pickAfter a pre-Christmas trip to London, staying with her sister, and Christmas itself, Sophronia and friends return to the school for the New Year Tea only to find that it has been infiltrated by Picklemen.
A satisfactory wrap-up to the series with quite a few surprises on the way.
pickSiddheag receives distressing news about her pack and Sophronia and the other girls put their training into practice to help her and incidentally foil the latest plot of the Picklemen.
It's been 3 years or more since I read the previous installments so I was a bit hazy on the details of what had happened. Fortunately there is fan wiki to remind me who was who. Great fun.
"Funambulist,” said Sophronia Temminnick, quite suddenly.
#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl
panStaying with an old friend in Oxford, Mrs Malory finds that her godson is more upset than his family realises about having found a body, crushed under falling bookshelves, because he believes it was no accident. She decides to investigate.
I would have loved the setting and characters in this cozy when it first came out around 1990 but now I found it rather meh, especially in its characterisation of gay men.
pickThe author admits in the first chapter that fascism is difficult to define and that different characteristics will be emphasised depending on what definition one chooses. The characteristics he chooses to highlight have some uncomfortable resonances this year (2025) considering this book dates from 2014. ⬇
pickA monastery seems to have been deserted by its monks during the evening meal, with no sign of why they did so. Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf, driven ashore in South Wales on their way to Canterbury are asked to investigate while the local Brother Meurig investigates the nearby rape and murder of a young woman.
Again, I fingered an accomplice as the murderer quite early on, but I had no idea how all the different events were tied together.
pickWhen the transport organizer for Domitian's Triumph falls to his death down the Tarpeian Rock, a witness comes forward and claims somebody was with him at the time he fell. The case is passed to Flavia Albia to investigate.
I had forgotten just how funny Albia's internal monologue can be.
pickWhen the Domesday Commissioners arrive in Canterbury they find that a charitable young woman has been found dead, apparently from a snake bite. A monk who ministers to lepers insists she was strangled first and then bitten afterwords. Then the monk himself is found poisoned.
I was nearly right. My choice of murderer turned out to be the murderer's chief henchman. The book was rather slow at first but the last third was very exciting.
every boy should stop reading a book as soon as he finds that he does not like it, just as you are not expected to eat more mutton than you want to eat.
@dabbe #hailthebail in 1906
pickDr. Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist, is asked by the police to identify some bones uncovered in the marsh near her home. They turn out to be those of an Iron Age girl but the police nevertheless consult her on ritual elments that seem to be part of a present-day crime.
I enjoyed this very atmospheric story with a very exciting climax that I had to put down several times just to remember to breathe.
pickPercy Jackson finds the Garden of the Hesperides in San Francisco.
He's not very bright, our Perce, is he?
so-soFrom his mid/late 30s Young looks back on his relationships as a young-ish gay man in Seoul.
Rather rambling narrative that frequently left me waiting for something to happen but even when it did, it didn't make much impact and was referred to so obliquely that it took me a while to realise what he meant.
No idea why it was longlisted for the International Booker.
"I took the elevator to the third floor of the hotel and went into the Emerald Hall."
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@ShyBookOwl
so-soThe weapon shops are the only recourse against the tyranny of the Isher empire although the weapons they sell can only work as self-defence for their owner.
I was a great fan of the author as a teenager - especially the Null-A books - so I must have read this before, but I had no memory of the story. I expect I enjoyed it then, mainly because I was unaware of certain controversies it seems to be playing into. Now, not so much.
so-soBrief sketches of Western writers who have set books in Asia. Each has a quick bio, a summary of their main works and the setting and whether a literary pilgrimage is still possible.
It wasn't horrible but disappointingly few books to add to my wishlist. The book was poorly edited with what appeared to be lines missing and sentences that should have been simple but had to be read several times to be understood.
S0-So verging on a Pan.
pickAn unnamed narrator wanders the streets of 1880s Kristiana (Oslo) as an impoverished freelance writer suffering hallucinations and physical and mental weakness while on the verge of starving to death.
Personally, I would have given up long before I got to that stage, but that may explain why the author won the Nobel Prize for Literature and I didn't.
pickPercy Jackson journeys to the Bermuda Triangle in a quest for the Golden Fleece.
Another enthralling adventure. I hope it's not the last we see of Tyson.
pickIn the guise of concern for their welfare, DICOMY makes use of another inspection to try to take control of the children in Marsyas.
More heavy-handed and preachy than its predecessor but this doesn't quite overwhelm the whimsical tone which kept me reading.
My March Storygraph stats - though they don't seem to have the same definitions of genres as I do.
pickLinus Baker, a DICMY (the Department In Charge of Magical Youth) inspector, comes to Marsyas Island to inspect the orphanage there.
There were times when I thought the AUTHOR'S MESSAGE was getting a bit heavy-handed, but the characters worm their way into your heart enough to overcome that and make this book a delight.
pickWhen a group of re-enactors turns up for a week-long festival one of the candidates for their leader is murdered by eating a poisoned fig pastry. Meanwhile Simon has his own problems with the arrival of his academic and vampiric mentor as one of the suspects
Nice final novel wrapping up various plot lines, though some threads are still left hanging. I'm pleased to say I got the who right even if i didn't get the why.
I haven‘t been dead all that long, but I‘m getting used to it.
#FirstLineFriday
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pickInteresting and thought-provoking essay by Ursula K. Le Guin which deserves a PICK but accompanied by a foreword by Donna Haraway that I didn't understand at all and would have been a BAIL if it hadn't been so short.
so-soA very unpleasant TV home makeover star comes to Blitherington Hall and is not surprisingly murdered. Unfortunately the only person without an alibi is Lady Prunella.
It had its amusing moments but the ending was a bit too Agatha Christie-ish, with a denouement as the suspects gather in the drawing room to hear the detective solve the case. Why read a pale imitation when you can read the original?
pickTwo gay men find love during the Iranian Islamic Revolution.
Difficult to read at times because the stakes if they were caught were so high. Another thing that stuck out to me in the flashbacks to the men's earlier lives was what a violent society Iran was even before the Revolution. The author has a playlist for the book on YouTube with some surprising choices, which was interesting to listen to while reading.
pickSimon and Giles (still not a couple) attend a literary conference where an imposter turns up claiming to be the person behind one of Simon's pen names. When the imposter is murdered, Simon and Giles investigate.
Fun, but I'm continuing mainly because I want to know when Simon and Giles will get together and when Simon will tell Giles the truth about himself.
A US vampire moves to a small English village. Because medication reduces his “condition“ to a mild allergy to garlic and eliminates the need to drink blood he can fit in with his new surroundings. Then the local postmistress is murdered and he is drawn into the investigation.
It had its moments, but not as good as the author's books set in the American South. Perhaps you need to be part of a culture yourself for this kind of humour to work.
pickThe Overlords take over Earth, ushering in a golden age. But what is their purpose?
Classic SF novel. Obviously dated in some respects, but still a great story.
@RamsFan1963 @ClassicLSFBC
pickNovella about an Icelandic trader who travels to Mongolia in the 8th century and returns with a herd of horses led by a white mare.
A fascinating story and great fun exploring the people and places referred to.
pickThe Ducote Sisters are asked to investigate spooky goings-on at a friend's home. When a fellow-guest is found dead in his bed, was his death caused by the spirit world or something more mundane?
This seems to have been the last in the series, but I have questions about what happened later. Did the Sisters adopt Benjy? Did he go to study at Athena College and meet Charlie and Diesel? (Or were we told in the main series and I've just forgotten?)
