Books Completed Since June 1

  Butcher & Blackbird, Brynne Weaver
Our friends' daughters were passing this around at a birthday dinner at a Korean steakhouse. I bit more than the delicious dinner.

The protagonists are Sloane Sutherland and Rowan Kane. Both are serial killers who only kill serial killers. Rowan's known as the Boston Butcher, Sloane as the Orb Weaver (because after she kills she creates a "map" of the serial killer's victim's locations with thread and the victim's flesh and eyeballs). They meet when Rowan rescues her from a cage in which she's trapped with her latest victim. There's no denying the sexual attraction, or the competition between the two, so once a year they meet up to see who can take down a serial killer first, a game arranged by Rowan's older brother, who's a hit man. (In the real world, Sloane is a data scientist and Rowan is a chef.)

You're right if you think this is a dark romance. Very, very dark. Both have their demons—in Sloane and her best friend Lark's case, it was a school at which they were abused—and their sex and their romance and the text is all very rough. Not for kids or people who get nightmares easily.

  Watership Down: The Graphic Novel, Richard Adams, James Sturm and Joe Sutphin
I've read the book, but the graphic novel looked so beautiful...there are wonderful watercolor-looking drawings of the English countryside and the little farms and nature scenes. The rabbits are slightly anthropomorphized (the big eyes, especially the blue eyes on Fiver and Pipkin), but they don't look cartoonish, and the other animals are beautifully drawn.

   Re-read: Enterprising Women, Camille Bacon-Smith
Two seminal texts on (mostly) fanfiction came out in 1992; I snapped both of them up at Magicon (the 59th World Science Fiction Convention in Orlando, FL) and re-read them every so often, because it was so novel to see serious writing, indeed serious educational writing, about a subject much-maligned: fanfiction ("All written," detractors jibe, "by hormonal teenagers who want to have sex with Spock").

Bacon-Smith, an ethnographer (studying of cultural norms in individual groups), became interested in the mostly female fans of Star Trek, Blake's 7, other science fiction shows, and also non-science fiction series (mainly Starsky and Hutch and The Professionals) who, for entertainment purposes only, wrote further tales involving the characters from their favorites in various themes: hurt/comfort tales, continuing adventures, psychological thrillers, and sexual encounters both hetero- and homosexual. As she became friends with the participants, she found that they bonded through these stories, worked out emotional disruptions in their lives, and took a far more realistic look into the emotional lives of the characters and the original characters created to interact with them than the source material, since the source material had to "play it safe" within boundaries set by the producers.

As indicated by the title, the text concentrates on women in (mostly SF) fandom, a place where many times they have been unwelcome, and how they made a society for themselves. While the shows and also the media (fanzines and story sharing) have aged, the themes have not (women worrying about sexual harassment, for example). Pair with Textual Poachers for a wide view of fandom.

  Re-read: Textual Poachers, Henry Jenkins
This was the other academic study of fandom and, by extension, fanfiction that came out in 1992. Jenkins' text takes off from William Shatner's infamous "Get a Life" Saturday Night Live skit, in which incensed fans responded that they did have a life; that interest in science fiction/detective series/British programming was just as legitimate as sports fandom or any other intense interest. It also takes the time to define "fan" and "fandom," and note how fans have been portrayed as distorted crazies.

The following chapters address much more than fanfiction: one discusses how the fans of the fantasy drama Beauty and the Beast felt betrayed by the network's choice to turn the romantic/action storyline to just action. Another discusses fanfiction, while a third addresses slash fanfiction, and there is also a chapter about music videos and another about filksongs, something rare in the online fandom today. Although the author in this case is male, there is still much discussion about women being the primary "makers" in fandom and how they react to female characters being marginalized in programming at that time.

Fan art is scattered throughout the book.

Again, much academic vocabulary, but the fan studies are fascinating.

  Not in Love, Ali Hazelwood
Rue Siebert grew up in an uncertain world: her mother was chronically underemployed and she and her brother often had to shift for themselves. Now she has a stable job in the food science industry under an clever woman who has fought her way up in the business world, and she feels safe for the first time in her life.

Then she finds out her boss started Kline, the business, with a big loan, and the Harkness Group has taken over that loan. Is the Harkness Group also going to buy out Kline? For Rue, this fact is almost as bad as when representatives of Harkness come to talk to Kline's scientists, it turns out she knows one of them: it's Eli Killgore, the man she unsuccessfully hooked up with on a dating app, only to have her brother horn in on their meetup.

As it works out, Rue and Eli are much more than rivals; they're rivals with an undeniable attraction for each other which they give into—surely two adults who are not in love can have kick-ass sex and not get emotionally involved? Outside of the hot sex, there's a duplicitous co-worker lurking at Kline and an injustice trying to be resolved. Much more sex that Hazelwood's usual mix and a sniffly HEA but still not quite up to Love Hypothesis.

  American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal, Neil King Jr.
King had, for some time, toyed with an idea to walk from Washington, DC, where he lived, to New York City, but after a cancer scare and treatments, decided to make the dream real. So in the spring of 2021, with a backpack and arrangements to stay at small bed and breakfasts or alternative lodging (and not averse to sleeping wild), King did just that, traveling the back roads from his home "nine blocks east of the U.S. Capitol" to the Ramble in Central Park. What follows are his adventures along the road, including incredulous people who can't believe he's walking the whole way (he does, except for a couple of minimal car rides), encounters with curious people along the way, including Amish and Mennonite communities, stops at tiny museums (like one which holds only tools that early Americans would have used) and historical spots, meeting people of all philosophies from MAGA stalwarts to offbeat rebels, enjoying spring blossoming over the countryside (he walks north just in time to follow the flowers blooming), crossing through historic sites (like the crossing of the Delaware and also Valley Forge), and other diverse adventures.

One interesting part is his endeavor to use only old roads and ways to travel, so he doesn't wish to cross modern bridges. This leads him to being lent a kayak to cross a river gap only otherwise accessible through a major highway. He also accepts a ferry ride from the New Jersey shore to Staten Island.

I enjoyed hell out of this, although I could never emulate him!

  Winter's Gifts, Ben Aaronovitch
FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds, who was introduced in Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" in Whispers Under Ground, is the focus of this short novella with a seasonal theme (after The October Man and What Abigail Did That Summer). A retired FBI agent calls in an alarm about a mysterious event in Eloise, Wisconsin, that no one understands until Reynolds finds out about it. She travels to Eloise to find that portions of the town have been destroyed by an "ice tornado," the FBI agent is missing, and some ominous creatures are wandering the shore of the nearby lake.

This starts out slowly, with Reynolds narrating her involvement due to her knowledge of esoteric activity that she learned from Peter Grant during his involvement in the previous case and talking about her past. However, the pace picks up very quickly as odd "monsters" creep out of a blizzard and wreak havoc in the town. The end is a tense chase straight out of a horror film as a long-buried curse has been unearthed involving Native American spirits.

I enjoyed this although it was a different narrative from the British-set books. Some British-isms do creep in, but I don't find them all that distracting. Reynolds herself is an interesting character because she was brought up as a strict Christian, but is now dealing with otherworldly events with no relation to the beliefs her mother tried to instill in her. I also liked the slow-attraction romance that is very peripherally part of the story (the ending is particularly sweet).

  Any Other Name, Craig Johnson
The tenth book in the Longmire series. Longmire's daughter Cady, now married to the brother of Walt's undersheriff Victoria Moretti, is expecting her first child and expecting Walt to be there at the birth. And he expected to be there, until his friend and former boss Lucian Connally asks if he will help out in the case of a fellow law-enforcement officer in the next county who apparently committed suicide. He figures it will only take a day or two.

If you believe that, you haven't read a Longmire book. Vic Moretti and Walt's best friend Henry Standing Bear end up helping in the investigation, which comes to involve a missing woman from a strip club, sending Walt from a casino to a lodge on the trail of what made Gerald Holman kill himself.

Slow build with a frantically tense ending involving a railroad spur line that will leave you gasping.

Does Longmire make the birth? It's Walt—you figure it out.

 The Joy of Independent Living for Seniors, FC&A Publishing
From the book sale. Really nothing I didn't know. I got some tips from it, though. Worth the $1.50 I paid for it.

Books Completed Since September 1

 Celebrate the Wonder: A Family Christmas Treasury by Kristin M. Tucker and Rebecca Lowe Warren

 Unplug the Christmas Machine by Jo Robinson and Jean Coppock Staeheli

 The Christmas Survival Book by Alice Slaikeu Lawhead

 Boldly Writing: A Trek Fan and Fanfiction History, 1967-1987, Joan Marie Verba
I thought I had or had read every book out there about fanfiction until I attended a panel at DragonCon about female Star Trek fans and this book was mentioned. I ordered it practically when the panel was over.

Don't expect academic erudition (like Henry Jenkins and Camille Bacon-Smith, who wrote the seminal fanfiction studies Textual Poachers and Enterprising Women, respectively) or examination of individual stories like The Fanfiction Reader, or a great big overview like Fic. This is a cut-and-dried narrative by Verba, who, through her own collection and collections of others tried to list as many of the Star Trek zines before 1987 (when Usenet reared its head and stories began to be posted online instead of on paper) as possible. As much as possible, she points out significant things about the zines, like it was the first issue, or the first photocopied issue versus mimeographed issue, or the first appearance of a certain storyline ("Night of the Twin Moons" being solely Sarek and Amanda tales, for instance), or perhaps at what convention a zine first appeared. She also mentions her own stories being published, or any fannish experiences she had. Letterzines and fan feuds are also discussed.

If you have any interest in the history of Star Trek fanfic or even fanfiction in general, I would grab a copy of this book. Despite the often pedestrian writing, it was full of interesting facts and tidbits about the fic and the fans.

 West, Edith Pattou
When Pattou's East, based on the fairy tale "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," was released in 2005, I was immediately drawn to the cover of the young woman in the company of a polar bear. I was fascinated with the society Pattou portrayed, one in which the compass direction a child is born into is said to determine his or her character. Rose, the heroine of East, was actually born facing North, which means there would be traveling in her life, and to make certain her child did not leave home, her mother swore she was facing East when she gave birth. Still, Rose fulfilled her destiny by helping the white bear—an enchanted prince named Charles—escape the enchantment he was under, falling in love with him in the process. Now they have a child named Winn and Rose is visiting her parents for the first time since his birth. The portents are bad—sickness is creeping in on her parents' community—and then Rose receives devastating news: the ship Charles was on ran aground, and he was killed. But she refuses to believe it, and travels to the town where he was reportedly found dead, while her parents and the baby's nursemaid care for Winn. Worse, she has no idea that the Troll Queen that she defeated to save Charles the first time is still alive.

Once again Rose is on an odyssey, but now the stakes are higher—because Winn is also now threatened. She must keep her wits and use all her courage to find her husband and save her child.

I wasn't enchanted as much by this sequel as I was by the original story. I found the choppy text a little bit annoying and longed for subordinate clauses. And it seemed as if the author was just putting Rose through all these ordeals to prove how faithful, courageous, and strong she is, a mirror of the quest of the first book. Still, Rose is still an admirable character and there's a decision she makes about halfway through the novel that makes me respect her all the more. Plus I found the subplot with Neddy and Sib enjoyable. On the whole, not as good as the original, or maybe I just wasn't in the mood for a fairy tale again.

 The Great Hurricane: 1938, Cherie Burns
I've avoided this book for years because of the bad reviews, but when it turned up as a booksale find for a dollar—well, why not? It's not as bad as I feared; it's pretty much a print version of the American Experience segment about the hurricane, complete with the story of the couple who were getting married the day of the storm. Burns tells the stories of the people she chose to concentrate on well, including the experiences of the Moore family who rode out the storm on the attic boards of their home on Napatree Point and whose experiences are covered in the two definitive books about the hurricane, A Wind to Shake the World and Sudden Sea.

Protests against the book include the "irritating" way she refers to the storm as "GH38" (hurricanes didn't have names back then and it's an easy shorthand to refer to it) and the overuse of the comparison of the storm to the attack of a big cat (which is rather overused), and also the way she refers to it as a "Category _" storm when that term didn't exist back then (again, easy shorthand to portray the storm strength).

This is basically a simple overview of the hurricane that remains in New England's legend; if you feel you want to read more, Everett Allen and R.A. Scotti will give you much, much more.

 Live Long and..., William Shatner, with David Fisher
For years there were a lot of jokes about William Shatner, his ego, his dramatic pauses when he spoke, the infamous Saturday Night Live  "Get a Life" skit. It was great to watch him in Star Trek reruns and T.J. Hooker had a respectable run if fan-favorite Barbary Coast didn't, but mostly the actor himself was set back on a shelf. However, a few years ago I started attending his panels at DragonCon, and I was surprised. He wasn't just some addled actor riding on his fame; in fact, when people asked him about some of his roles he would briefly answer and then go on to a subject that fascinated him: the composition of the universe and stars and planets and comets, communication between man and animals, advances in medical science, new scientific discoveries of all kinds. Here was a guy in his 80s who could kick back and rest on his laurels, and his greatest determination was to keep learning.

That's what this slim book is about: what William Shatner has learned in 85 trips around the sun. There's nothing earth-shaking here or profoundly philosophical, yet at the same time it struck a deep meaning to me. On our [husband and I] vacations, we like to go to museums. Not to beaches to loll around in the sun, or mountains to loll around in hammocks, or spas to loll around getting massages. We go to science museums and military museums and history museums and even quirky places like the American Helicopter Museum and the National Christmas Center. (I want to live at Greenfield Village myself.) I want to learn something every day until the day I die. And this is Shatner's philosophy exactly.

He also talks about keeping trying even when you're down to the lowest you can go (there was a period after Star Trek when he was living in his car with his dog), about keeping up your curiosity, even about his failed relationships and the fact that he alone was responsible for them; about his love for his horses, about things that have been dangerous (like parasailing) that he was afraid to do and tried anyway, because he was more afraid of regretting not having done it. About his beliefs, and about his tenure with Priceline, sometimes simply about life. All in a very conversational style in the words of a man who knows the threads of his life will someday come to an end and he doesn't want to regret it when he gets there.

I enjoyed it. You may, too. Worth trying.

 Death on the Sapphire, R.J. Koreto
I kind of ignored this book when it was first published since it looked like just another Edwardian mystery with a female heroine who was before her time and solved a mystery that sounded like it concerned a ship. However, it was different when I found the hardback for a mere $4. To my surprise, I enjoyed it more than I expected.

Lady Frances Ffolkes is indeed a forward-thinking Edwardian woman. Her family were liberals and no one takes it amiss when she attends suffragette meetings and has thoughts outside kinder, kuche, kircke. She even lives in a women's hotel. Like her brother Charles, she is saddened when Major Danny Colcombe, a friend of the family, dies, but doesn't think more of it until Danny's sister arrives at the Ffolkes home to report that Danny's war manuscript has vanished. He made her promise to take care of it and make certain it was published, and she feels she has let him down. So Frances promises she will help locate it, taking with her her new ladies' maid, June Mallow, who was formerly a housemaid at her parents' home. She reports the crime to Superintendent Maples of the police, who brushes it off. But as Frances and Mallow persist, ugly truths come to the fore. Something happened at the Sapphire River when Danny fought in the Boer War, and what he wrote about it may be the reason the manuscript is missing. Perhaps it's also the reason Danny died?

I actually enjoyed this. Frances and Mallow (she insists on being called by her last name, as a proper lady's maid would be; it is a sign of her rise in status among the servants) have a more realistic relationship than Phoebe and Eva in the Lady's and Lady's Maid mysteries. While Frances has an inquiring mind, she also enjoys the company of the two men who become interested in her during the course of the book. Mallow is also a terrific character, yet she never steps out of the Edwardian character of a lady's maid. I can see her being played by Nell Hudson, who plays Miss Skerritt on Victoria.

 Lies Sleeping, Ben Aaronovitch
I've been a fan of the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series since the first book and practically shrieked aloud when the publisher accepted my request to read it via NetGalley. I sat down and immersed myself until it was finished.

In this seventh novel in the series, all the stops are out at the Metropolitan Police and its esoteric division The Folly (dedicated to magic and the supernatural) to catch the sinister Faceless Man (recently identified as Martin Chorley) and renegade police constable Lesley May, who was formerly Peter Grant's best friend and fellow "probie" on the force. After a member of a magical club is attacked by a "killer nanny" and later dies, The Folly learns about the existence of a giant "drinking bell" as well as the thefts of artifacts from various archaeological sites. Chorley—and by extension Lesley—is planning something big and presumably catastrophic involving both. It's up to the team to determine what will happen, and then stop it before it "goes down."

Almost all of the series regulars reappear, including Peter's teenage neighbor and fellow apprentice Abigail (and the pair of foxes she speaks to), fellow constable Sahra Guleed, the intimidating Miriam Stephanopolos, Alexander Seawoll, and Father Thames and his riparian contingent, and of course Peter's "governor," the enigmatic Thomas Nightingale, head of The Folly. Sadly, Toby the ghost-sensing terrier and Nightingale's odd housekeeper Molly are very sparely used; however, Molly has a wonderful scene near the end. The story moves quickly, from one revelation to the next, yet there is time for psychological insights into the Faceless Man, Lesley, and even the hysterical Mr. Punch from the opening novel when his past is revealed. Plus there are surprises until the very final page (but no cliffhangers, thankfully, other than there is much more story to be told), and with the usual complement of inside jokes: the obligatory Doctor Who references, not to mention Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and, to my delight, one from one of my favorite caper movies, Sneakers.

No spoilers, but here's one titillating chapter title: "Of the Captivity of Peter."

In short, fans of this series should love it. If you are new to the series, you really need to read (at least) the other six books (there is also a novella, a short story, and five, so far, graphic novels that are all part of the canon) to understand how Peter Grant began his career with The Folly and his relation to all the other characters. Trust me, if you like urban fantasy, reading the other six will be enjoyable and no chore at all—you'll willingly find yourself searching for the rest!

 The Morville Hours, Katherine Swift
This is the last of the nature books (Wind in the Ash Tree, A Small Country Living Goes On, Wild Hares and Hummingbirds, and The Magic Apple Tree) I bought for summer reading. I enjoyed the latter two, I loved both the Jeanine McMullen memoirs, but I left this for last, and it truly was the icing on the cake. Let me reiterate again that I didn't inherit the Italian gene for gardening; I don't like to work in the dirt, I hate bugs, worms make me queasy, and I hate being out in the sun. But I love reading memoirs of this sort, especially when the author has a way with words as does Swift.

Basing her memoir on a medieval Book of Hours (a religious work that delegated what prayers and activities should be performed at certain hours in a monastery—Vigils, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and, at the end of the day, Compline), Swift recounts her years restoring the Dower House garden at Morville Hall in Shropshire, England. Part history of the Morville area, part garden redesign, and part memoir of coming to terms with her lopsided upbringing and past relationship with her parents, this is a beautifully written account of her days duplicating the different gardens that would have graced the Dower House in different eras of English history: a traditional knot garden, a cloister garden, a turf maze, a wild garden, and more. Her description of the flowers, the plants, the seasons are all exquisite. A glorious pleasure to read, especially for those who love nature and gardening (or just, like me, enjoy reading about it).

 The Librarians and the Pot of Gold, Greg Cox
This is the third, and possibly the last (since the series has been cancelled) of Cox's original novels based on the TNT fantasy series The Librarians. In 441 AD, the Librarians' deadliest enemies, the Serpent Brotherhood, led by the sinister Lady Sibella, has tried to wrest a pot of gold from a reluctant leprechaun and sacrifice an innocent infant to their malevolent cause. With the help of a Librarian, his Guardian, and the man who would later become Saint Patrick, Sibella was destroyed and the plot thwarted. Now a new leader, Max Lambton, a amoral Englishman who has taken over the Serpent Brotherhood with a curious partner who can create magical objects, wishes to finish the job Sibella began. It's up to Eve Baird, Guardian; Librarians Jacob Stone, Cassandra Cillian, and Ezekiel Jones; plus the caretaker of the Library Annex, Jenkins (Flynn Carsen is missing in action in this outing), to stop him.

With the action revolving around St. Patrick's Day, the plot moves swiftly from Ireland to Paris (where the Librarians face off against the Phantom of the Opera) to Oregon to Chicago and even to an colony of leprechauns near the Annex. The plot, however, isn't quite as tight as the previous two. There is one character who appears whom you almost immediately guess who the person is. I was also quite disappointed that there was seemingly no way to save another character, who seemed promising and might prove an interesting project for Jenkins. However, the entire book is worthy of  a Librarians episode as Cox works his own magic on the familiar characters. Once again Cox does a great job making each character sound just like his or her television counterpart; you can hear John Larroquette speak when you read Jenkins' lines.

BTW, when Jenkins mentioned one of the items in the library was Prufrock's Peach, I nearly spit out my drink. Not only media asides, but literary! Good one, Greg!

Great stuff, especially for series' fans.

 The Prodigal Tongue, Lynne Murphy
I buy more books because of podcasts (either "Travels with Rick Steves" or "A Way With Words," this one due to the latter). Most books about American English vs. British English are like dictionaries: "boot" is what Americans call the trunk of the car, explaining Cockney rhyming slang, etc. This book takes a different tack: what words are British that people think sound American? and vice versa? Is British English somehow more correct than American English (as so many British pundits declare)? Is one "better" than the other? And who has the accent? Is the Midwestern accent Americans use for newscasters so much worse than the "Received Pronunciation" that's de rigueur at the BBC? And what about those different spellings?

This is a topic that's fascinated me as an Anglophile and a reader of older British books and magazines. The chapter about British English changing is particularly noted because I notice from the British magazines I read today that British spelling has changed, even from the 1970s and the 1980s when I saw my first "Radio Times" and read "Woman and Home." Brits no longer refer to the "wireless" or spell it "tyre" or "kerb." But is the evolution the fault of American movies "invading" the Great Britain, or just a natural progression of the language?

I think you would really have to be a word nerd and Anglophile to get the most enjoyment out of this book. As you can expect, I did!

 Adulting (updated edition), Kelly Williams Brown
For some reason I've been looking at this book since it came out, so long, in fact, that the author updated it recently to add another 90 or so tips. Kelly Brown bases her tips on what she's learned going out on her own. While her tips are serious, they're told with a big dollop of humor that keeps the book moving and from sounding too pretentious. Most of these are common-sense tips—but, as they say, sometime common sense isn't. Brown has something to say about almost everything, from stocking a starter kitchen and good eating habits—hubby and I laughed ourselves silly when I got to the cooking chapter  and read him the passage where she's talking about basic weekly shopping items: #9 is "chicken thighs," with the notation "chicken breasts are for chumps! So dry! The meat equivalent of a PowerPoint presentation that no one asked for!"—to making friends and having relationships to just plain being kind.

The only thing that bothered me was that she spends a great deal of time talking about it's okay to have sexual relationships just for a good time (so long as your partner does not consider it a commitment either, and that you break up politely and properly—no e-mail breakups!—when it's over), but doesn't add a reminder or two to use protection. Very important, both for pregnancy prevention and for STD protection.

 Re-read: Understood Betsy, Dorothy Canfield Fisher

 Re-read: Charlotte's Web, E.B. White
The one children's book that keeps coming up (along with Harry Potter) on The Great American Read and at one point had George Lopez crying over it. For all White's years of essays in "The New Yorker" (several collections exist; all are recommended) along with his updating of William Strunk's famous English usage guide The Elements of Style, this is usually considered his magnum opus, the story of a runt farm piglet who befriends a canny barn spider, who cleverly works out a way to keep her pal Wilbur from becoming bacon and pork chops. Charlotte's solution: write messages about her porcine buddy in her web.

While this is a tale told simply enough for children, it has many pokes as the gullible nature of human beings, especially adults, and the nature of fame, plus is a lovely, nostalgic paean to farm life and children growing up. While the animals speak to each other, they are not "talking animals" of the humorous sort. Garth Williams' illustrations, never cartoony and based solidly on nature, accompany White's precise yet descriptive prose like a beautiful harmony complements a melody. Filled with charming characters you will never forget, and definitely an American classic for both adults and children.

 The Annotated Charlotte's Web, E.B. White, Peter F. Neumeyer
Who knew Garth Williams was once controversial?

I bought this at a used bookstore where the cashier had never seen an annotated book; me, I love them and have collected a few. Some annotated books use their annotations to point out unfamiliar terms, or expand on the history behind events in a story, or to point out the morals and mores of the time. While Neumeyer's annotations explain a few terms, he uses them most to point out White's careful choice of words, his edits of the text, and (forgive the pun) how he spun his web of words to create his classic novel. The animals and farm life (including the magic of a county fair) he lived (he and his wife lived on a saltwater Maine farm), but he did close research into spiders—one of the delights in this volume is being able to see White's notes on spiders and other aspects of the book, and drawings of the places that inspired the book locations. There are also photographs of the White farm, a chapter on Garth Williams' illustrations (apparently his The Rabbits' Wedding, which had a black rabbit marrying a white rabbit, was seen in pre-civil rights America as encouraging miscegenation 🙄 ), letters from White to his editor about the book, the different versions of the manuscripts, reviews of the book, White's own comments on the book, even White's essay "Death of a Pig."

Charlotte's Web fans and admirers of White's wonderful prose will enjoy immensely!

 The Bartered Brides, Mercedes Lackey
This is the third in Lackey's "Elemental Masters" sequence featuring a very mortal Sherlock Holmes and John and Mary Watson being elemental magicians (John is Water and Mary is Air) and the fifth novel (after two introductory short stories) featuring Sarah Lyon-White, a young medium, and her companion Nan Killian, psychic and Celtic warrior in a previous life. The story opens with the characters in mourning for their old friend Holmes, who was drowned at the Reichenbach Falls while fighting the evil Professor Moriarty, who also died. Only they know Holmes is still alive, hoping to track down the rest of Moriarty's cohorts.

Unfortunately one of his cohorts is also an Elemental Master who is coercing young women to marry him and then, when they have accepted him willingly, kills them and removes their heads, transporting their spirits into bottles that will provide him a "battery" to perform his final, most ambitious spell. In short, he is that most dangerous of magicians, a necromancer, and one with no remorse as he expands his collection to fulfill his scientific dreams. In the meantime, the bodies of his brides are turning up in the Thames, to the bafflement of the police.

Much better than the last villain in this series who was so irritatingly ignorant of what his actions were doing that his assistant was smarter than he was; this one knows exactly what he's doing and has no care of whom he hurts to do so. John Watson also has some great scenes, especially a terrifying sequence where he summons an evil spirit to help him track down the source of the bodies. Sarah also acquires an unquiet spirit who helps the group achieve their ends.

While I love Nan and Sarah, their young ward Suki, and the Elemental Masters versions of Watson, Mary, and Holmes, I am tired of them (although I love the birds Grey and Neville, the latter who gets some good scenes here) and would like Lackey to go back to creating original characters for this series (as long as it's not the German world from Blood Red and From a High Tower, which I found deadly boring).

 Re-read: Autumn: A Spiritual Biography of the Season, edited by Gary Schmidt and Susan M. Felch

Books Completed Since May 1

 Hattie Big Sky, Kirby Larson
A blogger whose book blog I regularly read loves this book, so I snapped it up when I found it at the library book sale. It fits into my World War I reading for this year as well.

At the end of 1917, Hattie Brooks inherits a claim in Montana from her uncle. Grudgingly brought up by an aunt who resents her and a mild-mannered uncle who usually doesn't defend her, Hattie is glad to get away from her home-in-name-only to face the challenge of proving up on 160 acres of Montana farmland. She finds the work almost insurmountable, but is helped by neighbors who she soon becomes good friends with, a couple with several children. But the husband is German and anti-German feelings are running high due to the war; Hattie is endangered just by knowing them.

Larson does a superb job of bringing the hardships of homestead life alive, and the staggering work Hattie has to perform to "prove up" on her claim, including installing a fence, not to mention the twin threats of the weather and sickness. Some reviewers have pointed out parallels between the Montana Loyalty League in this book and the Patriot Act, but there was a great feeling of hatred against Germans during the first World War and the similarities are obvious. If it's a political statement, it's an apt one and not one dredged up just to make a political point.

 Grace Among Thieves, Julie Hyzy
Grace Wheaton's job at Marshfield Manor (an estate with a passing resemblance to Biltmore House) has its ups and downs, and in this installment, things are definitely down: a friend has reported to Grace that there have been thefts from historic sites across the country, a grim fact Grace already knows as items have turned up missing from the Manor as well; she's beginning to believe that a movie crew filming a documentary on the grounds may have something to do with it. In addition, estate owner Bennett Marshfield's stepdaughter Hillary has been insinuating herself with the film crew and making noises about Bennett not being up to managing the estate.

And then, during a tour of the house, a woman is pushed down the stairs and killed, and a man is shot.

This is a nice solid entry in the Grace Wheaton series, which finds Grace not only confronting a new mystery but a new romance as well. My favorite part of these books is the relationship between Bennett and Grace, and this one does not disappoint. Major hisses to the bad guys in this novel for not only threatening someone very close to Grace, but for threatening her cat, too.

 The Ultimate Book of Top 10 Lists, from Listserve.com
One of my weaknesses is books of lists, going way back to the original Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace published back in the 1970s. This one, stacked purposefully on the bargain book tables at Barnes & Noble, called immediately to me. As with all of these books, the subjects run the gamut from bizarre lists (museums, phobias, traditions, etc.) to urban legends debunked, and lists of science and history facts. There are lists of movies and music, nature and people, survival tips, and travel tips. In short, this is a great bathroom book, perfect for long or short "trips." Redeeming social value? Not much, but there are interesting facts scattered throughout and you may even learn something.

 My Bookstore, edited by Ronald Rice
It's so nice to read this book and know there are still some great independent bookstores across the country. In my area we are still pretty much in the thrall of chains, and the best chain, Borders, is already gone. Yes, I buy online, but only because I don't have an unlimited budget for books, and sometimes because the bookstores just don't have what I want. It's all fine and dandy for the chains and the independents to offer the standard bestsellers and books authored or recommended by celebrities or in the news, but most of those have never been to my taste.

This book brings back the days when I did have a personal bookstore, Paperback Books in Providence, RI. It wasn't anything to look at, but I spent many happy hours there and bought books that I still have. The eighty-four writers in My Bookstore will tell you about their happy places and why they are special to them. And you, like me, may now have a list of bookstores you want to visit when you get to a particular city!

 Doctor Who: The Vault, Marcus Hearn
Oh, what a book! If you have any interest in the history of Doctor Who from its origins in 1963, this is the perfect 50th anniversary volume for you. It is full of one-of-a-kind photographs, memos, advertising circulars, BBC "Radio Times" issues, books and annuals, and other memorabilia which helps to tell the story of the program. Formatted as a year-by-year chronology (except for the "missing years" between the cancellation of the original series and the new one, which are combined save for the year of the television movie), each chapter features a full-color photo of the Doctor or one of his enemies (and a couple of companions). My thanks to Amazon.com, who had this on a one-day sale that enabled me to afford it.

 The Great Wagon Road, Parke Rouse, Jr.
What came before the interstates, before the state highways, before the first transcontinental road (the Lincoln Highway)? It was the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, built during colonial times and eventually extending from Philadelphia down to Augusta, Georgia (roughly along the paths of I-78, I-81, and I-85 today). Later Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road would be spun off this rough highway.

This reads like an interconnected series of separate narratives much of the time, rather than a straight history. Rouse opens with the busy path created by Native American tribes for trade purposes, which was then used by the German teamsters from Pennsylvania (whose great wagons made the name Conestoga famous) and the Scotch-Irish settlers who crowded into the Appalachian highlands. It saw further traffic during the French and Indian War. Jack Sevier and Daniel Boone, George Washington and the circuit preachers are just some of the colorful personalities who traveled the Great Wagon Road and later the Wilderness Road.

This is a good book for someone who enjoys colonial American history, or the history of highways in the United States.

 Re-Read: Shoo-Fly Girl, Lois Lenski
I adored Lenski's regional stories as a kid, so I had to snap this one up when I found it at the book sale. Her regionals are long out of print and command huge prices on e-Bay because of their use in homeschooling; recently I found that there is a publisher reprinting some of these, and I hope they do them all. Meanwhile, I'll make do with this one, one of my favorites about Suzanna, who lives in Pennsylvania as part of a large, warm Amish family. Suzanna gets her hated nickname from the day that she eats an entire shoo-fly pie all by herself, and in the course of the book she meets an "English" family whose worldliness frightens the shy child. She can only confide in her favorite brother, Jonas, who starts to change as he grows older.

The story follows several seasons in life on an Amish farm and is quite charming explaining the customs of the Amish sect, and even some of the dangers posed by their lifestyle in our modern society, such as cars not being careful of their carriages and causing accidents. This isn't my favorite regional, but it's very enjoyable.

 Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell
For the first time in their lives Cath and her twin sister Wren will not be rooming together. They've left Omaha and their emotionally fragile father to attend college in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Wren wants to fully experience college life by rooming with someone else, which leaves introverted Cath sharing a room with someone she'd rather not have to deal with, a self-possessed young woman named Regan. Cath and Wren have spent most of their adolescence writing fanfiction about the Simon Snow novels (sort of a pseudo-Harry Potter) and Cath feels alone and even a bit betrayed when Wren abandons both her and the fic. Worse, both girls are still coping with the fact that their mother walked out on them nine years earlier: while Cath still relies on fanfiction to buffer her feelings of abandonment, Wren turns into a hard-drinking wild child on campus. But what will Cath do when real life intrudes on her fanfic world, especially when she starts liking her roommate's boyfriend?

To tell you the truth, I was kinda bored with Cath's boy infatuation; most people review this book and say there was too much of her Simon Snow fanfic, but I thought the meet-the-world with a smile Levi character was nice but only okay—he seemed to be too much of a fantasy guy himself! The story makes the valid point that Cath can't use her fanfic dreamworld as a shield against her feelings about adulthood and her mother forever, but it's like her fannishness has to be purged completely for her to be a "normal" person. Still, the end of the book made me cry.

 Color Me Dark: The Diary of Nellie Lee Love, Patricia McKissack
Nellie Lee and her "almost twin" Erma Jean live in a small town in Tennessee divided across racial lines; when her soldier Uncle Pace dies in an "accident" that everyone realizes was racially motivated on his way home from the Great War, Erma Jean is so traumatized by the incident that she loses her speech and their father decides to move the family north to Chicago to open his own funeral home and find a better life that doesn't include the Ku Klux Klan and bigots who attack veterans. Sadly, the Loves find out that prejudices still exist in the North.

I enjoyed this "Dear America" novel despite the sad circumstances that force the Loves to abandon family in Tennessee and the prejudices that meet them in their new life. McKissack weaves the lives of the fictional Loves into the real-life race riots that rocked Chicago in the summer of 1919 after a young African-American boy accidentally strayed onto a whites-only beach area. It also addresses something I'd never read before, about the fact that even in "colored" schools light-skinned people were favored over darker-skinned ones. It's a shame people cannot have always been, as Dr. King said, "judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

 Tales from Watership Down, Richard Adams
I loved Watership Down, but I put off buying this sequel for years because most of the book appeared to be new stories about the King of the Rabbits featured in the original novel, El-ahrairah and his second, Rabscuttle. However, when I found it for a couple of dollars, I did get a copy. If you're not interested in the rabbit fairy tales, be assured they are not the entire body of the book, but they do take up much of it. There's actually a running plot about Hazel, Bigwig, Fiver, and the rest deciding that the colony is too large and planning to form a new warren some miles away. It also seemed (although I could be wrong) that Adams was responding to criticism that all the main characters were male and the does were interchangeable, because a portion of the tale is about a female rabbit who controls her own warren. However, the book has none of the suspense, poetry, and novelty of the original. Purchased at a library sale or at goodwill, it might be worth your while to see "what happened," but I wouldn't advise paying full price for it.

 Eccentric London, Ben Le Vay
I spend my time dreaming the impossible, which includes a visit to Great Britain some day, and love to pick up unique travel books about the British Isles. This isn't a tour book, per se, with tips on hotels and restaurants, but a book of unusual people, places, and things you'll find in that big metropolis on the Thames. You'll learn about eccentric Londoners (alive and dead), odd jobs, strange museums, and novel places to shop; read about unusual place names, facts about the Tube and the churches of London, and even improbable pubs. Finally the author takes you on five walks around the city for maximum exposure to the city's odd turns, and you'll visit four suburbs, including Greenwich, home of mean time. There's even a calendar of British-only events, such as the yearly Pancake Day races and the Garter ceremony.

The book is illustrated with humorous line drawings, plus has a color insert, several maps, and dozens of pop-out sections, and the narration is suitably tongue-in-cheek enough to keep you amused. If I can't afford that overseas trip, I can live vicariously through Le Vay's delightful book.

 Murder on Bamboo Lane, Naomi Hirahara
Ellie Rush is a newly minted Los Angeles bicycle cop, to the consternation of her mother who says she didn't send Ellie to private school for her to ride a bike at work, but a source of pride to her Aunt Cheryl, the Assistant Chief of Police. Ellie likes her job, despite getting stuck with "porta-potty duty" and having problems with a resentful male co-worker. One morning on patrol she is shown a flyer about a missing girl, a young woman she remembers having college classes with. Her friends remember the young woman, too, and one recalls that she was having problems. It's not Ellie's case, but she finds herself being drawn into it with the help of her aunt.

I usually don't like police procedurals, but this has a unique viewpoint, a likeable protagonist, and an enjoyable cast of supporting characters, from Ellie's best friend to her tough aunt. I especially enjoyed that the characters are not all eccentric whitebread types as in some of the cozies I've read; this is a multicultural group of friends who come off as being genuine, rather than minority characters being placed in the story to meet a certain quota, and her relationship with her best friend is warm and real. I'm looking forward to Ellie's next case.

 The Night Journey, Kathryn Lasky
I'm a big fan of Lasky's books, and know that several of them have been based on where she lives (the Calista Jacobs mysteries) or her heritage and family (Christmas After All, Pageant), so that when I found out this book was based upon the experiences of her father's family, I was eager to read it. Rachel's parents have asked her not to bother her great-grandmother about her past—it makes her too sad, they say. But when Nana Sashie starts telling Rachel about her childhood in Russia, the girl can't help sneaking into Nana's room after dark and finding out more about the story: how young Sashie, along with her parents and aunt and baby brother, escaped from Russia in 1900. They will use the Jewish holiday of Purim to escape from their pogram-scarred homeland—but will need the help of a frightening man who works with Sashie's father to accomplish it.

I was a little disappointed. I managed to find the hardback version, which has marvelously expressive illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman, but the narration seemed scattershot. I didn't think it packed the emotional punch of some of her other books, like Prank or even Christmas After All. The family's escape has some breathtaking moments, but I found it as a whole a little anticlimactic.

 Writing Juvenile Fiction, Phyllis Whitney
While there are probably more up-to-date volumes out there about writing children's or young adult fiction, this volume by Whitney, who wrote women's romance novels and teen mysteries, plus teen short stories for magazines like American Girl (the Girl Scout magazine, not the recent magazine associated with the book series), is a nice basic text, as the primary idea is to attract and then keep the attention of the reader and write a story that appeals to them. The material, today, does not seem as sophisticated, but then both children's and young adult books have grown darker in the past fifty years. Story structure has not changed, whether you are writing about a young woman fighting to give a talented but untrained artist a chance (the example used in this book) or about teens facing demons, vampires, and death. (In fact, the example being about regular kids was a bit refreshing!) This would be a good book to offer to an aspiring young writer, as it also addresses the problems of taking time to write, and the procrastination issues most writers face.

 The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar, Martin Windrow
This is the charming memoir of a British man who kept a tawny owl as a pet for fifteen years. After his first owl escaped, he was given Mumble, as he called the bird, who soon became an indispensable part of his life. At first she lives in an aviary on the balcony of his apartment building, carefully hidden from the landlord; later in her life he moved to the country where he built her a beautiful outdoor enclosure. Over the years he observed her behavior and chronicled life with his quirky roommate.

If you love birds, you will probably enjoy this book. I could see my own budgie in Windrow's observations of Mumble, and enjoyed reading about their friendship and Mumble's instinctive habits, like pouncing on "prey." Windrow does make the point that people should not keep wild birds as pets; he was only able to obtain for Mumble because his brother was a falconer (and I have to question the wisdom of having an owl in a city apartment that doesn't allow pets!). In the tradition of books like Ring of Bright Water and Born Free.

On Paper

Here's a multi-part piece of fanfiction that's quite good: Hogan's Heroes: "Dear Diary"

Speaking of Series Books...

...here's a new fan-written Dana Girls mystery, "The Clue in the Rainbow." It's okay; the "Ice Castle" story is head and shoulders superior.