Siena,

and the Palio, is such a rich subject. And I feel like Anne Fortier's Juliet gave me everything I didn't get from the other Siena/Palio book I read a while ago, Daughter of Siena (Marina Fiorata) [also, HOLLER, system worked, I had no idea what that book was and then found it in the blog just now]. This was more of a Pink Carnation or Mary Malloy type book, with the action in the present and the (related) action in the past being interwoven together. And a kind of mystery. Not that Malloy and Lauren Willig have a monopoly on the style, it's just what I think of.

Anyhow, I really liked Juliet, as I said the other day. I had been getting another book from Lamont, and I saw Juliet down the shelf a couple books, and the spine was appealing. So I read the first page - an epigraph, as it happened - and liked THAT, so I checked it out. Finally got around to reading it during the blizzard weekend, wanting something lighter after I had been reading something heavier, but it was better than just a palate cleanser.

Basically a young American woman who is obsessed with Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet ends up in modern-day Siena where she finds out she's a descendant (and namesake) of the original inspiration for Juliet. She also needs to find the artifacts relating to the story, and the whole story, that were a part of her parents' mysterious deaths when she was a young child. And there's a hot Italian man, and lots of clothes and prosecco and gelatto. Lots of history, too, but handled well - respectfully (and hopefully responsibly/accurately, although it's NOT my period, so it could all be totally wrong for all I know) and lightly, so it's everywhere, but not overwhelming or artificial. Lots of my favorite things in any case.

A lot of it is predictable, especially the development of the "relationship" between our Juliet and the leading man, but still entertaining and the main character, while a bit obvious, is relatable and very engaging. The setting (both the city and the temporal setting too, when in the past) is handled quite well, and the worlds feel real while you're in them. Ugh, except now I really want to go to Siena!!!

Orgies

Of reading, obviously.

I plowed through a ton of books this week/end, at least that's what it feels like.

Started Justice Sotomayor's memoir, but I was taking cold medicine for most of the last week, so I didn't want to really get into it, excited as I was to get my hands on it. So more on that later, when I really read it.

What I DID read, and is perfect for when you're not feeling great and spending a lot of time curled up in bed, was the latest Agent Pendergast book, Two Graves. It's pretty much what you'd expect - actually, it's exactly what you'd expect - but that's just fine - it's what I wanted. I will say, I give Preston & Child credit for not recapping the first two books in the trilogy (to say nothing of the entire Pendergast series), and basically just jumping into this particular story. It was schlocky, belief-stretching fun, although way over the top, of course. But who doesn't love when a Nazi hive gets blown up?

After Two Graves I continued on in the same vein with The Third Gate, by half of the same duo, in this case Lincoln Child. It was...fine? It's set at an Egyptian archaeological dig site, so maybe I was extra harsh, given my childhood love for the subject, but I felt like there were a lot of flaws. like the Preston & Child books, a LOT was crammed in - lots of different plot strands, random comments about cars and guns and machines that are maybe boy-brain-action-porn, but weren't doing it for me, and waaaay too much description of the man-made physical setting. Now, about that last maybe part of that is how I read. I generally don't "see" what's being described in my mind's eye, at least not always at the level of detail given, so when you go on and on about how the joists of a particular platform are connected, I get bored. But I think most people would have in this case.

The biggest problem was the huge twist at the end, or at least what I suppose was meant to be a huge twist, was super obvious and I saw it coming right away. Then again, I saw it coming because of clues in the text, so maybe we were supposed to get it, and then saying "you idiots! Don't you see?" to the characters would have ramped up the tension. But instead I just said "you idiots" and then was mildly annoyed when the revelation hit them, because I had been waiting for so long.

The end of the book, too, just seemed very abrupt and unsatisfying. Well, not unsatisfying, because I didn't want anything more, but not satisfying either.

Finished that yesterday, Saturday late afternoon, then started a book called The Apothecary's House (Adrian Mathews) - fine, about art stolen by the Nazis, but it was sloooooow going, so I gave it up, since I started it around 11 p.m. (stayed in last night, long story), and wanted something fast and easy.

So then I flew through another book with NO twist (although, again, when it's that obvious, is it even meant to be a twist?) and a really abrupt and in this case very unsatisfying ending, The Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood (and inspired by, or something, the work of the Duchess of Northumberland). It's a slim YA book about a girl in eighteenth century England whose father is an herbalist who keeps a locked garden of poisonous plants and about a mysterious young man (heh, I feel cheesy just writing that, but there's no other way) - who's also hot, obviously - who comes to live with them. The main character, even the two main characters, are appealing, and there's so much room in the plot to really explore, but virtually nothing happens and what does happen is incredibly obvious.

And, maybe this is a YA thing, but much like when I watch The Vampire Diaries or Pretty Little Liars on TV, I just want to scream/scold "you stupid adolescent idiot - just TALK to him/her/them and you'll get this all figured out a million times sooner than if you run around trying to do everything on your own and secretly." I guess wisdom comes with age.

Then the end is just like "okay, and now we're done. The end." Dunno. Found myself wishing a better author had taken the same story and made an adult novel out of it.

So then it was 1:30 a.m. (I read it in under 90 minutes), and I had napped from 5:30-7 p.m., so I was awake, so I sped through Lauren Willig's The Mischief of the Mistletoe, which is just such a sweet, adorable little thing (well, almost 400 pages, so maybe not that little...but they are small pages), and then I was happy again, so I went to bed. 

N.B. - looked up The Poison Diaries to the author, and it looks like it's the first in a series. So that may account for the abrupt ending.

More Austen, & etc.

As I was sitting down to write this post, I was thinking it had been a very themed weekend - specifically, Georgian/Regency, with Intrigue! And Ratafia!(whatever the hell that is - I keep meaning to look it up - I feel like it's some kind of gross Orangina-type drink, for ladies?) And Muslin! And Rakes!

And then I saw that that was kind of my last post, too...

So - some time this past week I started the latest Stephanie Barron (or, at least, the latest in the series I like), Jane and the Canterbury Tale; Being a Jane Austen Mystery. I assume that the subtitle is not really part of the title, but I like to make it nice and period-appropriate. And, totally unplanned, I moved on this weekend to another early nineteenth century caper, this one with spying rather than murder, but still lots of muslin, Lauren Willig's latest Pink Carnation episode, The Garden Intrigue.

As to the first; I think I started it Monday or Tuesday (I remember climbing into bed a little tipsy and very tired, and since I seem to be living my life backwards these days, that would place us at the beginning of the week) but didn't finish it until this morning (Sunday), since I never read for that long. Mostly because I was tired, but also because it just wasn't the kind of book where I couldn't put it down, and was making the time to read it.

I fell in love with this series years and years ago; probably before the first one had been out in paperback for long, and I'm not even sure if the first one came out in hardcover, since back then they (the paperbacks) were mass market and much less slickly turned out. There was a character I was very fond of who died, sometime when I was in grad school, and after that I just haven't felt as much for the remaining characters or the books themselves. So that might be some of it.

But the bigger problem is that they're starting to just feel dull, like we're going through all the same events, with the same people, and the same "reveals," just altered in minor ways. Barron also seems to be struggling a bit, or at least her editors are. There were some small, but noticeable mistakes and I had some issues with the tone.

The thing that I used to really appreciate about the books was Barron's ability to mimic Austen's language - vocabulary, pacing, little, loving nods to lines from the latter's novels - without it feeling forced or gratuitous. Now it kind of does. Like, some period spellings - fine.  But make them count. Every time she used the word "romantickal" (to be fair, I think it was only twice), I felt like I was being hit over the head with "hey! It's ye olden days!" We get it. But, for what it's worth, I think Barron still does a better job than the plethora of other authors trying to ape Jane's style (AHEM, P.D. James, I'm not letting you off the hook for that travesty so easily). When has a character say "It will not fadge, and you know it" (44), I knew basically what he was saying (it won't work, more or less), but the contemporary language grounded the character. And I could tell from context that a "succession-house" (48) must be a greenhouse, but it sounded old and English.  I had no idea what the etymology of the phrase "grass widow" was, but I spent some pleasant minutes trying to figure it out.



Finished up Jane this afternoon, and then immediately started Garden Intrigue. Not because of the chronological similarities, but because it had just come last week in the mail (I ordered it from B&N the day it came out, using a coupon & a Valentine's Day gift card, so it was free, sweet!) and I had made myself wait to read it until the week was over and I had turned in some reports I really had to focus on. So I started it this afternoon - and finished it tonight. So, am I about to say that it's not as good as the earlier books in the series, and that I am getting disenchanted? Yes. Was I also enchanted enough to read the whole thing in the course of the afternoon? Also yes.

Honestly, I think the marathon reading was more about the fact I had kind of an awful week, and a lot of stuff going on in my life that I wanted to avoid, so escaping into a book - light enough I didn't have to really focus, not so fluffy I could still brood while I read - was a good option for a Sunday. Doing the work I brought home probably would have been a better idea, but it's not like it's anything with a "due date," and in any case, that's neither here nor there.

It's not that I didn't enjoy Garden Intrigue, because I did. It was funny in places, romantic (kind of) in others, and it suggested that the cranberry muffins at Broadway Market are good, so I will have to check those out (although I am annoyed with the place at the moment). But again, it's getting oooooold.  Couple whose early verbal sparring is an obvious prelude to them falling in love, after some misunderstandings, and then a scene where they haltingly admit their love? Check. Interspersed romantic and personal entanglements of a modern-day history Ph.D.? Check. Some issues with a threat to British national security and/or an attempt against the French (the former bad, the latter good)? Check. But suspense, or excitement? Not so much.

I want to be fair. Willig is, I think, great with pacing. She knows just how to build and hold a chapter, and when to cut it off; she spaces out the modern sections well, tying the action in twenty-first century England to what was going on in Napoleonic France (in this book) and also cutting off the reader when something big(ish) is about to happen in the main narrative, heightening what suspense there is. But in this book, there just wasn't that much suspense.

Obviously, in any book like this, you know basically what is going to happen because a) Napoleon never does take over the world, so you know the right side - that's the British, by the by, as much as my brother might not like it - win, and b) it's a romance novel, whatever other pretensions it might have, so there will be a happy ending. Now Willig might not concur with my thoughts on romance novels, and I am probably being overly judge-y, but this book, even more than the others in the series, just seemed to be so consumed with the romantic aspects of the plot that the spy part got lost. Or maybe it's just that there wasn't much spy part to begin with?

While the protagonist, Emma, was an appealing character, I prefer the books in the series where the female main characters actually know, at least to an extent, what they're involved with, and not just in the concluding chapters of the book. It gives them more to do. I don't know...I can't put my finger on it, this one just seemed extra formulaic, and when nothing is a surprise, or even a little unexpected, it takes away from the journey.

Like Jane and the Canterbury Tale, this one had some editing issues, too - at least, I think so. It was stupid stuff, like using the same name (of a poet) in adjacent paragraphs (and they were dialogue-paragraphs, so they were practically adjacent lines), and forgetting the accent over the e in the name the second time around (310). Or missing a word here and there, or using the wrong word (off by a couple letters). "If he loved and lovely hopelessly" (283) had me puzzled for a bit, until I decided that it should have been "if he loved and loved hopelessly" - unless it's a quote I don't know? There's nothing in Google about it, other than a GoogleBooks citation of Garden Intrigue.

The worst is when a character is described as wearing a waistcoat when throughout the whole d*** book they've made a big deal out of the fact that he never does (350). I mean, even just a few pages earlier. I actually kept re-reading the page, trying to figure out if I had missed something...like him putting on a waistcoat. I'd rather think that I missed something, because if it IS a mistake, than it's so egregious, it makes me feel differently about the book. Because if the author, and editors, people who should really care about the book, didn't even read the final draft closely enough to catch something like that, when why should they expect the readers to care?

 Is that mean? I mean, I'm waiting for the first draft of my boss' book to come back from the publishers for us to edit soon, and I know how hard it was just getting the ms off to them. I know that we've been going back and forth on the cover illustration (forget the overall design), because of everything from if the colors are appealing enough to if the image gave the wrong impression (that was my objection - the publishers for some reason decided to use an old engraving showing brutal, brutish Indians slaughtering poor, innocent whites. Because obviously that is both totally historically accurate and representative AND is the point of the book. Sure. I felt bad being like "HELL no" to my boss, genius that he is, and a big-wig at a big-deal press, but someone had to) but still. READ YOUR OWN BOOK. I'm not saying it's Willig's fault, but someone on her team should have caught something like that. Again, IF it's a mistake, and I do truly hope that it's not, and it's just me missing something.

Hmph. I dunno. I seem to just be b*tching about these, but when I was reading them, while I was disappointed, I also passed some pleasant time, if that makes any sense. And I'll definitely keep going with the two series (how do you pluralize "series" anyways?). If the authors return to their original form, fantastic, because there was a time when I really loved them. And even if they stay where they are, I will keep reading, because I've grown fond of the characters.

But I think I need a palate-cleanser of some contemporary fiction and some non-fiction right now!

SO behind...part 2

Yikes - okay, the books I've been reading since shortly before Thanksgiving:
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.

A Halloween Treat

Finished Tana French's latest, Faithful Place, last night.  I would have taken longer with it, honestly, and tried to savor it instead of devouring it, but I'm just one of the people who signed up to reserve it long before the book even made it to the library, so I had to return it by next Monday (so, for me, today).  Not that devouring it was hard - as with her last two books, the plot pulled me in, the pacing pulled me along, and the characters and dialogue were pitch-perfect and burrowed easily under my skin.

Also like the last (second) book, Faithful Place took a character from its predecessor as the main character: Cassie Maddox, the partner of the protagonist of In the Woods became the conflicted heroine of The Likeness, and now her "boss" in that book, Frank Mackey, is the very conflicted and very flawed star of Faithful Place. 

It's an interesting way of handling the books; they're not a series, per se, each story stands along, and stands steadily & strongly.  But if you can't - or can't if you're me, anyhow - read one and not read the others...but that is definitely more the writing than the story's.  Which is a great thing as far as evaluating the author's skill!  The second was more tied to the first, but this one, at least, is wholly self-contained.  It's funny because I read In the Woods, and was almost disappointed that the main character was being "abandoned" and replaced in the next book.  But then I read the next book, and fell in love.  And then, of course, was a little sad that she wouldn't be coming back in the third, and was sceptical of how invested I would get in Mackey's story.  And, OF COURSE, French sucked me right in...and I was not at all surprised.

As far as the story, it wasn't all that much of a "mystery," in so far as I suspected the identity of the murderer from wicked early, and a lot of the plot twists were fairly predictable, but I think the book, and the experience of reading it, is watching how the story unfolds, and how the characters navigate those twists.  I was still on the edge of my seat, so to speak, even if I wasn't shocked by anything.

On a total side note, Lauren Willig was at the Borders in Downtown Crossing yesterday, and I went and listened to her read from her latest Pink Carnation book - well, an off-shoot of the series, and got a signed copy of The Mischief of the Mistletow: A Pink Carnation Christmas, which apparently gets some Jane Austen into the mix.  I was wondering when that would happen...  Not going to read it for a while, since I am on my "only scary and/or bloody" books until Halloween kick, but should be fun.

Second Rounds, Part 2 and Other News

Finished Conspirata - it picked up towards the end a bit, but we'll see if I remember about the trilogy by the time the third book comes out, whenever that may be.
On a brighter note, C. listened to The Secret History of the Pink Carnation the other weekend when she had a long trip to a wedding, and is now embarked on The Deception of the Emerald Ring (and maybe, by now, The Masque of the Black Tulip).  I am pleased to report that she is feeling much better about the series now that the annoying narrator-voice is over with - and, as I assured her, Amy, from Pink, is the least appealing of all the heroines of the series, by far.

random update

Was perusing Barnes & Noble's website just now, came across The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton; I really enjoyed that, and The House at Riverton, both of which I read before I started this blog (I assume, because I just searched for Morton and didn't come up with anything).  Anyhow.  An author to keep an eye on.  Forgotten Garden weaves in the Secret Garden, so how can you go wrong??  Okay, well, you could, you could go really wrong, and I would be incandescent with rage because I love that book, but this was more about Burnett, not Mary, et al., so it worked.  It was subtle, and felt respectful, not gratuitous or like the author was trying to profit from Burnett's work/following in any way.   Riverton, which I believe was her first novel, and had another title outside the U.S., was not quite as strong, but still very good.  Morton does a nice job with the tensions between social classes and age groups, and her prose is quite nice, too, so the books are more substantial than they might seem.  These would be totally fine for a plane, train, or automobile ride, but still smart and thought-provoking. 
Oh, and, this blog totally is worth it, because by checking on the dates of publication, I just saw that she has another book coming out in November - which I will totally keep an eye out for, now that I don't need to worry about writing the date and title down on a scrap of paper I will never see again...

Addition: not as good, but great beach/travel reading and worth keeping an eye out for more: Christi Phillips.  She wrote The Rossetti Letter and then The Devlin Diary, a series featuring a young female historian - diff. time/place than Willig, and darker, but same general "let's have an attractive historian researching the past and trace mysteries in two time periods" thing.  What can I say - improbable semi-romances that develop in archives appeal to me :)  In any case, don't think/know that Phillips has anything in the chute at the moment, but I'll add her name here so at some point when I search "books I want to read" it will come up and prompt me to check occasionally.

International Covers: Or, "What Up With the Covers Being Bosom-ified to Catch the Stupid People Audience?"

I was just on Vanora Bennett's website, and was noticing how different the covers for the UK and US, not to mention hardcover and paperback, versions of her books are, and I thought it would be an interesting (for me, anyways) topic to explore and then talk about here.  Then, not even thinking about it, I went to Lauren Willig's website, and when I was reading about her upcoming book tour stops, I noticed she had a blog posting of her own about the ways the covers of just one of her books have changed based the audience they're being marketed to.  Really, really interesting.  I hate to say it, but it's all about snob factor, I think.  Which I just remarked in the comments on Willig's blog, whoops!  Hope she does not remember I emailed her a while ago, because the covers only disappoint me because I think they don't even HINT at the awesomeness inside...maybe I should have written that, lol!
I think the whole cover issue becomes even more convoluted when you have genre-crossing books, like Willig's - historical fiction, mystery, contemporary fiction, romance.  And they do seem to emphasize the "romance" (a/k/a bosoms and beads) on the covers of the paperbacks and mass-market offerings.
Let's take a look.
This is the version of the Secret History of the Pink Carnation that I first picked up years ago, at the little bookstore kiosk in South Station, while I was on my way to D.C. for a work trip (I think).  I remember being drawn to the matte cover, as I always am, and liking the old-fashioned illustration, and the title line with the parchment & seal kind of look.  When I turned it over and read the back, I was hooked when I heard "graduate student," even though the romance parts made me a little wary, but I wouldn't even have turned the book over in the first place if the cover hadn't caught my eye while I was casually browsing.  If, however, I had seen the cover below, which will be the "mass market paperback" cover (October, 2010 release), I wouldn't even have paused - I would have thought "romance schlock" if I had thought anything at all about it, and kept moving on.  Plus, I mean - it looks Victorian, so how are the spies supposed to be fighting Napoleon??

Carole Nelson Douglas' Irene Adler series

While g-chatting with C today - since, obviously, there is no reason why I would be actually working - the subject of Harlequin romance novels came up.  I suspect I would not enjoy those all that much, but goodness knows the Pink Carnation books (Lauren Willig) are solidly in the romance category, as much as I would love to deny it.  And that made me think about my first introduction to romance novels - the Irene Adler series by Carole Nelson Douglas.  I have loved those books since my mom gave me the series opener, Good Night, Mr. Holmes, to read after she was done with it - and defended the quality of the book to my 7th grade teacher, who thought any book with cleavage on the front was not appropriate for a book report (looking back, it was a really restrained cover, compared to some, but Whalen was an idiot, we all knew that).
The series is narrated (at least at first, but I will get to that later) by Nell Huxleigh, the naive parson's daughter from the English countryside (or something like that) who is adrift in Victorian London and gets caught up with Irene Adler, pre-affair with the Prince of Bohemia and the resulting tussles with Sherlock Holmes.  Along the way, the two meet up with Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and Anton Dvorak, as well as a minor character or two from the Holmes canon.  The books are simply fun, and, I think quite well written.  Nell and Irene's characters are both well-drawn, and they feel like real people.  Nell, in particular, I just wanted to be an older sister or something.  And they run around solving mysteries, occasionally with dashing gentlemen - and plots turning on Liberty silks and Worth gowns.  There is actually almost an annoying amount of detail given to their "costumes" as they were callled, and I wonder if that has been removed from the new releases.

The second book was called Good Morning, Irene when I read it, but is now in print as The Adventuress - I don't know why they changed the name, except maybe to sex it up, or if the text has been revised at all.  Sarah Bernhardt comes charging in as a series regular which is tons of fun.  Irene at Large has been tranformed into A Soul of Steel (I guess ditto on the sex-ing up, but really?  Who uses a Conan Doyle quote for that?  And, now that I'm thinking about it - is he cited as Conan Doyle?  Or Doyle?  The former, I think, but I will have to check with M).  Regardless of what title to use, this one is a favorite of mine (and J.T.'s!) because it introduces the character of Mr. Quentin Stanhope - who is, natch, a dashing British gentleman!  Who was a spy in India and Pakistan!  And has unconventional ideas on women's abilities to think for themselves (they can) and corsets (not necessary)!  Exclamation points abound!!!  And he gave my beloved dog a name, so I will always adore the character for that.  But, seriously, he's a heartbreaker.  Then maker.  I'm swooning a little thinking about him :)

There was a long gap, as I recall, between Irene at Large and the next book, Irene's Last Waltz, which is now known as Another Scandal in Bohemia.  Here the author or publisher, or both, are just totally drafting on Conan Doyle, but I'm fine with that.  Less fine with the fact, though, that this was the last really good book in the series.  There was an even longer pause, and I do not know what the f*** happened, but all of a sudden it was like CND had a traumatic personality split, and the fetishy side came out.  Annoying characters (AHEM, fictionalized Nellie Bly, girl muckraker) and totally gratuitous sexually based crimes drag the whole thing down with the last four volumes.  To be fair, I guess when one, Chapel Noir (Number 5) is about Jack the Ripper, you kinda can't avoid that.  But they went from books I read over and over again from my pre-teens on (numbers 1-4) to books I read half of, and skimmed half of, and then never picked up again.  After Chapel Noir there was Castle Rouge (yeah, BRILLIANTLY imaginative titles there) which concluded a two-parter.  Those were followed by another set, Femme Fatale and Spider Dance (Lola Montez lives?!)  Maybe I will try them again...like next time I have strep and if I end up at my parents' house...it kills me, because 1-4 are SO f***ing good, but I just can't handle 5-8 - that said, I will totally buy 9 if another one ever comes out.  Because I'm a book wh*re :)

Upcoming Releases

So, a few new releases from preferred authors (authoresses, actually) are on the horizon...although some a bit far off. Can't wait for the latest in the Mistress of the Art of Death series, A Murderous Procession (Ariana Franklin, 4/1/10) - they're like a CSI, but in Ye Olde England, with a multi-culti female lead - ridiculous, but great.

Also ridiculous, albeit in a totally different way, Gail Carriger's Changeless, the second installment in a series called "The Parasol Protectorate." Following Soulless (on 3/30/10) it's about a soulless (yeah, okay, F for originality in titling) chick from Victorian England (hmm, theme to my books right now?) who runs around killing vampires who do unspeakable things like...ruin tea. Or her new dress. Yes! Number one was absolutely perfect for the first book I read after surgery, while I was still doped up, but I still think the next one should be fun...

Since even I, clearly, cannot escape the whole vampire thing - The Dead Travel Fast (Deanna Raybourn, coming soon, I think) looks similar, and...maybe a good plane read? We'll see - if the Harvard library system doesn't pick it up, I don't see myself buying it - at least not for full price!

Stephanie Barron is FINALLY coming out with a new Jane Austen mystery (Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron) - but not until 9/28/10 which blows. I just do adore those so much; more than any other contemp author, I think Barron (not sure if that is her real name?) knows Austen's works, world, and writing style better than anyone else - and then there's murders. SWEET. (ooh, off topic, but note to self, never again get cupcakes from Red Velvet in DC, even if you are trying to kick it to a bartender next door - neither one of you will want them. Even if you want eachother.  DO rock the jukebox though - that will go over much better).

Last but not least, there's a little bonus from Lauren Willig this October - she's releasing "The Mischief of the Mistletoe" which is hopefully not just a published version of the short story that was on her website (as much as I enjoyed it). Her last was not the awesomest, but still super fun, and let's face it, I kinda want to be Eloise Kelly.