddings and a Funeral, The Mummy), Monica Dolan (Black Mirror,
Cyrano), and Mandip Gill (Doctor Who).
I would love to see this play, and how they can stage something that had such action/adventure oriented movies full of CGI.
On
Stage: The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins's bestselling novel The
Hunger Games https://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQOJleQI6ag0chB_HA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nEW5SspoMLg-gVdw
is coming to the stage in a new adaptation from Conor McPherson (Girl
from the North Country), based solely on the first book of the series
and its screen version. Playbill reported that the play, directed by
Matthew Dunster (2:22 A Ghost Story), will premiere in London in fall
2024.
"To receive Suzanne Collins's
blessing to adapt The Hunger Games for the stage is both humbling and inspiring,"
said McPherson. "She has created a classic story which continues to
resonate now more than ever. In a world where the truth itself seems
increasingly up for grabs, The Hunger Games beautifully expresses values of
resilience, self-reliance, and independent moral inquiry for younger
people especially. This is turbo-charged storytelling of the
highest order, and I'm hugely excited to bring it to a new generation of
theatregoers and to Suzanne Collins' longstanding and devoted fans."
I love this, that the Catholic church's iron fist has been removed from the throat of Ireland and it's culture and books. The fact that even one bookseller stood up to the censorship bullies is awesome and inspiring.
Freedom of the Press Celebrated with
Ireland's Mercier Press
Celebrating its 80th anniversary next
year, Mercier Press https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQOKn-4I6ag0dhonTg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nEWJ6mpoMLg-gVdw>
was shortlisted for the IPA's Prix Voltaire, for fighting for free
expression in Ireland, a country where for many years the Catholic
Church and the government combined to censor a variety of books
dealing with social, culture, religious, and political issues. (Until
1960, the word "pregnant" did not appear in print in Ireland, for example.)
Many books published by Mercier Press
have been groundbreaking, including One Day in My Life by Bobby
Sands, the IRA political prisoner who died 66 days into a hunger strike
in 1981. When his prison memoir was published in 1983, one of the major
booksellers in Ireland refused to sell the book, and others were
hesitant. Dee Collins recalled that Mercier Press's John Spillane then
visited a bookseller in Northern Ireland whose response was one of the
best we've ever heard concerning controversial titles. The bookseller
said, "If I don't sell it, one side will be at me. If I do sell it, the
other side will be at me. Give me 20."
I was shocked to hear that Scholastic was creating a ghetto for diverse books, but I'm glad to hear that they've backtracked on this backward policy. Children deserve access to every kind of story that there is. Banning books is horrible.
Scholastic Backtracks on Book Fair
Policy
Following widespread criticism,
Scholastic will no longer put diverse books into a separate, optional catalog
for school book fairs, the New York Times reported
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQOKn-4I6ag0dhonGQ~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nEWJ6mpoMLg-gVdw.
The catalog, which was dubbed "Share
Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice," contained 64 titles
pertaining to race, gender, and LGBTQ identities. They ranged from
biographies of John Lewis to picture books depicting families with same-sex
parents, and book fair organizers could choose to opt out of specific titles or
the entire catalog.
Scholastic said it created the separate
catalog in response to the many new state laws banning or restricting
similar content in schools, and when the company acknowledged the new
policy earlier this month, it said it had faced an "impossible
dilemma" of either backing away from such titles entirely or
exposing teachers, librarians, and book fair volunteers to risk.
The backlash was immediate and, in a
letter quoted in the Times, Scholastic apologized to its authors
and illustrators this week, pledging "to stand with you as we
redouble our efforts to combat the laws restricting children's access to
books."
Jonathan Friedman, director of PEN
America's free expression and education program, wrote of the
reversal: "Scholastic recognized that, as difficult a bind as this pernicious
legislation created, the right answer was not to become an accessory
to censorship. Scholastic is an essential source of knowledge and a
delight for countless children. We are glad to see them champion the
freedom to read."
What Became of Magic by Paige Crutcher is a very odd and convoluted fantasy novel that I had a hard time understanding, due to it's murky prose and labyrinthine plot that stops and starts with abandon. Here's the blurb:
From Paige Crutcher, the author of The Orphan Witch and The Lost Witch,
comes a new tale about a witch, a book of magic, and a beguiling and
powerful creature whom she must free, even if it puts her life and soul
at stake.
Aline Weir, a witch who can talk to
ghosts, has kept her talents hidden ever since a disastrous middle
school slumber party, choosing to be invisible and use her powers in
secret to help lost souls reunite with the keys to send them home. All
the while, she finds solace in a bookstore and the three mysterious
women who run it… until Aline discovers the book of Mischief, and her
powers are enhanced.
Living a solitary life until the age of
thirty, Aline’s life takes an unexpected turn when the wrong (or perhaps
right) person witnesses her using her powers and she is invited to a
town that doesn’t exist on any map. Arriving in Matchstick, Aline learns
of a lost magic that desperately needs to be found and only her unique
powers can do it. But what she’s not told is that Magic is a person. One
that is dangerous and seductive and has been waiting for a witch with a
power like hers for centuries.
Readers are never quite sure if the characters surrounding Aline are friends or foes, good or bad. Aline constantly bemoans the fact that her only friend is a ghost, but later she learns that many of the witches, fates and gods surrounding her are either dead or they have their own agenda that can't be accomplished without using her in some way. Then she falls in love with "Magic" (or one aspect of magic) and, as she's a magic practitioner they're finally able to get together after dealing with bad witches and cowardly fates (they spend a majority of the book hiding). I tried to like this book, but I found all the confrontations and convolutions to be tedious and annoying, and before long I was counting the pages until the novel was finished. Boring though it was, I'd still give it a C+ or B-, I'm conflicted about the novel that much. I'd recommend it only to those who are really into witches and myths and legends about magic and its practitioners.
The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen was a grimy and grimdark YA fantasy, which is usually not my cup of tea....horror novels and dystopian societies depress and repulse me. Still, the books prose was crisp and cool, and the coming of age story of the protagonist Fie (and her grumpy cat Barf) was engaging and helped smooth out some of the rough points in the plot. Here's the blurb:
"Rich, harrowing, and unafraid to tackle discrimination—perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Tomi Adeyemi."—Kirkus, Starred Review
One way or another, we always feed the crows.
A future chieftain
Fie
abides by one rule: look after your own. Her Crow caste of undertakers
and mercy-killers takes more abuse than coin, but when they’re called to
collect royal dead, she’s hoping they’ll find the payout of a lifetime.
A fugitive prince
When
Crown Prince Jasimir turns out to have faked his death, Fie’s ready to
cut her losses—and perhaps his throat. But he offers a wager that she
can’t refuse: protect him from a ruthless queen, and he’ll protect the
Crows when he reigns.
A too-cunning bodyguard
Hawk
warrior Tavin has always put Jas’s life before his, magically assuming
the prince’s appearance and shadowing his every step. But what happens
when Tavin begins to want something to call his own?
The prince and Tavin, his half brother (that's not much of a spoiler, to the average reader it will have been evident from the second chapter on) who serves as his double are typical teenage boys/young men who are emotionally immature but still constantly on the hunt for sex due to tall the hormones surging through their bodies and taking over whatever sense they have left in their brains. Fie, though portrayed as younger/smaller, has seen death and dealing with body disposal due to plague (and giving "mercy" to those dying in agony by cutting their throat) since she was a small child. She hasn't had the luxury of immaturity, she's had to deal with violent prejudice and ignorance for so long she's capable of handling just about anything, which is good, because her two royal male companions are idiots. That was why I felt that her falling in love with Tavin was too quick and didn't seem to make a lot of sense. She makes a deal with these two knuckleheads and somehow believes they will keep their half of the bargain, to provide guards to her people and keep them from being slaughtered by religious fanatics. Unfortunately she discovers what every POC or disabled person has discovered throughout the decades, that governments move glacially slow when it comes to giving aid to those people being brutalized by prejudiced fanatics. There's a sort of HFA ending, which suffices, but I think that the author could have done a lot more with this book. I'd still give it a B, and recommend it to anyone who has been part of a marginalized group in society.
Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber is a YA romantic fantasy with a fairy tale style setting, that I had high hopes for. I've read a couple of Garber's other books, so I was not surprised that the prose was like a prom dress, full of glitter and ruffles and glamorous slashes that show some skin. My problem with it was that the 417 page plot had a few too many twists and turns, so it lagged in places that could easily discourage the casual reader from continuing to read. Here's the blurb:
Once Upon a Broken Heart marks
the launch of a new series from Stephanie Garber about love, curses,
and the lengths that people will go to for happily ever after. For
as long as she can remember, Evangeline Fox has believed in true love
and happy endings . . . until she learns that the love of her life will
marry another.
Desperate to stop the wedding and to heal her
wounded heart, Evangeline strikes a deal with the charismatic, but
wicked, Prince of Hearts. In exchange for his help, he asks for three
kisses, to be given at the time and place of his choosing.
But
after Evangeline’s first promised kiss, she learns that bargaining with
an immortal is a dangerous game — and that the Prince of Hearts wants
far more from her than she’d pledged. He has plans for Evangeline, plans
that will either end in the greatest happily ever after, or the most
exquisite tragedy.
Evangeline seemed to me to be more than a bit crazy, as she will literally do anything, from curses to murder, to get her desire for a fairytale romance to come true. Sadly, she has the wrong guy picked out, but once she's made a deal with the devilish Prince of Hearts, who seems to be a wicked fae character bent on her destruction, she has to see her journey through. She flounces and pouts a lot, which is amusing for awhile, and then finally realizes her true love was right in front of her all along. HEA achieved. There was just too much action going on around the main characters for it to keep my interest holding steady. I'd give it a B-, and recommend it to those who enjoy enemies to lovers tales in a fantasy setting.
Below Zero by Ali Hazelwood is a short romantic contemporary fantasy that is part of a series about women in STEM professions finding the loves of their lives without having to become brainless and sacrifice their work for a relationship. Here's the blurb: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis comes a new steamy, STEMinist novella.
It will take the frosty terrain of the Arctic to show these rival scientists that their chemistry burns hot.
Mara, Sadie, and Hannah are friends first, scientists always. Though
their fields of study might take them to different corners of the world,
they can all agree on this universal truth: when it comes to love and
science, opposites attract and rivals make you burn.
Hannah’s
got a bad feeling about this. Not only has the NASA aerospace engineer
found herself injured and stranded at a remote Arctic research
station—but the one person willing to undertake the hazardous rescue
mission is her longtime rival.
Ian has been many things to
Hannah: the villain who tried to veto her expedition and ruin her
career, the man who stars in her most deliciously lurid dreams…but he’s
never played the hero. So why is he risking everything to be here? And
why does his presence seem just as dangerous to her heart as the coming
snowstorm?
I've read a few Ali Hazelwood romantic fantasy novels, and she always manages to make the female protagonist smart and funny and someone you can really root for as a character. Hazelwood's prose is clean and bright, and her plots slide along as fast as a seal sliding on glacial ice into the water. Hazelwood's sex scenes are refreshingly original and based on reality, not some soft porn romance fiction or movie from decades past. I also loved that Ian is a tall redhead, when few male protagonists are described as handsome and covered in freckles. Hannah's HEA was perfect and funny and I hope to read more of this author's short fiction. I'd give it an A, and recommend this novella to anyone who likes their heroine smart and fearless and not available to rush into a relationship that will stall or stop her career.
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