Have loved Jane Smiley since Moo! Pre-Civil War Monterey setting; after her husband is killed in a bar fight Eliza works at a brothel and gains financial independence. Her friend Jean works in a similar establishment catering to housewives. The exploits of a fictional detective inspire the two to try and solve a series of murders of fellow prostitutes. Eliza is an intriguing mix of naïveté and practicality; some things never change.

Now this is good! Dragons can change into human form to interact in an uneasy political and social alliance to prevent war in this excellent YA fantasy.Seraphina is half human, half dragon; keeping as much a low profile as possible in her work as assistant choirmaster. Everything goes to hell of course:kept me engrossed on how Seraphina navigates it all. First of a series - will go on to the next!

Wanted a light change of pace so what can go wrong for a YA fantasy set in alternate French Revolutionary times? Just about everything- shallow one note characters, plotting you can see a mile away, and most unforgivable dropping of contemporary cliches (okay, agency, etc.) into what supposedly is world built fantasy vocabulary. Photo; how I feel about this book.

What happens to two immensely musically gifted biracial brothers and their younger sister, and their parents against the backdrop of 20th century America. Racism, identity, privilege, love, anguish, redemption. Lyrical and beautiful descriptions of what it is like to sing. At the end a twist of time. Last book read December 2022.

Started after dinner and couldn‘t stop til finished! Eyedrops needed. Action, violence, hard-boiled but lyrical thriller set in New Delhi. Epic storyline of corruption, disparity between wealth and poverty via collision of rich playboy with delusions of doing good, a journalist, and the playboy‘s valet. A car crash is the triggering incident. Hindu concept of cyclical eras defines this time as the age of Vice and spiritual loss for all.

Short stories, poems, art, perfect for dipping into and discovering new writers and accomplished translators!

Kinokuniya main bookstore Tokyo holding annual new year 20% off sale of foreign books this weekend! My haul a little smaller than usual due to exchange rate but will be going again. Great free shipping service for purchases, too. Big Red Hollywood noir centered around Orson Wells and the incredible Rita Hayworth by Jerome Charyn, tagged book, Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, and the best stress reliever when mad at the world: Jack Reacher.

RIP. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/04/fay-weldon-author

2023 books to look forward to! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/01/fiction-to-look-out-for-in-2023?CM...

Happy new year, everyone ❣️🌟❣️2023 is the Year of the Rabbit; good fortune 🙃, health, and luck in abundance for all.
Warrior rabbits-vital and strong…ready to kick in the new year😎

Here we go for the holidays:
https://lithub.com/the-13-best-literary-adaptations-of-2022/

There are certain books you know you want in hardcover, and this is one of them for me. So imagine my elation when the UK edition finally arrived!🌟The usual cardboard sleeve package was surprisingly and clumsily wrapped in plastic; torrential rains the day before so I thought delivery service here was being thoughtful. Opened to find package damp, book damp😱Not the seller‘s fault. Dry now, will carefully read respecting its resiliency.

All out of order, but bingeing my way through all of the Inspector Gamache series this Christmas break. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, love and light to all!

The best book covers on 2022!

https://lithub.com/the-103-best-book-covers-of-2022/

Produced by the company who does The Crown, now on Amazon Prime! Here's a link to the Vanity Fair magazine interview with Louise Penny on the show based on her second book in the Three Pines series- Fatal Grace.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/louise-penny-three-pines-show-gamac...

By strange coincidence (this is only the second time)I read two books in a row that share the same type of hero and theme; this time the latest Rebus and Bosch. Both grumpy lone wolves, retired, with a private code of honor that doesn‘t fit the world anymore. Both see no way out except that of going over the ultimate line. Brought back a memory of a shocking, indelible, episode of a gritty police series titled Baltimore. Same theme.

Rebecca Roanhorse‘s selections are outstanding - all informed by the world on fire now and as the best of SF&F, imagining what the alternatives (or none)would be like. My favorites highlight human resilience and the cracks that might let the light in: The Pizza Boy by Meg Ellison, The Red Mother by Elizabeth Bear, The Cold Calculations by Aimee Ogden; and the opposite: the devastation of hope in The Future Library by Peng Shepherd.

Books I‘m starting, part 2.
Looking forward to Our Missing Hearts and Mothers, Fathers, and Others. So glorious to dither over reading order😎❣️

Books I‘m starting, part 1. Couldn‘t resist a title like Venomous Lumpsucker!

Haven‘t posted; have been reading! Most recent the last 2 volumes (The Man in the Wooden Hat & Last Friends) of the Old Filth trilogy. Rashomon points of view of story for each volume - husband, wife, lover. Working on my pile of TBRs, not helped by adding new purchases! Making a dent, though.

Book Depository delivery today🌟So looking forward to this satiric academia parody. Hilarity will ensue!

Gorgeous selection of short stories, all intriguing, all intelligently crafted. Excellent debut and as for me, will pick up a hardcover copy. It‘s that good.

Was in the mood for dark academia. Unreliable narrator, can see ending coming a mile away. Saving it were descriptions of NYC, the excitement of a newcomer fresh in the city, and the Cloisters itself as well as a tarot card chart appendix. Meh.

Goldsmith prize winner Diego Garcia!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/nov/10/goldsmiths-prize-duo-natasha-soobr...

Woo hoo! Winner of World Fantasy Awards😎 Here‘sthe link to full list of nominees and winners: https://lithub.com/looking-for-a-good-bookish-escape-here-are-this-years-world-f...

This will be so good to see!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/sandra-oh-trio-joins-hbo-the-sympat... - Sandra Oh Among Trio Joining HBO‘s ‘The Sympathizer‘

Picked this up on Halloween; very apt. Digesting each story slowly, halfway through. It‘s brutal horror via what happens to animals, insects, interactions with humans. Not for the squeamish. If you can get past the horror, much to think about connections of all living creatures on this lonely planet spinning in the dark.

John Rebus and crimelord Gerry Cafferty have been each other‘s nemesis for decades. Both have slipped from their heyday as time and new faces have pushed them away from the center of action. Obstinate, maverick, principled and yet close to criminal Rebus advises Shiobhan Clarke on her cases under the radar as he enters the endgame with Cafferty. Final fight for both aging lions; Rebus steps over irrevocable line. Whew. Photo: Edinburgh street shot

Have wanted to read this for a while, and absolutely inhaled it today! Ex-time travel police now head of security at the Paradox Hotel-a luxury hotel for rich and privileged time travelers. Add 4 of the richest men vying to bid for the property, ghosts, murder, time slippages, and the heroine who willfully blocks any iota of intimacy, until she breaks. #queerlitsy

All of us have clicked and 💕photos & videos of funny or cute animals on social media. Have we given a thought to how rare, so miraculously wonderful, and how we are so dangerously close to losing them? Brilliantly written profiles of selected animals, birds, fish, insects which, for me at any rate, were eye opening; making me curious and angry at the damage we have wrought. The author makes a case for what can possibly help: to be attentive

From Twitter: https://twitter.com/shakespeare_co/status/1585223305568563205?s=46&t=08E2FrVqwYu...

New book to film adaption of A Man Called Ove but for some reason now Otto: link with trailer https://deadline.com/video/a-man-called-otto-trailer-tom-hanks/

Choices, choices for the weekend! I‘ve got a few door stoppers on my TBR, including tagged book, The Books of Jacob, and To Paradise. Help, can‘t decide which to read first!

Neo-noir western that upends traditional white POV. A curse that will never be undone, love-in all it‘s forms-that will never quit, and standing in the center of roiling racism, class & ethnic divisions, white privilege, cultural clashes and naked land power grabs is the reluctant hero,Solitario Cisneros,with a samurai heart and pride tasked to solve a series of brutal killings. Prose controlled to just this side of purple. Oh yeah! -Art by Qende

Garvie is a charming genius, the smartest in his school, but snarky and lazy with boredom.Chloe, the most beautiful but self-obsessed girl at school goes missing and is found dead- and Garvie finally has a challenge to solve. DI Singh, methodical and unpopular, is handed his first murder case. The relationship between Garvie and Singh is fraught- intuitive reasoning vs by the book but develops quite nicely. Garvie realizes he can‘t treat ..

First encounter with magical realism was with Marquez, Allende, moving on to Toni Morrison, Murakami and Carpentier. Reviews noted magical realism elements in this story of a young woman escaping a small New Hampshire town to go to medical school but who never went to classes and returned home as her professor father was hallucinating animals and palled around wait a ghost. Emma was regarded as a healer but has lost her touch, unable to save her..

“Novelists tell that piece of truth hidden at the bottom of every lie. To a psychoanalyst it is not so important whether you tell the truth or a lie because lies are as interesting, eloquent, and revealing as any claimed truth. I feel suspicious about writers who claim to tell the whole truth about themselves, about life, or about the world. I prefer to stay with the truths I find in writers who present themselves as the most bold-faced liars.”

Why books are important in wartime; excellent article and comments. Link: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/06/hope-matters-ukrainian-and-interna...

I read the author‘s memoir on 1st year law school, 1L, and of course Presumed Innocent, his big courtroom bestseller. Have to admit I had sort of consigned him in my mind as traditional legal drama writer, but damn, he is courageous! The world has changed, and he plunges into meeting it with a new heroine. Pinky is a former could have been an Olympic contender until she broke her back, got hooked on opioids and drugs, rehabbed and started work

Two minds on this overly long latest in the Cormoran Strike & Robin Ellacott series. They pass on helping a cartoonist beset with social media trolling only for the cartoonist to turn up dead. Much research evident and reflects author‘s own experience on social networks. Most of the clues lie in pages of chat room talk which frustratingly on Kindle is in tiny font size, and difficult to see much less read. Skipped masses of stuff but followed fine

National Book Award finalists: https://lithub.com/here-are-the-2022-national-book-award-finalists/

Book adaptation news. And here‘s the trailer for the Mayfair Witches: https://youtu.be/8uwIto8dn4U

Woo-hoo 🌟❣️Fairy Tale coming from Universal: https://deadline.com/2022/10/universal-pictures-paul-greengrass-stephen-king-fai...

1929: Baxter is a sleeping car porter, saving his tips for his dream to become a dentist. Sleep deprived, under pressure to keep his job threatened by privileged spoiled passengers, constant racism, and the absolute fear to keep his queerness undercover has him exhausted and hallucinating. The long trip across Canada is made longer with the train stalling…absolutely brilliant. Exhausted just reading his travails. Photo: 20th Century Liner.

Star!🌟🌟🌟
Annie Ernaux has won the Nobel Prize for Literature!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/06/annie-ernaux-wins-the-2022-nobel-p...

Rainy Tokyo afternoon just turned fabulous with delivery of this book from the #BookDepository! It‘s the illustrated hardback edition and I‘m so happy; I read it way back when in separate volumes and was just blown away. Looking forward to re-reading. 🌟😎💕

Well this has to be one of the best beginnings of a book on thermodynamics😂

Great collection of funny, exhilarating and sometimes uneven (a couple of a bit too earnest) SF short stories - visions of hope during dark times. The Bookstore at the End of America and Rock Manning Goes for Broke were particular favorites for me. Best of all was Clover: which the author notes is a quasi-sequel to All the Birds in the Sky, answering the question “What happened to Berkley the cat?” 😂 🌟😂

Annual ritual every fall on 10/1: read The October Country.

The author was a producer and this story takes a long hard look on the imbalance of power and at herself and the complicity It took to realize her ambition, sliding step by incremental step. I work freelance in the industry; every woman has experienced this, at some point. Brave and revealing. Photo: black cat casting call for a horror film decades ago.