Welcome to "almost May" my friends and bibliophiles. It's been a rough and weird April, both for me physically as I struggle with Crohns disease and asthma, and dealing with the death of my beloved mother a month ago. The weather has been ridiculous as well, with temps up to 70 during the day, dropping down to a chilly 40-50 degrees at night. So you're either freezing or sweating. Since I'd rather hunker down under some warm blankets than sweat, I've been reading in bed while dealing with pain and insurance companies. Here are some tidbits and some reviews.
I remember visiting Ada's back in the early 90s, and finding that it was a warm and welcoming place. I'm so sad that its closing down. Just another victim of the horrible economy right now. RIP Ada's.
Ada's Technical Books in Seattle, Wash., to Close
Noting that Ada's hopes "to go out on a high note and celebrate this community," Hulton shared information about upcoming changes, deadlines, sales, and events, as well as Independent Bookstore Day on April 25.
"I feel incredibly privileged to have done this work for the past 16 years," she added. "Ada's started as a dream of something that 'should' exist in Seattle, and I am so proud to have created a technical space that is both beautiful and welcoming to all. The team I've worked with over the years has been remarkably talented, and you, our customers, have been curious, dedicated, and supportive. This chapter of my life is one I will always look back on with immense fondness.
Hulton told the Capitol Hill Seattle blog that the decision to shutter Ada's and sell off the Fuel Coffee locations is "not a statement of how things are going right now on 15th [Ave. E]." Danielle and David Hulton, who purchased the former home of Horizon Books and redeveloped it to house Ada's, still own the property, Capitol Hill Seattle noted, adding that while the three Fuel locations they lease are for sale, the 15th Ave. E co-working space will continue to operate.
I would love to see this movie, having been a lifelong fan of Woolf and her immaculate prose.
Movies: Virginia Woolf's Night & Day
Tina Gharavi's Virginia Woolf's Night and Day will have its world premiere at SXSW London in June as the opening film. Deadline reported that the project is adapted by Gharavi, with screenwriter Justine Waddell, from Woolf's 1919 novel "revolving around the life of Katharine Hilbery, a high-born young woman who challenges the patriarchal society of the time to pursue her love of astronomy and life on her own terms." Haley Bennett stars as Hilbery, joining a cast that includes Jack Whitehall, Jennifer Saunders, Lily Allen, Sally Phillips, and Misia Butler.
I remember discovering the prose and poetry of the wonderful Muriel Spark back in the 80s, and being amazed that it had taken me so long to find her. I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and then watched what was, at the time, the highly salacious movie with Maggie Smith and being smitten by the story and Smith anew ("Little Gurruls!") It was a view into feminism of a straightforward and tough kind I'd never seen before. I will have to keep my eye out for a copy of this book about her life.
Book Review: Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark
"I was never really in the world," the great Scottish author Muriel Spark told an interviewer late in her long life. That would explain her ability to squirrel herself away and write 22 novels, some of them among the finest of her time, as well as poetry, plays, and short stories. Her colorful life has been catnip for biographers since Spark, a lifelong cat lover, died at 88 in 2006. One such biography is Like a Cat Loves a Bird by the English critic James Bailey, author of the scholarly analysis Muriel Spark's Early Fiction. With this volume, he widens the aperture for a reverent and engrossing look at Spark's peripatetic life.
Bailey became obsessed with Spark, "perhaps modern literature's finest shapeshifter," when he read her most famous work, 1961's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Once he finished the rest of her output, he was struck by "how deceptively violent her books are," with shootings and cannibalism, and "in one particularly grisly scene, a corkscrew driven through the neck," a reference to The Ballad of Peckham Rye. Her range of subjects made her a hard author to pin down. Bailey wrote this book to capture "this lifelong slipperiness, this sense of perpetual reinvention," and to present, as he puts it, "a series of flickering sparks, each illuminating a different aspect of a life in constant motion."
The result is an affectionate work that covers Spark's Edinburgh childhood, when she was already "an avid watcher of others"; her years in South Africa, when, at 19, she married 32-year-old Sydney Oswald Spark, who, Spark learned too late, "had been suffering from a serious mental illness for some time"; her escape to England, leaving Sydney and young son Robin behind, to create wartime propaganda for the Foreign Office in Milton Bryan; her controversial postwar stint as general secretary of London's Poetry Review; her midlife conversion from Judaism to Catholicism; her eventual success as a novelist; and her final years living in Tuscany. To its credit, Bailey's book is not indiscriminately adulatory. He doesn't hesitate to criticize works like The Mandelbaum Gate, which he says is "riddled with contrivances," and he calls 1970's The Driver's Seat "a deeply unsettling book." But he's clearly a fan, and readers unfamiliar with Spark's work will be, too, after reading this excellent book. -- Michael Magras
In this short story collection, our heroes get what’s due to them—with a supernatural flair.
But the injustices that have been holding them back might cost them more than they realized.
In “Mister Petty,” a brand-new Dresden Files story from author Jim Butcher, a woman hires Goodman Grey to get back at her cheating husband. She’s about to find out that Grey isn’t your ordinary detective—he’s a professional monster. And he’s going to balance the scales.
From author Holly Black, “Dying Isn’t Just for the Young” follows an elderly widow reckoning with family scheming to take away her independence in a world infected by a disease of vampirism.
New York Times bestselling author Faith Hunter’s “Razors and Revenge” finds the vampire bounty hunter Shiloh awaiting her judgement at the hands of the Dark Queen, fresh off a brutal werewolf attack and the loss of a dear friend. But Shiloh’s not just a vampire anymore—and the wolfish instincts growing inside her are howling for blood.
And Kim Harrison takes us to the Hollows in her story “Dog-eared.” The demon Algaliarept makes a bargain with the dangerously insane Newt, the last female demon, to punish an arrogant wizard for abusing his precious magical texts—but how ruthless is Al willing to be to get his petty vengeance?
I'd say 80 percent of the stories in this anthology are worth the price of the book, while there's a couple of clunkers that stand out like an owl pellet in the punch bowl...but they're easily dismissed as readers can move on to the next story, which will likely be enjoyable. I'd give this anthology a B+ and recommend it to anyone who enjoys a variety of paranormal fantasy stories that will spark your imagination.
Paranormal Nonsense by Steve Higgs a dark paranormal thriller that is, unfortunately, full of misogyny and many tired fantasy tropes. Here's the blurb:
When a master vampire starts killing people in his hometown, paranormal investigator, Tempest Danger Michaels, takes it personally… and soon a race against time turns into a battle for his life. He doesn’t believe in the paranormal but has a steady stream of clients with cases too weird for the police.
Mostly it’s all nonsense, but when a third victim turns up with bite marks in her lifeless throat, can he really dismiss the possibility that this time the monster is real?
Joined by an ex-army buddy, a disillusioned cop, his friends from the pub, his dogs, and his mother (why are there no grandchildren, Tempest?), our paranormal investigator is going to stop the murders if it kills him …but when his probing draws the creature’s attention, his family and friends become the hunted.
This book reads like it was written either by a teenager who has played too many shooting-up-creatures of the night videogames, or an immature middle aged guy who has either read too many violent fantasy stories, watched too many episodes of Jack Reacher on streaming services or read too many Jack Reacher or James Bond-like thriller novels and considers himself an expert in all things martial arts/weaponry, and fantasizes about being the "hero" in any of these fictional roles, and saving the day while also "getting the girl" and being irresistible to women in general. Wanker. There's a lot of penis comparison and glorification, a lot of ridiculous focus on female breasts and butts, and a lot of immature humor disguised as "snark" in every chapter. Though the prose is simplistic, the plot is full of holes and doesn't make sense in many ways, as Tempest is so busy debunking the supernatural he's sent to investigate that he doesn't seem to notice or care that people are dying around him. I'd give this disgusting throw-back to old pulp fiction a C, and I can't really think of anyone stupid enough to recommend it to.
The Librarian of the Haunted Library by Brian Yansky is a supernatural horror comedy/fantasy that is self published, written in limp and ragged prose with a paint-by-numbers plot that is very unsatisfying. Here's the blurb:
But when the previous librarian dies face-first in his oatmeal (poisoned, naturally), Kevin makes the mistake of trying on a ring (at the mayor's insistence) that obligates him to become Eden's new librarian. His first assignment? Find the murderer of his predecessor.
He's now responsible for a library where Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde argue about book rights, a ghost writer who is actually a ghost haunts the stacks, and something in the basement that looks suspiciously like a foster mother from his youth wants him dead.
Oh, and there's Olive, the waitress who is a witch, a murder suspect, whose father is technically dead but still lives with her, and who Kevin is definitely falling for.
Kevin has his hands full. If you’re up for a wild adventure, lots of laughs, and action with a touch of romance, read today. Especially for the reader who takes the less travelled road.
Really? A protagonist named "Kevin"? Like the kid from Home Alone? I have a younger brother named Kevin who is also an idiot, and I was not surprised that this Kevin was a real goober who is tossed out of a car by a clown in a small, strange town that has a nasty haunted library and needs a sacrificial idiot to work at said library and cleanse it of ghosts and ghouls. Kevin turns out to be "the one" who can bring his special destructive curse to bear on the town and its unwanted guests. He does so in a meandering fashion, and by the time the book is over, readers won't be sure if Kevin is a hero or a hobo-turned-villain. There's some underlying misogyny, and the prose is murky at best. I'd give this short and painful book a C-, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a tried and true horror fan.
In 2000, Sophie Cass, an ambitious journalist, may have finally found her big break. Convinced a celebrated painter in the Hamptons is hiding a dark secret, she sets off to unravel the truth about his past. Her research takes her back decades to 1940, as an international group of artists and intellectuals gather at The House of Dreams, a beautiful villa just outside Marseilles where American journalist Varian Fry and his remarkable team are working to help them escape France. Despite the incredible danger they all face, The House of Dreams is a place of true camaraderie and creativity―and the setting of a love affair that changed the course of the painter’s life forever. But as Sophie digs further into his past, she begins to wonder whether some secrets are better left untouched.
Inspired by the real-life heroism of Varian Fry and the volunteers who risked their lives to help save legendary figures like Marc Chagall, Hannah Arendt, and Max Ernst, Kate Lord Brown’s The House of Dreams is a lyrically told novel of great courage, love, and the power of art.
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