I started Lauren Willig's latest, The Mischief of the Mistletoe, while I was on the bus back from Plymouth (Hatherly Family Reunion) to Boston (Charlesmark night with E). Perfect for the bus, and then even MORE perfect for the world-class hangover I had the following morning. Partied hard, J & E style, at Cmark (and before, and after), and for some reason known only to God, or maybe Satan, I DIDN'T EAT before going to bed. Don't know what the f*** was wrong with me, but I woke up with the worst hangover I have had in years and years Sunday morning, and could just barely drag myself back and forth between the couch and my bed throughout the day. The only thing that added any happiness to my day, or made my head/stomach/limbs hurt any less, was Willig - a particularly light, silly, and sweet Willig. Jane Austen even makes a cameo, which was cute - and respectfully done [weird - feeling like I've written this before...]. And the "hero," such as he is, is "Turnip" Fitzhugh, from some of the other books, and he was written pretty adorably funny. Obviously Willig had to man him up a little, but this story was a nice change from some of her other ones - the heroine wasn't privileged and confident, the hero wasn't dashing and strong. I think this might actually be one of my favorites of the series, even though it's meant to be something of a side project.
The next stop on the book-train was The Savage Garden by Mark Mills. I didn't love it, but it killed time well enough without feeling like it was dumb or a waste of time. Set in the 1950s, at a villa in the Florence environs, it's about an English graduate student (I think...undergrad? English academic systems confuse me) who is sent to research a unique Renaissance garden and who ends up stumbling onto a contemporary mystery (of course) that mirrors elements of one surrounding the garden's creation, and stumbling onto some romance (of course) with a free-spirited Italian girl.
What was kind of a waste of time was Gail Carriger's Blameless - and I should have
known it. In fact, I did know it, even before I started. It's the third book in a really unimpressive series, but I wanted to learn the "science" behind the surprise pregnancy of the second book, and I saw it the other day at the bookstore, and it was cheap, and I have a coupon, so... sh*t happens. This one was actually the best of the three, I think, though; at least, I don't really remember the first one at this point (it's been almost a year), but I definitely think this one was better than the last one (although I don't really remember the second one either). Carriger digs into the "mythology" behind the whole soulless thing, with her heroine travelling to Italy (Florence, again!) to get more information about her situation and tangles with some Templars.
Went from a steampunk, alternative Victorian England to 14th century England with Susanna Gregory and
The Mark of a Murderer. I mostly grabbed it from the library because I had decided to try and sell a copy of another book in the series that I had at home, and I remembered vaguely that I had enjoyed it, so I figured I'd find the earliest one in the series that the library had and see if I still liked it. I guess the answer is yes? It's okay, but not great. Reminds me of all the other ye-olde-murder-mysteries, you know? Brother Cadfael, or any of the others set in medieval Oxford and Cambridge. Even that one I read a while ago about Giordano Bruno, Heresy
, had a similar feel, but less of the cozy-vibe.Last but definitely not least, after taking some time with it, last week I finished Russell Menard's Sweet Negotiations: Sugar, Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados. Such an enjoyable book. Interesting and easy to read. If I have a complaint, it's that it was too high-altitude - there was a lot of surface, and not a ton of depth. It also lacked in "stories" and material/cultural history and social history, but over all, definitely very decent. I wouldn't recommend it to people who aren't used to reading strictly history books, it's definitely not popular history, but it's not super academic or hard to digest by any means.
