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Saturday, September 30, 2017

Sourdough - Robin Sloan

SourdoughThis was an absolutely charming book.  From the author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (which I did not realize when I picked it as my Book of the Month), it's a love letter to food and technology (Mr. Penumbra, similarly, was an ode to books and technology) with its own sense of quirkiness set in San Francisco.

The main character and narrator, Lois, works on programming robotic arms.  She has a diet that consists of a nutritional gel called Slurry and little else, until one night she orders a "double spicy" combo of soup and sandwich from a place that's opened in her neighborhood.  The food is a revelation, and she orders it every night--until the two brothers who own the shop encounter visa issues and depart for Europe, leaving Lois their sourdough starter.  Lois feeds the starter and starts to bake with it, producing loaves with strange faces in the crust.  People go crazy for her bread; she tries to sell it at a farmer's market and ends up at the Marrow Fair, an underground market selling radioactive honey from Chernobyl, cookies made from crickets, all kinds of crazy stuff.  But why is the bread the way it is?  And who is Mr. Marrow?

Lois is an utterly likable heroine.  She has good intentions that sometimes go awry, though she gets herself back on track eventually.  The supporting characters here are all charming in their own ways, as well.  The Marrow Fair is an intriguing setting.  Lois' work with robots sets the tone for the story and her knack for sourdough uplifts it, and it's great to see a female character in a STEM field, because that's fairly unusual.  There are also a few nods to Mr. Penumbra in here, showing that the universe the books exist in is definitely same, though this is in no way a sequel to the first book.  Still, the tones definitely match up with each other, so if you read Mr. Penumbra and were left wanting more, this is an excellent book to pick up even if the characters and story are not the same from one to the other.

This was a book that made me want to bake, or teach a robot to bake, and browse farmers markets, and visit San Francisco, and eat cheeses with strange colors in them, and eat honey that glows in the dark, and eat bread that knows how to sing.  There's this sense of whimsy and wonder and whole-heartedness on every page of this book, and it was an absolutely fabulous read.  I'm so glad that I picked it as my book of the month.

5 stars out of 5.

Friday, September 29, 2017

Slightly Sinful - Mary Balogh (Bedwyn Saga #5)

Slightly Sinful (Bedwyn Saga, #5)Plowing along through the Bedwyn books, I've finally come to this: Slightly Sinful, aka the amnesia book.  I call it this on the premise that, if an author writes books for long enough, sooner or later they're going to come to a place where they just have to give a character amnesia.  It seems like Balogh hit that point here, because when we find out where Alleyne Bedwyn has been since he vanished in Slightly Tempted, and that has been cavorting with four prostitutes, one young lady posing as a prostitute, and a one-eyed sergeant, because Alleyne hit his head and doesn't remember who he is.

Our heroine is the young lady pretending to be a prostitute, Rachel York, who ended up with the prostitutes because one of them was her nurse before she was fired and lured into a life of sin.  After Rachel's fiance steals both the prostitutes' money and Rachel's, Rachel is left stranded in Brussels with an approaching war and at the mercies of the prostitutes, who are indeed quite merciful.  When she encounters Alleyne during an attempt to rob the dead and brings him back, the prostitutes even take him into their house, as they do the one-eyed sergeant who helps Rachel retrieve Alleyne to begin with--a sequence that was a nice tie-in to the preceding book.  And when Alleyne can't regain his memory, he decides to help Rachel recover her money one way or another.

The amnesia actually lends a bit of an uncomfortable dynamic to this book for me, because one of the things that Alleyne can't remember is whether or not he's married.  We, as readers, know that he is not.  However, Alleyne doesn't know that.  He doesn't offer to marry Rachel because he can't be sure that he's not married.  And yet he proceeds to engage in a sexual relationship with her, which really made me question his morals.  Apparently the Bedywns are so moralistic that they marry for love and then never stray from their marriages--and while Alleyne can't remember that he's a Bedywn, he can remember everything else, so why does this behavior suddenly seem like it's okay to him?  Hmmmm...

Other than that, this book seemed a bit happy-go-lucky.  The prostitutes all have hearts of gold, the one-eyed sergeant is willing to pay for Alleyne's living until he remembers who he is, the uncle who's blatantly lied to and who the characters are, essentially, trying to rip off forgives everyone and welcomes them into his home.  While the four prostitute characters were absolutely lovely to read about, very amusing and engaging--presumably to replace the other Bedwyns who are missing for most of the book--everything just seemed so sweet and false.  It didn't really ring as a good story with various dimensions, though it was still an enjoyable read and I think still better than the first few in the series.  It probably helps that I'm partial to the amnesia trope, as well.  I didn't like it as much as the book before this, but I'm still planning on finishing out the series--after all, Wulfric is finally up next!

3.5 stars out of 5.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

The Winter King - C. L. Wilson (Weathermages of Mystral #1)

The Winter King (Weathermages of Mystral, #1)Look at this cover.  Doesn't it look like a classic fantasy romance?  It's definitely what drew me to the book; the premise, about a summer princess who can't control her weather powers marrying the conqueror of her homeland who just happens to be a winter prince as cold in personality as magic, was a distant, trope-y second draw, but I do like "opposites attract" stories, and this fit that bill.

Khamsin is a princess of Summerlea, but her father hates her because he blames her for her mother's death, and has kept her away from the court for her entire life.  When Wynter, the king of Wintercraig, demands a Summerlea princess as payment for wrongs wrought against him by Khamsin's brother, the king of Summerlea sees it as an opportunity to rid himself of the daughter he hates.  And so Khamsin ends up married to Wynter, who of course she has immediate chemistry with.  But Wynter doesn't trust her, and has implied that if she doesn't bear him an heir within a year, she'll be killed.  Oh, and Wynter is also possessed by the spirit of an evil immortal king who wants to take over the world and will do so if Wynter doesn't fall in love within a year.

This wasn't necessarily a good book, but it was a fun one.  Khamsin is billed as not being able to control her weather abilities, but it really seems like she just can't be bothered to do so, choosing instead to engage in foot-stomping and head-tossing and curl-tousling, because when she actually tries to control her powers, she does so without much trouble.  Of course there are two realms that happen to have winter and summer powers and are enemies that must be united through marriage, which means that it's a literal ice-and-fire combination.  There's a few blatant conflicts in the plot, such as where the mystical sword of Summerlea is actually located.  And of course the main (human) villain just happens to be a woman who is willing to do anything for power.  And can I mention that Wynter and Khamsin's relationship is actually pretty toxic, with Wynter not trusting Khamsin as far as he can throw her until she literally throws herself in front of a magical ice spear for him?

Still, I did find this an enjoyable read.  I rolled my eyes at the cliches and winced at parts of the relationship, but I did appreciate how Khamsin grew as a character and became a leader in her own right.  This also has some good setup for the next book in the series, The Sea King, which actually appeals to me more in premise than this one did.  If you're looking for a classical-feeling fantasy romance, I'd say this is a good option; probably also good for those who liked the Dennis L. McKiernan's Faery series, which starts with Once Upon a Winter's Night.  The premises aren't really all that similar but the worlds evoked a similar feel.

3 stars out of 5.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

My Fair Princess - Vanessa Kelly (Improper Princesses #1)

My Fair Princess (The Improper Princesses #1)This was one of the monthly book selections for the Unapologetic Romance Readers group on Goodreads.  We tend to read a lot of historicals, and this is no exception, which makes me happy because historicals are my favorites!

The plot follows Gillian, the bastard daughter of a royal duke (AKA the Prince Regent's brother) who grew up in Sicily and, when we encounter her, is busy hunting down the bandits who killed her beloved stepfather.  Skip ahead a bit, and Gillian and her surviving family have returned to England, where they have enlisted Charles, Duke of Leverton, to help with civilizing Gillian so she can make a good match.  Why Charles?  Because he's apparently some sort of distant cousin; at least distant enough that I couldn't keep any of the connections straight.  Gillian doesn't want civilizing or a husband, she just wants to go back to Sicily, and so our conflict is born.

As far as plots go, this one revolves around a trope that I quite like: the hero trying to find the heroine a love interest, and then falling for her himself.  Charles as a character actually grew on me quite a bit.  Despite being rather bland and proper at the beginning of the book, he slowly starts to come out of his shell, pulled from his comfort zone by Gillian's behavior and the scandal that she stirs up.  Gillian, on the other hand, made me want to slap her upside the head.  She has her own desires, of course, but she acted like such a child, refusing to even see that maybe the way she was going about things wasn't the way to get what she wanted, or that what she wanted might not even be possible.  She dragged other innocent parties into downright dangerous situations, including a child who wanted to impress her.  When Charles tells her that she can't continue acting like that, she basically blows up and says that well, then they can't be together, to which I say, well then, maybe he would have been better off without her.

As for their relationship, there's a rather abrupt shift in it at one point.  In the beginning of the book, they kind of separately admit to themselves to being mildly attracted to each other, but neither is pursuing the other in any sort of active way.  And then, all of a sudden, they're all over each other.  It's not insta-love or insta-lust, but it's also not a slow development, and the switch felt like it came out of nowhere and made the pacing of the relationship just feel a bit off.  The supporting characters help to bolster the weirdness of the relationship, particularly Charles' sister Elizabeth, who was a wonderful supporting character and just the kind of sweet and steady presence both main characters needed.  Gillian's half-brother, Griffin, is also featured, and appears to be a main character in a book in one of Kelly's other series, the Renegade Royals--one of the books of which I have also read!

Overall, I liked this, but it was nothing extraordinary.  Gillian was an infuriating heroine and her revenge subplots kind of dragged down what could have been something absolutely delightful.  However, I would still be interested in reading more from Kelly in the future.

3 stars out of 5.

Monday, September 25, 2017

Siege and Storm - Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #2)

Siege and Storm (Shadow and Bone, #2)I wasn't super psyched about the first volume of the Grisha series, but I held out hope for the other volumes.  In this second book, Alina and Mal are fleeing Ravka and the Darkling--until they're not.  And soon, Alina finds herself with a second amplifier and hopes for a third, control of the Second Army, and no idea where the Darkling actually is, but a sense that all is not going to go well.

There's a split in my opinion on this book.  On one hand, there's definitely a case of second-book syndrome going on here.  Not a lot happens in it other than Mal and Alina fighting--and more on that later.  On the other hand, I felt like this book was a bit better than the first because the symbolism wasn't quite as heavy-handed and Bardugo didn't do as much to deliberately manipulate readers and without much art.  The "dark is bad, light is good" dynamic is still there, but because the Darkling isn't present on the page for most of the book, it's not played up as much.

Instead, the focus of this book is largely the relationship between Alina and Mal.  I'm not sure why this is a relationship that Bardugo continues to push, because it's clearly very toxic.  Mal can't accept that Alina has a moral compass that doesn't always align with personal desires (his or her own) but Alina clings to him and refuses to let go of some dream of them being together, because they've known each other their entire lives.  Note: knowing someone your entire life does not automatically make them a suitable romantic partner.  Alina pushes away another potential romantic interest who, though he has his own motivations, is probably also much better for her, just because she's so wrapped up in Mal, who is downright nasty to her for most of the book.

Bardugo did add in some interesting supporting characters in this book, mainly in the form of Sturmhond/Nikolai and his crew.  This is exactly the sort of dynamic that I think this book needed.  Nikolai is a very strong character and I hope we see more of him in the final book, though I suspect that it's going to be a lot of Mal and Alina on their own.  Seeing Grisha who weren't actually part of the Grisha hierarchy was also interesting, and made sense; after all, if Grisha are born in all nations in this world but are only welcomed in Ravka, it makes sense that not all of them would run away to join the Second Army.  I do wish we knew a bit more about this whole dynamic, because Ravka seems like such an isolated country and that's really not how countries work, but I guess that's not something Bardugo really plans on going into, at least not in this series.

So, yes--a stronger book than the second one, and it gives me hope for the third.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Sheikh Romances - Sexy Sheikh Bundle

Oh, boy.  This is one of those things I can't believe I'm confessing to reading.  But one of the romance categories for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' 2017 Reading Challenge was a sheikh romance.  Sheikh romances are notoriously terrible and, it seems, notoriously short.  But I always feel like reading a novella instead of an actual novel is cheating, for some reason, so I got a bundle of three novellas out of the library with the thought that, together, I would have done my due diligence.  Enter the "Sexy Sheikh" bundle.  There are three books in this bundle, all of them put forth by the imprint of "Harlequin Presents."  Oh yes.  They're Harlequin.  All three are contemporary stories, each by a different author and characters--no overlapping or connections here.  Let's take a short look at each of them in order.

Exposed: The Sheikh's MistressThe first book is Exposed: The Sheikh's Mistress by Sharon Kendrick.  This is actually the reason I got this bundle, because another reader in the group read a Kendrick sheikh romance and said it actually wasn't terrible, which is high praise for something in this subgenre.  The story here follows Sienna, an event planner whose life is upturned upon the reappearance of Hashim, the guy (and sheikh) she was involved with years before until he found out she'd posed for topless photos in a calendar in order to pay her mother's medical bills.  Clearly, this made Sienna the worst sort of trash in his eyes, and so he dumped her, only to come back years later to torment her/have sex with her.  This will quickly become a theme in this bundle: it's totally okay to hire someone to work for you just because you want to have sex with them, and then sexually harass them until you get what you want.  Oi.  Anyway, Sienna eventually concedes to being Hashim's official mistress, but the scandal is revealed to the media!  Gasp!  I honestly didn't feel that these two had any chemistry, and Kendrick didn't do a very good job of developing plot or character here--another theme in this bundle.  It's totally possible to do a good job with both plot and character in a novella, but none of the authors seemed to feel like doing that here, which was disappointing.


The Sheikh's Innocent BrideNext up is The Sheikh's Innocent Bride by Lynne Graham.  Heroine Kirsten works at a castle as a servant in hopes of saving up enough money to escape her extremely restrictive and abusive father.  Her world is turned upside down when the castle's owner, Shahir, shows up and becomes interested in her, despite him being her employer.  Things quickly get out of control, Kirsten gets framed as a thief, and runs away to London.  The drama escalates from there.  This engaged in the "secret baby" trope, as well, which is not one of my favorites.  Of course, Shahir finds out and immediately decides that he must marry Kirsten so their child can inherit his country, which really seemed like the flimsiest logic of all time.  I mean, he thought Kirsten was a thief, and wasn't entirely convinced she wasn't a slut even though he knew she'd been a virgin when they got together, and really seemed inclined to think the worst of her in every way, and definitely wasn't in love with her, and yet he rushed off to marry her.  It seemed far more likely that he would have taken the age-old way out of giving her some money and then never speaking to her again.  Again, this book involved copious sexual harassment from a superior and emotional abuse by the hero, and really no development of characters to compensate for the flimsy plot.  They're not in love and then they are, happily ever after, the end.  Meh.  Probably my least favorite of the three.


Stolen by the Sheikh (Clemenger Sisters #2)And finally, there's Stolen by the Sheikh by Trish Morey, which actually appears to be the second in a series of novellas, though this bundle didn't include the first.  Heroine Sapphire is a rising star of a fashion designer in Italy, expected to marry her on-again, off-again lawyer boyfriend.  When Khaled shows up and commissions her to design a wedding gown for his bride, she reluctantly agrees on orders from her boss, and finds herself spirited off to Khaled's home country and palace--because he is, of course, a sheikh.  The plot, that Sapphire is actually the person Khaled intends to marry, is pretty transparent to us as readers, though I actually can't fault Sapphire for drawing the initial conclusions she does, weird as the situation is.  There's a revenge plot going on here as well, of course involving Sapphire's boyfriend.  Morey does throw in a bogus terrorism subplot as well, one that comes out of nowhere and then doesn't go anywhere, either, and mainly revolves on a lot of infodumping about a minor character who was completely unnecessary.  Still, I liked the romance here, flimsy as some of its trappings were, and thought that Khaled and Sapphire had a bit more character to them than the main characters in the other books in the bundle.  This was a tropey book, what with the minor Stockholm syndrome and all, but I think it was the strongest in the bundle and I liked it the best.

Overall, was this a good bundle?  No, of course not.  Was I expecting it to be?  No, not really.  But considering I went to it because I actually had to toss aside the other book I'd planned on reading for the category because it was such trash (the offensive kind, not the fun kind) I guess I got off easy.  I've actually read a few historicals in this genre that weren't absolutely horrible, as far as I can remember, but it seems like tastes for this trope have shifted to the modern, and the quality hasn't shifted with them.  Sigh.  2 stars for the lot--I can't even really justify 3 for Stolen, though it's probably a stronger 2 than the others.

Saturday, September 23, 2017

All Night Long - Jayne Ann Krentz

All Night LongAll Night Long was the romantic suspense read for the Unapologetic Romance Readers in August, but it took me a while to get it from the library and then get around to reading it, so I didn't finish it until early September.  The story seems to have a good premise from the summary: having fled her hometown years before after the murder of her parents, Irene is summoned back by the woman who was her best friend the summer of the murders, pulled by a code word that meant something urgent had happened.  But when Irene arrives, she finds that Pamela is dead, too, apparently of an overdose, though Irene suspects more foul play is involved.  And with a sexy ex-Marine innkeeper to help her, she is determined to get to the bottom of things.

There's definitely some suspense here, though the story goes a little sideways and eyebrow-raise-worthy towards the end of the book, complete with a scene of the villain info-dumping all of his motivations and actions to the heroine, which of course gives the hero time to swoop in and save the day.  And the the denouement seems to drag on a bit, as well.  But my main issues with this book were twofold: first, the hero is a total creepy stalker not at all worthy of making this a romance, and second that Irene has absolutely nothing to actually lead her to believe that all of the murders are connected (or are, in fact, murders at all) and instead just forges ahead like a crazy person on nothing more than her gut because--well, there really is no because.

So, first, Luke.  He is not a romantic person.  He is a crazy stalker.  Irene is staying at the hotel that Luke has recently acquired while she's in town, and he immediately begins following her around without her permission, and in fact directly in opposition to all of her wishes, for no reason at all.  Later, after they become involved, he basically shows up and says he's moving in with her.  Their total acquaintance?  A handful of days, at most.  Let me emphasize this for everyone: stalking is not sexy.  It is utterly terrifying, and should not be viewed at all as romantic.  Some books utilize otherwise nonromantic behaviors in a romantic way because the relationships are supposed to be twisted; however, that's not the case here, and Krentz seems to honestly put forth that Luke's behavior towards Irene is attractive and desirable.

And then there's Irene, who's supposed to be an intrepid reporter, but honestly is going on nothing.  The death of her parents was ruled a murder/suicide, which okay, she doesn't have to believe--that's her prerogative.  But there's absolutely no reason for her to believe that Pamela's death is anything but an accident or a suicide, and there's even less for her to go on from there.  Ultimately, of course, Irene is right--because otherwise there wouldn't be a book here--but there's no sense of logical progression in the crimes that form the backbone of this story.

The writing itself is fine, I guess, but Krentz relies on the sensational in order to sell the story and there isn't a lot to propel it along other than that.  The whole book just feels very "thin," from the characterizations of the hero, heroine, and antagonists, to the romance and the very plot itself.  There are some good scenes--a car chase along a winding road comes to mind, as does a confrontation with Luke's family, who were another annoying part of this book--but overall it was nothing to write home about and I don't intend to read any Krentz in the future.

2 stars out of 5.

Friday, September 22, 2017

The Wave - Susan Casey

9674788There is something utterly fascinating about the ocean and how little we know about it.  Fascinating, and completely terrifying, because have you ever witnessed an 1,800 foot high wave?  No?  Neither have I, and after this, I plan on avoiding the ocean for like, ever, because I don't want to! 

In this, Casey splits her attention in a few different directions to examine big waves in various contexts.  First, in a narrative she goes back to again and again, she follows surfers, particularly Laird Hamilton, as they attempt to surf bigger and bigger waves across the globe, with a lot of focus on Hawaii's "Jaws" surf spot.  Interwoven with the surfing, which is probably the easiest for the layperson to understand, she talks to scientists who study waves, salvagers who recover ships wrecked by huge waves, historians who look at
the big waves of the past--like the 1958 mega-tsunami in Alaska that I referenced in the first paragraph of this review--and other assorted "wave" personalities. 

What all of this underscores is that the ocean is really freaking scary, and it's likely to get even more so.  We actually know very, very little about how waves, particularly big waves, work--one of Casey's interview subjects points out that, after a certain size, waves kind of stop acting like water waves and start acting kind of like waves of light, which is totally weird.  We can't study them in their natural environment to any great degree because, as another interviewee pointed out, if you encounter a hundred-foot wave, you're probably trying to survive it, not measure it.  But we know that they occur much more often than we used to think they did, and that they're doing a lot of damage--like apparently sinking two shipping ships or tankers per week, and why is no one pointing that out???  I think Casey did a good job of pulling in all kinds of information that people don't really encounter about waves and the ocean, and by using the surfing as the core of the narrative, she focused a lot of the science into through a lens that a lot of us laypeople can understand.

I listened to this an audiobook, and the narrator, Kirsten Potter, was excellent.  She has a very conversational way of reading the book and, while some of her "surfer guy" impressions came off as very stereotypical and maybe even mildly offensive, she really made the book engaging.  I think this is one that would have been good in actual book form as well, but it was a good choice for audiobook!

Overall, I really enjoyed this.  It's a great science book about a topic that I don't think is really frequently covered in the "popular science" category.  Apparently Casey has written some other books that have serious ethical questions involved regarding her behavior in researching and writing them, but I really liked this one, didn't see any issues like that, and would recommend it to others.

4 stars out of 5.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

The Stone Sky - N. K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth #3)

The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3)N. K. Jemisin has come to the conclusion of her latest series with The Stone Sky, wrapping up her Broken Earth trilogy, which began with the Hugo-winning The Fifth Season.  While I absolutely loved The Fifth Season, I thought that the second book, The Obelisk Gate, fell victim to a serious case of second book syndrome with nothing really happening.  But by the end of the second book, things were shaping up in a mildly more-interesting direction, with main-character Essun's daughter, Nassun, entering the picture as a serious character in and of herself.

The pacing of this book is rather slow; a lot of it is the process of Essun and her new comm moving on from their now-unusable home and to another abandoned settlement.  Meanwhile, Nassun decides that she's going to destroy the world and sets about figuring out how to do it.  All of this takes a startling amount of the book, and a lot of the rest of it is padded out with a series of chapters that are, essentially, info-dumping on Hoa's past and how the world got to be the way it is.  This seems to have been a trope I've encountered in a few series lately--wait until the last book and then just infodump all of the background that wasn't really worked in elsewhere.  But the background focusing on Hoa means the first-person segments are expanded, so the book is pretty evenly divided between first-, second-, and third-person chunks, focusing on Hoa, Essun, and Nassun respectively.

Ultimately, this was not as good a book as the first one in the series was.  In the end, I felt like Jemisin had come full-circle back to her first book, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  The way the narrative is structured is very similar, as are significant parts of the plot, even if the world-building and overall story are very different.  There is some really good characterization; Jemisin notes in her acknowledgements that she really struggled with the idea of motherhood in this series and this book in particular, and it shows in Essun's internal struggle regarding Nassun and her other children.  Hoa is given added dimension with his background, but I'm not entirely sure that it's worth the info-dumping, and a few other characters are characterized excellently but summarily written off, which had a very strange feel to it.

Overall, a book I enjoyed, definitely stronger than the second, but without the snap and sizzle of Jemisin's other series.

3 stars out of 5.

Monday, September 18, 2017

The King of Attolia - Megan Whalen Turner (The Queen's Thief #3)

The King of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #3)The third book of The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia continues in the third-person vein that the series switched to after the first book.  Additionally, it introduces a new protagonist, Costis; indeed, Eugenides, now the King of Attolia (and sometimes going by the "official" name of Attolis) only has a few, very brief sections that focus on him as the main character.  Instead, this has become Gen's story through Costis' eyes, as he seems to struggle to come to terms with his new role.  After all, if we can recall, Gen only took the role of king because he wanted to marry the queen, not because he actually wanted to rule.

I'm not sure if I'm a huge fan of this perspective shift.  The thing is, by now readers should know that Gen is a tricky character.  This means that, instead of seeing him as a bumbling fool for much of the book, as Costis does, I spent the duration squinting suspiciously and going, "What is he up to now...?"  And, of course, Gen is up to something.  Costis is an interesting point of view character because he resents Gen, just as much of Attolia does, but because we know Gen is up to something, he's not entirely convincing in his depiction of Gen as a bumbling fool.  Seeing Costis coming around is something of a paradigm shift, for the character rather than for the reader in this case, but honestly it just makes him, and the rest of Attolia, seem easily manipulated, rather than showing anything of Gen growing as a character.  And ultimately, this is still Gen's story--it is a series called The Queen's Thief, after all.

However, I think I did like this better than the second volume.  The relationship between Gen and Attolia/Irene is more believable here, and while the story is still very political in nature--with Gen apparently failing as a king--it was on a much smaller scale.  This is a story of intrigue and assassins rather than the movements of armies and navies, and I think it's a scale that was done much better than the preceding book.  If only the dynamic of Gen being incompetent could have been kept up, I think it would have been good...but two books of that was more than enough for readers to catch on that it's just a trick and to wise up to the ongoing deception.  With that in mind, I'm not sure how much longer this series will continue to be convincing.  The setting remains interesting, and there's clearly a rising of forces on the horizon, but without a compelling central character, it can't help but fall flat, and I'm not sure how much longer Gen can be compelling unless the dynamics are seriously switched up.

3 stars out of 5.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

Cinder - Marissa Meyer (Lunar Chronicles #1)

11235712It feels a bit weird reviewing this book so long after I put out my first review on this series, for Cress.  I had read Cinder before, but I wasn't writing reviews at the time, and so this comes to anyone following along a bit out of order.  Cinder was the Unapologetic Romance Readers' theme read of "A sci-fi romance" for September 2017, and I was delighted to have an excuse to re-read it, especially as I'd been in a bit of a reading slump and going back to books I've previously enjoyed always helps with that.

Cinder is, as you can guess from the title and cover, a Cinderella story.  Except this Cinderella is a cyborg.  Injured in an accident she can't remember, Cinder has been left with a mechanical arm and lower leg/foot, with wires in her brain and nervous system and an interface that flashes information over her eyes.  She's also one of the best mechanics in New Beijing, and her business is her step-family's main (only?) source of income.  Oh, and New Beijing, and the rest of the world, are currently being ravaged by a plague with an unknown cause and no cure.  But one day, when Prince Kai stops by Cinder's stall to get an android repaired, Cinder is pulled into a web that she never imagined and that will destroy--or rebuild--her entire life.

I love this story so much.  It follows a very traditional Cinderella structure, but with little flourishes and garnishes that make it seem new.  The pumpkin coach is a decrepit car, the glass slipper is a cyborg foot.  The characters are also wonderful; while Meyer makes Cinder's stepmother absolutely loathsome, the daughters aren't entirely without redemption, particularly Peony, who Cinder actually likes.  And then, of course, there's Iko, Cinder's android sidekick who has a quirky, perky personality all her own.  Adding the plague and the brewing conflict between Earth and Luna adds dramatic tension to a story that traditionally lacks it, and having Prince Kai and Cinder meet and grow closer multiple times before the ball is absolutely necessary--the "love on first site" aspect of Cinderella has never sat well with me, so I appreciate this added relationship building.

That said, this isn't a perfect story.  It has a bit of a cliffhanger ending, which I didn't remember.  Given the narrative arc of the series as a whole, I can see why Meyer had to break it where she did, but it definitely doesn't lead to a satisfying conclusion for this volume.  And while the Cinderella element helps to tie together a story and genre that could otherwise alienate some readers--I probably wouldn't have normally picked up a story about a cyborg--it also means that, despite the flourishes, the plot itself can be quite predictable.  Of course, the story as a whole goes past the Cinderella story, but that doesn't mean that parts of it can't be called from a mile away.

Still, I really enjoyed rereading this.  It's not my favorite book in the series--that goes to Scarlet--nor does it feature my favorite main characters--that would be Cress--but I still think it was a solid intro volume, and would definitely recommend it to others.

4 stars out of 5.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Wild - Cheryl Strayed

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest TrailAnother audiobook down.  These are great for listening to while working on spreadsheets, guys!  This one drew me because it was on several recommendation lists; one for adventure-lovers, one for memoirs, and I think it was on a list of recommendations from the cast of something that I watched recently, but I'm not 100% sure on that last one.  The idea of a woman whose life is in shambles going on a twelve hundred mile hike and finding herself along the way appealed to me, and so off I went.

The narrator for this was good, and so is the book structure.  Strayed intersperses the parts about her journey on the trail with more biographical sections about her life before the hike.  Breaking it up like that is a wise decision, so that neither part seems like too much of a slog.  However, I felt like there was more pre-trail biographical material in here than was really needed.  She spent a lot of time re-hashing things that she had already gone over--yes, yes, she loved her mother and was devastated in the wake of her death.  This was a wrenching story the first time around, less the fifth or sixth time.  With all of this going over and over again, it really felt like the book ended up being the story of her pre-trail life interspersed with her trail life--that is, that the pre-trail life was the bulk of the book, and the hiking actually took up less of the book than one would think, given the title and cover of the book and how it begins, with a scene of Strayed losing one of her hiking boots over the edge of a cliff.

And here's something to keep in mind if you're planning on reading this book: Cheryl Strayed, at the time that she embarked on her adventure, was not necessarily a good person.  Her marriage had dissolved after she confessed to sleeping with a ton of people who were not her husband while they were married; she had substance abuse problems, including heroin.  Sometimes she acknowledges that she was not really a good person, nor was she in a good place before the hike; at other times, however, she tries to spin it off with a sort of "Hee hee!  Look how messed up and quirky I was!  Tee hee!" sort of tone, which annoyed me vastly.  Because that's the thing: if you're going to put your whole life out there for everyone to read, everyone gets to judge you for it.

As for the hiking portions of the book, not a lot actually goes on.  It becomes very quickly evident that Strayed was not prepared for the hike, which she freely admits.  There's a lot of suffering, toenails falling off, boots plaguing her, burning the pages of books as she reads them to lighten her pack, dubbed "Monster" for its size.  She sees a bull, bears, and rattlesnakes, but no mountain lions.  But mostly it's pretty much exactly what you can expect: a lot of walking.  The people she meets along the way are enjoyable, but for the most part this was a solitary journey for her, and that shoes.  It was definitely an adventure for her to live, but it perhaps doesn't shine quite as well when you're reading (or hearing) about it, especially years later.  Parts of it did make me want to go off and have a hiking adventure of my own--but other parts made me never want to leave the city again, though in an age of cell phones (and solar chargers) and GPS technology, it would no doubt be a very different experience from the one Strayed lived in 1995.

Overall, an amusing listen, but certainly not what I thought I was getting myself into (much like Strayed herself) and probably not something I would go back to, with the balance issues it has.

3 stars out of 5.

Friday, September 15, 2017

Slightly Tempted - Mary Balogh (Bedwyn Saga #4)

Slightly Tempted (Bedwyn Saga, #4)Finally, I found the book I was waiting for in this series.  After three disappointing volumes, fully half the series, I was almost ready to give up, but I wanted to read the book focusing on Morgan Bedwyn, because she had seemed like such an interesting character, different from the rest of Bedwyns.  I'm glad I stuck it out, because I really enjoyed this one.  Just like Morgan, this was different.

The beginning of the book finds Morgan in Brussels with the family of a friend, swept up in the social scene surrounding the buildup of armies in the wake of Napoleon's escape from Elba and return for the Hundred Days.  She's being courted by her friend's brother, something she inadvertently encouraged but wants to get out of.  She catches the attention of the Earl of Rosthorn, Gervase, both because of her looks and youth and because she's the Duke of Bewcastle's youngest sister--and Rosthorn and Bewcastle have beef that goes back nine years.  Wanting to start a scandal (really, this should have been titled Slightly Scandalous instead of Freyja's volume) to hurt Bewcastle, Rosthorn starts to court Morgan with the intention of dropping her like a hot potato after gossip starts circulating, but the encroaching war gets in the way and the two find themselves suddenly and truly close.

This is an age-gap romance (Rosthorn is twelve years older than Morgan) which is a bit strange, because Balogh really hammers that gap home, but I'm a bit more forgiving of that in the historical romance context, and I think the book makes up for it in so many ways.  The setting of Brussels in the shadow of the looming and then present war lent the first half of the book an atmosphere that the other books had so far lacked and gave the blooming relationship between Morgan and Rosthorn a snap and sizzle that was absent with the other couples.  And when the deception at the heart of the relationship is revealed, Morgan doesn't just crumple or throw a fit--she vows to get her own form of revenge, and despite her doubts forges ahead and ultimately manages to redeem the relationship.  The one thing that I didn't like here was how Rosthorn uses humor as a shield; while this is totally a thing, I felt like it's already been overused in this series, and therefore didn't do a good job distinguishing Rosthorn from the previous hero, Joshua.

Ultimately, this was such a great book in contrast to the preceding ones, and it's encouraged me to continue on with the series; there's only one more book before the other one I was looking forward to, Bewcastle's, and I'm interesting in seeing how they're going to deal with Alleyne coming "back from the dead," which is totally not a spoiler because clearly Alleyne is alive, he's the next book!

4 stars out of 5.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Sing My Name - Ellen O'Connell

Sing My NameContinuing the 2017 Unapologetic Romance Readers' Reading Challenge, I picked up Sing My Name in hopes of fulling the category of a romance taking place in the antebellum, Civil War, or Reconstruction periods.  However, after reading it, I shifted it to another category I hadn't filled yet: the secret baby category.

The story here revolves around Sarah, a young woman travelling west to marry her fiance who is in the army, and Matt Slade, a man who was arrested for a murder he didn't commit.  When most of their travelling party is murdered by Comanches on the trail, Matt and Sarah escape and find themselves trying to survive in the wilds, and falling in love.  But when they finally make it back to civilization, it seems like their troubles have only just begun.

I've read another of O'Connell's books before, Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold, and I have to say I liked that better for one main reason: in Sing My Name, all of the romance happens in about the first quarter of the book.  After that, Matt and Sarah are separated for a good deal of the book, pining separately and going through separate travails, until they finally reunite but are still held apart by Matt's conviction that he's not good enough for Sarah.  Sigh.  That is my least favorite romance trope: the "I"m not good enough for you!" trope keeping the protagonists apart, rather than anything in their actual lives or environments.  O'Connell tries to throw in a few disapproving allies and townsfolk, but it's pretty clear what's keeping Matt and Sarah apart is ultimately Matt himself.  Additionally, there's Sarah's use of her child as an attempt to manipulate Matt into coming back to her.  While Sarah clearly loves her daughter and values her, she also uses her as a tool rather than as a person, leaving her raising mostly to other people except when Matt shows back up and Sarah decides to prove a point.  This is so underhanded and underlines another reason I don't really like child characters in novels.

Overall, this was an okay book.  The pacing was incredibly slow; while the beginning was good, when Sarah pretty much immediately decided she loved Matt, I knew that the remaining 75% of the book probably had unpleasantness in store, and it did indeed.  This definitely wasn't as good of a book as Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold, and if it had been the first of O'Connell's I'd read, I probably wouldn't bother with any other ones.  Sigh.

2 stars out of 5.

Monday, September 11, 2017

Voracious - Cara Nicoletti

Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great BooksWhen I first saw Voracious' description, I thought it would be love at first read.  "A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way Through Great Books."  What more could a hungry reader who reads her way through great books want?  Well, the answer is apparently something other than Voracious, because while this book had nice parts, it wasn't really what I wanted.

Cara Nicoletti is a woman with a career in the food industry and a love of books.  Our love of books doesn't always overlap--I've only read a few of the books she covers in Voracious--but that didn't really matter to me.  What mattered to me was that she is also the author of the blog Yummy Books (last updated in 2015) and a blog is exactly what this book reads like.  This was my issue with What If? as well; it didn't read like new material, but like material that was just recycled into book form from the blog.  And here's the other thing: I like blogs, I like food, but I generally don't like food blogs.

Yes.  I said it.  Here's the thing.  For some reason, food blogs seem to have this thing about them that no other type of blog I've encountered has, and that's that food bloggers seem to feel the need to put deep and personal stories in front of all of their posts, when what I really want is just the recipe.  My favorite food blog, Budget Bytes, falls into this pitfall as well, though maybe not to the same degree as other ones.  As you've probably gathered from the preceding sentence, I don't particularly care about these personal stories.  And that was exactly the case here.  I really liked the parts of this book where Nicoletti dug into the books she talked about, showed how food played into them and how the characters in the books used food in their lives, or abhorred it.  But I didn't particularly like the stories about Nicoletti's life.  While her life in the food industry and in New York in general was no doubt interesting in its own way, it was the very last thing I was looking for in a book about food and other books, and consequently it did not hit the right note here.  I think this book might actually be aimed at people who already read and liked Nicoletti's blog, and were just looking for some new material in the book, other than an entirely new audience.

Overall, I'm just not convinced that blogs made into books are a good market.  They just seem to lack something that books actually conceived as books seem to have, and I haven't yet found one that's really worked.  So, while I liked the actually bookish parts of this and some of the recipes definitely seemed intriguing, the book as a whole didn't really agree with me.

2 stars out of 5.

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Mornings in Jenin - Susan Abulhawa

Mornings in JeninHm...  After finishing Mornings in Jenin, I'm not entirely sure what to think.  I'm conflicted about it, which seems suitable, because it is a book of conflict.  Centering largely around Amal, a Palestinian refugee, over the course of her life between the refugee camp of Jenin, an orphanage in Jerusalem, Philadelphia, Lebanon, and then some more of the same.  Amal always seems to find herself in the center of whatever conflict is brewing between Israelis and Palestinians, and I keep coming back to this in reflecting on the book, because I ultimately had one big problem with it: it's very heavy handed.

The Israel/Palestine conflict is one that I don't want to get into, because quite frankly I don't want to start a fire.  However, Abulhawa mentions in her afterword that someone said to her once that Palestinian literature is greatly lacking in presence in the Western world, which is one of the reasons she wrote Mornings in Jenin.  I certainly agree with that, but in trying to right that, I think Abulhawa might have tried a bit too hard and shoved too much into one book.  I felt for Amal, but towards the end of the book I found a thought crossing my mind: What a lovely piece of propaganda. It's not actually propaganda, of course, but Abulhawa spends much of the book beating readers over the head with one message: Israel and Israelis are evil.  There are only two exceptions to this, but they're also not really exceptions.  Ismael/David isn't evil, but he's really Palestinian.  And Ari isn't evil, but he is what Abulhawa describes as a "self-hating Jew," and so is on the outside of Israeli civilization anyway.  Meanwhile, the Palestinian characters are all, all, pretty much flawless.  Even the characters who initially seem flawed, such as being cold or distant, are later excused as just loving too much.

The book also has a weird quirk where it lurches between tenses and perspectives; Amal is followed in both first and third person, as is her brother Yousef, and the transitions between the sections aren't always or even often smooth.  Meanwhile, parts of the narrative jump between present and past tense, which helps to compound the confusion, as does the jumping between past and present in the narrative itself.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the book.  As I said before, I felt for Amal, for her constant adrift-ness in the world and for the tragedies she kept facing.  I cried at the end of the book--I am a sucker for a good death scene, though in this case it was more the funeral that got to me.  But I admit I was still a little judgey towards Amal at this point, thinking, You knew what it was like, what could happen--how could you in good conscience take your daughter there?  I liked the eventual re-entry of David/Ismael into the picture, but found how easy it was somewhat questionable.  And the final bit of the book...hmmmm.  It kind of seemed like acrobatics to make the narrative fit the facts of history.

Overall, this was a book that I think has an important place in its genre and in literature in general.  However, it was heavy-handed and had problems with the narrative structure.  The emotion is there and there's a sincerity to the whole story that resonates throughout the entire book, but I'm not sure that it overcame the other problems and I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy this as a story, even as a tragic one (which is, of course, its own sort of melancholy enjoyment).

2 stars out of 5.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Rabid - Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy

Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical VirusRabies is a terrifying but absolutely fascinating disease.  Pretty much the only disease guaranteed to kill you--more people have survived Ebola than rabies--it's been around for as long as civilization has and has also lurked close to humanity because one of one of its main carries, dogs.  In Rabid, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy go not into the science of rabies, though they touch on it, but into the cultural history of rabies, including how it's inspired works of fiction in genres of literature and horror.

The book starts with a quick overview of rabies as it exists in our culture today--a looming threat of twenty shots in the stomach that's not true of all--touches on Louis Pasteur and his team's work to create a vaccine, and then dives into the first chapter, taking us all the way back to ancient times and touching on lyssa, a sort of rabid rage that pops up in The Iliad.  Wasik and Murphy aren't arguing that Paris, who lyssa refers to in the original Greek, is actually rabid, but more that the sort of rage that consumed him was the type that was seen in rabid animals, drawing evidence that rabies existed even back then.  A Sumerian joke adds to the argument.  From there, they work their way forward in time, through dog cullings, the evolution of vampire and werewolf myths and werewolf trials, how it's affected zombies (fast zombies, distinct from slow zombies that are more true to their origins in voodoo), and so on.  While parts of this were fascinating, I found myself wondering if it was quite so necessary to spend so long on the pop culture when there's really a lot more to "culture" in general than werewolfs, vampires, and zombies.  The final chapter, about a recent rabies epidemic in dogs in Bali, was more intriguing to me, because it dug into not only how rabies spread, but how it was maintained in Bali because of the relationship people had with their animals.  In the conclusion, they go into the potential that rabies has to be a tool of use instead of evil.  They also touch on the treatments for rabies, which, if you miss the vaccine, is pretty much only one and has only been "successful" six times, if you count "successful" as "didn't die from rabies, but died of other complications, remained in a vegetative state, or had serious other impairments," with only two people actually recovering.

I listened to this as an audiobook, and the narration was good, but having it in audio form really hammered home how much time the authors spend recounting various vampire and werewolf encounters, relating the plots of zombie movies, and things like that.  It seemed like, for much of history, they didn't really have a lot of "cultural history" of rabies to pull on, so they used up pages by relating every detail they could dig up for the instances they did have.  Consequently, if you're not interested in vampires, werewolves, or "fast" zombies, it can be a bit of a drag.  Rabies influenced these genres?  Interesting.  An hour of records of every supposed vampire or werewolf encounter?  Not as interesting.  I guess I was looking for something that did have a little more science behind it; we still don't know a ton about rabies, but that's been the case for much of history with supposed "cures" ranging from the ridiculous to the downright dangerous, and I think I was looking for some idea of how culture had lent itself to these, more than just myths and legends.  The actual science parts of this book were so much more interesting than the recitations of myths and extended quotes of records and the science didn't feel like filler, unlike the numerous examples for the "cultural" bits.  I think the culture was interesting, but there was a bit of "beating the dead horse" here, and that was frustrating.

Overall, a decent book, and I liked it, but I was hoping it would have a bit more substance than it actually did.

3 stars out of 5.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

The Waking Land - Callie Bates

The Waking LandSigh.  What a disappointment this one was.  Recommended for people who liked Uprooted, which I loved, I found that it ultimately fell flat and felt more like the conclusion to a series, or at least a middle book, than it did a first book.

The story follows Elanna Valtai, who is taken hostage by the king of her country in exchange for her parents' good behavior after the foiling of a rebellion they were attempting to foment.  Raised by the king like his second daughter, Elanna has become fiercely loyal to king and country and scores her home province, her family that never came for her, etc.  Until the king dies under mysterious circumstances, Elanna is framed for the murder, and she throws everything she's ever loved out the window not to clear her name, but instead to support the very rebellion she scorned for so long and to embrace the magic she's always hated.

There is absolutely no consistency in Elanna's character.  Yes, she is nineteen and some allowances can be made; but she flipflops between causes and decisions and abandons things she's loved and believed in her entire life so easily.  She has no constancy in her character and it made me really dislike her as a heroine.  I loved the idea of her magic, of her waking the land to go win it back for her people, but the way it was done just felt rushed.  There are so many different possibilities Bates jumps between here, but she abandons them without developing them and left me wondering why they were introduced in the first place.  This also affected the pacing, making it seem like a sprint for the finish instead of a slow building and developing of characters and world.  There is so much potential here, but the jumpiness of the story meant that much of it was left undeveloped and underutilized.  And the side characters!  While Elanna's countrymen are wonderful, for some reason Elanna is one of those characters that everyone falls in love with, even though she's absolutely horrible.

This was such a frustrating book to read because I just kept wanting it to be more.  More developed, more thought out, with more consistent characters--all of it.  There was so much cool stuff in here, but it was never really brought out and used in the ways that would have best highlighted it, and it felt like Bates was trying to stuff three books' worth of plot into one, which didn't work out.

2 stars out of 5.

Monday, September 4, 2017

Slightly Wicked - Mary Balogh (Bedwyn Saga #2)

Slightly Wicked (Bedwyn Saga, #2)After the Unapologetic Romance Readers group read Slightly Married for one of our July reads, I thought I might as well continue on with the series, as some of the other side characters seemed interesting.  Unfortunately, the hero of this book, Rannulf, wasn't one of them.  He wasn't nearly as prominent in the first book as some of the other Bedwyn siblings, so I was a bit disappointed to see the second book was about him; I might have liked him more if there'd been more of an intro to him in the first book.

The plot here follows Rannulf, of course, and our heroine is Judith Law.  Judith has been exiled from her family home to go serve as a poor relation to her aunt, because Judith's brother has run up bills that are driving her father into poverty.  On the way to her aunt's, the stagecoach Judith is traveling in overturns and the passengers are stranded.  Rannulf comes along and offers to fetch help, and to take Judith with him to another town; she agrees, wanting a bit of adventure, and immediately makes up an alternate identity--as does Rannulf.  The two have a brief, steamy affair, and then part ways...only to find out that they're to be neighbors, which also leads to them discovering each others' true identities.  Oh, and Judith's aunt is trying to marry Judith's cousin off to Rannulf, a plan that his ailing grandmother supports.  Drama ensues.

Ultimately, the problem with this book is that neither Rannulf nor Judith is that interesting of a person.  Judith is a long-suffering young woman resigned to being a spinster and suffering for her family, who tell her that she's ugly and that men leering at her is because she's doing something wrong, though clearly it's only because she's gorgeous.  And Rannulf is a long-suffering young man who wants to party but has decided to settle down and make his grandmother happy.  His family, who are full of colorful characters, also isn't very present here.  The side characters, instead of running the whole gamut from amusing to annoying like they did in the first book, are instead just insufferable.  Judith's entire family deserved a good punch to the face with the exception of her grandmother, who instead just deserved a slap.  Rannulf's grandmother was equally tedious.  There's a sub-plot here involving Judith's brothers debts and a lecherous step-cousin, but it's not enough to salvage a story full of boring characters.  And because Judith and Rannulf hook up so early in the story, there's no real tension there to pull the story forward, either.

Ultimately, this was a boring second book, and it manages to suffer from second book syndrome in a series that doesn't even have a continuous plot.  It's not terrible, but there's nothing there to make it really sparkle.  The first book was good, but clearly served a launch for the rest of the family characters, and this one is boring.  Hopefully the third book will be better or this might be a series that I'll be abandoning.

2 stars out of 5.

Saturday, September 2, 2017

Heads in Beds - Jacob Tomsky

Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called HospitalityHeads in Beds was my latest foray into the audiobook world, because it seemed to fit what I needed perfectly--something not too heavy, easy to tune in and out of without losing a major thread, and with a good narrator, who in this case was the author himself.  Tomsky has worked in hotels for years and, as he states in the beginning of the book, has disassembled them all and re-assembled them into two hotels for the purpose of the narrative.  One hotel is in New Orleans, and the other in New York City.  He's also changed names, including his own, and conglomerated some people, made up a few scenarios in order to demonstrate general rules of working in hotels that he might not have remembered a distinct incident to illustrate the point for.

Overall, this is pretty amusing.  Tomsky has worked in a few different areas of hotels, and in this book he talks about his time as valet, front desk worker, and a lower-level manager in housekeeping.  He suffers burn out, just like we all do, and it becomes clear in the end of the book that he pretty much wrote the book on a three-week bender in a fury after being fired from one position.  However, that doesn't eliminate the appeal of the rest of the book, which for the most part is written in a lighthearted manner...as long as you can be pretty sure that you're not one of the people he's talking about in the book, in specifics or in stereotype.  Having never actually checked myself into a hotel--geeze, I can't remember the last time I stayed in a hotel--I was pretty safe on that front, though now I have a handy arsenal of tricks filed away in my head for the next time I do have to stay in a place that's not mine or my family's or an Airbnb.  Hint: it involves carrying plenty of cash and being willing to give it out freely.  Allotting an extra $100 probably wouldn't go astray, in various denominations for doormen, bellhops, front desk attendants, etc.

Of course, many of the things that people suspect go on in hotels are confirmed--employees slurping from the minibars, discriminating against you because you booked via Expedia instead of direct, etc.  But he firmly maintains that some of the things that people claim happen really don't, such as housekeepers stealing from guests, and honestly, why would they?  His pictures of entitled guests and stuck-up management are spot-on, as someone who has worked in an extremely unpopular arm of service, aka the front desk person in a parking enforcement office. (Ask me about the time we honestly thought a guy was going to leave and come back to shoot up the place.  Go on.)  So no, you definitely don't have to have worked in hotels to empathize with this memoir; you really just have to have worked in any job where a portion of the population you work with feels entitled to treat you like garbage, which is pretty much every job.

Overall, an enjoyable listen.  Sometimes Tomsky does come across as an asshole, and I strongly suspect that he's casting aspersions on people who really didn't mean anything bad some of the time.  After all, not everyone is aware of "the rules" of staying in hotels, especially because those rules don't seem to have changed even while many of our other social contracts have.  I would not doubt at all that millennials are particularly egregious at this hotel stuff, because that's just not how we work.  But there are some good stories, some good lessons, and some good wince-worthy moments (yes, that's a thing) that shine, and this was definitely worth the time.

4 stars out of 5.

Friday, September 1, 2017

Plainsong - Kent Haruf (Plainsong #1)

Plainsong (Plainsong, #1)Plainsong was the September book for discussion in the Deliberate Reader Book Club.  After the train wreck that August's book, The Diamond Age: or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer was, I was glad to see that something was going to be a bit more, ah, tuned down.  The story of a small town in Colorado seemed like that would fit the bill.

This is definitely a character-driven book focusing on a handful of people in the town of Holt, Colorado.  The book also tries to be artsy, by doing one of those things where the author is apparently too good for dialogue punctuation marks.  I find that extremely irritating, and it almost made me put down the book; I only continued reading it because I wanted to be able to take part in the discussion in case anything interesting came up.

The main characters in Holt are Guthrie, his sons Ike and Bobby, and teenager Victoria.  Other characters are the McPheron brothers and Maggie, and occasionally Gutrhie's wife Ella.  Guthrie is a teacher and Ella is depressed and their marriage is falling apart, which clearly impacts their children.  Guthrie is also dealing with a troublesome student in his school.  Victoria, on the other hand, is pregnant from a boy she was seeing over the summer and who has since ditched her, and her mother throws her out of the house and casts her adrift on the town's mercies.

I greatly preferred Victoria's part of the book to any of the other characters.  Watching her adjust to her new life and slowly building a relationship with the McPheron brothers was a real example of character growth, as opposed to Guthrie who seemed to be just running in place.  Ike and Bobby didn't interest me much and their parts mostly seemed like filler, just to show that there were children involved to begin with.  I actually did like Ella; though she's not very present and doesn't seem like a good mother, I could empathize with what was her struggle with depression.  It wasn't that she didn't want to be a good wife or mother or functional human being in her own right, because she clearly did, but she just couldn't.  And she knew that remaining in Holt wasn't going to help her, so she had to leave.  I liked that Haruf didn't seem to shame her for this, but just portrayed it as it was.

One thing to keep in mind is that there's not much of a plot here to follow; this is evidently a series, though it's a strange book to be a series, and there might be some sort of large, overarching plot involved across the multiple books, but there's nothing really driving the story forward as an episodic story in this single volume.  This means that, while some of the people were enjoyable to read about, the book wasn't riveting.  I could put it down easily and sometimes found myself paging ahead to find out when Victoria's next section would begin.  And honestly, the cover here seems perfect for the book: dim and gray, much like Holt and the book itself, with Victoria's red purse and the McPherons' red cow being the only splashes of color in the whole book.

Overall, this was an enjoyable book for what it was, but I didn't find it to be anything extraordinary.  The lack of dialogue punctuation drove me to frustration--there's really no need for that.  I don't think I'll continue with the series, but it was fine for a book club book, and a welcome slowdown from last month's Book of Crazy.

3 stars out of 5.