cyphomandra

I am doing a five day 80km walk at the end of January and have finally managed to find a treadmill to hire, so much of this is now being read on said treadmill while I attempt to clock up at least 10K steps per day (this month's goal).

Just finished:

Spoiler Alert, by Olivia Dade, which I went on about previously and I really enjoyed. I do however know exactly what the main slash pairing would be in the fandom and how much of a juggernaut it would be, and yet slash is never, ever, mentioned.

Broken Resolutions, Olivia Dade. So then I tracked down a previous book by Dade, part of a series (Lovestruck Librarians); librarian who has made a resolution to avoid men for a year after lousy boyfriends is set up by colleague at library singles night with the handsome supposed accountant who is actually one of her favourite authors. It's pretty slight and it's okay; I did find the sex scene on an impromptu bed made from children's toys while they're snowbound at the library almost exactly the opposite of hot :D

Endell Street, by Wendy Moore, finally (I still have to take it back though!). Very good, fascinating and depressing - yes, these women ran the hospital, researched, and made many, many, vital contributions, but they had to fight for every scrap of official recognition and as soon as the war was over (and, in the aftermath, the pandemic) they were sidelined out of history.

Writing Fight Scenes, Marie Brennan. What it says on the tin; blog posts as book. Useful in terms of thinking about how to do this, not useful because it made me want to re-read Dunnett's Lymond series and I don't currently have time.

Dine With Me, Layla Reyne. Chef with some sort of oral cancer refuses treatment rather than risk losing his sense of taste; takes foodie surgeon who really wants to do oncology but is committed to his family's plastic surgery clinic on food tour of a lifetime. This did not work for me for all the reasons I'd mentioned earlier - the surgeon never feels real as a character, the food sounds great but it all feels so unreal - and for the additional reason until I checked a couple of other reviews I'd been unaware Grant Achatz, the real-life chef behind Alinea, had oral cancer and ended up undergoing an experimental non surgical treatment in order to preserve his tongue, and it felt a little too close.

Relay, Changing Lanes #1, Layla Reyne. Despite that I tried another. Alex (Alejandro) is captain of the USA Olympic swim team; Dane is the new star, groomed for success according to a rigid script set out by his southern caricature villain parents (one clergy, one sales); they had a fling as teenagers but then Dane walked away. This has a surprising lack of Olympic training in it and there's no real sense that they are going to be competing against any other countries, plus there's a weird doping/hacking plotline, but I did like it more than Dine with Me

The Girls of St Brides and Nancy at St Brides, Dorita Fairlie Bruce, first new to me but second a re-read. Scottish island school; the first has the standard plot in which the quiet dependable one in a pair of friends is given authority rather than her mercurial and more flashy friend, which is interesting because although it always ends up with them friends again, there's always the recognition that duty and responsibility is more important. The second was written later, as back story for Nancy, who has the slightly unusual schoolgirl experience of being asked to leave her first school after a tumultuous start. She then attends a day school for several years and then returns to St Brides older and wiser to finish out her education. Very readable, although I don't have the complete set (and they're a mix of recent reprints, elderly reprints, and a first edition 1925 publication of That Boarding School Girl, which is a bit fragile for day-to-day reading).

The Magnolia Sword, Sherry Thomas. Mulan retelling, set in 484 AD, and heavy on the wuxia. This had an oddly confusing beginning (it appears to be designed to be read later once you've worked out what's going on) but then settled into its stride and I liked it a lot. Great setting, great fight scenes (although it would have been nice to know how many hidden weapons Mulan had stashed away), and I particularly liked Mulan's first actual battle, where despite being a highly skilled duelist she totally freezes and then feels terrible about it.

In progress:

The Art of Theft, Sherry Thomas. Fourth in her Lady Sherlock series and actually given that the fifth one is just out I might abort this and read them all again in sequence, because I'm having trouble remembering some of the continuing side plots.

When All the World Sleeps, Lisa Henry and JA Rock. I really prefer the books Henry writes on her own. Small town, guy with sleep automatism burned down a house with the guy who gay-bashed him in it, now locks himself up to sleep (with ice in the locks so he can get out when it melts); local cop gets involved (in multiple ways), m/m romance.

The Mage on the Hill, angel martinez. Out of control mage's only chance for survival is a mysterious exiled wizard. I am mainly reading this for the magic system but it is an m/m romance.

Up next:

I have KJ Charles' The Sugared Game and need to re-read the first one in the series; also an f/f immigration romance recommended by KJ Charles called You, Me, U.S..

I am trying to catch up. 13 books, one a re-read; authors Dorothy Garlock, Sherry Thomas, Mary Treadgold, Balli Kaur Jaswal, Ruth M Arthur, Catherine Storr, Sarah Caudwell, Leigh Bardugo, Joanna Lloyd, David Galler, Stephen Donaldson, Karen Lord, John Le Carré.

( Books read, February. )

March. I don't have an overall favourite for this month but Here If You Need Me is probably the one I am most likely to recommend to people.

Gwen Hayes, Romancing the Beat. Basics of story structure for romances with lots of gratuitous 80s music references. Cheerfully useful.

Kate Braestrup, Here If You Need Me. Memoir. I got this as a rec somewhere on Dreamwidth and it is not the sort of book I would have otherwise picked up; the author is a chaplain for the Maine search and rescue service, a combination of job and calling that the author only came to after the sudden death of her state trooper husband. It's a book about grief, family, and God, as well as What Not To Do in the Outdoors, and I really enjoyed it - despite being an atheist I quite like reading about religious faith, although so often anything written post 1920 or so isn't worth it (I flatted with a fundamentalist Christian for a while. Most of her books were appalling, either of the straight out "demons cause schizophrenia and allergies" or the more deceptive "hey, let's ask all these big questions about the universe and coincidentally come up with a very specific set of answers that just happen to fit within a very specific narrow worldview" of her Alpha course text. I did quite like Philip Yancy's What's So Amazing About Grace.)

Martine Bailey, An Appetite for Violets. Historical; Biddy, an undercook at a stately home who has picked out her husband and her future, is caught up in the schemes of nobility, which nvolve lots of travelling and food. This has a really annoying beginning and I only picked it up again the day before it was due back. Biddy's point of view is what carries this; the plot is obvious and the end in particular too melodramatic, but the recipes and the expansion of Biddy's world are very good.

Jeffrey Deaver, The Skin Collector. In the same series as The Bone Collector. Not terribly good. There's a thing I read somewhere that says that a standard plot twist deceives the reader, but a great one deceives the characters, and unfortunately much of Deaver's work has now tipped far too far over into deceiving the readers (The Bone Collector, in contrast, has at least two fabulous twists for the characters that I still think of fondly).

Sherry Thomas, My Beloved Enemy The romance part of The Hidden Blade. Lots of great scenery. I wish the main characters in this had a bit more to do together rather than go through the romance bits, because I like them a lot but sadly the romance bits are the second-least convincing part of this book, right after death/immobilisation via accupressure points. I suspect this is more me than the book. I did like this but not as much as the first.

Jilly Cooper, The Common Years, and Appassionata. Both re-reads. I lent the former to a colleague who is having issues with her rescue dog's behaviour, on the grounds that she could not possibly do worse than Jilly, who is forced to put down not one but two of her dogs after she has done everything possible to stop them killing other people's pets except a) train them b) neuter them c) keep them on the lead. And then I re-read Appassionata, because it's probably my favourite of her novels, and it even makes me think wistfully about listening to classical music.

Rather than keep getting further behind I will post all this behind a cut: this is all of January except for four books by Robin Stevens that I loved and which will get their own entry. Someday.

Sarah Dressen, Dreamland
Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit
Yoon Ha Lee, Raven Stratagem
Yoon Ha Lee, Revenant Gun (x2)
Sherry Thomas, Not Quite a Husband
Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy
Stephen King, Riding the Bullet
KJ Charles, Wanted, a Gentleman
Jenny Lawson, Let's Pretend This Never Happened
Naomi Alderman, The Power
Megan Abbot, You Will Know Me
Elin Gregory, The Eleventh Hour
Emma Newman, Between Two Thorns (the Split Worlds, book 1)


( Books read, January. )