Monthly Archives: July 2017

#JubilantJuly – July 9 – Shoes on Covers

by

0

20170708_160820

I loved What Not To Wear, back when we were watching television regularly, so I bought several of the associated books. I think I have 4 by the various hosts. This one is actually pretty awesome. (I almost used it for #wannabe, but realized I had a dearth of books with shoes on the covers!)

You can find the index post for Jubilant July here.

#90sInJuly – July 7/8

by

0

20170708_162403A second double post, to make up for missing yesterday. July 7 was “Wannabe” – and while it’s not quite the meaning of the song, I’ve always wanted to be an urban/backyard homesteader. I’ve come to realize I’m not capable of it, at least not here. The heat and the humidity saps what little energy I have, and being hypothyroid means I’m not very capable of dealing with extreme temperatures. I overheat very quickly out in these nasty east coast summers. But I can dream and continue to read about it!

 

20170708_154710July 8 is “Heart-Shaped Box” – and I actually have one! Looking at the design on it reminded me of this series by Claire Delacroix – the delicate filigree borders and the trinkets on each cover. I do on occasion enjoy a cheesy romance. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine!

You can find the rest of the 90sInJuly posts indexed here.

#JubilantJuly – July 7/8

by

0

20170708_125756Double post, because I forgot yesterday! July 7 is “Starts with M/N/O” so I have a stack of urban fantasy by a variety of authors! I had a surprising amount of titles starting with M to pick from – Moon this, Moon that, mostly. Less N’s, and almost all of those were Night. O was a little harder, and you can see I cheated a little bit by not counting “The” as a word, on The Outlaw Demon Wails.

 

 

 

20170708_130338July 8 is “Family” and for that I have a set of books given to me by my uncle when I was a very little girl. Like a lot of girls, I grew up slightly horse crazy, and Marguerite Henry might be responsible for a lot of that! These books carry a lot of nostalgia for me – they lived on a little shelf on my dresser most of my childhood. King of the Wind was usually my favorite, but they’re all fantastic.

 

The Jubilant July index post can be found here.

Canadian Book Challenge and other Miscellany

by

0

No book review today, unfortunately, the last few days have been more chaotic than I was expecting. But next week I’ll be reviewing The Crown’s Fate, the sequel to The Crown’s Game, a duology about Russian enchanters serving the Tsar. Spoiler: The Crown’s Game was absolutely amazing, and so far, Fate is turning out to be a worthy successor!

I have signed up for The 11th annual Canadian Book Challenge! I’m really excited to expand my reading outside of my normal comfort zone (urban fantasy, high fantasy, etc) and try to read more multiculturally. I’ve been researching books by First Nations authors, but the hard part seems to be finding books my library actually has! It’s supposed to be 13 Canadian books (set in Canada/about Canada/written by Canadians) in the next year. (Canada Day to Canada Day.) So if all goes well, one of my book reviews each month should be about a Canadian book!

20170708_141810In other news, my husband and I helped a friend vend at Anthrocon in Pittsburgh last weekend, and that was an extraordinary amount of fun! I got a little bit of reading time in the hotel room while she was at parties, but I spent the largest amount of my weekend selling leather masks to people. She had a record weekend, so it was pretty awesome. All of the hotels and restaurants near the conference center go all out for the Con – our hotel keys have original art of a derpy-looking unicorn! I got a couple of chances to walk around the vendor room, and there were a couple of small publishing houses there, but (and this makes perfect sense, it’s Anthrocon, after all) they catered exclusively to Anthro writing. I thought about picking up a book anyway, but I just didn’t see anything that called to me. I don’t mind fantasy whose world involves anthro animals – I loved Redwall, after all – but all of the blurbs felt much more like “this book is about anthropomorphic animals doing stuff because they’re anthropomorphic” than “they just happen to be humanoid animals doing things.” It’s a small distinction, I suppose. And for the main audience at the Con, not an important one. (I’m obviously not the target audience.)

I have a lot of interesting books heading my way in my local library system, including a biography of Jon Stewart (of The Daily Show fame), a memoir by an abortion doctor, and a retelling of Captain Hook’s origin story. Exciting things to come!

 

#90sinJuly – July 6 – Where the Wild Things Are

by

0

I was not expecting these two books to be as good as they are. I mean, really, Bambi aside, who cares about a story told from the viewpoint of a deer? But these are amazingly written. The animals have their own rituals, and limited magic, and beliefs. They’re absolutely fantastic, and fantastical, books. Fire Bringer (free on Kindle Unlimited right now!) is about deer, while The Sight gives the same treatment to wolves. I may have to re-read these, as apparently Fell, a sequel to The Sight, is out.

20170704_170645

The 90s In July index post is here.

#JubilantJuly – July 6 – A Whole New World

by

0

This was a random book I picked up in a used book store – the angel on the cover, and the description, about fallen angels and spaceships, intrigued me. And if it wasn’t good, it was only 99 cents wasted, right? I loved it. I am fascinated by this world. It’s a derelict colony ship, adrift so long that the AI has fractured and gone a little insane, but some part of it realized the ship is in grave danger of being destroyed by a nearby sun, and it must bring its inhabitants together enough to fix the damage done to the ship and get it moving again. The inhabitants, however, don’t really even understand they’re on a spaceship. It’s really quite well done.

20170704_165800

The Jubilant July index post can be found here.