Book Review: Knowingly Familiar

This week’s book review is Alma T.C. Boykin’s Knowingly Familiar. It is Book 16 in the Familiar Tales series. And, until this week, was the latest in that series of stories about the magical community in Riverton. I like to think that the Riverton of the familiars is the Riverton my grandparents lived in and I visited frequently as a small child. The weather and some of the town features are similar…hmmm….but, back to the book.

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Book Review: Divided We Fall

I’ve always liked anthologies because I can get a taste of multiple authors at one time. Anthologies also introduce me to authors I haven’t yet read and finding new authors is always fun. This week’s book review subject is Divided We Fall: One Possible Future edited by Tiffany Reynolds and Patty McIntosh-Mize. The authors include Sarah A. Hoyt, Brad Torgerson, Mack Henkel, Jon Del Arroz, and more. There are twelve stories in all. All twelve are good to great, but I’m only going to go into detail about a few of them here.

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Book Review: “What Does This Button Do?” by Bruce Dickinson

This week’s book review is not an urban fantasy selection. It’s Bruce Dickinson’s autobiography, What Does This Button Do? Like many people, I have an eclectic range of interests when it comes to reading. Well, let’s be honest, I’ll pick up pretty much anything if it looks interesting. On a three-week backpacking trip through Europe after college I read five or six Jason Bourne novels…in a row. I discovered how formulaic they were, but they kept me engaged until the next hostel or pension. Hostels had (or may still, I don’t know) libraries that functioned as sort of pick up/drop off points for books (this was waaaaaay before phones and tablets or e-readers. Way before). Pick up a book in London, read it, drop it off at hostel in Edinburgh or Paris or Nice or wherever, and pick up another one. I read a lot of things in terms of genre and authors that I might not have otherwise. It was definitely a way to broaden my already wide reading horizons. All that is to explain why I read and write urban fantasy but end up reviewing a book by and about the lead singer of Iron Maiden.

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Book review: Paladin’s Sword

The weekly book reviews continue! This week I’m reviewing Fiona Grey’s debut book, Paladin’s Sword, the first in the Professor Porter series. We are introduced to Dr. June Porter, newly minted PhD in folklore and military history, on her way to her first full-time position at Paladin University in New Hampshire. In addition to her new PhD, June is also in possession of magic which, unlike the PhD, she would like to put behind her. But the universe is a fickle thing, and it has other plans for her.

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Book recommendations

Based on discussions elsewhere and the ongoing shift of education toward a complete leftist/Marxist world view, I have added a page to this blog for book recommendations (Book titles, linked in main menu). The idea is to compile a list that is, yes, conservative in nature, and gives an accurate as possible look at history and politics in the US and the world (so, no 1619 Project bullshit, please). I have put in a few books off the top of my head, but I encourage everybody to add their recommendations in the comments. Also, if you have any suggestions for children’s history books, that would be wonderful.

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Book Review: The East Witch

Starting this week, I’m adding a weekly (maybe every two weeks) book review to the blog. I think I’m going to keep it on Tuesdays, but that will be determined by how other things get scheduled. The writing prompt responses for More Odds Than Ends are due (sorta) Tuesday evening, and I usually procrastinate enough that I don’t get them done until then. I expect that the majority of books I review will be in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, but giving that I am a politics and history geek, there may be some of those as well. All of my reviews are in the mode of “hey, I found this fun/interesting/enthralling and you might too.” So, if you agree or disagree, you can comment accordingly. Just keep it polite, thanks. We’ll see how this all goes.

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Books and Reading

Posts on books, reading, bookshelves, collecting books, buying books, culling books, not culling books, have been coming to my attention in the last few days (check out Cedar Sanderson’s post, Bibliophilia). I have a LOT of books. My husband has a LOT of books. Between us we have TONS of books. We live in a small two-bedroom apartment. There is not a lot of extra room. We turned the front room, which was meant to be the main bedroom, into a home office for both of us. It has five bookcases. The hallway has two, the living room has three, and the bedroom has one. This isn’t even dealing with the ten or so banker’s boxes of books that came from my campus office.

Before we moved away from California twenty years ago, I purged at least a hundred books. These were books that I had bought, read once (well before electronic books) and hadn’t picked up again. When we moved in together I had boxed them up and put them in storage. A year later, realizing I had not once looked for any of the books in storage, I donated them all to the local Goodwill.

My husband and I have different tastes in books. He prefers, and almost exclusively reads, non-fiction. It can be historical, historical analysis, political, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him reading fiction. I, on the other hand, love urban fantasy (duh), swords and sorcery, mysteries, and science fiction. I also like a range of authors like Tom Clancy, P.G. Wodehouse, John LeCarre, Terry Prachett. We both like biographies, especially about bands and singers we like (we do share pretty identical tastes in music).

I have books that I’ve collected (for example all of the Oz books, a collection started by my grandmother for my father), books that I re-read often, and books that I’ve read once and keep because, well…because. There are reference books, and of course, books from grad school and beyond. I love being surrounded by books. And, I do love the electronic readers such as Kindle, etc. The ability to take a few dozen books on vacation or any trip is intoxicating.

The first time I went to Europe, I did the post-college-backpack-through-Europe-for-three-weeks thing with a couple of friends. One of the things I loved was picking up books in hostels or pensions reading them over the course of the next few days, dropping them at the next hostel/pension/b&b and picking up another one. That way you didn’t get weighed down carrying books, yet you were able to read several. That was how I ended up binge reading Robert Ludlum’s Bourne series. We must have followed that individual around Europe. I also learned that Ludlum has a definite formula (hero is wrongfully blamed, government baddies after him, ex-wife/gf/lover helps out despite rocky end to relationship, saves the world) that he uses in Every.Single.Book. By the time I got to the last two or three books I was challenging myself to figure out the plot arc by the end of the first chapter. I was correct each time.

It doesn’t matter what genre or type or subject, books provide escape, knowledge, information, ideas, a different world view, laughter, life lessons, puzzles, and entertainment. Sometimes all in the same book. In other words, books offer the world. Reading is not just fundamental, it’s necessary for me.

Writing has become another way for me to escape. Now I am indulging all my day dreams of worlds and discoveries in my own stories. And, I can’t tell you how much fun it is!

What kind of books/stories do you like? How eclectic are your tastes?

Enjoy a lazy Sunday! If it’s nice outside where you are, take a book outside and read!

Image by Birgit Böllinger from Pixabay