Author Archives: Goddess in the Stacks

Book Review: His Hideous Heart

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his hideous heartHis Hideous Heart
Edited by Dahlia Adler
Young Adult / Retellings / Short Stories / Horror
468 pages
Published September 2019

The first of my spooky reads this month, His Hideous Heart is a collection of thirteen redone tales from Edgar Allan Poe. The timing for this review is perfect, because today is also the International Poe Festival here in Baltimore! I am heading down to the festival today, and should have photos to post tomorrow!

This book was incredibly well done – one of my favorite parts about it is the inclusion of the original versions of the eleven stories and two poems, in the second part of the book. A few of the tales chosen were ones I had never heard of – I’m much more familiar with Poe’s poetry than his prose. So having the originals to read made the experience much richer.

I think my favorite was the retelling of Annabel Lee, one of my favorite poems. Tessa Gratton turned it into a story of two young lesbians and called it Night-Tide, and it beautifully captures the yearning and loss from the poem. A Drop of Stolen Ink, inspired by The Purloined Letter, was another fantastic, futuristic piece. They are all fantastic pieces, though, who am I kidding? I think my least favorite was actually the one built from The Raven – it’s the original poem, but with most of it blacked out so the un-redacted words form a new poem. It’s novel, but just not as good as the rest, in my opinion.

Like much of young adult lit recently, the diversity was on point; The Murders in the Rue Apartelle, Boracay includes a trans character, and several of the tales star queer people. The viewpoint character in Happy Days, Sweetheart (The Tell-Tale Heart) is black and Mexican.

Overall, this is a beautifully done modern take on some of Poe’s best tales, and I definitely want to buy a copy for my own shelves. I actually need to re-buy a book of Poe’s tales – somehow, though my husband and I each had a copy when we married, somewhere through our moves we’ve lost both copies! I’ll have to keep an eye out today at the festival, though I think what I really want is one of Barnes & Noble’s pretty collector’s editions.

From the cover of His Hideous Heart:

Edgar Allan Poe may be 170 years beyond this world, but the themes of his terrifying works live on in modern fiction for young adults. And with this collection, a host of some of today’s most beloved authors come together to reimagine Poe’s most terrifying, thrilling tales in new and unexpected ways.

Whether Poe’s stories are already familiar or discovered here for the first time, readers will revel in the terrors and thrills of his classic tales and how they’ve been brought to life in thirteen utterly unforgettable ways.

Friday 56 – The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics

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lady's guide to celestial mechanicsThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics, picking up right after our main character has presented her translation of a scientific text to the exclusively male “Polite Science Society.”

Mr. Hawley kept his eyes on Catherine, swept out his hand, and brushed the pages, unread, to the floor.

Aunt Kelmarsh gasped, hand over her mouth, and Mr. Frampton’s eyebrows shot up.

Mr. Hawley sighed. His tone was all sweet disappointment. “My dear countess: you must know you are being unreasonable.” While Catherine choked on shock and outrage, he turned to Miss Muchelney, putting a hand on her wrist and gripping it with earnest entreaty. “Please do not think I disparage your eagerness to help, my dear girl – it is only that as men of science, we must uphold certain standards if our work is to be accorded its proper value in the community. You understand, of course.”

“Oh yes, Mr. Hawley,” Miss Muchelney replied tightly. “I understand you perfectly.”

Book Review: Country Wisdom and Know-How

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country wisdomCountry Wisdom and Know-How: A Practical Guide to Living Off the Land
by M. John Storey
Nonfiction / Homesteading
1055 pages
Published 2004

This is a heck of an encyclopedia on homesteading topics. It gathers up a bunch of bulletins previously published by the Storey company, collating them into one very large book. It’s divided into six main categories: Animals, Cooking, Crafts, Gardening, Health and Well-Being, and Home. Each of those categories is divided into 2-5 subcategories, then individual columns under those. For example “Home” is divided into “Inside the House” and “Fences, Orchards, Outbuildings and More.” Under the latter category we have topics ranging from “Making Maple Syrup” and “Cold Storage for Fruits & Vegetables” to “Building Stone Walls” and “Build a Pole Woodshed.”

There’s an entire line of these encyclopedias; this seems to be the most broad of them, as others have slightly narrowed focus, like Garden Wisdom & Know-How or Woodworking Wisdom & Know-How. They are absolutely not books you’d read cover to cover, but are also books I want on my shelf and in my Survival Library. I only have this one from the library currently, but I definitely want to own it, and the entire line.

Country Wisdom & Know-How is well put together, with LOTS of diagrams and instructions. It’s often hard to visualize how something goes together if you’ve never done it before, and the book solves that with the diagrams, very clearly. It’s a gigantic book, but it’s PACKED with information on a huge number of topics – 144 individual topics plus 8 appendices!

From the cover of Country Wisdom & Know-How:

(This is actually the description from Goodreads, as the back cover just has a list of topics)

Reminiscent in both spirit and design of the beloved Whole Earth Catalog, Country Wisdom & Know-How is an unprecedented collection of information on nearly 200 individual topics of country and self-sustained living. Compiled from the information in Storey Publishing’s landmark series of “Country Wisdom Bulletins,” this book is the most thorough and reliable volume of its kind. Organized by general topic including animals, cooking, crafts, gardening, health and well-being, and home, it is further broken down to cover dozens of specifics from “Building Chicken Coops” to “Making Cheese, Butter, and Yogurt” to “Improving Your Soil” to “Restoring Hardwood Floors.” Nearly 1,000 black-and-white illustrations and photographs run throughout and fascinating projects and trusted advice crowd every page.

Library Loot Wednesday

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I spoke of Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book and A Boy Named Shel in last Thursday’s book review, but I also picked up His Hideous Heart: thirteen of Edgar Allan Poe’s Most Unsettling Tales Reimagined. It’s one of my planned Fall spooky reads, and is especially timely because we’re going to the Poe Festival this Saturday, October 5th! Living in Baltimore, we have all kinds of Poe things, and I’m excited about the festival. I’ll try to take lots of pictures!

TTT – Books With Numbers in Their Titles

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is books with numbers in their titles.

First I want to mention Gideon the Ninth, which I read recently and WOW. Amazing. Fantastic adult SFF with lesbians and necromancy and – just wow. Right up there with it is Six of Crows, which I’m sure will be on plenty of lists this week because it’s SO. GOOD. I’d better find The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms on plenty of lists, too, because N.K. Jemisin is amazing.

Number One Chinese Restaurant was a surprisingly charming contemporary fiction book that captured food service perfectly. A Thousand Beginnings And Endings was a gorgeous anthology of short stories based on Asian mythology. Forest of a Thousand Lanterns is a retelling of Snow White told through an Asian lens, and is equally gorgeous.

One Person, No Vote was a horrifying nonfiction book on voter suppression in the US. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century was another horrifying nonfiction book of essays about recognizing fascism. Dear Fahrenheit 451 is a series of letters from a library to various books, and was a delight to read. Period: Twelve Voices Tell The Bloody Truth rounds out my nonfiction picks this week, and was a beautifully diverse look at menstruation. (Fahrenheit 451 should probably get an honorable mention, though I haven’t read it since high school and so don’t have a review on this blog for it. I should perhaps remedy at least the first part of that.)

This was a surprisingly hard post to write! I’m glad I have everything logged on Goodreads, because I was able to skim through my reading history for books with numbers in the titles. My memory was DEFINITELY not up to this task!

 

 

Book Review: There’s Something About Sweetie

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there's something about sweetieThere’s Something About Sweetie
by Sandhya Menon
Young Adult Romance
378 pages
Published May 2019

There is so much to love about this book. I read When Dimple Met Rishi a while back, and fell in love with Rishi like I VERY rarely do with fictional characters. This book is about Rishi’s brother, Ashish. I don’t care for Ashish as much as I liked Rishi, but Sweetie – oh, girl.

See, Sweetie is fat. But despite how all the traditionalists around her would have her feel, she’s okay with that. She’s still the fastest runner on the track team, an amazing singer, and has a close group of loyal friends.

So when she’s approached by Ashish’s mother to arrange dating him, and it’s turned down flatly by her own mother because she’s “not at his level” – she makes the decision to show her mother she CAN be happy, and have the things her mother wants for her, WHILE BEING FAT. And so is born the “Sassy Sweetie Project,” which is adorable.

I love Sweetie, and being a fat person myself (who also snagged a hottie, not gonna lie) I identify SO MUCH with her struggles here. Snide remarks from family friends, the constant “if you’d just lose weight” from the people close to you, the expectation that you can’t be happy while fat – Sweetie faces all of that, tells it to sod off, and proves you can be fat and healthy and happy.

One thing I really like about the Menon’s arranged relationships – the Patels, at least, treat it as “we’ll arrange this, but it’s up to you to follow through. If you don’t like each other, we won’t force you to go through with this.” Which is a nice thing to see. It’s probably just an American stereotype that says arranged marriages are forced relationships; not knowing the culture first hand, I can’t say which one is closer to the truth. BUT it challenges American assumptions about arranged marriages, and that’s a great thing, and another reason to read diversely. (I’m willing to bet Menon’s version of it is closer to the modern norm for arranged marriages, at least.)

I love that even in a sweet, lighthearted romance such as this one, reading diversely challenges American assumptions about other cultures. I feel like this is especially important in Young Adult lit – presenting other cultures to teens before opinions about them are fully formed. Because I’ll admit, I have a instinctual “ACK!” reaction to the thought of an arranged marriage – in my mind that infringes on all the independence and free will I’ve clawed so hard for – but it’s worthwhile to be reminded that sometimes it looks like this, and not “Hey, my 14-year-old daughter, you’re going to marry a 40-year-old man tomorrow, deal with it” (though that does certainly happen, but it happens in the US, too! Don’t believe me? Read here).

Both of Sandhya Menon’s books that I’ve read present arranged relationships in a much more positive light than typical American media. It’s important representation, and the characters and relationships are a joy to read to boot.

(Tagged LGBT for an adorable gay couple who are friends of Ashish’s and show up throughout the book.)

From the cover of There’s Something About Sweetie:

ASHISH PATEL didn’t know love could be so . . . sucky. After he’s dumped by his ex-girlfriend, his mojo goes AWOL. Even worse, his parents are annoyingly, smugly confident they can find him a better match. So, in a moment of weakness, Ash challenges them to set him up.

The Patels insist that Ashish date an Indian-American girl – under contract. Per subclause 1(a), he’ll be taking his date on “fun” excursions like visiting the Hindu temple and his eccentric Gita Auntie. Kill him now. How is this ever going to work?

SWEETIE NAIR is many things: a formidable track athlete who can outrun most people in California, a loyal friend, a shower-singing champion. Oh, and she’s also fat. To Sweetie’s traditional parents, this last detail is the kiss of death. 

Sweetie loves her parents, but she’s so tired of being told she’s lacking because she’s fat. She decides it’s time to kick off the Sassy Sweetie Project, where she’ll show the world (and herself) what she’s really made of.

Ashish and Sweetie both have something to prove. But with each date they realize there’s an unexpected magic growing between them. Can they find their true selves without losing each other?