Night Witch (Rivers of London graphic novel), Ben Aaronovitch

I'm giving this a C, because it was confusing, but take that with a grain of salt; I am notoriously bad at understanding visual media. I honestly reread a bunch of pages over and over because I wasn't sure which Russian was doing what. There's a lot of double-crossing and Russian here, and not much magic. I liked the parts with Molly, and Peter, and Beverly, but the rest of it was a little muddled to me.

Grade: C
#95 in 2016

The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London, Judith Flanders

This makes me want to reread Dickens, which is HIGH PRAISE because I hated Dickens in high school (except A Tale of Two Cities. I looooved me some Sidney Carton). But this book is FASCINATING. There are chapters on everything, from how sewer systems worked before the Great Stink, to what street sellers shouted as they sold stuff, to what prostitutes wore (fun fact: we're not sure!). This is a fun book, and there's a lot of great stuff here to excitedly tell people as you're reading.

For example, I just turned to my roommate and said, "So it turns out no one was sure who were the prostitutes and who weren't in London; all the records are from men who were like THERE ARE SO MANY PROSTITUTES ON THE STREETS," by which they mostly meant women who were out in public or maybe looked at them in what they considered a friendly way. It's hilariously ridiculous. Also, because the prostitutes allegedly dressed so brightly, they were known as "gay women," and the streets were just FILLED with gay women. I'll be honest -- that sounds great.

On the other hand, huge amounts of the chapters are just listing things; 74 kinds of street sellers, 93 things for sale for breakfast, the cost of 112 different rolls. I'm kidding, but not really. It gets exhausting, which is why it took me so long to get through the whole book.

Grade: B
#94 in 2016

The Final Deduction, Rex Stout

So this lady comes to Nero Wolfe and says her husband has been kidnapped, and she wants his help. She pays the ransom, the husband is returned, and then he winds up dead. What could have happened???

The charm of these books, as always, is in Archie Goodwin's narration and voice. I'm going to start putting in cute quotes or something from these books, because the patter and the flavor is just so good, and otherwise every summary is "oh hey, another book! Wolfe ate some stuff, Archie was sarcastic, Cramer chewed on a cigar." (That is not a complaint.)

#93 in 2016
Grade: B

Book Recommendations: Non Fiction and History

I've been asked a few times for my best history/non-fiction book recs, so here are some I have loved. Nearly all of these are written for a popular history audience, not a specialist, so they're plotted or paced almost like novels. These are books that will make you turn to whoever is sitting next to you and go, "Oh my god, did you know--" until they give up and leave the room. 

I'll also label them "long" or "short" for how long it'll take you to read them. ...keep in mind that I read a lot, and all the time, so my "short" might not be yours.

If you're looking for something exciting action adventure-y:
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
This cold war spy book reads like a novel -- and it should, since Graham Greene is one of the men involved. Once you get into this one you won't be able to put it down. (medium)

Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade
This is about the crusades, and it's a little bit drier, but it's awesome. It's either what Kingdom of Heaven was based on, or they're both using the same primary sources, the difference being that Orlando Bloom's character should have been an old grizzled dude. I've used this book (excerpts) in class with 9th graders, and they loved it. Los of set up, lots of "oh my god, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??" Also: some great gossip about Richard the Lionheart. (longish)

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
This! Is! So! Exciting!! Genghis Khan's actual life feels like you're watching an awesome, epic movie about a badass warrior with surprisingly enlightened views. Compulsively readable. The sequel has been in my to-read list for... literal years. (shortish)


Something kind of creepy or mysterious:
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
Such a cool book. Did you know that germs travel through contaminated water? Well, people sure didn't before - not kidding -- John Snow proved that they did through tireless work. Cholera was wiping out whole neighborhoods, and no one else connected it to the water supply. Sounds kind of boring, but how he put it together is a page-turning read. (Shortish)

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime
A nice case-by-case history of murder in Victorian England, how it was discussed at the time, and how the Victorians were obsessed with death. If you like true-crime TV or watching Criminal Minds, you'll love this. (Medium)

The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse: An Extraordinary Edwardian Case of Deception and Intrigue
This book is BANANAS. I'm not going to tell you anything here except the title. Look at that title! Read this book! (shortish)

Something packed full of information that will honestly just blow your mind:

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
As a Jewish atheist, I can whole-heartedly recommend this book whether you're a practicing Christian or have no particular feelings about God. This is an incredibly well-researched biography of Jesus the man, placing him in the right time and place, and explaining the social, political, and economic issues of his day and how we see those things reflected in the Bible. Does it sound dry? It's fascinating. (medium)

Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired
For a long time it was illegal to translate the Bible into English, and people were killed for attempting it. Then King James approved it, and we got the King James version. You won't believe how many every day and common expressions come from this ranslation, or how profound its impact was on history. (Medium)

Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
Okay. This is a dense, dense book. I've read it twice, but I'll probably read it again and go, "Wait, what?" a few more times. If you like military history, or American history (not my favorite) then this book is amazing. But keep in mind, I brought Postwar with me to the beach in Hawaii one vacation. It's all the decisions that were made after World War I -- and I do mean all -- and how they happened. The personalities involved, the negotiations, the back stabbing and double dealing. It's very readable, but also very long. Personally, I love how it's broken down by continent, so you see how WWI affected Europe, Asia, and other places. (Long. The Longest.)

She-Wolves: The Women who ruled England before Elizabeth
FASCINATING. There were so many women who NEARLY got to be the Queen of England before Elizabeth. They ruled through their sons, their husbands, their claims on the throne that were almost but somehow not quite legitemate enough. This book makes medieval military history feel fresh and exciting, like you're watching a war movie, and its thesis -- that these bad ass women deserve more attention -- is thoroughly persuasive. (Medium)

Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar

I've read a ton of Roman history, and this is by far the clearest and most readable. Amazingly clear, exciting, well-explained history of the Caesars, and all the unbelievably crazy shit they got up to -- even the "good" ones. Reads like a novel, un-put-down-able. (Medium)

BONUS: Science books!
What if? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions 

This is hilarious and fascinating and wonderful. It's by the guy who writes XKCD. Just awesome. 

A Short History of Nearly Everything
Have you read this? Go read this! Especially the part about the Yellowstone volcano. It will scare you so fucking much. It ranges from hilarious to amazing to fascinating to shocking science explanations. Bryson is always wonderfully readable. I love this book. (Medium)

T-Rex and the Crater of Doom
How do we know that the dinosaurs were killed by a meteor? Well, the author of this book is the guy who proved it. Short, fascinating, and with a first chapter that will knock your socks off (and wipe life off the planet. (Short)

Silent in the Grave (Lady Julia Grey, #1) , Deanna Raybourne

** spoiler alert ** Eh. I love a good mystery, but there's barely any mystery here, and I knew who the bad guy had to be. The hero was too rude to be charming, and not in a Mr. Darcy way, and the heroine's big modern family felt forced. (They are cool with EVERYTHING, including encouraging her to have affairs, her sister having a female lover, venereal disease, prostitutes... awesome, but jarring every time it's just shrugged off. The heroine will never speak to her family doctor again after learning that he's anti-semitic. Oh boy, I wish people reacted like that.) 

The heroine was fine, but didn't do much, and I didn't like the hero enough to root for them to get together. Also, the book keeps dropping really heavy foreshadowing -- "Would I have gone that night HAD I REALIZED HOW TERRIBLE THE SITUATION WOULD GET????" when nothing terrible ever really happens.

Oh, and then on the last page someone mentions that the hero turned into a cat, and the heroine says, "Of course; I should have realized it was him."


Grade: D
#92 in 2016

Too Many Clients, Rex Stout

In this book, written in 1955, Archie Goodwin describes the area around 82nd street and Columbus Ave in NYC as just about the worst neighborhood anyone can imagine. You can't imagine how loudly I sighed, pretending I could afford an apartment there now.

A man is murdered! It turns out to involve a sex attic, which I hadn't really considered as a thing. Nero Wolfe agrees to somehow solve the mystery without telling the cops about the sex attic where the murder happened. Archie barely argues with any police, nor does he spend the weekend with Lily Rowan. (Nor does he take her to the sex attic, unfortunately.)

Grade: B
#91 in 2016

Wild at Whiskey Creek

The only reason this book is a B instead of an A is that Julie Anne Long wrote one of my top-five romances of all time, and until she writes a book that makes me feel that phenomenal again, I am unfairly docking her points. Yes, I know it's unfair, but oh god I loved that book.

This book is the second in her contemporary series, set in a charming small-town in the West. I grew up in a small town, so I have a lot of feelings about how it's often made out to be charming and wonderful; I appreciate that Julie Anne Long has made it clear that a lot of people want to leave Hellcat Canyon. In particular her heroine in this book, Glory Greenleaf, is from the kind of small-town family I recognize. Single-parent, financially disastrous, brother in jail, barely scraping by keeping a job, but that's just sort of how life is. Glory is a very talented singer and songwriter, and everyone thought she was going away to be successful, but her family has pulled her back. That feels incredibly real to me.

A lot less of the book is spent on her love interest, Eli, whose name I had literally forgotten and had to go look up. He's the local sheriff, and of course they grew up together, and of course they were madly in love, until of course he had to arrest her brother (his best friend) and send him to jail.

It's a really lovely romance, and Glory gets to live her dreams and love her family. I liked it a lot. (Could I do without the "she's pregnant" epilogue? Yeah, probably. I'm so tired of romance novels tacking on a "she's pregnant" epilogue. THERE ARE OTHER WAYS TO HAVE A HAPPY FAMILY. But whatever.)

Grade: B
#90 in 2016

Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom, by Leigh Bardugo

These books are GREAT. I really really really liked them a lot. These are the "read on the subway, read during lunch, read in your spare five minutes, stay up too late to finish" kind of books.

Things I loved: the world building is so interesting! It's set in what I think of as fantasy Netherlands, although fantasy Russia, fantasy Germany (or maybe Finland/Sweden), and fantasy China make appearances. Old school fantasy used to have each country be a different type of person, as if all the people from country X are evil, and from country Y are religious zealots, and from country Q are proud but dumb (cough cough David Eddings cough). This does a great job of showing people from each country being influenced by their own culture and history, but also able to grow and change when they meet new people. There are good and bad people from everywhere.

Things I loved: the characters! A great range are assembled as part of Kaz's gang, not just "a sassy girl" and "a smart boy" and "the love interest." Everyone is complex, everyone gets flashbacks about how they became who they are, and everyone contributes. There is no whiny princess dragged along against her will, nor is there an ass-kicking warrior chick who never talks except to growl or be sexy. I liked everyone. (Okay, I especially liked Inej and Wylan.)

I haven't told you anything about the plot because book 1 is about a heist, and book 2 is about the repercussions of that heist, and you'll be happiest not knowing anything except that. I was sold on these books when I was told that Lymond is one of Bardugo's favorite hero-types, and you can see reflections of that in Kaz, but again, you'll be happiest not explicitly trying to compare this to Dunnett. It's twisty it's exciting, it's awesome.

One thing that made me laugh: everyone is a teenager, because it's YA, but also everyone is weighed down by endless tragic backstory and difficult experiences. These are some worldly, grizzled teens.

Grade: A
#88 and #89 in 2016

The Fate of the Tearling, Erika Johansen

Oh my goddddddddddddddddddd.

I am not sure how to talk about this without spoiling the very end of the series. Here is the non-spoilery review: It did not wrap up the way I expected! I think the ending works, and it definitely builds on the themes that came before it. I loved Lily and Katie and Kelsea. I liked the book's discussion of what is or isn't a utopia and what it means to create a "better world." I liked Kelsea's struggle between wanting to help people and do good things, and wanting to just destroy the shit out of bad guys once she had that power. This book was more dystopian than I usually go for, but it's not utterly hopeless. It's not a Hunger Games ending, if you know what I mean by that. It's really well written, and nearly every question that was asked, gets answered. It takes a lot of YA fantasy tropes and spins them on their heads, for better or worse. And after I finished it, I needed to run around shouting at a friend for a long, long time. I think it's well worth a read.






OKAY HERE ARE SPOILERS. STOP READING NOW. GO READ THE BOOKS. SPOILERS.




One thing that had carried me through the dystopian parts were the little excerpts of books at the beginning of each chapter, implying that Kelsea would win the war and the future would be bright. And at some point in this book you realize that although she wins, these books come from a darker future timeline where everything is even more fucked up -- and when Kelsea makes her ultimate decision to use the Tear jewel to go back in time, they vanish. I loved that.

I had spent a lot of books 1 and 2 wondering why William Tear's vision of a perfect utopia was a kingdom, not a democracy. And that question is pretty thoroughly answered in this book. Because it got fucked up. Because he got killed. Because Jonathan got killed, too, and because the Raleighs were jerks. So in the final timeline there are not and never have been any kings, only one Queen of the Tearling.

SO let's talk about that ending. I figured we were going somewhere ~it's all a dream~ about the time Aisa died horribly, but was absolutely not expecting the way it actually all came down. On the one hand, yeah, it feels a little bit cheap to erase everything. Row gets a fast death after creating centuries of suffering and violence and destroying everything in his path, including children. None of Kelsea's sacrifices or struggle really happened. She never killed anyone, she never had to deal with that. She goes back in time and undoes the major turning point in history, and then that's it. Gavin doesn't have to atone for centuries, either. (Can we talk for a second about the sexy, daring Fetch as a whiny little monster of a teenage boy? I laaaaaaughed.)

But on the other hand -- oh my god, does she pay a price for that. The scene where she murders Row is one of the creepiest things I have ever read. And then at the end, when she wakes up in what is inarguably the Better World at last, having saved her kingdom, having saved all her friends, having saved the world... she's all alone, and she will be forever. She saved the world and lost literally everything doing it. No one knows her. I still expected some kind of wink at the end, for the Mace or someone to also vaguely remember or recognize her. But no one does, not the Mace, not Father Tyler, not Pen. It's devastating. It balances out how good things are really beautifully, but oh my god, it leaves you feeling hollowed out and miserable at the same time. She saved the world! And no one knows, or cares, or remembers her. What a fucking gut-punch.

Grade: A
#87 in 2016

The Hanging Tree, Ben Aaronovitch

I have this book because one of my bffs lives in London and shipped it to me in hardcover when it was released in the U.K. It'll be released in mid-January in the states. (Allegedly. They pushed this release back over a year, and it's been driving me nuts.)

I love this series! I really should have reread all the books before I sat down with this one, because it heavily references earlier books and characters. I don't want to talk about what happens, because it's a mystery series (and this one deals with the ongoing reveal of the Big Bad) so I'll just say it's a delight to spend another few hours reading about Peter Grant. Although, thematically the whole thing didn't come together at the end the way I expected. And now I need the next one, so PLEASE don't push it back another two years, Ben Aaronovitch.

Note: I haven't read a real hardcover book in a long time and I forgot how annoying it is compared to my kindle. I needed a way to mark my page, I couldn't carry it around from room to room nearly as easily, and when I went to bed I had to leave the lights on to read it. I love turning the lights on and using the backlight on my kindle to read until I fall asleep. Also, I found I skipped paragraphs more often while reading actual paper, and had to go back and make myself read more slowly. All around kind of a weird experience.

Grade: A
#86 in 2016

And Four to Go, Champagne for One, Plot it Yourself, by Rex Stout

Three Nero Wolfe books! They are my comfort food books.

And Four to Go has four holiday-themed stories. What do I remember... Uh, the Christmas one is hilarious nonsense -- zero percent chance Wolfe dresses up like Santa Claus. Be serious. The easter one is something about cameras that shoot poison darts. Okay, what I really remember is that one of these stories gives us actual Archie backstory -- that he tried college, dropped out after 2 weeks, became a guard on the docks, shot a guy, lost his job, and got hired by Wolfe. I would swear we didn't know that before. This is also about where Doll Bonner starts showing up -- an actual female private detective! The late 50s sure were something.

Champagne for One is about someone being poisoned at a party that Archie was invited to, and even though there's an obvious solution for the police (the poisonee was suicidal and poisoned herself) Archie was watching her and knows she didn't do it. It's great.

Plot It Yourself is about books and publishing. Authors with popular books are being sued for having ripped someone off, and they need a way to prove they haven't. The book is great (Archie spends the weekend with Lily Rowan, glad to hear they're still doing well) although the ending is a little silly. It's great when a murderer decides to make a full confession just for fun.

Grade(s): B
#83, 84, 85 in 2016

Just One Damned Thing After Another, Jodi Taylor

I wanted to like this SO MUCH. It has a great premise -- time traveling scientist historians! Unfortunately, the writing doesn't hold up to the idea. The whole thing is told instead of shown -- our narrator will declare, "No one liked him, because he was such a jerk. But then I decided to give him a chance," and there is no example of him being a jerk, nor of why she wants to give him a chance. Things are just declared. The same with the historical action adventure scenes. They are sort of generally described as after the fact events. The book has the tone of wanting to be the Eyre Affair, but without the wit. I read 25% and decided I had other things to spend my time on.

Just go read the Eyre Affair, honestly.

Grade: DNF
#82 in 2016

A Court of Mist and Fury, Sarah J Maas

"But you didn't like the first one! Why did you read this one!"
"To see if it got better."
"...and did it?"
"NO."

So in the first book Feyre meets Tamlin, the High Lord of the Spring Court of the faeries, falls in love with him, and fights the evil Queen of the faeries to save him. She dies in the attempt and is resurrected as the strongest, most badass faery ever, but is understandably all fucked up from the terrible things she had to do.

Then suddenly in book 2, Tamlin is abusive and won't listen to her, has a secret dark past of evil running through his family, and is willing to collaborate with the evil faeries he tried to die to stop in book one. Luckily for our heroine, she had a dark and sexy maybe-evil guy in book one who loved her but whom she hated. And now he turns out to be all sad backstory and secret goodness inside, and ACTUALLY her true love after all.

Nonsense. Just hilarious nonsense.

I really like the idea of a YA novel where the heroine has a good and boring boyfriend and a sexy semi-evil boyfriend, and she chooses the semi-evil one. I was all about Elena and Damon on the Vampire Diaries. But the retconning this book attempts is hilarious. I actually liked Rhys okay, but he was a sexually harassing creep in book 1, which no amount of "but he's SAD inside!" could make me forget.

About 40% of the book is Feyre moping that she's twisted and broken inside, while trying on endless beautiful dresses. Another 40% is backstory of characters we've just met who weren't in book 1 but are now the heroes of the series which... is an interesting way to do things. The last 20% is plot, but just barely. A lot of the book is macguffin quests to do stuff that doesn't ultimately matter. The ending was particularly bizarre. It's been 1st person pov from one character for 2 books and then suddenly it isn't. There's also a switcheroo that doesn't particularly work.

I don't know. It's not TERRIBLE. I get the appeal of throwing out Tamlin and subbing in Rhys as the romantic lead. The problem is that I'm not convinced anything from book 1 supports that, and that I kind of don't like Feyre enough to care who she ends up with. She's always moping and shouting at people, and her adorable sass which wins everyone over, is mostly just not that sassy.

Will I read the 3rd book just to shout about it? Signs point to yes, as long as my library has it.

Grade: C
#81 in 2016

I read Game of Kings again. Yes, that's three times this year, more or less, but I desperately, desperately needed a break from election coverage and then election feelings. Plus, this time I basically read it page by page with friends, and I figured out the actual timeline of what the backstory was, which had always confused me. The key turns out to be that Margaret Douglas didn't marry Matthew Lennox until after Francis had escaped from the galleys, which is how he managed to be turned over the French by her, then rescued by him, in totally different years. Great things were accomplished, AND I managed not to lose my mind!

Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut

I've read a lot of Vonnegut, but not this one somehow, and now two of the writers from Cracked have started a Vonnegut book club podcast so I figured I'd catch up. I especially like that, although both of them are huge Vonnegut fans, they discuss not just the beautiful parts of the books, but also the parts that haven't aged well, or where he could have done better. (In this book, I was underwhelmed by Beatrice's character in general, and there's a bit in the jungles of Africa that really wasn't necessary.)

I had honestly forgotten that reading Vonnegut is just about equal parts "ahaha, OH THE SATIRE," and feeling like you've been kicked right in the chest. Ouch. Damn it, Kurt.

Recapping this book would be a nightmare, but it's very Vonnegut-y; there is an invasion from Mars, there is some stuff about joining the army and literally having your mind wiped away, there is some religious satire, there is Trafalmadore, and there is a lot of meditation on the meaningless of life -- just try your best to love the people (or aliens) around you. The book essentially comes down in the same place that Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does; there is no meaning of life, we are all a series of accidents, nothing is fair, humans are ridiculously short-sighted and self-centered, and probably aliens are controlling everything everywhere anyway. But it's a great story.

Vonnegut's writing style is so beautiful and raw and unique, and his use of language is so musical, and his imagery is so vivid. He just uses words so well. I am usually  not a fan of books where everyone is miserable or hateful, and everyone ends up badly, but Vonnegut makes it worth the struggle.

Grade: A
#80 in 2016

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Mary Roach

I liked this book a lot. Super interesting history of NASA stuff, super interesting anecdotes about astronauts and how gross, boring, and insane their job actually is. There is some stuff about weightless sex and designing space toilets that was both hilarious and horrible, and will stick with me for a long, long time. It's hard to find an excuse to bring it up in a conversation, but I have been trying. I found the tone here a little less wry than in Gulp, and the footnotes less intrusively cutesy. Great, great book; I would recommend it to my students or my friends who just want some interesting and weird science writing.

Oh, and it reminded me how much I like the romance novel series set at not-really-NASA in the 60s. Check them out!

Grade: A
#79 in 2016

Three for the chair, Rex Stout

It's so hard to remember which short stories were in which collection. Hang on. ...okay, after reading a bunch of goodreads reviews I got it. There's one here about a guy who had pneumonia and managed to die under possibly mysterious circumstances -- Wolfe is hired to decide if it was murder or just illness. The second one here is about Wolfe making dinner for some diplomats and the state department. It features Archie saying angrily, "Well, this is a great way to serve your country. Not!" Which I was not expecting in a novel from 1957. And in the third one a whole lot of private detectives have been summoned to testify about illegal wire-tapping activities. They were all tricked into it by the same guy, and that guy has just wound up dead, which looks pretty incriminating. The third one is great, mostly because Wolfe basically sends Archie off to do useless errands the whole time, while letting everyone else help him, and Archie is in suuuuuch a bad mood because of it.

I need some kind of different rating scale for these books, because they are all basically the same thing, but that's the joy of the series. In a week when I really needed a way to turn my brain off and stop looking at twitter or the news, a nice reliable murder mystery with a nice reliable set of characters and a nice reliable plot was exactly what I needed.

Grade: B
#78 in 2016

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, Mary Roach

I love humorous science writing. This isn't quite on par, with, for example, Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams, but it's super interesting and enjoyable. Even the gross parts -- and this book, which is all about food, where it comes from, how it gets into you, how it comes out of you, people who have died from interesting and strange food-related problems... It was weird to read the chapter about saliva while I was eating lunch, for example. But interesting! Definitely a book where you want to tell people all the interesting things you read. The book was sliiiightly more sassily commenting on the science and scientists than I wanted it to be -- I genuinely think anything can be cool and interesting, and I didn't need the slight ironic detachment, I guess?

The footnotes, while usually funny or interesting, are a little awkward on a kindle, jumping back and forth. It's a dumb little complaint, but it made the book about 3% more irritating than it should have been. Oh well.

Grade: B
#77 in 2016

If Death Ever Slept, Rex Stout

I swear this book is a repeat of an earlier book in the series, but then again, WHO KNOWS. This is the 29th Nero Wolfe book, and a lot of those are three-story collections, so I've lost track. Anyway, I'd swear there's another book where Wolfe and Archie are in a shitty mood (this time it's over Lily Rowan, my favorite socialite) and so someone comes in with an absurd job and they both sort of dare each other into taking it, and Archie ends up going undercover to pose as someone's secretary to collect information. I think the other one was in Westchester, though (it's the book where Archie gets roofied), and this one is set in a duplex on Fifth Avenue.

I liked this one; there's lots of sassy dialogue, lots of Archie flirting and going to the Flamingo Club and being a pain to the police, and lots of suspects. On the other hand, it felt like a retread of an earlier book, and when the murderer was revealed it was pretty ".... eh. Okay, sure. Fine. Why?"

Grade: C
#76 in 2016

Three Witnesses, Rex Stout

I had a dream about Archie Goodwin so I figured I was time to finally get back to my Nero Wolfe read-through. Also, I wanted a palate-cleanser of fiction that would be comfortable and easy and charming and funny. Murder mystery series are that for me. Enough formula that I don't need to worry about how it's all going to play out, enough surprise that I want to keep reading.

Not gonna lie; I had to check goodreads to see what stories were in this book, and I just finished it yesterday. They are all very standard fare; in one a soldier who was presumed dead in Korea comes home to find his wife has remarried, and then he is murdered (for real this time). One of them is all about switchboard operators. And one of them involves Nero Wolfe adopting a dog, which was great from start to finish. Archie, of course, thought he'd make Wolfe mad by bringing the dog home, only then Wolfe wanted to keep the dog, and it was just adorable.

One fun thing about these books is that Archie and Wolfe stay roughly the same age but the books are set in the year they're written. Archie was a Captain in World War II, and now here he is, still about 30, during the Korean War. Another fun thing is that they are really of their time. I knew switchboards were a thing, and I knew sort of how they operated, but a mystery set around ladies and switchboards was super fun to read, since I got a much clearer and more vivid idea of how they worked.

Grade: B
#75 in 2016

Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded, Hannah Hart

Boy, I love Hannah Hart. There was a point when, after a few hours of watching her videos, I realized I was talking about her like she was my latest crush. Then I realized that she was my latest crush, and needed a minute while the whole world realigned itself a little. Anyway, I loved her goofy, very sweet cookbook so I pre-ordered her autobiography.

I am... not sure I can recommend this book. It's interesting and well-written, but it's the farthest thing from a light hearted, fun read.

A lot of the book is about Hannah's mother, who is schizophrenic, and was unable to really care for her daughters because of it. Hannah's younger sister was taken away by Child Protective Services. Hannah's father, who left and remarried, is a Jehova's Witness who disapproves of homosexuality. Hannah talks candidly about depression, self-harm, and growing up in a home that didn't have electricity or running water from time to time.

There are funny and charming stories here, and Hannah is almost always upbeat and positive about even the worst of her experiences. But I was so sad and upset reading about the things she has overcome that I wasn't sure I'd make it to the end of the book. I think what she really wanted to write was a book about our broken American mental health system, and her personal experiences trying to help her mother, and so the stories about YouTube and living in Japan are just sort of sprinkled on top.

Definitely check it out if you're interested, but don't mistake this for vacation reading or something fun to tell your friends about.

Grade: B
#74 in 2016

Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs, Dave Holmes

Go read this! It's hilarious and heart breaking, and you will want to read every part of it out loud to whoever is closest to you at the time. Dave manages to be very, very funny, while also reminding you of the crushing pain of being gay in the late 80s and early 90s, before being out and proud was really a thing for kids, especially at Catholic school. And he does it all to a mixtape of songs of the era that made me incredibly nostalgic. I'm a few years younger, but that just means I a) know all the songs and b) voted for him in Who Wants To Be A VJ on MTV, because TRL was requirement viewing for me after school, every single day, no matter how much I hated Korn and Limp Bizkit. My sister remembers my outrage during the trivia contest, shouting, "WHY AREN'T PEOPLE VOTING FOR THE SMART NERD WHO KNOWS STUFF???" when Jesse Camp inevitably won.

This book is a delight. You will feel all the feelings reading it, and you will want to tell these stories as if they were your own.

Grade: A
#73 in 2016

The Swans of Fifth Avenue: A Novel, Melanie Benjamin

I really liked this book, until I got to the end, and then I spent a few days struggling with why I was so disappointed. This book is a wonderfully written, juicy romp through the New York City of the post-war years, featuring Truman Capote and all the incredibly rich socialites he made his social circle. In particular, Babe Paley (wife of Bill Paley, head of CBS, whom I recognized from the Paley Center name). There is a lot of great gossip, a lot of scandal, some betrayal, some dark secrets, and the inevitable moment (foreshadowed in the opening) when Truman turns all of this into a book, and his "swans" turn on him.

I really struggled to articulate why I was frustrated that at the end, the author discusses how, while the events are real, all the conversations are fictional. I love historical fiction; my favorite author, Dorothy Dunnett, fictionalizes all the people in the Lymond Chronicles and makes up conversations between them, and I don't feel let down like this. I thought for a while it was because of the weirdness of making up thoughts and feelings for people who were alive in the 70s, but I don't think that's it, either.

I think my frustration with the book comes from the fact that while the events are real (the black and white ball, Babe's will, Ann's death) those aren't the plot of the book. The imagined conversations between Babe and Truman, their emotional connection, their trust in each other, are the main plot of the book, and that's the part that's made up. Everything that makes the characters interesting, unless you have a previous interest in Truman Capote (and I realized that David Sedaris was narrating his parts in my head), is made up. I'm sure it's well-researched, but I came out of it wishing it had just been a non-fiction book. Yes, it's my fault for missing "a novel" in the title. But I would much rather read a super juicy non-fiction version of this story without all the imagined deep dark secrets.

Grade: C
#72 in 2016

She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, Helen Castor

Yeah. I've read one book in a month. Whoops. And I was so on track before. 

I loved this! The prose is super clear, the stories are REALLY interesting, and I loved looking at the rise and fall of these kings from the perspective of their wives. (Or moms.) Highly readable, very very interesting. I have no idea why it took me a month to get through, except I just lacked any spare time for reading, and when I climbed into bed at night I was ready to sleep, too tired to read. 

I should have more to say about a book I really enjoyed, but -- if this sounds remotely like a thing you'd like to read, definitely read it. 

Grade: A

#71 in 2016

Kanye West Owes Me $300: & Other True Stories From A White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big, Jensen Karp

I ran into Jensen Karp because I listened to his Bachelor podcast (now defunct) although I guess I should have run into him 10 years ago when I was paying a lot of attention to Pete Wentz. (Let's be serious: I was/am always paying more attention to Patrick Stump.)

So this is the story all about how his life got flipped -- turned upside-down. Sorry. I'll stop. In college Karp used his obsession with rap and rap battles to become a famous rap-battler on local L.A. radio, which led to a music deal with Interscope, which was eventually shelved because Interscope also represented Eminem and seemed to feel they could only promote one white rapper.

The joy of the book is all the run-ins he had with famous people, and since we're about the same age, I loved all his stories. I want to hear about pre-fame Kanye, and Sisqo, and Fred Durst, and Mark McGrath, and the Justin-Britney dance-off, and Suge Knight. I was obsessed with a lot of the same pop-culture Karp was, only he met all these people and I was in college watching TRL.

The flip side is that Karp didn't deal well with losing out on fame; he was already depressed because of his parents' divorce and his father's cancer, and the end of the book is a little bit emotionally brutal. As a reader, it feels like he never totally believed his rap career was going to happen (the lyrics he includes are always jokey) and when it fizzled out he just collapsed. But I get it -- I've queried a novel, gotten great feedback and talked to editors and agents, and then had them say, "Oh, you know what, this just isn't... quite... Good luck in the future!" and then collapsed in on myself and wanted to go hide for months and/or years. I'm delicate, and it's hard. And I didn't even have a pen name that's an awkward sex act from urban dictionary.

I highly recommend this book if you want some great stories about the rap scene in the early 2000s, or if you want a rise-and-fall fame story that won't crush your soul forever (just make you a little sad). I just wish he'd explained how he met Pete Wentz.

Grade: B
#70 in 2016

A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J Maas

There is a trope in YA fiction, where the heroine's arc is to learn about the world and how people (or aliens, or fairies, or vampires) aren't the way she assumed they were, and she's going to have to grow up and realize everyone can be good or bad. A lot of the book is her assumptions, and her finally realizing how wrong she is. And there is another trope in romance, where the heroine hates the hero for some reason, and just when she's starting to thinks he likes him, she overhears part of a conversation that seems to confirm all the things that make her hate the hero. Then she runs away, and then dumb terrible stuff happens to her.

Neither of these tropes are bad; they just aren't my favorites. I'd always rather have a clever heroine, and a romance where the tension of "will they or won't they?" is built on actual problems rather than overheard, imagined ones. So this book wasn't my favorite, because to some extent it's built around both these tropes. The romance also felt a little.... Well, he's handsome, and he's nice, so now she LOVES HIM, even though he represents everything she always thought she hated. And he loves her for no reason I ever totally understood (she's not that nice, and she's not that smart). Of course, some of that gets explained with a twist toward the end, but it still felt a little unearned.

I really liked parts of the book. Feyre is a human, and she kills a faerie so her family won't starve to death. Then another faerie comes for revenge, and rather than murder her, demands she come live with him forever instead. (Yes, it's Beauty and the Beast.) She haaaaaates faeries, and spends a lot of the book plotting escape, and being a huge brat to someone who is instantly only nice to her (for reasons that are explained later, in fairness to the book). Eventually a Thing happens, I won't ruin the twist, but she has to go rescue him, because now she LOVES him, and to do that she has to survive a bunch of trials and solve a riddle. I bet you could solve the riddle even if I don't tell you the riddle, but sure, okay; it's a YA book.

The problem was that by the time we got to Feyre standing up to the evil queen, I didn't believe she was smart enough to survive the traps set for her, or to bargain her way out of tricky faery deals. And frankly -- she's mostly not. She solves the brute force puzzle okay, but needs help to solve the thinking puzzles, makes terrible deals, and only solves the obvious riddle on the verge of death. She's bad at rescuing; she isn't even plucky and stubborn and determined. By the end she's sadly resigned to lose and die.

Oh, and there's what I think is going to be a love triangle in the sequel, which might be the dumbest love triangle I've read in years. (There is an evil faery who is dark and beautiful and saves her, but ONLY FOR HIS OWN SELFISH REASONS, or did he, or does he have SECRET FEELINGS??????? This subplot features a lot of sexual harassment, and being saved from sexual harassment, and although he has a reason, I didn't like it.)

I think I really really would have liked this if I were younger; the heroine rescuing the hero from the evil person who has stolen him away to be her consort is a great twist on a fairy tale. But Feyre just wasn't the kind of heroine who I like reading about, and so for me, this book wasn't great.

Grade: C

#69 in 2016

Hotter Than Ever, Elle Kennedy

This book wasn't for me. I'm near the target demo. I'm in sight of the target demo. This author was one of the authors of "Him" and "Us," two of my very favorite romance novels. I can tell why this novel was great for what it is. It just wasn't for me.

So: Claire is jilted at the altar by her cartoonishly uptight husband, who proceeds to go on the honeymoon without her. His brother Dylan, whom Claire has never liked, takes her home with him for a few days so she can get a break from all the sympathy. Dylan, who is a SEAL, is shockingly hot; so his his "roommate," Aidan, who is in Navy intelligence. Claire, who is also stunningly gorgeous -- even without makeup!! -- realizes the two guys are actually together, but they tell her they bring home women all the time, because they're bi and can't live without pussy. (They say so.)

Guess what happens?

You know what happens.

If what you want is a lot of very explicit sex scenes, including m/m, threesomes, dirty talk, and a lot of the word "sexy juices" then this book is for you. There isn't a ton of plot; Claire isn't sure she's a threesome kind of girl, but it turns out she is. Her parents disapprove. Her cartoonishly evil ex tries to ruin things. Love triumphs.

For me, there wasn't enough character (all three of them are mostly described as "sexy"; we know Aidan has secret sadness but he immediately tells Claire what it is; Dylan turns out not to be a bad guy after all) and there was no angst or pining, two things I require in romance. I'm a lot more interested in the build up to the fucking than the actual fucking itself. I want complicated feelings and misery. (Misery is pretty key for me.) This is a straightforward story about threesomes and the beautiful, sexy people who have them. So close, but not quite what I wanted.

But if you haven't read Him or Us by Elle Kennedy and Sarina Bowen, for god's sake go do it. M/M hockey romance that is flat-out amazing.

Grade: C
#68 in 2016

The Invasion of the Tearling, Erika Johansen

The second book in a trilogy can be hard to pull off, but I loved this book. It added to what we knew from book one, it advanced the plot, it was full of great exciting moments. And it ends on a cliffhanger, which I figured it would, but.... Now I have to wait a couple of months for the last book to find out if the series sticks the landing. (I really hope it does.)

In case you forgot: the Tear is a fantasy land, and Kelsey is its queen, raised in seclusion so she couldn't be murdered by her mother's enemies. In book 1 Kelsey comes back to her kingdom, realizes how messed up things are, and tries to make it right -- which kicks off a war with a much more powerful country on the border. We also know that Kelsey and other characters read books from our world, reference the Bible and Shakespeare, and came to the Tear on something called "the Crossing," in boats, a few centuries earlier. All the technology and history from before that is more or less lost, though.

In this book Kelsey has to figure out what to do about the invading army. She has magic, and she has the potential to use it to destroy her enemies, but just like Luke Skywalker could have told her, once you go down the dark path forever will it control your destiny. Kelsey can't save her people without doing some potentially terrible things. And meanwhile, she's having visions of the life of a woman before the Crossing, back in Manhattan, dealing with a dystopian slight-future where a terrible US president has seized power and is using censorship to make life terrible, especially for women. But maybe there is hope for a better world...

This story gets dark (if you have trouble with sexual assault or self-harm I wouldn't recommend it) but I loved the story Kelsey finds herself watching, and I loved Kelsey's story, too. I really liked how it expanded what we know about the Crossing, and the Tear, and I liked Kelsey's arc here. I also like Pen, and the Fetch, and the Mace. So many good characters! So much going on!

And who the heck is Kelsey's dad, you guys. Seriously, I need to know.

Grade: A
#67 in 2016

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, Ben Macintyre

Then I took like, 2 weeks off from reading because I'm on vacation and it's the Olympics, whoops. Also, in my defense, this book is non-fiction, and it took me a while to get going with it.

But once I did, my god. someone recommended this to me as vacation reading and I strongly agree. If you like thrillers or spy movies you should take this book to a beach and read the whole thing in a couple of days, under an umbrella with a drink in hand. It's the true-life story of the Russia mole inside MI6 in the UK during WWII and the early Cold War, the man who was simultaneously reporting everything to the Kremlin and running the anti-Soviet counterspy division. The number of ways he was almost turned in, the way he totally duped people, the close calls -- all of these things would seem insane if this were a movie, but they all really happened.

Halfway through the book MI5 begin to suspect him, but that is only halfway through the book! Things continue to escalate in ways that should be outlandish, and are totally real. You will find yourself turning to whomever is sitting closest to you and shouting, "AND THEN, YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS PART, AND THEN--"

If I had a criticism, I would have liked to have the parts about James Angleton and the CIA more fleshed out, but otherwise, this was a literal page turner. ...except I read it on a kindle, so I guess it was a literal virtual page turner.

Grade: A
#66 in 2016

Lick (Stage Dive #1), Kylie Scott

This book was about an hour of vacation reading, which was just about perfect for me. This is a contemporary romance novel; our heroine wakes up after a crazy 21st birthday night in Vegas, married to a man she doesn't even recognize, who turns out to be a famous musician.

I'm gonna be honest, this book felt like fan fiction wish fulfillment. That's not a complaint! It's very light and fluffy -- he loves her desperately, immediately. he's there when she needs someone to be in her corner so she can tell her parents that she isn't going to fulfill their dreams, she's going to find her own. he gets her beautiful designer clothes and a place to live and of course she'd love him even if he weren't rich and famous, but he is, and she inspires him to start writing music again. (She also walks in on him kissing his ex -- but OF COURSE this turns out to be a misunderstanding.)

I enjoyed this book a lot. It is exactly what it promises. It's total candy -- a sweet story about a normal girl and the rock god who loves her.

Grade: B
#65 in 2016

It Takes Two to Tangle (The Matchmaker Trilogy #1), Theresa Romain

There was a point in this book when I almost put it down, because "mistaken identity" is not always my favorite trope. But everything else was so charming that I kept going, and I'm glad I did. This is a charming regency romance. Our hero is a soldier who was wounded fighting Napoleon and has lost the use of one of his arms. Our heroine is a widow who blames herself for a couple of bad decisions she's made in the past. She is acting as a companion for her beautiful cousin, who is the toast of the ton.

He thinks he wants the beautiful cousin; he gets a letter from the heroine and thinks it's from the beautiful cousin instead. That's where I nearly quit, but it turned out to be fine, and charming, and I was very happy at the happy ending. What an adorable book.

Grade: B
#64 in 2016

How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country, Daniel O'Brien

This is history by one of the main guys over at Cracked (go listen to the Cracked podcast, it's awesome). It's both well-researched and funny, and if it weren't quite so full of swear words I would give it to my students. Some of the jokes get a little repetitive, but I also laughed out loud at several of the chapters. Perfect vacation reading, if you happen to be a nerd (which I am, obviously).

Grade: A
#63 in 2016

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime, Judith Flanders

This book was awesome. It covers all the different waves of crime in Victorian England, how they were covered by the media then, how they were popularized, how different types of crimes and criminals were seen (and glorified or turned into boogey men), and the impact on laws and the legal system. It's incredibly interesting, and the footnotes are hilarious. If the title makes this topic sound even vaguely interesting, you should pick this up. Loved it.

Grade: A
#62 in 2016

Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence, Bill James

I love true crime stuff, and I love baseball, so when I learned that Bill James (the guy who invented the theory behind moneyball) had written a true crime book I knew I was going to read it. And there are several sections where he attempts to say, "Okay, if it requires 100 points to convict someone, this evidence should be about 30 points, and this evidence should only be 5, and we shouldn't include this kind of evidence at all." It's hilariously Bill James-ian, trying to quantify the legal system in that way. Make stats! Find averages! Set up a system!

So about 2/3 of the book is about different crimes, from very early crimes in New York when the US was brand new, through to discussions of cases like the JonBenet Ramsey case and OJ Simpson. He does a great job of describing what happened without getting gory or too excited about the gross details. He attempts to explain why he thinks various people are innocent or guilty. (Lizzie Borden: not guilty. The guy who confessed to being the Boston Strangler: not guilty of most of it.) He also talks a lot about why "true crime" is considered so lurid and such a waste of our time, and so destructive to our morality. He argues in favor of true crime reporting, books, and even TV movies if they're well done. And at the end he has a list of 100 best true crime books. I'm going to check out a bunch.

The other 1/3 is, frankly, weird. Every few chapters James stops to tell us, the audience, why the Warren Court was way too liberal and destroyed American society's ability to keep criminals in jail. Or he argues that Miranda Rights and giving suspects access to legal libraries created our super-sized industrial jail complex. He says he's not liberal or conservative on the issue, and he has a long, long, long explanation at the end about all the ways he'd reform prisons to make them places that would create good citizens ready to go out into the world, rather than locking them up forever. But his ideas about how to fix prisons seem, honestly, bananas. (24 person prisons? Tiny prisons on one floor of an office complex?) These chapters were interesting, but not at all persuasive, and you could skip them without losing much. They felt a little -- sorry Bill James, I swear I still love you -- Old Man Yells At Clouds.

Anyway. Excellent true crime stuff. I had to check the closets and make sure no murderers were lurking in them, but the book also made me laugh out loud.

Grade: B
#61 in 2016

The Devil's Delilah, Loretta Chase

Loretta Chase was the first romance I ever read. (I'd say I don't know how I got so lucky, but I do -- I followed a rec from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.) I was a little worried, because this is an early book by her, and sometimes going in to a favorite author's back catalogue is a mistake. Not everyone started out a brilliant writer, and the tropes that were popular a decade or two ago aren't the ones that are popular now.

This is definitely different from other Chase books I've read, but not in a bad way. It feels very much like Chase was trying to recreate the screwball comedy pacing and narration of some of the Georgette Heyer books. There is an awkwardly bookish hero, and a heroine who just can't stay out of trouble. There are scheming parents who knew all along who loved whom, there is a hapless bad guy and an evil bad guy, and our hero has a beautiful (male) friend who, of course, tries to seduce the heroine just as a joke at first, and then gets serious about it later to his own surprise. There is a missing manuscript and a secret plot.

It's giddy and delightful and funny -- although, like a lot of other back catalogue books I've bought, there are a bunch of typos and a couple of missing sentences. I'm not sure anyone is proofreading the kindle versions of these books, which sucks. It definitely detracts from my enjoyment.

Grade: A
#60 in 2016

Three Men Out, Rex Stout

Eh. As Nero Wolfe trilogies go, you can skip this one. Only one reference to a date with Lily Rowan, and the mysteries are mostly things you couldn't possibly guess or solve -- someone just confesses at the end. Eh.

Grade: C
#59 in 2016

How to Catch a Wild Viscount, Tessa Dare

I was worried because a) this is a novella and b) this is Tessa Dare's first novella, which doesn't always bode well. (I picked up Julia Quinn's first book the other year, and it was nearly unreadable.) But this was a charming little story. I was worried that the hero was going to be too much of a jerk, bu the pulled it out in the end. I was worried that the heroine was going to be dumb, but she was not only as smart as I hoped, but also had some great backstory he didn't know about. Overall a charming little story, which avoids some of the super melodrama Dare goes for sometimes (maybe because it's only a novella).

Grade: B
#58 in 2016

Capturing the Silken Thief, Jeannie Lin

I LOVED THIS. A romance set in Tang Dynasty China, between a scholar studying for the civil service exams, and a woman who plays music for a troupe but who is pretending to be a courtesan? Oh man. They were both so likeable, and they were both so smart and into each other. My only complaint, as usual, is that this is a novella and not a novel, because I would have read a lot more of this. (Yes, I know, it's part of a series, and I will go get the rest of it, don't worry.)

Grade: B
#57 in 2016

The Corrupt Comte, Edie Harris

This is a DNF and I'm not counting it, but -- yikes, no. I made it three chapters, and there was just too much of a creepy power dynamic right off the bat -- tying up a stranger so you can finger bang her in a closet without telling her what you're doing or who you really are? No. Especially when he can feel her virginity (?? that is not how the hymen works) and just HAS to take it, after years of pretending to be homosexual to be a spy. No nope no no nope no.

DNF

The Queen of the Tearling, Erika Johansen

I know my goal for the month was NOT to buy any new books but JUST ONE isn't bad. And this one was on sale when I picked it up, it barely counts as a purchase!

This is fantasy -- our heroine is a princess who has been raised in a cabin in the woods because her uncle the Regent would kill her if he knew where she was. The Red Queen in the next country over would kill her, too. And so would the assassins who've been hired, and maybe a whole bunch of other people, including the soldiers who are supposed to be protecting her. When she claims her throne she finds out just how screwed up her country is, and she has a lot of difficult choices about how to fix it, when changing anything will mean inevitable war with the neighboring countries that have been preying on it in her absence.

This is a familiar story, but I still found it really interesting. I liked that the main character is a girl, and that her kingdom seems to have been ruled by lots of queens, good and bad. The main antagonist is a woman as well. I like that our heroine isn't beautiful or thin. She isn't a great swordswoman, but she has a very firm sense of right and wrong. She's driven by a need to be better than her mother -- I can't remember a lot of high fantasy where that's a driving character motivation. I liked that instead of a generic fantasy land this place was settled by the English and Americans after some kind of "crossing" that destroyed all their technology. It means historical references and books and religion can all be familiar. It also adds a vague dystopian element to the world, which I hope is explored more in later books. (On the other hand, some of the language is jarringly not fantasy; royals and nobles suddenly shouting "fuck you!" breaks the mood of the book a little.)

This is so compulsively readable that I wonder if it's YA -- if it is, there's a lot of fairly graphic sex going on, most of it creepy or non-consensual, and lots of referenced rape and murder. There are also a bunch of mysterious elements I want explained. Who is the evil spirit? What's the deal with The Fetch? Who is Kelsea's dad? I'm going to pick up the second one to read on summer vacation next month and I'll let you know.

Grade: B
#56 in 2016

The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, Simon Singh

My favorite popular math writer is Simon Singh. He just makes it feel really understandable and accessible, even when he's writing a whole book on Fermat's Last Theorem. I took calculus in high school, and haven't thought much about math since then; I have only the vaguest idea what e or log mean anymore, I only vaguely ever understood limits and derivatives. But when I read his books I feel like I do, and that's awesome. He writes books that make me wish I'd taken math in college (and understood them).

This book doesn't have much math; he talks a lot about how smart all the Simpsons and Futurama writers are, how many math awards and papers they've published, and all the math jokes they've snuck into the shows. It's fun, it's a fast read, and there are math jokes scattered through it. I think this was a .99c kindle deal of the day a year ago, and I'm glad I bought it then.

Grade: B
#55 in 2016

Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe, Simon Winder

So on the one hand, I loved this book. The author is just plain old funny. He is wry and a often sarcastic, and there's a lot to mock about the poor Habsburgs, who had an empire but never really did much with it, and certainly weren't successful at much. In his introduction he promises to avoid talking about how one ethnic group is spicy, or another is cold, or another is always joyful and drinking, and I love that level of metacognition about history writing, especially when discussing Eastern Europe, where everyone is constantly trying to merge or differentiate themselves.

On the other hand, he constantly describes castles, or paintings, or suits of armor, or museum exhibits in a way that sounds hilarious, but I want to see it. There are almost no photographs, but the whole book is predicated on traveling from city to city and castle to castle. I spent a lot of time on my phone looking at google images, and it added a ton to the book. It needs both maps and photographs. Also, Winder talks about classical music as if we're all totally familiar with every Austrian (etc etc) composer. I like classical music, too, but it genuinely made me feel like he was condescending to me a little, and that made me like him less.

Grade: C
#54 in 2016

The Black Mountain, Rex Stout

Normally when the Nero Wolfe books go outside the standard formula I love it. This one, though, removed all the mystery elements and turned it into a travelogue. It ended up being "Archie and Wolfe go on an international adventure," which was so different that it threw me off. Because of a murder, Wolfe has to go home to Yugoslavia, and Archie goes with him. It's a lot of description of airplanes and hiking and boats, and almost no actual mystery.

Here's what I liked: I liked that Archie thinks about Lily Rowan four separate times. (Just get married.) I liked reading what it was like in Yugoslavia under the Tito regime. Archie was funny as always, although severely hampered by only speaking English, so he couldn't argue with anyone. I liked Wolfe's secret plan that comes to fruition in the last couple of paragraphs of the last page.

Otherwise.... eh. Not a lot happens except walking around the mountains.

Grade: C
#53 in 2016

The Golden Spiders, Rex Stout

I gasped out loud at a plot twist in this book. 22 books into the series I am pretty delighted that they can still surprise me this much. The villain, when they are revealed, turns out to be someone we haven't spent much time with, which sucked, but this is one where you really feel the murder victim and care about Wolfe solving the mystery.

Grade: B
#52 in 2016

Mad for Love, Elizabeth Essex

What an adorable novella. (I bet you can guess what my criticism will be already.) Our French heroine, who has escaped from the French Revolution with her father, is a heroine I haven't often encountered -- she's tiny and agreeable and doesn't argue with anyone or plot or scheme. She's funny and adorable and agreeable, but not a wide-eyed ingenue or a sheltered optimist. It's hard to describe; I really liked her, even though the first half of the book is mostly her saying "Yes, Papa," or "Please stop forging art, Papa."

Our hero, Rory, is Scottish. He's an art-fraud-discovery specialist. He says "ye" instead of you about a million times, and although he was charming and funny, too, that was pretty annoying.

Mignon (her nickname) comes from a family of art forgers; Rory catches forgers for a living. And it doesn't go at all where you think it's going to. She's precious but not dumb; he's enamored of her and not dumb either. Very very charming, even though a quarter of the book is spent in a closet together, kissing and touching and swooning.

But then, because it's a novella, it just ends. He's been lying about who he is; she finds out; she's fine with it; they agree to get married. At the beginning of the last scene she has a moment of "oh god, oh no!" and cold sweats, but then by the end of the same scene she's absolutely fine with marrying a man she was just monologuing that she really knows nothing about. Just... one more scene would have helped that a lot.

Grade: B
#51 in 2016

Hot in Hellcat Canyon, Julie Anne Long

I think my least favorite recurring character trope in any romance novel might be the super hot ex-girlfriend, who is unbelievably beautiful and confident, and floats back into Our Hero's life just as he's happy with his new girlfriend. She inevitably is naked or nearly-naked in a scene to give Our Heroine the wrong idea. She usually declares that she and the hero are getting back together, and no matter how many times he says no, she won't hear it. The hero stands around helplessly telling her damn it, NO, he doesn't want her anymore! but the plot conspires against him and he HAS to let her stay at his house. This usually facilitates a fight with the heroine who doesn't understand why he won't kick her out. And at the end, this super hot ex is usually embarrassed or humiliated, although sometimes she just sails off into the sunset with a new man-slash-victim.

I don't know. It doesn't do it for me. It's not a person I've ever met in real life, for one thing, and I don't think it's an interesting conflict to introduce. Either the heroine ought to believe the hero when he says nothing is going on (especially since The Ex is usually so blatantly horrible), or the hero really ought to just kick her out and take his new girlfriend's feelings into account. Either way it feels like manufactured drama, and I don't find it compelling.

This is a long intro to say that while I enjoyed the characters and the set up in this book, I got to 66%, realized there was no obvious Big Problem looming, and then sighed so hard when his ex showed up. Basically: J.T. is an actor, who used to be on a big hit show, but times have been rough lately. Now he's driving through gold rush country, getting ready for the show he hopes will be his big comeback. He also has a beautiful, terrifying ex. Britt is a waitress in Hellcat Canyon, who loves to bring dying plants back to life, and has a past she is running from. When J.T. shows up he hits on her immediately and she turns him down, because her ex has made her afraid of relationships. Then she decides she can sleep with him as long as it's just that. Then they basically move in together, having great sex and enjoying her adorable small-town life, even though they both know he'll go back to Hollywood shortly.

One thing that bugged me was Britt's constantly changing problems: first she can't be with anyone, she has to hide because of her ex. Then she can do sleeping with him, but not a relationship. Then, when his ex shows up, she's furious that he's with someone else, and won't admit that she needs him, but somehow the real problem is that since she left her abusive husband she's running from relationships. That's like... four different book's worth of reasons for a relationship not to work, and I found it to be just a little bit too much. J.T. meanwhile, is handsome and charming and wonderful, and his only real problem is that he can't say "love." That's it.

Anyway, then his beautiful ex shows up, and first it seems like Britt is mad that he's sleeping with her, and then she seems mad because his ex is so beautiful, and then she's mad that the paparazzi show them looking like they might canoodle. When he says he's tired of apologizing and he's not going to do it anymore, and then leaves, I couldn't figure out what Britt was still waiting for. (She was waiting for a Big Moment, that was kind of too cutesy for me.)

Okay, I didn't mean to recap the whole book. A lot of it's fun! It's very charming! I like the small town and I liked Britt and J.T. in the first half. It just... seemed like they could basically have been happy together, and drama had to be included, and it made them both seem kind of dumb and unlikable. "He's famous and she's not" is plenty of drama for a relationship, in my opinion, and the rest of it made me tired.

Grade: C
#50 in 2015

June Goals

My goal this month is to read down my totally bananas "to read" folder on my kindle. No new books, even if they are super great deals, or ridiculous sales.

This is going to be so difficult.

Mr. and Mr. Smith, HelenKay Dimon

I gave this three stars on goodreads, but you should go pick it up anyway. On the one hand, it's exactly what it says in the title -- he's a spy! Then he realizes he's dating a spy who may or may not be a bad guy! Everyone shoots at everyone! Chasing! Shooting! Escaping! Angry sex!

On the other hand, one of our main guys is almost unforgivably slow on the uptake, especially considering he's supposed to be a super spy. It doesn't make the book unreadable but boy did I shout at it a lot.

Minor spoilers (although... it's all right there in the premise anyway): Fisher Braun, undercover CIA guy, comes home to his secret London flat to find his secret boyfriend whom no one was supposed to know about, missing-presumed-kidnapped. Fisher's boyfriend didn't know Fisher was a spy, either. So Fisher and his spy bff run off to the kidnapping site and promptly get themselves kidnapped, too. When Fisher wakes up, tied to a chair, there's his boyfriend Zach, who gloats a lot about how dumb Fisher is for not having realized that Zach knew everything all along, mwahahaha.

The thing is, though, that while the real bad guy is interrogating them, Zach deliberately lets wrong information about their sex life slip a couple of times. Fisher finds this infuriating. Then Zach puts something in Fisher's pocket. Fisher finds this confusing. Then Zach offers to do the torturing himself, and the zapping with electricity doesn't seem to hurt as much as it should. Fisher finds this... infurifusing. When the other badguys leave, Zach unties Fisher and insists he shoot Zach and then escape, because Zach says he is also undercover CIA and his cover will be blown.

The whole rest of the book, basically, is about poor angry, confused Fisher, who feels like Zach has lied to him and can't be trusted, and is definitely evil, no matter how many other characters decide he's probably not. The number of abrupt changes of heart Fisher has is honestly hilarious. The number of times they fuck and then yell at each other about trust, or Zach tries to explain yet again that he was undercover, or Fisher loses his shit because Zach lied about who he was (while Fisher was doing the same thing)... Man, this book is bananas.

It's also a very fun read, and I'm going to pick up the sequel when it comes out. If a book with torture and shooting and some very angry sex can be a romp, then it's this one.

Grade: C
#49 in 2016

Triple Jeopardy, Rex Stout

I have the worst book hangover. How does one get past the end of the Lymond Chronicles? Last night me and a couple of friends, whom I've made read Game of Kings, went out and drank, and basically performed an episode of Drunk History about Scotland in the 1500s. But they haven't read the whole series and there are a lot of things I can't yell about yet. Sigh. Makes getting excited about other books hard.

Anyway. This Nero Wolfe collection of short stories was published in 1952, and wow, is it VERY 1952. In the first short story, a family finds out their murdered son was a Communist, but he claimed to have been undercover for the FBI, infiltrating Communists. In the second, Wolfe helps two illegal immigrants escape the police. The immigrants met in a concentration camp in Russia, which is why they don't have papers. And in the third, a man who writes comic books frames Archie for murder. Commies, concentration camps, and comics. You'd guess this was published in the 50s, for sure.

Anyway, I guessed the answer to the first mystery, I really liked the second one (Archie does some spectacular lying) and I loved the conceit of the third, with Archie framed for murder, and Wolfe so angry about it that he sort of loses his mind, briefly. Rex Stout writes a very satisfying short story.

Grade: A
#48 in 2016

Checkmate, Dorothy Dunnett

Where have I been? Well, I have been reading this book (kindle estimated reading time: 15 hours) and then ALSO accidentally rereading the 1st book in the series, because I know someone reading it who wanted to ask questions, and -- anyway, all the Dunnett. ALL OF IT.

So how to talk about the last book in a series, without spoiling the whole thing? Honestly, it would be hard to spoil if you hadn't read 1-5 because you won't know who everyone is or why they're so important, or why I cried so hard at the end. Books one and two are comedy-action-adventure, with a gut punch of feelings at the end. Three and four are action-adventure but the serious kind, with life or death hanging in the balance and our hero relentlessly pursuing justice and/or revenge no matter what the cost. Five was his attempt to run away from his friends, family, and feelings, but because he is This Kind of Hero, six is where he is dragged back to face all the messes and solve all the problems he's created along the way. We get most of our assembled band of heroes back, we get war on a grand scale, and we get, finally, the romance that kicked off in the last book.

You'd either love or hate the way the book treats the romance; it gets very nighttime soap opera "oh my god, PLOT TWIST, THEY CAN NEVER BE TOGETHER, OR CAN THEY??????" They are soulmates, and the book makes it very clear that they not only literally complete each other but basically read each other's minds and are connected in their very souls. This is fine with me, because if Francis is the smartest guy in Europe, and the most ruthless, and the hottest trash fire, then she (I am being deliberately ambiguous) is smarter, more sensible, and puts up with none of his self-pitying bullshit. She's better than he is, which he realized at the end of the last book. Every character in the series has a strong opinion on either them being soulmates who must be brought back together, or that they will only ruin each other and must be separated. The Queen of Scotland has an opinion. The King of France has an opinion. Nostradamus has an opinion. It is both hilarious and hilariously over the top, and I love it -- but I'm happy to read a romance about two people who really genuinely complete each other, even if it gets so poetic and mildly ridiculous that at one point the entire French army appears to be discussing whether or not Francis will die if he can't have sex with her. (That happened. It was great.) This is, gloriously, historical fan fiction, which is to say Francis is a Mary Sue of the highest order, and so like any good fic protagonist, everyone is absolutely obsessed with his love life. Also, everyone loves him even when he doesn't deserve it (and bless the characters who smack him when he needs it). But also HE NEEDS A LOT OF LOVE, HE'S SO SAD, SECRETLY.

With 22 minutes left in the book, I was absolutely sure (even though I've read it before) that there was no possible happy ending. And then with 5 minutes left in the book, I was sobbing with joy. It's a beautiful end to the series. It wraps up a lot of things, and leaves the future of the characters delightfully open to what might happen next. Francis says over and over that he's retiring, but a character like his would never really just go home forever. Everyone in these books feels so amazingly real, I can't believe that half the characters are fictional. I'm going to spend a lot of time rereading the last few pages to make sure the happy ending really did happen, and imagining how beautiful all their futures are going to be.

Grade: A
#47 in 2016

Rivers of London: Body Work, Ben Aaronovitch

I usually don't even try to read graphic novels because I am terrible at figuring out what the hell is going on. I like words, not pictures. When I read a graphic novel I usually just look at all the dialogue, and end up super confused about what happened.

But I love the Rivers of London series, and the newest book was delayed (now a friend in the UK is going to send it to me in August instead of waiting for November -- November! What kind of bullshit is that, releasing a book months earlier in one country? It doesn't even require translation!) so I decided to look at the graphic novels. Body Work is the compilation of the first set of comics that go along with the Rivers of London books -- kind of a side adventure for Peter and everyone.

I liked it a lot! I'm not great at decoding pictures, but it only confused me a little here and there, and I stopped and went back and double-checked what was going on. Peter doesn't look quite right (he looks too cool, honestly; I never pictured Peter as suave at all) and Toby is cuter in my head, and Molly-in-my-head is eerier. But this is a great mystery story about a killer car that's been broken up and sold for parts, all of which seem to be trying to murder people in various ways. And then Peter and Nightingale find another cursed car from the 1920s, which also tried to murder people. Are the cases connected? (Of course). Is there a twist ending? (Of course).

It's a great little side story while I wait (INCREASINGLY IMPATIENTLY) for the release of the next proper book. It's not as funny as the novels, and it doesn't have some of the things I particularly love about Peter's narration, like the description of architecture and London history. But I liked reading it a lot, and I'll pick up the other one, too, when it's compiled.

Have you read Rivers of London? Because I kind of can't recommend it highly enough.

Grade: A
#46 in 2016

Earth Bound (Fly Me To The Moon Book 3), Emma Barry and Genevieve Turner

Erin kept telling me how much I would love this book, and she was totally, totally right. I love the setting (alternate NASA in the 60s, trying to send a man to the moon). I love Charlie, who is a PhD and works with computers and has steeled herself for a life of everyone underestimating her and refusing to take her seriously, when she's always the smartest person in the room. I even love Parsons, who is kind of a perfectionist jerk, because he treats Charlie with all the respect she deserves. He loves his job and just wants to do it well. She loves her job and does it well, so he doesn't have all the sexist garbage baggage all her other bosses do. It is a match made in math-nerd heaven.

Would you enjoy a romance between two people who love their work, and science, and not having feelings? A romance where they refuse to admit a romance is going on, and pretend it's just (very hot) hook ups in a seedy hotel where they NEVER talk about feelings? A romance where the hero, whom everyone believes is a ball of rage with no ability to recognize other people's feelings turns out to be entirely gooey pudding feelings inside? A romance where the heroine is NOT here for romance because it might interfere with the work that she loves, but sure, she's up for some crazy sex stuff, if you INSIST? (Until the end, of course, when they realize they can have science AND feelings.)

It's just awesome. I liked them both so much, and I liked them together even more.

Grade: A
#45 in 2016

Outlaw Cowboy, Nicole Helm

This is a DNF but I might go back and finish it later. It's not a DNF for being a bad book. If anything, it hits me a little too close to home. Nicole Helm really understands the dark side of small town life; the claustrophobia, the families with dark secrets, the bad boys who make stupid decisions because they're bored and there's nothing to do.

Both the main characters in this book are desperate -- he needs to prove himself, after a lifetime of screwing up, now that he's stopped drinking and his dad is in a wheelchair. She's on the run from the law after some bad choices, hungry, alone, and trying to rescue her sisters from an abusive father. They're both so angry with each other, and they're both so sad and alone. I  that picking the book up to read when I'm having kind of a rough month just doesn't feel like fun.

So it's a DNF, but not because of the book. I'm just not in a place where this is an enjoyable read for me. I do plan to go back and pick it up again when the weather is nicer and I have a lot less stress in my life.

Grade: DNF

Prisoner's Base, Rex Stout

It's always fun when these books break formula. In this one a woman comes to Nero Wolfe and asks if she can stay in his brownstone for a week. He says no, and she gets murdered, and Archie is so guilty-slash-mad about it that he essentially quits and tries to solve the mystery himself. He can't, because he's not Nero Wolfe, but when he gets arrested, Wolfe lets Archie hire him as this book's client.

The mystery is very satisfying, and I solved it at about 94% on my kindle, when Wolfe gave Archie and Inspector Cramer the final clue. I was very proud of myself. Also: Archie went away for the weekend with Lily Rowan. This is important to me, and maybe only me.

Grade: A
#44 in 2016

Star Dust, Emma Barry and Genevieve Turner

This is a very sweet romance. Set in the early 60s at the height of the space program, it's about one of the brave, play boy astronauts who dreams of going to see the stars (before the Russians do) and the not-going-to-be-burned-again divorcee who moves in next door to him in Texas. I loved the setting. I loved the atmosphere -- all the astronauts' wives struggling to maintain a facade of having perfect lives under scrutiny from the press. I loved that Anne-Marie is divorced in an era when divorce was nearly unthinkable. Kit is a very charming hero. Anne-Marie is a little brittle and distinctly unfriendly, but in a way that makes sense.

My one critique of this very charming story, set in a time-period and a place that I'd love to read more romance novels about, is that things are resolved very easily. He doesn't like kids, but Anne-Marie's kids are nice, so he never has a problem with them, and it's never an issue. Her ex husband doesn't come to visit, and no one really seems to mind, certainly not the kids. She's terrified of the scrutiny and judgement, but then decides she loves him, and at the end is happily posing for photos with him. He says he can't have her being a distraction, which understandably hurts her feelings, but the other astronauts's wives tell her "that's just how things are," and then she's okay with it. I wish that some of the problems that were set up had more of a pay off, and more depth to them.

But overall this is a very charming story about nice people who end up happily together, which is exactly what I want in a romance novel.

Grade: B
#43 in 2016

Ruthless: Scientology My Son David Miscavige, and Me, Ron Miscavige

I'm a little bit obsessed with Scientology.

If you know anything about Scientology (like if you've watched Going Clear, or read Going Clear) you can skip this book. Most of what Ron Miscavige says is just confirming stories other people told about Gold Base and his son David. If he didn't witness something personally, but it's a well-known rumor (like the infamous musical chairs interlude) he'll say, "I have no doubt that really happened, because I know my son." There's really no new information here about Scientology, and in fact, he doesn't really explain much about Scientology or its beliefs. For example, he throws out "I know this will anger many scientologists, but auditing is basically just talk-therapy as it has been practiced since the days of Freud," without really explaining any part of that sentence. I've read a thousand Scientology tell-all books, so I know that L. Ron Hubbard hated psychiatrists and Scientology treats considers them one of their top enemies. Without that context, though, I wonder how interesting this book is.

Honestly, Ron Miscavige seems more interested in telling us about his difficult first marriage and career as a musician, which takes up about half the book. Twenty-seven years in the Sea Org is boiled down to about 1/4 of the book, and the last part is about how terrible the policy of disconnection is, and what life has been like since he left Scientology. Interesting, but not the juicy memoir it could be.

If you want Scientology celebrity gossip and crazy stories, read Leah Remini's book, Troublemaker. If you want "holy shit, Scientology does WHAT?" stories, read Jenna Miscavige Hill's book, Beyond Belief. And if you're new to Scientology or want a well-researched overall story of Scientology, read Going Clear.

Grade: C
#42 in 2016

Coming in from the Cold (Gravity Book 1), Sarina Bowen

I'm not going to finish or count this one but I figured I'd type it up to remind myself not to try and read it again. There's nothing actually wrong with this book, but the level of melodrama left me cold, and I didn't think the hero was sympathetic enough to try to keep reading.

So: He's a professional skier with a dark secret - his brother and mom both died from a degenerative disease that left them unable to speak or move over the course of years. He's afraid that now that he's 30 he's about to develop symptoms, too, and doesn't want to tell anyone because of his career. He has decided to never have a relationship or a child, so no one else will ever have to deal with this. He goes so far as to say he never even sleeps with anyone; he fucks a lot but he's always out before morning.

Obviously he meets a nice girl and they get stranded in a snow storm and have sex, and he can't run away. Then they have sex again, this time without a condom, even though he NEVER does that, and then he leaves, and even though he warned her -- and even though he repeatedly and wistfully wishes he could stay and have this kind of life, with a house and a girlfriend, and somewhere to belong -- he vanishes.

When he reappears, obviously, she's pregnant, and he won't tell her anything except he doesn't want her to have the baby, and then he storms away, and she cries, and at this point I gave up. It wasn't fun, he wasn't especially sympathetic, and the level of melodrama had hit critical for me. "NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE MY BABY, BUT I WON'T TELL YOU WHY!" "WAAAAAAAAAAAH, BUT I LOVE YOU AND I WANT A BABY." Just talk to her.

I have loved several other Sarina Bowen books, but this one didn't feel worth finishing. Sorry. Maybe I'll try the second book anyway.

Grade: DNF

Murder by the Book, Rex Stout

It's not this book's fault it's getting a medium "I liked it okay" grade. The vast majority of Nero Wolfe books have been B's because they are exactly the distraction that I need from something else. This book was fine, but I read it to try and get over my The Ringed Castle hangover, and... nothing could have held my attention then, honestly.

There's a murder, but no one knows what it means. There's another murder but no one's sure why. Archie has to date ten different secretaries, which is too many for me to keep straight, before he can even figure out who the suspects might be. Archie flies out to California where he meets some great other characters, but at that point I was overwhelmed with people to keep track of. By the time I found out who the murderer was I barely remembered what was going on. I did, of course, notice the throw away line about Lily Rowan, because Archie looooooves her.

It's not Archie's fault that my heart was still in Tudor England, thinking about heart break and friendship and pining.

Grade: C
#41 in 2016

Updated reading plan

An attempt to keep myself honest so I don't just start buying new books as if I don't currently have 14 books on my Kindle. Books here are listed as OK (on kindle), NW (Nero Wolfe books), and GGK (by Guy Gavriel Kay for the favorite book exchange). 

1. Coming in from the cold (Gravity book 1) (on kindle)
2. Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me
3. Star Dust (on kindle)
4. Earth Bound (for podcast)
5. Murder by the Book (Nero Wolfe)
6. Prisoner's Base (NW)
7. Outlaw Cowboy (ok)
8. Checkmate (Dunnett re-read)
9. How to Catch a Wild Viscount (OK)
10. Beguiled (on kindle)
11. Capturing the Silken Thief (on kindle)
12. Hot in Hellcat Canyon (pre-order)
13. Triple Jeopardy (NW)
14. Danubia (giant non-fiction book on my bookshelf taking up space)
15. The Corrupt Comte (ok)
16. The Girl Next Door (ok)
17. The Other Side of Midnight (podcast)
18. Be Not Afraid (OK)
19. The Hanging Tree: A Rivers of London Novel (pre-order)
20. Courtiers (non-fiction paperback)
21. The Golden Spiders (NW)
22. Rise of a Queen (ok)
23. The Black Mountain (NW)
24. The Bohemian and the Banker (ok)
25. Three Men Out (NW)
26. Scrap Metal (ok)
27. Vermeer's Hat (ok non-fiction)
28. Before Midnight (nw)
29. Under Heaven (GGK)
30. Might As Well Be Dead (NW)
31. The Slipstream Con (ok)
32. The Closer You Get (ok)
33. Three Witnesses (NW)
34. Spice and Smoke (ok)
35. Heat Trap: The Plumber's Mate (ok)
36. If Death Ever Slept (NW)
37. Driving Her Crazy (ok)
38. The Scandalous Lady W (paperback non-fiction)
39. Three for the Chair (NW)
40. Dirty Thoughts (ok)
41. And Four to Go (NW)
42. River of Stars (GGK)
43. Champagne for One (NW)
44. The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets (ok)
45. Plot it Yourself (NW)
46. Trade Me (WHY HAVEN'T I READ THIS YET)
47. Three at Wolfe's Door (NW)
48. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years (non-fiction ok)
49. Too Many Clients (NW)

The Ringed Castle, Dorothy Dunnett

A reread, of course, and I have a lot to say but I'm not sure how to talk about it without spoiling everything.

Ten years ago I got halfway through part two of this book and put it down for six months. My memories of this book are misery, Lymond being really mean, and endless scenes of description of Russia. I knew it set up important things for Checkmate, though, so I wasn't going to skip it in my reread.

Me from the past, I have good news and bad news.

The bad news: you could BASICALLY skip all of part two, Lymond's Adventures in Russia, and not miss that much plot. Or any plot. I'm genuinely not sure any forward story momentum would be lost if you just read part one (In Which Philippa Is The Best) and then skipped straight to part three (Back In England). Well, you'd miss a pretty great fight scene, you'd miss a pretty great sex scene, and you'd miss Diccon Chancellor, who I like a lot. (Don't google him, he's a real guy, you'll spoil yourself for good stuff.)

The good news, though, is that I got through this book in four days, so no, it's not an unreadable slog. Part one is a delight, as it's 90% narrated by Philippa, who is my favorite character in the series. (Petition to rename books four, five, and six The Legendary Philippa Chronicles.) Part three has a lot of stuff I can't talk about without spoiling really important plot that readers shouldn't be spoiled for. Francis is, indeed, a total jerk for a lot of the book, but he's not the icy monster I thought I remembered. He's sad, and he's struggling, and he has perfectly good reasons for everything he does, if you look at it from his point of view. There is some brutally emotional stuff where everyone is furious with everyone else, and it makes sense no matter who you sympathize with.

Very mild spoiler, I guess: Francis gets the punch in the mouth he's been basically begging for the whole book, and it's delivered by someone who richly deserves a chance to punch Francis in the mouth.

The REALLY good news: Dunnett hits nearly all the swashbuckling tropes in these books. There are sudden rescues, noble self sacrifice, near-death experiences, sudden reveals, sudden reversals, chess games and card games fraught with tension, prophecy, disguise... I mean, it's all here. But it's not until The Ringed Castle that you get romance, with all its over the top tropes, including fainting, pining, and sudden revelations of "oh no, I fucked up; I love her."

(DID I MENTION PINING? THERE IS PINING.)

And at the end there is some unbearable -- no, you know what, even to name the trope would be to spoil it, mildly, so I won't. I'll just sit here shouting at my Kindle and highlighting virtually every sentence to reread, possibly while crying, later.

Grade: .......this is as close as I'm coming to giving any of these books a B, because you really can skip the middle, but damn the end is SO GOOD. A.

#40 in 2016