3
Followers
3
Following
Vellichor Afternoons
I like trip-hop, anachronism, cats, both coffee and tea, the sound of rain on a tin roof, antique keys, pop culture as a substitute for religion, theatre, photography, Oxford commas, and, of course, reading.
Currently reading
John Dies at the End
Geek Love
I, Lucifer
The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British
An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace
Craven Place
Bloodroot
Unfamiliar Fishes
Academics Handbook 2nd Ed-P
That's a very ambivalent rating of 3 up there.There are definitely things I liked about this book. Hell, I read it in a day, which I don't do unless I'm caught up in a plot. There's a gritty atmosphere that I dug, and the plotting and the slow build of tension was well done. And nothing is more appealing than a good damaged, spunky, sexy character; this has two. Ellie, the main character, isn't really likeable--she's actually pretty heinous, yet she is still compelling, which I appreciate. And I'd be happy to pluck Camden out of the pages and keep him. Everyone who reads the book probably would.
But.
It's an indie novel.
And it really, really shows.
It could very much use an editor, one who would take away the really awful alternating perspective things where all the 'then' parts are a weird first person-masquerading-as-third-person (i.e., "The girl coasted down the street in her beat up Chevy truck, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible"). Yes, it is literally third person, but it all reads as if Ellie is narrating about herself in her head as she has flashbacks. If i had read another "the girl" I might have just gouged my own eyes out. We all know who the fucking girl is. It's not adding to the mystery, it's just making the whole damn thing sound clunky.
And points for the sexytimes described herein, which actually manage to be, you know, sexy, until some odd ear-grating turn of phrase pops up (the most egregious: "He deftly unzipped his pants and positioned his cock into my opening," which just pains my ears in a cringey, bleeding sort of way).
So yeah, an ambivalent 3. I did *like* it, even if I also wanted to edit the whole damn thing.
Maybe I should stick to indie bands instead of books.
It's not that I didn't like this book. Or that it wasn't somehow charming. I did. And it was.Yet.
Sometimes, I just wanted to step into the pages and deliver a well-deserved smack (or five) to Ginny. For a reasonably smart girl, she is myopically short-sighted, in grand denial, and NEVER asks questions about the things she should be asking questions about. OSTRICH GIRL, THY NAME IS GINNY.
Or maybe I'm just a confrontational sort of person who prefers a direct approach and am therefore stymied by a character who doesn't ask, for instance, why she is being blackmailed by someone who seems like a perfectly nice fellow otherwise. HMM, GINNY? DO YOU THINK THERE MIGHT BE SOME SORT OF TRAGIC REASON BEHIND IT?
::headdesk::
So, while I like the book, like in the first one, I don't really like the main character.
But this book telegraphs its moves like a drunk frat boy at a bar.
Grand premise.In fact, *I* want to go on this trip.
However, I certainly wouldn't want to do so with the main character, who, while smart and self-reliant, is entirely too personality-of-a-doormatish to be likeable. She lets everyone shove her around, she ends up in dumb situations because she can't say no or ever express her opinion, and she's spineless.
I have tendencies toward shyness around new people, so I don't think that's what I'm not understanding here. It's more that she is completely disengaged from the world around her rather than just shy.
Nonetheless, the book is certainly charming, and the European travels with the Ghost of Aunt Peg are entertaining enough. I just wanted to see Ginny shaken up, pushed into reacting to something. Yet she is all replete with very her.
I'll take my YA with a side of plucky, please.
If Mike Carey's Felix Castor series and Neil Gaiman's American Gods got together and had a baby, It would be this book.That's a compliment of the highest order, by the way.
I think I'm done with this. I just reached a certain point and hated to keep reading. I don't really have a problem with violence, but this is just fucking *bleak*.May pick it up again. Who knows.
Flavia is back.The last couple of Flavia de Luce novels have been a little... convoluted. But in this one everything falls perfectly into place again, and our precocious eleven-year-old expert on poisons is back in fine form.
I do love a mystery that I can't solve before the reveal.
However, unlike previous volumes, Bradley leaves us with one hell of a cliffhanger. Now the agonizing wait for the next in series.
There is something to be said for a book you finish in 24 hours, not because it is slender in any way but because you shut out The Intrusive World in order to spend the time with it.This is such a book.
This is a novel full of characters you root for, and full of a mystery--not just about the plot but the quest to unfold the mystery you can sometimes be to yourself.
So, when someone says, "Hey, read this book about time travel," don't be put off. It's handled deftly. The time travel isn't a deus ex machina, it's interwoven with the plot in a believable, grounded in reality sort of way. Which, if you read the book, is not a unlikely as it may sound.
The Spellman Files (Spellman Files Series #1)
I ADORED this book.It's a mystery, but saying that seems so reductive. It's really a story about family, the kind you both love, despise, and blackmail, though good-naturedly.
It's also a story of a very snarky young woman, one whose voice is so clear and so darkly comic that I found myself laughing aloud repeatedly. Isabel Spellman, middle child and PI at Spellman Investigations, is irreverent, clever, and slightly insane. Which is to say--I adore her.
Can't wait to rip through the other books in this series. GOD, I love a series.
Admittedly, I am a sucker for all things Holmesian.I liked this.
It's odd, though.
I don't know if I entirely buy it.
Which isn't to say I think Sherlock Holmes sprung from the womb a fully-formed deduction machine.
However, he seemed a little... oblivious here.
And I do accept that it's a YA novel...but maybe it's just a little more YA than I'd like it to be.
Still, Sherlock is 14 here, and I would expect him to be on his way to becoming the legend he becomes.
Instead, he's not terribly observant, is woefully obedient, and moreso seems to have very little personality. The characters around him are more vividly characterized than Sherlock, and the story is told from his POV.
Maybe I'd like it more as just a mystery, rather than as a *Sherlock Holmes* mystery, because...well, it isn't.
However, I did enjoy the novel, and the sense of time and setting. And I'll be checking out the sequel. So there's that.
Entertaining.However, if you have an attention span that can persevere past endless twelve word sentences, you might find this choppy, to say the least.
A couple of misfires, one story that I couldn't quite puzzle out why it was included (inserting the name 'Holmes' does NOT make it a Sherlock Holmes story), but overall a wonderful collection of short stories related to the Holmes canon. The Alan Bradley and Neil Gaiman stories in particular stand out, both beautiful and slightly sad, just the way I like 'em.
Not much put me in the Christmas spirit this year... but this book helped. It's the definition of heartwarming, but i don't mean that in a reductive way.
I am putting more Barthes into my thesis than I would have ever expected. But he is so damned quotable. And since Sofia Coppola composes her films like photographs, including a book on photography makes sense, no?
So, I found myself sitting in a barbecue joint in Decatur, AL, crying into my plate of ribs because I had just finished this book and it's beautiful and moving and so, so good. And it's not often I get surprised--actually surprised--by the end of a novel; when you're that far in, and you read a lot, you know the conventions, you know that 9 times out of 10 authors will go for the happy ending.Not so here. It's dangled, and then completely subverted, and it's stunningly, incredibly right, even in the sadness.
Every book I read of David Levithan makes me want to read more of his books. That is a good sign.
Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics
A great, wide resource... but it has some indexing issues.Best pate brise recipe EVER though. It is my go-to recipe for all pie doughs. The page is covered in flour.