Books Completed Since April 1

 The Kiss Quotient, Helen Hoang
I read the second book in this trilogy, The Bride Test, first. It made me cry. This one did, too.

Stella Lane is a whiz at her job—she configures algorithms to predict customer purchases, which is perfect for someone with high-functioning autism—but her social skills are low and at thirty her parents are nagging her about getting married. Her sexual experiences so far haven't been sterling because she really has no idea how to react. So she decides to hire a professional escort to teach her the ropes.

Michael Tran is quite good at what he does, but he doesn't do it because he wants to—he has debts he needs to pay off. He figures he'll take on Stella's project; what he doesn't count on is Stella becoming special to him. Nor does socially awkward Stella realize until she meets Michael that maybe she doesn't need "lessons," she just needs someone to understand her.

All of Helen Hoang's books that I've read so far involve neurodivergent people navigating living in a neurotypical world. I've especially enjoyed them since I've always suspected I'm slightly on the spectrum.

I have what looks like the final book in this trilogy, The Heart Principle, to read next month. I'm whipping out the hankies in advance.

 The Road From the Past: Traveling Through History in France, Ina Caro
I loved Caro's Paris to the Past (day trips you could take on the road or railway to French historic sites from Paris) so much that I had to pick up this earlier book I found at the library sale. The watercolor cover of an old French village was so compelling. And indeed, Caro's chronological history of France, told from its first Roman ruins in Orange through the residences of Louis XIV takes us through some picturesque places indeed: castles, fortresses, palaces, aqueducts, monuments, all set among the lovely French countryside where Caro and husband Bob enjoy the food (sometimes—tourist traps seem to undo them) and roll their eyes at the rude tourguides who don't like people who don't speak French.

But it's a lot of French history, so as much as I like history and old buildings, this was rather a slog to get through. If you're a Francophile historian, come here first!

 The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
What I would have done without the school libraries at Stadium Elementary and Hugh B. Bain Junior High? We were over a mile from both the Arlington and the Auburn libraries and Mom didn't drive; the books at Arlington were so old that the most recently published volumes still had cars with running boards. Stadium and Bain gave me wonderful adventures like Miss Pickerill, Johnny Tremain, The Green Poodles, my first Heinlein juveniles, A Wrinkle in Time (thank you, Judy Martini, for recommending it!), and so many more. And it gave me The Phantom Tollbooth, a daft-looking book with scrawly illustrations by cartoonist Jules Feiffer, whose work I saw in the newspaper. I'd never read a book like Tollbooth, with its literal use of idioms, its fantastic wordplay, the ideas of infinity and bravery and other concepts it put into my brain. Milo, the boy who didn't know what to do with himself; Tock, the Watchdog (literally); the braggart Humbug; Chroma, the conductor who directed the colors of the universe; Dr. Dischord and the Terrible Dynn—they all lived now in my head as beloved friends.

What a joy to find this annotated edition and so much information on the illusive Norton Juster, the things that almost made it into the story (a chocolate moose?), and how he edited unceasingly until every word made The Phantom Tollbooth, like Mary Poppins, "practically perfect in every way."

  On Writing, Stephen King
This is King's memoir about growing up almost from the beginning with stories in his head, and having to tell the tales. Between great writing and editing tips—he got some of his best advice writing for the school paper—you get some glimpses of his childhood and his teen years—including the time he almost got expelled for insulting a teacher in a "humor" magazine he printed and brought to school in which he cruelly skewered each of his teachers—and then his meeting Tabitha Spruce, who later became his wife.

Unfortunately, you have to get through his alcohol and drug addiction. That part was very distasteful.

 The Dead Guy Next Door, Lucy Score
This book looked like such fun. And parts of it were fun. But a good comedy should be short and sweet. Four hundred and sixty pages of cute retorts, car chases, weird goings on, and strange characters was about 200 pages too much.

Riley Thorn's goofy mom is psychic, and so is she, but she suppresses and denies her visions of the future. She married a well-known television anchor, then he divorced her and for some reason she has to pay alimony. Broke, she lives in this appallingly awful rooming house with a bunch of elderly people who I guess are supposed to be funny and adorable, but are neither. She has to share a bathroom with a disgusting guy named Dick who flashes her and leaves his dirty underwear out for her to find. One day she has a vision of him being shot. But who's she going to report it to? When she tries to hint about the threat to the police obliquely, she becomes the prime suspect when he is killed. Then a friend asks ex-police detective Nick Santiago to investigate further. Gorgeous and handsome Nick sees sexy and flaky Riley and the attraction is on.

The story just goes on, and on, with witty banter after witty banter, almost sexual encounters, Riley's totally irritating elderly neighbors, her dippy mother...I couldn't wait to finish this one. Will not go on with the series.

  In the Form of a Question, Amy Schneider
In general, I enjoyed this book. I have trans friends and I was especially interested in Amy's narrative of being born in a male body but never feeling as if she belonged there. (I was quite surprised that she was so open with her "dead name," as so many trans people are reluctant to reveal that information, although I can understand why.) That was the best part of this book, also finding out that she was a Daria fan, her interest in tarot, etc. I was less fond of the parts where she talks about open marriages—of course, if it works for the couple, it's fine, it just made me uncomfortable, and that's my problem—and where she talks about using drugs. I don't even like taking prescription drugs, and mind-altering drugs or sedatives/uppers creep me out, so I was happy to leave that chapter behind, too.

And, after awhile, the cutesy little footnotes in every single chapter got on my nerves.

  Weather Girl, Rachel Lynn Solomon
Ari Abrams has loved the weather since she was a child, and she almost has her dream job at Seattle's KSEA television, where she's the "weather girl"  under the aegis of Torrance Hale, her idol and the station's chief meteorologist. "Almost perfect" because Hale isn't giving Ari much direction and also because her feud with station owner—and ex-husband—Seth Hasegawa makes working conditions at KSEA a little rocky—even though it's clear the couple still love each other. After an inebriated December holiday party in which Hale throws one of Hasegawa's awards out a hotel window, Ari and her buddy from the sports department, Russell Barringer, decide to start doing little, anonymous things to bring their bosses' together, and perhaps make them think about having a fresh start.

But it also brings Ari and Russ together in ways they couldn't have imagined, to the point Ari thinks there might be a future between them—if she can keep her "bad days" covered up. For Ari, like her mother, suffers from depression, and believes she's unlovable if she doesn't keep the fact covered up.

A nice love story entwined with Ari's struggle to "be her sunny self" rather than letting her dark side show.

  Whoever Fights Monsters, Robert K. Ressler and Tom Shactman
If you watch Mindhunter on Netflix, Ressler is the person that Bill Tench, played by Holt McCallany, is based on. He was the man who coined "serial killer" as a name for repeat murderers with similar pathologies, and served as an advisor on Silence of the Lambs. In this volume he talks about how behavioral crime analysts form profiles, and some of the serial killers he has encountered, including Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, David Berkowitz, Ed Kemper, etc. While most of these men—serial killers are almost exclusively men—are spur-of-the-moment, disorganized, and unprepossessing, there are also some very cunning ones who view their killings as "games" with the police.

Worth reading for the reality behind television series like Criminal Minds and other psychological-based crime dramas.

  Georgie, All Along, Kate Clayborn
Georgie Mulcahy is suddenly floundering; her high-powered Hollywood boss Nadia has retreated to enjoy the simple life and personal assistant Georgie is out of a job. To collect her thoughts, she goes back to her east coast small-town birthplace to spend some time with her best friend Bel and her husband Harry, who are expecting their first child. Georgie plans to stay at her peripatetic hippie parents' empty house while she gets her life together, only to find town bad boy Levi Fanning housesitting. Georgie and Levi settle into an uneasy truce, and George finds among her childhood things a "friendfic" she and Bel wrote together before going to high school about all the things she planned to do in high school and then in the future. To cheer herself up, Georgie decides to do a few of the things in the fic that she wrote about, and, to her surprise, grumpy Levi, who seems to figure he owes her one after she allows him to stay at her parents' house, volunteers to help her.

Yeah, it's a love story, so it goes where you think. It's a nice story, nothing special, but sweet. Levi's unforgiving father hangs like a big dark cloud over the whole story—I dare you to get through the story without wanting to slap the jerk—and the jokes about Hank (Levi's dog) farting got old fast. But a nice summer read about two old friends, a new one, and facing the future.

  Life in an Old New England Country Village: An Old Sturbridge Village Book, Catherine Fennelly
Found this at a book sale only to discover it was about Old Sturbridge Village. It's from 1969, and the first chapter talks about what it was like to live in New England following the Revolutionary War until shortly before the Civil War, and then the rest of the book enumerates the current buildings and displays at SV and how they fit into life 1776-1840. The Village, which we visited for the first time in 2015, as very much expanded since then, but it was fun to read the inception of Sturbridge and the histories of the first buildings on the site. Totally still worth picking up at a book sale if you're an OSV fan or a fan of early American history.