The Reading Year (So Far, 2021)

From wsj’s Best Books of 2020/Science Fiction:

• The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal – So far, one of the best novels she’s read in 2021
• Ballistic Kiss, by Richard Kadrey – wildly inventive, self wasn’t so taken with the he/she/they gender politics of a major character

In a category by itself:

• Dark, Salt, Clear, by Lamorna Ash — A first book by a 22-year-old, E.S.A.D.

Kick-Ass Discovery of the Year:

• Eddie’s Boy, by Thomas Perry, the sequel to a 1982 novel, The Butcher’s Boy – That’s chutzpah, coming up with a sequel 40 years later. Kudos! Self added The Butcher’s Boy to her reading list.

from wsj’s Best Books of 2020/Mysteries:

• All the Devils Are Here, by Louise Penny — Self adored Jean-Guy Beauvoir and of course Paris.
• One Fatal Flaw, by Anne Perry — All hail the May-December almost-romance between 25-year-old Daniel Pitt and 40-year-old Miriam Crofft, daughter of his employer.

from The Economist’s Books of the Year 2020/Memoir

• A Promised Land, by Barack Obama — Beautifully written, can’t believe 45 was succeeded by Drumpf.

from The Economist’s Books of the Year 2020/Fiction

• SHUGGIE BAIN, by Douglas Stuart — an absolutely immersive experience, though her favorite character was not the title character but his unheralded older brother, Leek

from The Economist’s Books of the Year 2020/Business and Economics

• No Rules Rules — This one was a disappointment.

from wsj’s Books of the Year 2020/Travels in the New North

• Ice Walker, by James Raffan — another absolutely immersive experience, the ending almost broke self.

from Jonathan Strahan’s Notes from a Year Spent Indoors (Locus Magazine)

• the first two books in Joe Abercrombie’s (smashing) Age of Madness trilogy and her first Grimdark: A Little Hatred and The Trouble with Peace

“I’m not part of anything bigger, and I need to be.”

Oh bravo, Miriam Crofft, gentlewoman scientist in England 1911.

Reading One Fatal Flaw, Book 3 of the Daniel Pitt series by Anne Perry. It’s self’s first Anne Perry! Apparently it’s a log-running series (like Louise Penny’s Inspector Armand Gamache series), but most of the books were about Daniel Pitt’s parents. Now, the next generation has taken over.

Daniel Pitt is 25, a graduate of Cambridge, and still quite green. He receives superb assistance from the daughter of his boss, Miriam. Miriam is a much-loved only child, and her father indulged all her scientific notions and built her a chemistry lab in the basement of their home.

It’s very interesting.

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

Angst in All the Devils Are Here

Whew! The angst in this mystery. There’s enough angst here to power a whole galaxy. Everyone in the family is a suspect to Inspector Armand Gamache, including his own son!

Did self mention the angst?

The angst also comes wrapped in a bow in the person of Jean-Guy Beauvoir, former hardscrabble kid (from East Montreal; self never having been to Montreal, or even to Quebec, she can only imagine the horrors of growing up in East Montreal), “found” and made his boss’s No. 2, thereby earning a) the love of the boss’s daughter; b) the hatred of the boss’s son; and c) the curiosity of every reader of Louise Penny’s Inspector Armand Gamache’s series (mostly female, self’s assuming)

Better than the mystery is the suspicion, the miscommunication, the times we worry for Jean-Guy Beauvoir (there’s “something wild” about him, muses a character in this book), the times he’s called stupid by a prissy female colleague (French), the times Inspector Gamache’s son Daniel looks at him with deep hatred, the times Jean-Guy looks at his boss and mentor with fierce protectiveness.

Self doesn’t know if Jean-Guy is as integral to every Inspector Armand Gamache book as he is in this one, but let’s just put it this way: if you do not like the character of Jean-Guy Beauvoir, you will probably not like All the Devils are Here.

Self, it turns out, does like the character, hence she likes this installment (#16!!!) of the Inspector Armand Gamache series, very much.

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

April 6 BRIGHT SQUARES

Every day this April, a BRIGHT SQUARE.

Learn more about the challenge here.

Self took the pictures below in Afterwards, a vintage clothing and furniture store in Menlo Park. She was on her way to the Rodin Sculpture Garden at Stanford, but her attention was caught by the big globe hanging in the window. So she decided to investigate.

The store is huge! And full of one-of-a-kind pieces. So much more fun than shopping in a department store.

Self and the woman there had a nice conversation about Louise Penny.

Squares in Picture # 1: the McDonald’s awning? The shape of the building?

Squares in Picture # 2: The chair back is sort of — squar-ish?

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

TTWP Part VI

Big battle scene coming!

“No plan survives contact with the enemy.” — Helmuth von Moltke

— The Trouble with Peace, p. 353

Self has the rest of the day to read. She might be able to finish TTWP as early as tonight.

Next on her reading list: All the Devils are Here, by Louise Penny.

Exciting. Self has never read a Chief Inspector Armand Ganache mystery before. Of course it is set in Paris. There is a picture of the Eiffel Tower right on the cover, that’s how she knows.

Self memorably spent Christmas 2017 in Paris. And shared the hotel with a Filipino family (with three small kids) on their way to spend the holidays in Iceland. (Self will never get over this, but Filipinos have a real hankering for extreme cold. It’s a THING) Because self was all surly and anti-holiday, she never spoke to this family, not even when she and they were the only ones in the hotel restaurant for breakfast. She pretended she was Chinese, couldn’t understand Tagalog, didn’t want to know why they were going to Iceland, or where they were staying.

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

Quote of the Day: 44

A Promised Land, p. 190:

• I’m not by nature a superstitious person. As a kid, I didn’t have a lucky number or own a rabbit’s foot. I didn’t believe in ghosts or leprechauns, and while I might have made a wish when blowing out birthday candles or tossing a penny into a fountain, my mother had always been quick to remind me that there’s a direct link between doing your work and having your wishes come true.

A mere two paragraphs later:

• My assortment of charms grew steadily: a miniature Buddha, an Ohio buckeye, a laminated four-leaf clover, a tiny bronze likeness of Hanuman the monkey god, all manner of angels, rosary beads, crystals, and rocks. Each morning I made a habit of choosing five or six of them and putting them in my pocket, half consciously keeping track of which ones I had with me on a particularly good day.

LOL

Explorers of the North

Self has always been fascinated by explorers, which is why she’s writing her novel about 18th century missionaries. She also has a very long story (32 pages currently, and nowhere near done) about an alien invasion in the Bering Sea. That story is all about Ice, but every day she reads various scientific reports about the disappearing glaciers so she feels mild concern that if she takes too long to finish this story, the context of the physical setting will cease to make any sense.

Today, she reads about the Penny and Barnes ice caps on Baffin Island, and about the Laurentide ice sheet that once covered much of North America. She learns that Baffin Island was known to the 11th century Norse of Greenland and Iceland, and that Baffin Island is postulated to be the Helluland of Viking sagas.

She also reads up on Sir John Franklin. The two ships that were lost during his fourth and final Arctic expedition were named the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus. The HMS Erebus was a 372-ton Heclaclass bomb vessel, built in Wales in 1826. The wreck has been located, in Queen Maud Gulf. The wreck of the HMS Terror lies under the water of Terror Bay. (Who names ships Erebus and Terror? Isn’t that like asking for trouble?)

She reads that Georgian Bay has 30,000 islands. Fresh in her mind is the fate of Kat, in the novel she just finished reading, Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods. Who sets off alone in a small boat and becomes lost and lost and more lost.

She learns about the Jesuit mission of Saint-Marie, founded on Lake Huron in the 17th century.

She reads about Lewis and Clark and about rivers like the Columbia and the Hood, which she has seen, long ago, on a driving trip north that started out in San Francisco and hugged the coast of Oregon and Washington.

And she also reads about Celtic and Norse mythology, in a book she found in son’s room.

So many books, so little time!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

#amreading: Tana French, THE TRESPASSER, p. 425

SPOILER ALERT

Detective Breslin to Detective Conway: I spent twenty minutes sitting in the Top House before the penny dropped. Fair play to you, Conway: you make a very convincing South Dublin airhead.

Temporary: The Daily Post Photo Challenge, 8 November 2017

This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is TEMPORARY.

What could be more “temporary” than the weather?

Last night, Dublin was cold and rainy.

Today, just look at the difference!

Self took the Luas from Blackhorse (name of a saloon on the corner; sadly, appears to be closed) to Jervis. One of the stops on the way was Fatima. Only in Dublin!

Dublin, Thursday, 9 November 2017: By the Ha’penny Bridge

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

Signs You’re In New York City

It’s midnight, and the airport terminal is as crowded as Grand Central.

The line at the taxi rank is 200 people long, at least. It makes self’s stomach twist in all sorts of nasty ways.

A woman keeps trying to cut ahead of her, for some reason. All self’s fighting instincts come to the fore and she blocks the woman, refusing to give up an inch.

A man wearing a bright yellow vest marked AIRPORT MONITOR keeps yelling at people. Strangely, he does not strike self as angry. In San Francisco, when people yell, they are really really angry.

There were 10 cabs lined up at the taxi rank. Until self got to the front of the line, and then there were NO taxis. NO taxis for another 20 minutes. And the airport monitor kept yelling, to no one in particular: “There are a hundred taxis coming, people. A HUNDRED taxis!”

The green-and-white Medallion cab looks very nondescript, and the leather seats are worn. No GPS, just the driver saying he knows where to go (and he does). Sometimes New York strikes self as being on the verge of breakdown. But it never quite gets there. Which shows you just how tough its people are.

She catches just a glimpse of skyline before the cab enters Manhattan. Next thing you know, it’s stopped in front of a very nondescript sign on a very dark, narrow street that seems to be one big construction zone. Welcome! You’re in New York City now!

People self knows in New York City: one niece and two nephews and of course their parents; Melissa; Penny and Thomas; Luis and Midori; Sam; Marie; Drew; Bruce. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but whenever self is in New York, she is always busy seeing people. She used to know a literary agent who, as far as self knows, probably still has her office in a building on 57th Street.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.