Thumbs up for Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Children’s.
I honestly don’t remember ever having read this before. It’s possible I read it as a kid and didn’t connect with it. As an adult, however, I loved it.
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A big announcement – my newest novel, Cold Sandwiches and All, is now available!
To say the least: YAY! I’ve been working on this book for….a long, long time. But now it’s done and I feel that it was worth the effort, because I really think it’s quite fun. Think The West Wing meets classic screwball romantic comedies plus pianos and magic.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. Fantasy.
I went into this knowing three things. First, that it is a fantasy in which the main character is an accountant (this is, for me, a plus). Second, it got great reviews from people whose opinions I trust. Third, not just one but several of the blurbs on the dust jacket include the word “brutal.” When I was early in my first late-night marathon read—that is, before the really brutal stuff started happening—it occurred to me that it might easily lend itself to a humorous plot summary: “Young woman becomes an accountant for the Evil(ish) Empire in order to legalize gay marriage.” At the end, when I have been reduced to a gibbering and yet somehow gleeful wreck, all I can do is wave the hardback twitchingly in your general direction and tell you that if (a) you like zero-magic political fantasy but don’t need Martin’s bazillion characters and (b) you understand how inflation works and (c) you are capable of sufficient ethical complexity to see why someone might do terrible things for a good cause, you should stop reading this blog and get a copy of Traitor RIGHT NOW.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for Good on Paper by Rachel Cantor. Literature.
One of the only two book blogs I regularly follow gave this book glowing praise. There aren’t many novels out there in which the main character is a literary translator and translation is actually central to the plot: events are kicked off by the heroine receiving a phone call from a Nobel-prize winning poet who will have no one other than her translate his newest book.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for Passing Strange by Ellen Klages. Fantasy.
I’m not sure why the cover says “inspired by the pulps, film noir, and screwball comedy,” because this novella bears no resemblance to any of those things, except that it is set in San Francisco and one of the main characters paints covers for the pulps. What it actually is is a sweet love story with just a teeny bit of fantasy.… >> Read more