Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Masquerade in Lodi

By Lois McMaster Bujold.

Previous book here.

Penric is now 29, ten years after the first book. After the death of his employer, he's now got a new job on the island of Lodi.* It's supposed to be Bastard's Day, a holiday, but Penric ends up working anyway when he's informed of the story of a guy who went overboard off a ship and was sorta-rescued....by getting possessed by a mostly-animal-influenced demon that's so messed up it can't be saved, and has made the poor guy completely whackadoodle out of his mind, and now he's running around the island doing God knows what.

• as a Californian, I have a vastly different, less picturesque vision in my head of anything called Lodi, so this weirded me out.

Penric needs to get the assistance of a demon-eating saint, and the one here, Chio, is actually a teenager and has been doing it since age 14 or so. I found Chio to be really intriguing, not to mention eerie. The mystery gets more involved when more is found out about the missing Madboy and specifically the business he's been working in. Pen ends up getting surprised....

Anyway, so far I find this to be the most interesting of the bunch, and I rather liked the foreshadowing of Chio ah, meeting a dude and how the Bastard may have set it up. I also like how this goes into how having to eat a demon (particularly a bad one) makes the saint feel (Ista seemed fine with it, but given her circumstances...and this is a more innocent girl). 

I find it odd that this takes place AFTER Penric loses his job in Martensbridge after the death of his mentor/boss, and we find out after the fact that he did not enjoy having a medical career, to the point of having some kind of breakdown. I'm not sure why she didn't decide to tell that story, other than maybe she was feeling squeamish on the topic?

Four stars, though. 

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

By Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

I got obsessed with watching Dash and Lily on Netflix and finally got the book. I'm not sure how good of a review I can write of it since my brain kept going back and forth between what book did vs. what movie did. Ah well...

Anyway, the title characters are two NYC teenagers chillin' without too many family members about during the Christmas season. Dash's brutally-divorced parents aren't aware that he's managing to spend the holidays alone. Lily's parents are off in Fiji, leaving her with her brother. She and her brother (and her cousin working at The Strand bookstore is also involved) come up with an interesting way for her to meet a book nerd guy by planting a notebook and some dares/activities/scavenger-hunt-y things at the store. Dash is the one that finds them and the two eschew phones and the like to pass a notebook of their thoughts and possible activities to do back and forth for awhile between finally meeting. Fun incidents like clubbing, Lily's aunt "Mrs. Basil E", Dash's friend Boomer getting involved, Lily making an ugly puppet, Dash being sent to sit on Santa's lap, etc. ensues. There's a bit of stuff involving Dash's foreign ex returning but not in a particularly romantic way. There's a running gag about a Pixar movie about office supplies finding love that still greatly amuses me.  There's also a ah, cliffhanger of sorts involving Lily's family as to whether or not they'll be staying in NYC.

Eventually Dash and Lily meet and hang out, and there's An Incident in which Lily saves a baby and somehow they get arrested and become media stars? (Definitely different from the movie.) I admit this kind of crazy surprised me, but ah well.

Overall it's cute and sweet and fun and something you wish you could do in real life with anybody (even though I confess I think the show made it even more fun for me). These authors do good fun pairing books. Dash is more cynical after the shit he's been through, Lily is more emotional (trying to live down a nickname of "Shrilly" from childhood). By the end, they're bonding at a bookstore, together this time. It's all very cute. Four stars. 

Elizabeth and Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters

By Andrew Morton.

This book starts out with both sisters, but really it's at heart Margaret's biography while relating to her sister, as it should be. 

Roughly speaking: they had a nice upbringing, then Uncle David abdicated and everything changed and Elizabeth became Number One and Margaret never had much to do, or ways to use her intellect, and then there's how her love life was affected by being royal. Ends up not marrying her first love after all, her husband's an asshole, she has an 8-year-long relationship with a younger boyfriend. But sisters to the end, right?

Memorable bits:

• King George V didn't like his oldest kids anyway but especially David/Edward: "After I am dead, the boy (Edward) will ruin himself within 12 months. I pray to God my eldest son will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne." Welp, he almost called that one exactly.
• Margaret: "Disobedience is my joy."
• "Every generation of the House of Windsor is stalked by a shadow. The good versus the naughty royal. The rebellious extrovert versus the sensible introvert."
• Little Elizabeth had her pockets sewn shut. THE GIRL WAS DENIED POCKETS.
• Literally she was also bribed with biscuits.
• There's a charming anecdote about Uncle David "who had taught them the Nazi salute on the lawns of Balmoral." chokes
• During the war, the crown jewels were dismantled, thrown into waterproof bags and sunk in the castle ponds. DAMN. (Later they got moved to the castle dungeons.)
• Someone should have spelled out to Margaret and Townsend as to how hopeless the thing was rather than hoping they could wait for 2 years. 
• The family's policy is "ostriching," or "ignoring a potentially explosive situation until it becomes untenable." SOMETHING THAT HAS NEVER CHANGED.
• While practicing for her coronation, Elizabeth wore the giant crown around the house to be used to five pounds on her head. Or sometimes, a bag of flour on her head. 
• While stranded in Brussels, Peter Townsend took up horse racing, where he met his future wife...who was a 14-year-old at the time and supposedly looked like Margaret. cringes
• The Windsors were paid to stay out of England and would have had to give up their income to come back. Would have been opposite for Margaret.
• However, eventually the deal was that Margaret would have to get out of the line of succession and she could have kept everything else. 
• "In the two years since they were forced to part, Townsend had altered. The man she first knew--the dashing fighter pilot who became a confidant of her beloved father--was now forty, stuck, through no fault of his own, in a dead-end job and obsessed with his hobby as an amateur jockey."
• The author notes that both Edward and Margaret kept information from their significant others. 
• Carrie Fisher claimed that her father and Margaret had an affair-during the Townsend separation years. "I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for this," she said. 
• At one point Margaret chucked a wet dishcloth at Elizabeth's face during a barbeque and Elizabeth just ducked and cleaned it up. "She had learned not to show too much concern, as it merely pandered to Margaret's dramatic nature." 
• On a related note, one night at dinner a footman tripped on Margaret's dress and "a miniature waterfall of flaming brandy cascaded down her dress. The queen watched this extraordinary scene with a quizzical expression and then, in a voice of calm glee, said to the queen mother, "Oh look Mummy, Margo's dress is on fire." (Both Margaret and the dress were fine.) 
• Margaret SERIOUSLY rebounded with Tony: "I received a letter from Peter in the morning and that evening I decided to marry Tony. It was no coincidence." 
• Tony hated Margaret's property on Mustique, which he called "Mustake." He hated being forced to be on vacation. 
• Tony had a similar experience to Philip in the staff hating him. One maid would ONLY bring Margaret tea and orange juice in the morning, and got sacked.
• Tony got along better with the rest of the family than he did Margaret, which is why they liked him better. "He took Margaret off their hands." He also let Philip win arguments.
• At one point Elizabeth was out to lunch at a stable and the creme brulee was so hard nobody could break into it. Elizabeth whipped off her high heel and smashed the dessert. I want to see more of this kind of thing, please. 
• At one point Margaret sent a message across a room requesting that Judy Garland sing. Judy replied, "Go and tell that nasty, rude little princess that we've known each other long enough and gabbed enough in ladies' rooms that she should skip the ho-hum royal routine and just pop over here and ask me myself. Tell her I'll sing if she christens a ship first." GO JUDY.
• Tony: "I am not a member of the royal family. I am married to a member of the royal family." Um.....
• Aberfan: the one time Tony's obviously decent, more or less. He called seeing it the worst day of his life. 
• Brian Cox: "What do you do when you're being touched up by a royal?" (Guess who.)
• Regarding Tony's hate notes: "There was such a paper blizzard of unpleasantness that she couldn't bring herself to open her chest of drawers. Instead, she asked the maid to do it for her. One note said "Twenty Four Reasons Why I Hate You." A crushed Margaret confided to a friend, "I can't think of twenty-four reasons to hate ANYBODY." 
• At one point Prince Philip's private secretary records Tony and Margaret arguing and sends it to a psychiatrist, who says, "This lady needs help--and she needs it soon."
• A dirty limerick from Margaret: "There once was a man from St. Pauls / Who did a turn on the halls / His favorite trick / was to stand on his dick / and freewheel off the stage on his balls."
• The one time Roddy met Elizabeth, he was wandering around in a shirt and underwear looking for someone to sew on a button. "Please forgive me, Ma'am, I look so awful." "Don't worry, I don't look very good myself," she responded.
• No one's allowed to be depressed or ill in this family. After Margaret burned her feet and couldn't walk, Elizabeth banned wheelchairs from Balmoral and Sandringham to force her to. OY.  She had to steal her mother's wheelchairs! 

Four stars. Well done, comprehensive, and juicy. 

How They Met, And Other Stories

By David Levithan.

Book of short stories about love, mostly of the teenage variety, some straight and some gay. The author said he started writing love stories during physics class in high school and then handed out stories for Valentine's Day. He's left them the way the earliest were written in high school.

"I am here because of a piano, a Jeep, Hunter College, the U.S. Army, the Beatles, and a whole bunch of matchmakers. I am here because of letters written during a war, music played with windows open, a crazy leap. And love. I am here because of love."

• Starbucks Boy: guy gets matchmade with a guy at Starbucks by his babysitting charge, cute.
• Miss Lucy Had A Steamboat: interesting use of the "Miss Lucy" rhyme that every girl for decades knows, mixed in with poor Lucy only getting to secretly date girls who won't go public with her. 
• The Alumni Interview: how awkward is it when your alumni interview for college is with your secret boyfriend's dad?
• The Good Witch: Closeted gay guy casually asks a casual friend to the prom, turns out she's REALLY into him romantically, awkwardness ensues. 
• The Escalator, A Love Story: I don't write poetry much, though when I tried, my writing group told me what I wrote was "proetry." This story is proetry. 
• The Number of People Who Meet On Airplanes: My favorite of the stories and what felt like the most well done: a story about a couple who met on an airplane who find out later that they were matchmade by a guy at the airport. Awwww! 
• Andrew Chang: a strange one about getting fixed up with the son of dad's business associate, which turns out to be a prom date, and then she meets the love of her life at that boring guy's prom.
• Flirting With Waiters: an 8th grader has a crush on a high school senior and is always going to his pizza joint to see him. They form somewhat of a friendship (if nothing more) during his last year in town. Sad and sweet.
• Lost Sometimes: another story about secret gay loving at the prom with a guy you know it's not going to last with.
• Princes: 17-year-old dancer boy has a crush on a 22-year-old, makes the mistake of claiming this guy is his new boyfriend and he wants to bring him as a date to his brother's bar mitzvah. Then the little brother heroically is on his side on this when the family says no...and even though the 22-year-old smartly won't go there, it looks like there's another guy in the wings.
• Breaking and Entering: dude breaks into his ex's house after the ex has moved on toe college, runs into his mother. Not terrifying, just sad.
• Skipping the Prom: a couple who knows they won't last forever has one last night.
• A Romantic Inclination: two scientifically-minded people briefly debate getting together, then don't. 
• What A Song Can Do: even more proetry, I'm not really sure what happened with this couple, inexplicable breakup?
• Without Saying: Honestly, the way this was written confused me and I'm not sure what was going on here. Switches between second and third person.
• How They Met: talking about how his grandparents met during the war, they knew, and they got married soon. "But the moral of the story is that it worked. They knew, and they were right." 
• Memory Dance: the one story about an old couple together for decades, quietly at home.
• Intersection: almost proetry but not quite, about accidents of love. 

Overall, three and a half stars. 

 

Kamala's Way: An American Life

By Dan Morain.

This is a short, skimming book about Kamala Harris's career from the start until she was picked as a vice presidential candidate. It feels like a brief survey regarding her life and career and cases she worked on, etc. I haven't seen Kamala Harris's actual biography at the library, but maybe that might be better? This was fine, but it felt like the American Presidents books--short, covers a lot but briefly. I didn't know she'd been involved with Willie Brown while he was separated from his wife, something she got over, obviously. There's a few really sweet personal moments mentioned in there with certain friends, visiting a dying lady/going to funerals, and befriending/talking to kids that were really sweet. I rather liked hearing that the Senate Intel committee is a lot of work for no public payoff, but Kamala still wanted to be on it anyway. Aww. Some mentions of mistakes-mostly in her presidential campaign--come up, but overall it's a happy book.

So, a nice skimmer if you want to find out more about Kamala Harris, but if you want more meat, maybe read something else? Three stars. 

Penric's Fox

By Lois McMaster Bujold.

Previous book here. 

The adventure of Penric with Ingris and Oswyl continues, as Oswyl interrupts the other two having a fishing trip to make them go look for a murderer. A nice Temple sorceress got murdered by two shots in the back with an arrow--and her demon is missing. Looks like someone wanted to kill her from far enough away to not risk catching demon....but well, it's a forest and odds are high that guess what animal seems to have ended up with it. So what happens when a demon ends up going back down the evolutionary ladder? Also, who the heck wanted to murder this nice lady? Well, her demon--and specifically the previous owner of it--is why.

This was an entertaining tale. It's not a hugely mysterious mystery, but the plot works. I especially enjoyed Penric's line to the murderer about his little revenge trip: So you did all this just to make yourself feel better? "Is it working?" I've always wondered about that question myself, sir. Shamans become of more use in this one--I particularly liked the fox shaman, Lunet, she was very cool. I also liked the nerdy, near-blind baron character, he was nice. And hopefully they'll work out a reasonable solution for the particular demon problem. By the end of it, Penric has decided he wants to learn shaman magic even though he's literally unable to become one, which I don't quite understand, but...whatever, I guess. 

Four stars. Well done for the duration!

Penric and the Shaman

By Lois McMaster Bujold.

Previous book here.

It's four years later, and Penric is out of seminary school and working for the local princess/archdivine. Someone who appears to be the equivalent of a private investigator/cop in this world, Oswyl, asks for the loan of a sorcerer  He's trying to track down a shaman who possibly murdered someone. It's a bit confusing--there was some kind of incident with a boar killing a guy, but he also got stabbed, and they presume that Ingris (a descendent of Ingrey from Hallowed Hunt, obviously) did it. Well, he had something to do with it, but also things went wrong, Ingris got himself injured, he can't use his magic, and and he's trying to find another shaman for assistance. This isn't going too well since the next nearest shaman died in a freak death recently and his ghost somehow still seems to be hanging around. In the end, the characters need to figure out how to deal with the various ghosts, and some other deities step in to have their say. Cool beans. 

I read The Hallowed Hunt (even though I can't find my review of it for shit to cite it) and I always found "how do shamans work here" to be a bit confusing, and it still is to me. Somehow people magically blond with an animal spirit over generations, they have to bleed in order to do magic, there's Great Beasts in this one that are more doggy than doggy, I think the murdered guy was trying(?) to become a shaman? Something like that? Other than "his spirit got trapped in a knife," I'm still unclear as to what was going on or what his relationship was with the actual shaman. 

Penric is a bit more of a grownup. He's still cheerful and comes off as weird to others (well, that's not a shocker) and he's comfortable in his working with Desdemona and her biological need to go destroy something. So she does things like eliminate all fleas in the vicinity, works on book plates (it makes sense in context), etc. to get her urges out. It makes me imagine posting a flier:

"BORED DEMON NEEDS SOMETHING TO DESTROY."

Got too many fleas around your place?

Need to demolish a building?

Hack up some firewood?

If you need anything eliminated or otherwise destroyed, contact Penric at the princess's house."

This book also covers Oswyl and Ingris's POV"s a bit and how they see Penric (yup, he's a bit odd as to how he hides his expertise in public so as to not make others uncomfortable, casually chats with his 200 year old demon). I enjoyed the use of gods in this one--I cracked up at the seminary joke about how the Son promises people beer when they die and that is actually true, LOL. 

Overall, I thought this one was a bit better done, but I still find shaman anything in this world to be a confusing messy mess. Whatever LMB is thinking with that concept, I didn't super get it in Hallowed Hunt and I still don't really super get it now even though this one kind of explains how Ingris gets himself into magical mental place, at least. Maybe I'm just dumb? So....I guess 3 3/4 stars? 

Penric's Demon

By Lois McMaster Bujold.

I finally caved in and bought this entire series, so here comes a bunch of reviews! This series takes place in the same "World of Five Gods" as the Chalion books. (I can't find my review of The Hallowed Hunt, but it's more taking place there than Chalion, in the "Weald" area.)

Penric is a younger son, handsome, sweet and innocent but not stupid, and he's riding off to get engaged when he runs into a dying woman on the road. He goes to help her out, and for his troubles, ends up becoming possessed by her demon. Demons aren't ALL bad in this world--depends on the person, depends on the demon, etc. and the demon previously occupying the Learned Ruchia is a nice lady. Or group of ladies, really, as the demon has taken on/saved the personalities, skills, languages and traits of all of her previous (female only, with a few animals thrown in) rides. And she's nice too! She sounds AMAZING and I'd love to have a demon like that! Penric dubs the demon as a whole "Desdemona" as a gift, which she appreciates. 

Anyway, nobody knows what the hell to do with Penric, since usually people go off to magical college for years before they're permitted to get a demon, and now some complete rando has gotten an extremely powerful and sophisticated demon. Everyone acts like he just got the cootites, his engagement is IMMEDIATELY OVAH, and he's sent off to wait around while other people figure out what to do with him, more or less. This makes the book a bit slowish to get get going as Penric basically putters around town and goes shopping and takes a nice bath (I'm making it sound bad, but it's also getting to know his demon) until finally he gets a dinne invitation and gets attacked by others wanting to kill him and get his demon. Desdemona has no intention of going along with that, and helps Penric out there. Finally, a demon-eating saint is brought in--much to Desdemona's terror--to sort out the situation. If you ever read Paladin of Souls, you'll be aware that she's got nothing to worry about. Suffice it to say that things resolve nicely and Penric shall go on to have more adventures once he gets out of magic college.

It was a pleasant, fun read (if a bit slow to get going) and yet gave me some things to think about. I'd love to partner with a Desdemona, personally. Three and a half stars. 

 

Well Played

By Jen DeLuca.

Previous book here.

Stacey loves working at faire, but it's always a letdown once it ends and she has to go back to boring real life. She had to give up her fashion career dreams when her mom became ill years ago, she still lives at home now, and she's afraid to go anywhere and the career is long since gone. Feeling mopey about having nothing to look forward to in life, she messages her occasional Faire hookup, Dex MacLean, on his band's website, while drunk and horny.  

This comes out better than she expected, as Dex actually messages her back and it becomes a yearlong, progressively intimate long chat. Except halfway through the book, she finds out that it was really Dex's band manager/cousin Daniel (also cute if not a Hemsworth, redheaded, but not a womanizer) who saw the message and has been writing her back all year. As Simon snarks, this is some Cyrano shit. This gets resolved halfway through the book so that this year Stacey and Daniel can have a Faire fling, but there's one more awkward moment involving Dex--and can Stacey leave her mom in order to move on with her life? (Much easier than most of us could, as it turns out. Lucky girl.)

Anyway, this is pleasant enough and I enjoyed certain moments in it (particularly the end), but it just didn't feel that memorable to me. One of those romances where two very nice people get together but don't have a whole lot of conflict or drama. I kind of got mildly bored reading after awhile even though I like everyone involved. I guess it just needed more spice and drama for me. 

Overall, three stars. 

 

Sorcery of Thorns

By Margaret Rogerson.

I wasn't as into this one as I was her previous book, but I did like it. 

Elisabeth Scrivener is a mystery orphan* raised at one of the Great Libraries--libraries in this world being places where the books may eat you. She's lived there all her life, loves it, and at age 16, is an apprentice and is looking forward to becoming a Warden someday. And then the director gets murdered, Elisabeth has to kill one of the attack grimoires, and she gets suspected of the crime of murder. While that blows over "relatively" easily, she finds out something even more sinister is going on, and the only person that believes her is Nathaniel Thorn, an 18-year-old orphan sorcerer and the last from a great house that scares the shit out of everybody. Nathaniel also has a demon servant, Silas, who perennially works for the family. Those two are the only ones that will help her, along with her bestie Katrien, who's still at the Library and on her side from a distance.

* See spoiler space for more thoughts on this.

That's the general plotline, I definitely feel like there were some plot details I was missing periodically though. Basically, bad guy has evil scheme involving taking down libraries and fucking with demons, and he's so popular and kind and rich that nobody buys it--and of course at one point he gets Elisabeth thrown in a loony bin. Happily, she escapes. This book doesn't have that many characters in it, but I did really like Mercy and Parsifal, minor characters that crop up here and there and are on her side. 

Mostly this book is about the trio of Elisabeth, Nathaniel, and Silas. Elisabeth is plucky and determined and not at all fazed by general weirdness since she grew up where the books try to eat your fingers (there is definitely some snark about that). Nathaniel has a tragic backstory of losing the rest of his family at age 12 and binding Silas to him so that he still had someone in his life. And Silas may be a demon, but he's unfailingly kind to them both and so obviously a being of Good Heart despite his origins, that they make a lovely little family that take care of each other. It's all very sweet and my favorite thing about the book. I heart Silas most of all, I think everybody does. 

But plotwise I was a bit muddled--maybe others might not have that problem, I'm not sure-- at times. And there's definitely a huge missed opportunity in the story that bugged me. And it feels a bit insular to be only focused on those three at times--their world seems kind of small-ish., even though people move in and out of the plot so maybe that's just my impression. But overall, those things didn't bother me enough to really dock the star rating. Four stars.