Book Round-Up

 Cold Clay by Juneau Black: Sad to say, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the first. The authors have created fun characters in a delightfully cozy setting, but the actual writing in this novel was not great — both overwritten and messy.

Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch: I’m enjoying the Rivers of London series, an urban fantasy about a police officer learning to become a wizard. This one centered around jazz music and its vampiric fans.

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly: This book, about a boy who finds himself in a world of fairy tales, was a lot darker than I expected, but it was a moving exploration of grief and growing up, deeply satisfying by the end. The only flaw was the chapter with Snow White, which was completely out of place tonally.

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-García: This was a bit of a disappointment; it has lots of interesting elements and characters, but it doesn’t quite cohere, feeling more like a draft than a finished novel. Some elements are left dangling — ownership of the land, so critical in 1908, is not mentioned at all in 1998, and Minerva talks about her mother and great-grandmother, but her grandmother is entirely missing. Then there’s Alba’s relationship with her putative lover: Alba, and the narrative itself, treat it as if it were merely inappropriate and not absolutely awful. I don’t regret reading it, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as Gods of Jade and Shadow.

The Other Side of Midnight by Simone St. James: I try to read a Simone St James novel every fall; she excels at mysteries that are spooky and romantic. I didn’t love this one as much as the first two I read, but it was an enjoyable, creepy-but-not-too-creepy story about psychics real and fake.

Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher: Kingfisher's novels have certain commonalities -- middle-aged characters with ordinary jobs, humor to counterbalance the horror and weirdness, and a pantheon of saints and gods -- but the settings and stories are varied and inventive. This one takes the elements of Snow White (queen, daughter, mirror, apple) and puts them together in an utterly novel way. I just can't get enough of Kingfisher, and I'm pacing myself through her extensive bibliography.

Book Round-Up: Bibliomysteries Edition

The Mysterious Bookshop in downtown Manhattan is publishing a Bibliomystery series, short stories or novellas by various mystery writers that center around a book, bookstore, or library. When I went for my birthday, I picked up a few.

The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository by John Connolly: this was a fun little story about a bookish accountant who stumbles upon a special library housing not only first editions, but a number of characters from those books that have come to life -- shades of Eileen Favorite's The Heroines and Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair.

The Book of the Lion by Thomas Perry: A lost Chaucerian manuscript is being held hostage by a nefarious character, and a professor and his billionaire friend try to claim the manuscript before it is destroyed forever. It was entertaining, but I think I would have preferred a longer work, and more time spent on the lost manuscript (it apparently did exist at one point).

The Little Men by Megan Abbott: This story mostly takes place in the former apartment of a bookseller, but it ultimately was a psychological thriller that had little to do with books.

Reconciliation Day by Christopher Fowler: I liked this one a lot (no surprise, I like Fowler's Peculiar Crimes series, too).  It involves the original manuscript to Stoker's Dracula, and is appropriately creepy and weird.

Seven Years by Peter Robinson: of all the ones I read, this one was probably closest to a traditional mystery -- a cryptic inscription in an old book leads to an unsolved death and a missing person. It had a distinctly Christie-ish vibe.

Bibliotheca Classica by Simon Brett: The choice of a deeply unreliable narrator made this a lot of fun to read. Professor Rounsevell is curious to discover the origins of his bowdlerized copy of the Bibliotheca Classica, but being both a snob and a technophobe he leaves most of the work to his long-suffering wife. I was tickled to learn that the more common name for the text is Lempriere's Dictionary, which is the title of a (disappointing) Lawrence Norfolk book I read ages ago.