Happy Birthday Phinney Books, Piranesi Movie, The Night Manager Season 2, Quote of the Day, Pride Display Burned in Portland, OR, James Baldwin Estate Inks Development Deal, the Wren in the Holly Library by KA Linde, Where the Dark Stands Still by AB Poranek,Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny, and Bedsocks and Broomsticks by G Clatworthy

Hola fellow book lovers! Today is the last day of June already, as we head into hotter than hades summer weather  for the next two months. Fortunately, we have air conditioning, so I stay relatively cool indoors and spend as much time as possible reading and writing letters and blog posts. I hope that you all are getting ready for the 4th of July and reading lots of exciting books! BOOM!

 

I remember visiting this bookstore just a couple of days after it opened, because it was in my old neighborhood of Phinney Ridge, which was where Jim and I landed when we first moved here from Florida.  I loved getting to know the PNW during those years, and I'm glad that Phinney Books is surviving and thriving!

 

Happy 10th Birthday, Phinney Books!

Congratulations to Phinney Books https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVCIxukI6a5mKhlxSw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mXWsehpoMLg-gVdw, Seattle,

Wash., which celebrated its 10th anniversary with a thank-you party for

customers, staff, and book industry friends last Thursday, June 20.

Guests were invited to write down the top 10 favorite books they read in

the past decade (and submit them to win prizes, including a store gift

certificate and a year of Phinney by Post book subscription). The party

continued through the weekend with a 10% storewide discount. Tom Nissley

and Laura Silverstein bought the bookshop in 2014

(previously Santoro's Books).

Though I'm not a fan of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange novel, I did enjoy the film adaptation, and I imagine this adaptation will be just as engaging, though it's animated (I prefer live action).

Movies: Piranesi

Laika has acquired the rights to Susanna Clarke's 2020 novel Piranesi

https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVCIxukI6a5mKhl-Tw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mXWsehpoMLg-gVdw

and will make an animated adaptation directed by the studio's president

and CEO Travis Knight, Variety reported. Knight (Kubo and the Two

Strings; Bumblebee, from the Transformers franchise), said: "Piranesi is

a treasure, and very dear to me. As a filmmaker, I can scarcely imagine

a more joyful experience than wandering through the worlds Susanna

dreamed into being. She's one of my all-time favorite authors, and with

Piranesi, Susanna has created a beautiful, devastating and ultimately

life-affirming work of art."

Clarke added: "Animation is one of my favorite things. I've been

inspired by so many animated movies, and Laika has produced such

extraordinary work--movies like Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings,

full of beauty and wonder and weirdness."

The Night Manager is another adaptation that I really enjoyed, especially the great casting of Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. Though the latter won't be in season 2, I bet it will still be engaging and fascinating. 

 

TV: The Night Manager, Season 2

Casting choices have been announced for the second season of The Night

Manager, which continues to be inspired by John le Carre's bestselling

novel, with series creator David Farr also executive producing and

writing the new season, Variety reported. Georgi Banks-Davies (I Hate

Suzie, Paper Girls) is directing Season 2.

Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman are reprising their roles as former

military officer Jonathan Pine and intelligence officer Angela Burr

respectively. Also returning for the new edition are Alistair Petrie as

Alexander "Sandy" Langbourne, Douglas Hodge as Rex Mayhew, Michael

Nardone as Frisky, and Noah Jupe as Daniel Roper. Previously announced

cast include Diego Calva, Camila Morrone, Indira Varma, Paul Chahidi,

and Hayley Squires.

"Story details are being kept under wraps, but the return of several

cast members who were in the Season 1 orbit of villain Richard 'Dicky'

Roper (played by Hugh Laurie) gives hint that there is unfinished

business there," Variety noted, adding that while Laurie is among the

executive producers on Season 2, so far there has been no indication

whether he is returning as Roper.

Season 1 of The Night Manager (which aired on AMC in the U.S.) scored

Golden Globes wins for Colman (best supporting actress), Hiddleston

(best actor in a limited series or TV film), and Hugh Laurie (best

supporting actor). The new season, which takes place eight years later,

is set to air on BBC in the U.K. and on Amazon's Prime Video outside the

U.K. (including the U.S.).

This is true...bookstores are sacred spaces, along with libraries and theaters. They carry some of the culture of humanity. They enlighten, entertain and inform.

 

Quotation of the Day

"Books have made me feel more, and they've granted me access to spaces

and ideas I never would have encountered. In many ways, the sum of

literature is the sacred for me, and without it I don't know where I

would be. To imagine a world without books... impossible. And the same

for indie bookstores, which are the very places that carry the

sacredness of story. But who opens that door? The indie booksellers, the

ones who give so much of their lives to making books available to

people. I suppose what I'm saying is those indie booksellers (and anyone

who is spending their life doing this kind of work) are the reason I am

here. They're the storykeepers--the ones we, or at least I, need to keep

going."--Morgan Talty, author

 

 

This just disgusts me...what kind of cowardly person(s) tries to burn down a bookstore just because they're fascists who are opposed to the LGBTQ community...this is not the 17th century, and witch hunts are no longer a way for idiots to display their closed minds and shriveled souls. For shame, whomever did this. I'm glad that the damage was minimal and no one was hurt.

 

Pride Display Burned at Dark Star Magick, Portland, Ore.

A Pride display at Dark Star Magick was lit on fire

https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVCKweUI6a5mdhl1SA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mXWMCtpoMLg-gVdw earlier this week, FOX12 Oregon reported.

Early Monday morning, someone smashed one of the store's windows, poured some type of accelerant on the Pride display, and lit it on fire. Around 4:30 a.m., Portland Fire & Rescue responded to the fire and put it out. The fire had not spread further than a pile of books in the display.

None of the apartments above the bookstore were affected.

"Whoever did this put at risk an entire apartment building full of

people," store owner Steve Kinchen told FOX12. "They need to be caught.

This is not acceptable. This is not the Portland that we love. This kind

of nonsense has to stop. We're just small business people trying to make

a living."

I've been a fan of James Baldwin's writing since I was about 12-13 years old. I'm thrilled that they're going to adapt some of his works for TV and film. I don't know how they will be able to capture the grace and sheer brilliance of his prose on screen, but I look forward to their efforts nonetheless.

 

Fremantle Development Deal with James Baldwin Family Estate

The works of James Baldwin "could be headed to the small and big screen"

after Fremantle North America struck a deal with the Baldwin Family

estate https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVCLkOsI6a5mdhEjTg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mXWZGjpoMLg-gVdw via Trevor Baldwin, nephew and founder of the Baldwin United Fund.

Deadline reported that the deal allows for the development of new

adaptations of the author's books for TV and film. Original Productions

will handle the documentary side of the agreement, which comes ahead of

what would be Baldwin's 100th birthday in August.

"We are deeply honored to bring James Baldwin's timeless works to a new

generation," said Dante Di Loreto, president of scripted programming,

Fremantle North America. "We are committed to preserving Baldwin's

legacy while making his powerful narratives accessible and compelling

for contemporary audiences. This collaboration underscores our

dedication to producing content that entertains and inspires."

The Wren In The Holly Library by K. A. Linde is a gorgeous romantasy novel that is stunning on the outside, with sprayed edges, stenciled artwork and beautiful endpapers, and elegant prose with a stunningly beautiful story inside. This book is something every bibliophile would be proud to display on their shelves. Here's the blurb: Can you love the dark when you know what it hides?

Some things aren’t supposed to exist outside of our imagination.

Thirteen years ago, monsters emerged from the shadows and plunged Kierse’s world into a cataclysmic war of near-total destruction. The New York City she knew so well collapsed practically overnight.

In the wake of that carnage, the Monster Treaty was created. A truce...of sorts.

But tonight, Kierse―a gifted and fearless thief―will break that treaty. She’ll enter the Holly Library...not knowing it’s the home of a monster.

He’s charming. Quietly alluring. Terrifying. But he knows talent when he sees it; it’s just a matter of finding her price.

Now she’s locked into a dangerous bargain with a creature unlike any other. She’ll sacrifice her freedom. She’ll offer her skills. Together, they’ll put their own futures at risk.

But he’s been playing a game across centuries―and once she joins in, there will be
no escape.

 

This is the first of several "Beauty and the Beast" fairytale retellings that I read this past month, and by far the most elegant and satisfying. The romance wasn't too porn-ish or sappy, and the fantasy was well grounded in myth and legend. I loved Kierse and Graves, and how their relationship changed over the course of the novel...and I loved the adventuresome spirit of Kierse. The ending was very satisfying, and I found myself hoping for another book in this series right away. All in all, a well-deserved A, and a recommendation to anyone who enjoys revamped fairytales with romance and lustrous prose that glides along a swift plot.

 

Where the Dark Stands Still by A.B. Poranek is another romantasy Beauty and the Beast retelling, but it takes place in a distant time period that seems to correspond to the 17th century or before, with the Christian Church running entire towns and doing its best to kill off anyone seen as pagan or magical. It's billed as YA, though I would certainly not give it to anyone on the younger side of that spectrum, and only recommend it to those 17 -15 years old, at least, due to a lot of violence and gore and massive intolerant misogyny by the Church. Here's the blurb: A girl with dangerous magic makes a risky bargain with a demon to be free of her monstrous power in this “dark, devastating, and gothic” young adult fantasy.
Liska knows that magic is monstrous, and its practitioners are monsters. She has done everything possible to suppress her own magic, to disastrous consequences. Desperate to be free of it, Liska flees her small village and delves into the dangerous, demon-inhabited spirit-wood to steal a mythical fern flower. If she plucks it, she can use its one wish to banish her powers. Everyone who has sought the fern flower has fallen prey to unknown horrors, so when Liska is caught by the demon warden of the wood—called The Leszy—a bargain seems better than death: one year of servitude in exchange for the fern flower and its wish.

Whisked away to The Leszy’s crumbling manor, Liska soon makes an unsettling discovery: she is not the first person to strike this bargain, and all her predecessors have mysteriously vanished. If Liska wants to survive the year and return home, she must unravel her taciturn host’s spool of secrets and face the ghosts—figurative and literal—of his past. Because something wakes in the woods, something deadly and without mercy. It frightens even The Leszy…and cannot be defeated unless Liska embraces the monster she’s always feared becoming. 

 The Beast, Leszy, comes across as an arrogant and selfish person who has no problem killing off his apprentices to save himself, and our female protagonist falls in love with him rather quickly, and puts her life and magic on the line to save him, and then to save her village from being overrun by monsters. The death of the Leszy, though he killed himself, is seen as heroic enough to put paid to his debt for being a monster, though that act also murders the romance and leaves our heroine responsible for keeping her village safe. She ends up in a situation that she was trying to avoid at the start of the book, which made the whole novel bittersweet at best, sour at worst. I'd give this book a B- and only recommend it to those who are die-hard fans of Beauty and the Beast revamps.

 

Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny (she really needs to change her last name), is a modern rom-com novel with a strange plot and unusual characters who keep advancing that plot with odd happenstance intertwined with mundane everyday small town life. It's a book that I am certain many women will like because the main character, Jane, is very insecure and a people-pleaser who carries around a lot of guilt that informs nearly all her decisions in life, which is apparently familiar to many American women. Here's the blurb:

Alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, a wise, bighearted novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family—from the acclaimed author of Standard Deviation, who has been called the "literary descendant of Jane Austen, sharing Austen's essentially comic world view" (NPR).   

Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan's old girlfriends everywhere—at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away.

While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world's most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, a woman with shiny hair and pale milkmaid skin, still has Duncan mow her lawn. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from Duncan's apartment at the most inopportune times. Sometimes Jane wonders if a relationship can even work with three people in it—never mind four. Five if you count Aggie's eccentric husband, Gary. Not to mention all the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices.

But any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Soon Jane's life is permanently intertwined with Duncan's, Aggie's, and Jimmy's, and Jane knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But could it be possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of Jane's eyes? Katherine Heiny's Early Morning Riser is her most astonishingly wonderful work to date.

The male protagonist, Duncan, who has slept with dozens of women in town and all around the area, is supposed to be sympathetic somehow, especially once he settles down with Jane and helps raise Jimmy, who is the town idiot (very low IQ) and marries Jane, as well as having a child with her. His past philandering, which seemed more like prostitution to me, is totally forgotten, and we, the audience, are just supposed to believe that he's turned over a new leaf, and that he didn't get any STDs from all those one night stands. Some of the other small town people, like Aggie, were just horrendously irritating and controlling, not to mention mean-spirited, so I didn't find them funny at all, though I gather that is why they were there, as small town archetypes. I imagine to big city people, the trials and tribulations of weird small town people seem hilarious, but having grown up in small towns in Iowa, I don't really find them funny so much as annoying and sad. So I'd give this rather boring and depressing book (It mystifies me that Jane feels she has to take care of Jimmy for the rest of her life out of guilt for something that wasn't her fault. He should have been sent to a home or assisted living facility for people that can't survive on their own) a C+ and only recommend it to people who find pathetic people enslaved to their past entertaining.

 

Bedsocks and Broomsticks by G Clatworthy is a cozy mystery/urban fantasy novel that I got for a song for my Kindle Paperwhite. It was a quick and silly novel written in a light and breezy style with a fast moving plot. Here's the blurb:  

Village Fetes can be murder.

When Fi's electrical powers cause her to be fired from her job, the last thing she wants to do is help the Witches', Wizards' and Warlocks' Institute host the annual Halloween Fete. But when a judge collides with her, she's thrown into a murder investigation...as the prime suspect. Can she clear her name and catch the real killer?
Jam and Jerusalem meets Midsomer Murders meets magic.

If you like cozy British settings, sarcasm and witches, you'll enjoy this series.

This is one of those novels that would make a good beach read, because it's easy to figure out whodunit after the first 25 pages. Also the witches involved are a bunch of grumpy and competitive old women whose most important use of magic seems to be to grow the biggest vegetable or make the best pie for the village carnival, to win the first place ribbon that is highly coveted. There's a lot of goofy bits, with one of the witches only able to fly a vacuum cleaner instead of a broom due to her young age, but there's also some funny moments with the sarcastic small dragon familiar who is left behind by the character who was murdered. The IT worker at the heart of the novel is kind of clumsy and goofy, but gets the job done in the end. I'd give this quick read a B-, and recommend it to those who like supernatural mysteries and wise-cracking familiars, like the cat from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.