Greetings book people! It's Valentine's Day week, and I'm hoping for a trip to the bookstore instead of flowers or candy this year. My TBR is getting small and anemic! Anyway, I've had to resort to reading a lot of cheap ebooks, so forgive the shorter reviews. And here's hoping for no more snow and ice in the coming couple of weeks.
One of the first things that fascist regimes do, historically, is ban or burn books, jail or harass intellectuals and teachers, and attempt to rewrite history to make themselves the heroes/those in the right/on God's side. It's reprehensible how our current POTUS is following this script, making oligarchs/rich white guys his acolytes and taking money and power and intellectual/educational freedom from the poor and everyone else. I'm so glad to see that there are people fighting back!
Publishers, Others File Suit Against Idaho Book Banning Law
Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Sourcebooks, authors Malinda Lo, David Levithan, and Dashka Slater, and others have filed a lawsuit in Idaho challenging the book removal provisions of a law signed last July that restricts books in public and school libraries. The Idaho law, called HB 710, forbids anyone under the age of 18 from accessing library books that contain "sexual content," regardless of the work's literary or educational merit; the law's definition of sexual content is "broad, vague, and overtly discriminatory," the plaintiffs said.
The law allows county prosecuting attorneys and the state attorney general to bring claims against any school or public library and "incentivizes private citizens to file legal complaints against public libraries or schools through a bounty system." The plaintiffs noted that "many libraries, including those in rural areas that are the sole book providers in their communities, cannot afford to be sued because they cannot cover the cost of a defense."
Plaintiffs charged that the law has "resulted in a chilling effect across the state, with libraries preemptively removing hundreds of books from their shelves.
Plaintiffs said the law has been applied to "classics such as Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; and bestsellers including Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and Forever... by Judy Blume." The law also affects nonfiction, "imperiling access to factual resources such as The "What's Happening to My Body?" Book for Girls by Lynda Madaras, and erasing history by removing books about the Holocaust and other historical events. The law makes no distinction between infants and 17-year-olds--books are classified as harmful regardless of the age and maturity level of the child."
Plaintiffs seek to have the court to declare the law "unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, issue preliminary and permanent injunctions barring its enforcement, and award plaintiffs their costs and attorneys' fees."
Michael Grygiel, an adjunct faculty member with Cornell Law School's First Amendment Clinic, the lead legal representation in the suit, said that the law "has resulted in the removal of classic works of literature from library shelves across Idaho as libraries attempt to protect themselves from liability under the law's vague and overbroad provisions. This type of self-censorship is inimical to First Amendment liberties and has suffocated the right of Idaho students to read books deemed appropriate for their age and maturity level by their parents. In short, the law is an affront to the Constitution. It is a privilege to represent the publishers, authors, libraries, parents, and students who have joined this lawsuit to challenge HB 710 and stand up for the First Amendment rights of all Idaho citizens."
More dirt has surfaced in the case against Neil Gaiman, who has been accused of sexual harassment, rape and abuse. It appears that his ex-wife Amanda Palmer helped him procure young women to abuse. SHAME on you, Ms Palmer.This whole thing fills me with disgust and despair, that such a talented writer/author is, in reality, a sexual predator and total creep. I don't plan on reading or watching any more of his work.
Neil Gaiman Accuser Files Civil Lawsuit
Scarlett Pavlovich has filed a civil lawsuit against British author Neil Gaiman https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJsdgDblOUI6a1ick9zTw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x67HCZWtpoMLg-gVdw and his estranged wife, musician Amanda Palmer, accusing Gaiman of repeatedly sexually assaulting her while she was working as the couple's babysitter and nanny, the Guardian reported.
Pavlovich filed the lawsuit in federal court in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and New York earlier this week. She was one of eight women who had detailed allegations of assault, abuse, and coercion against Gaiman in an expose published by New York magazine last month. The civil lawsuit also accuses Gaiman of rape, coercion, and human trafficking, and Palmer of "procuring and presenting" her to Gaiman "for such abuse."
Gaiman has denied all allegations, saying he thought the relationships were consensual. (Editor's note: This is total BS, because Gaiman is way too smart not to know the difference between consensual sex and forced or coerced sex).
Two of Gaiman's publishers, HarperCollins and W.W. Norton, have said they have no plans to release his books in the future. Others, including Bloomsbury, have so far declined to comment, the Guardian wrote, adding that Dark Horse Comics announced in January it would no longer release its illustrated series based on Gaiman's novel Anansi Boys. In addition, a production of Coraline has been cancelled, while Disney has paused a planned adaptation of Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. Netflix is still scheduled to release a second season based on The Sandman, but has announced it would be the last.
I remain a huge fan of the book "Night" by Elie Wiesel, and I am saddened to hear that his wife and translator Marion has passed. She lived a long and colorful life.
Obituary Note: Marion Wiesel
Marion Wiesel, who translated many books written by her husband, Elie Wiesel, including the final edition of Night, and who "encouraged him to pursue a wide-ranging public career, helping him become the most renowned interpreter of the Holocaust," died February 2, the New York Times reported. She was 94.
The Wiesels met in the late 1960s and married in 1969. Elie Wiesel had already achieved acclaim with his memoir Night (1960), which was originally translated from French by Stella Rodway. "Friends, relatives, and writers all attributed the moral stature he achieved partly to the quiet influence of Marion," the Times noted.
"In the alignment of stars that helped make Wiesel the international icon he became, his marriage to Marion was among the most significant," Joseph Berger wrote in Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence (2023). Berger noted that of the 10 million copies of Night that have had sold, three million came after her 2006 translation, which was also promoted by Oprah Winfrey and became a widely assigned book in high schools.
Like her husband, Marion Wiesel was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. One of her major impacts on his career was through translation. She "shared her husband's cosmopolitan knowledge of European culture and fluency in several languages. She quickly began translating his writing from French to English, ultimately working on 14 of his books," the Times noted.
Describing Marion Wiesel as her husband's "most trusted adviser," Ileene Smith, the couple's editor, observed that "as his translator from the French, Marion pored over every sentence of Elie's work with astonishing insight into his interior world, his literary mind."
Once my husband (at the time he was just my boyfriend) and I landed in Seattle after driving diagonally all the way across the United States in 1991, I set out to learn about the cultural atmosphere of the Pacific NW by reading some local authors. The Center for the book recommended Tom Robbins, among others, and once I got ahold of a copy of Jitterbug Perfume in 1993, I was hooked. I read his other famed works and watched the movies based on those books, and as a stalwart fan, I had hopes that I would be able to meet him at a book signing event in the Seattle area. Though it was not meant to be, I am still saddened to read of his demise. RIP to a wonderful, fun and brilliant author.
Fare Thee Well, Tom Robbins
The novelist Tom Robbins has died at the age of 92. Known for infusing his work with humor and whimsy, Robbins penned bestsellers— Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Skinny Legs and All, Jitterbug Perfume —in addition to essays that revealed a voracious curiosity. Robbins, who was aware that "establishment critics…write me off as a counterculture writer," knew his work was about much more than LSD-fueled imagery and countercultural themes. As professor Catherine E. Hoyser, who once wrote a guide to Robbins’s work for her students, told NPR, "People who believed that he was a drug-taking bon-vivant that wasn’t particularly serious in his work actually don’t pay attention to the profound nature underneath that humor." Those who read more closely will see that Robbins "was an advocate for feminism, social justice and the environment."
Obituary Note: Tom Robbins
Tom Robbins, author of bestselling books, including Jitterbug Perfume, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Still Life With Woodpecker, died February 9. He was 92.
His "early books defined the 1960s for a generation and [his] publishing career spanned more than 50 years," the Seattle Times wrote. Robbins "was unclassifiable, and he liked it that way. He was a shy, dreamy kid who became a class clown and bad boy, a native Southerner who moved to Seattle from Virginia."
Speaking on behalf of Robbins' family, friend Craig Popelars said: "Tom's wise and weirdly wonderful novels were filled with magic, mayhem, mythology, imagination, and high-wire humor--always humor. His books touched readers in the most profound ways, and up until his death he continued to engage with them by responding to their fan mail, sending them hand-written thank you letters. He loved connecting with readers in every way imaginable."
After arriving in Seattle in 1962 to attend the University of Washington's Far East Institute, he also started working at the Seattle Times. He soon "left graduate school and evolved into an art critic, and his freewheeling style earned him the label 'the Hells Angel of Art Criticism,' in the words of one Seattle Art Museum associate director," the Seattle Times wrote.
His second novel, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), led Rolling Stone to call him "the new king of the extended metaphor, dependent clause, outrageous pun, and meteorological personification." By 1978, his first two novels had sold two million copies. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was adapted into a 1993 film by director Gus Van Sant.
Robbins published 12 books, including the novels Skinny Legs and All (1990), Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994), Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000), and Villa Incognito (2003); a children's book, B Is for Beer (2009); and his memoir, Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life (2014). In a New York Times interview about the memoir, journalist Rob Liguori asked, "Have you ever been to Tibet?" Robbins responded, "I didn't go to Tibet for the same reason I never slept with Jennifer Lopez. Sometimes it's better to imagine things."
In 1997, he won Bumbershoot's Golden Umbrella Award, which recognizes "one artist from the Northwest whose body of work represents major achievement in his or her discipline." He was a "member at large" of the nonprofit service Seattle 7 Writers.
The Seattle Times noted that Robbins once described his books as "cakes with files baked in them..... I try to create something that's beautiful to look at and delicious to the taste, and yet in the middle there's this hard, sharp instrument that you can use to saw through the bars and liberate yourself, should you so desire."
Eventually Robbins married Alexa D'Avalon and together they created a joyous and adventurous life, lovingly surrounded by family, friends, art, the natural world, and cosmic interlopers. D'Avalon shared, "Tom's hope was that his books would continue to be discovered and embraced by new readers, and that we would all find every opportunity to smile back at the world."
Holmes, Marple and Poe by James Patterson (and co writer Brian Sitts) is a mystery/thriller that is fast-paced and exciting, as well as imaginative in the conceit that the descendants of famous fictional detectives would band together to solve crimes in the current century. Here's the blurb:
The prose was tight and clean, aiding a fascinating plot that will keep readers turning pages into the wee hours. I couldn't put it down, and yet I was troubled in reading that Holmes was still saddled with a hard drug problem that hampered his ability to help with the team's investigations. It's also sexist that Ms Marple is the one who has to drag him out of his drug induced stupor, and get him help. Someone who is obviously such a liability should be banned from the team until he's sober for at least a year. Anyway, other than that, I enjoyed this fascinating ebook, and I'd give it an A and recommend it to anyone who likes classic mysteries and classic detectives solving them.
Castles in Their Bones by Laura Sebastian was a YA romantasy that started out with a fascinating premise and then scuttled the rest of the book by turning the trio of sisters into emotional wreaks who couldn't manage to do what they'd been trained to do, or to sacrifice their plans on the altar of love and make things right again in their adoptive kingdoms. Everything is, of course, blamed on their horrible mother, who is manipulative and psychopathic enough to only see her children as tools to be used and then murdered for her ambition. Here's the blurb:
The farther along I got in this book, the less I liked the sisters, who pined for each other and seemed to be unaware of their mother's over-reaching ambition to seize control and then assassinate each of them. The ending was particularly abrupt and terrible, enough so that it put me off of reading the next two books in the series. I'd give this uneven text a B- and recommend it to anyone who finds fairy tales about princesses lack grit and bloodshed.
Birdy has made a mistake. Everyone imagines running away from their life at some point. But Birdy has actually done it. And the life she's run into is her best friend Heather's. The only problem is, she hasn't told Heather.
The summer job at the highland Scottish hotel that her world class wine-expert friend ditched turns out to be a lot more than Birdy bargained for. Can she survive a summer pretending to be her best friend? And can Birdy stop herself from falling for the first man she's ever actually liked, but who thinks she's someone else?
One good friend's very bad decision is at the heart of this laugh-out-loud love story and unexpected tale of a woman finally finding herself in the strangest of places.
I didn't find this story of a serial liar funny (let alone laugh out loud funny) at all...I found it sad and pathetic and sexist (why are women always the bunglers in these stories, where they're infantilized, and why are the men who rescue them always so perfect as to never step a foot wrong?) By the end of the book, Birdy still hasn't "found her purpose" and she still has no passion other than to be "included" and be "loved" by the side characters and the male protagonist, of course...gag. How ridiculous and childish. I'd give this book that lionizes lying and cheating to get ahead a C+, and I would only recommend it to people who enjoy watching young women screw up repeatedly and still get "their man" in the end.
Hellcat's Bounty by Renae Jones is a "Rosewood Space Western" and part of a series. Because this is the first book, there's a certain amount of unavoidable set up, but it doesn't really mar the first few chapters at all, due to the snappy prose. Here's the blurb:
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