Wednesday, July 27, 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

Sunday, July 3, 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