Romance and Smoochies: The Experience

So, this weekend I read my first romance novel.

Weirdly enough, the male model is not actually wearing a kilt.

I have never read a romance novel before.

Let me be perfectly clear: This is not because romance novels are inherently "lesser" or shameful or that there is anything laudable about not reading romance novels.

Romance novels are amazing. There are many stories of empowered ladies taking their sexuality into their own hands (heh) and it is a fascinating feminine literary space with so much variety that everyone can find something to pique their ... interest. There are also nipple swords.

But for a variety of reasons, I just never picked one up. So inspired by Smart Bitches and several fantastic friends as well as being challenged as a librarian to read outside my comfort zone, I picked one up.

Bad Boys in Kilts by Donna Kauffman (which I keep typing as Bad Boys in Quilts for some reason. Possibly because that sounds like a book full of soup and snuggling as a blizzard rages outside your cabin in Vermont) is a collection of three short stories surrounding hot Scottish brothers (each hotter than the last) in the remote Scottish village of Glenbuie.

There is the mechanic and the pub owner who have some shenanigans on a pool table, some verrah unprofessional business meetings between the distillery owner and the web designer and a writer who drives into a wall and the shepherd (for reals!).

In brief(s) (heh):
- There were a lot of nipples
- A whoooooooooole lotta nipples
- Those nipples tightened a lot. That sounds like it hurts.

It was a light, fluffy romp (heh) of a book. Not having any understanding of the genre, I can't really provide anything in the way of critical review.

But I can say that after reading it, I wanted to take a trip to Scotland a drive my rental car into a wall. In a good way.

Future Slings: The Fall Bue Collection

I like to think of fall books as books that are being released too far in the future for me to pre-order because I might move or get crushed by a bookshelf (occupational hazard of librarians).

It seems that the theme for this year's fall YA releases is blue. Moody, mysterious blue. Which will go nicely with my newly organized-by-colour bookshelves.
 

The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White (September 10)

By the author of the Paranormalcy (which is a bit of a mouthful to pronounce), The Chaos of the Stars features a protagonist who is the daughter of Egyptian gods. And, Egyptian gods like to keep it  in the family. 

Like, exclusively.

Everything stays in the family.

Everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrything.

I'm talking Flowers in the Attic levels of togetherness. 

Should be interesting.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black (September 3)

The blurb says that this is a tale of rage and revenge, of guilt and horror, and of love and loathing.

So, you know, Monday.

Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger (November 5th)

The second book in Gail Carriger's steampunk YA Finishing School series.I predict that there will be curtsies, curiosities and conspiracies. And tea.

Lots and lots of tea.

Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan (September 24th)

I admit that I am kinda bummed about the cover (I love silhouettes) but looking forward to seeing Kami Glass, girl detective, again.

Across a Star-Swept Sea by Diana Peterfreund (October 15th)

Set in the same universe as For Darkness Shows the Stars, Across a Star-Swept Sea looks to be a dystopian retelling of The Scarlet Pimpernel with less wigs.

Pre-order/places holds at your local library today!

The Bookslingers Bookslinging Podcast #24: Murder, murder, murder

Congratulations CLA Book Award winners! (Dear CLA, your website needs some work.)

It's TD Book Week, so check out bookweek.ca for events in your community.

If you don't know about WikiWars and the way female American Authors is being divided into "American Authors" and "American Women Authors," and you really enjoy being infuriated, you might want to check that out.

Puffin is releasing new editions of four beloved Canadian children's classics! Included are Awake and Dreaming by Kit Pearson, Mama's Going To Buy You A Mockingbird by Jean Little, Run by Eric Walters (which oops, neither of us has ever read) and Underground to Canada by Barbara Smucker. And none of them has an inexplicable buxom blonde on the front, so they're already a vast improvement on the last time somebody tried to revive a Canadian children's classic *coughAnneofGreenGablescough*.

This week's book is the latest and greatest (maybe? my feelings are confused) in the Flavia De Luce series by Alan Bradley: Speaking from among the Bones. If that title gives you the shivers, you're already in just the right mood for this book.

Books from this week's podcast:

• Speaking from among the Bones by Alan Bradley
• The Fire Chronicle by John Stephens
• Grave Mercy by Robin Lefevre
• Scarlet by Marisa Meyer
• The Madness Underneath - Shades of London #2 by Maureen Johnson
• Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan
• The Phryne Fisher series by Kerry Greenwood
• The Pigeon Pie Mystery by Julia Stuart

Your Morning Peruse

No doubt Miss Maiar is still recovering from the foaming-at-the-mouth bliss of watching Iron Man 3, so I am here to bring things back to the things that matter. Books.

And wait it out until I see it on Sunday.

The Edgar Award winners have been announced! 

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY CAREEEEEEEER?

 Congrats to all the winners and the nominees.

I suppose this is just another reason to finally read Code Name: Verity. I know that it's going to be amazing but I am convinced that I am going to cry myself into an asthma attack.

Future Slings: Doll Bones by Holly Black

Holly Black is cool.

She has a fantastic scary-book writer name, she wrote The Spiderwick Chronicles and YA books that I am too wimpy to read, and she sometimes wears a hat.

Black is back for middle grade audience (essentially I have created this entire blog post just to type that) on May 7th with Doll Bones.

It looks like another welcome addition to the highly specialized genre of "Creepy Ass Evil Doll Books for Children."

Because that is the look of the doll that children can't wait to bring into their bedrooms

I hated dolls.

Especially dolls with eyeballs. A well-meaning grandparent gave a three-year-old me a baby doll that had eyes that opened and closed depending on how you held it. It was a lovely present (although, as an older sister, I never saw the point of baby dolls as I could grab the real thing from the crib and roll them around in the dirt). I christened the doll as "Harry."

And then screamed that it was evil and locked it in the closet.

Needless to say, I will be reading Doll Bones in the daytime with one hand around a cricket bat. In case the dolls come for me.

Other classics of the Creepy Ass Evil Doll Genre (in no particular order of creepiness) are:

The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones - Dolls are trying to kill you and all your friends

Ragweed by Garth Nix - The moral of the story is, DOLLS ARE EFFING EVIL

The Dollhouse Murders by BettyRen Wright - Dolls are not only often gender stereotypes, they are also MURDERERS

Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy - THIS BOOK HAUNTED ME AS A CHILD. IT HAUNTS ME STILL.

Labour of... Gritted Teeth

Happy May Day, Bookslingers!

Not only is this a day where you can unabashedly dance around a maypole (as much as such a thing can be done unabashedly) but it is also a day to celebrate that fact that children are no longer legally allowed to work in mines in the US and Canada!

Labour has penchant for toques

This is the day where we salute those who fought for the  working day many of us "enjoy" today: eight hours of work, eight hours of pleasure/reading and eight hours of sleeping/reading.

And it was a fight. Peruse the Wikipedia article on History of Union Busting in the United States. And then this one.

So, having this in mind, you get a peak into the source of my ire towards Dear America: The Diary of Pringle Rose by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.

Ostensibly, this is a book about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 that killed hundreds of people and destroyed great swaths of the city. Unfortunately, the historical tragedy takes second billing to Pringle Rose's bizarre struggle with unions and domestic melodrama.

Part of my issue with the book was not the writing, which is solid and engaging, but with whose story was being told. It really brought me back to Bill Campbell's critique of another book in the Dear America series which tells the story of Japanese American Internment through the eyes of a priveledged, white protagonist. Though not to the same extent, the misplaced protagonist displaced the story from where it should have been.

Pringle Rose is the daughter of a rich mine owner in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The workers in his mines are on strike for better conditions and the situation is quickly descending into violence. Pringle is a world away in Merrywood School for Girls in Philadelphia but her life is overturned when her parents are killed in a mysterious carriage accident - her brother Gideon (who has Down Syndrome) is the sole survivor.

When her uncle arrives with his inevitably cruel wife, Pringle doesn't know if she can go on. Her only bright spot in a life darkened by grief is Rabbit, the handsome miner who courts her with Alice in Wonderland quotes. But when her aunt finds the letter to her friend detailing their little romance, Pringle decides to run away with her brother to Chicago to start a new life.

Seems like a hopping place... Hop right into the river, am I right, fleeing survivors?

She finds work as a nursemaid in the home of a labour newspaper publisher. But when their young male relative comes to visit, everything changes.

Oh, and Chicago burns to the ground.

So, why so grumpy Miss Corene?

Well, maybe because:

- Does Pringle really intellectually engage with the struggle of the workers? Nope. They are just a mass of threat to her family. Pringle hears about the working conditions and the mining disasters but doesn't sympathize or seek to understand what the unions are asking for. Why add the details to the story if you aren't going to engage with them?


- Why not tell the story from the point of view from an immigrant coming to the city? Or a child from one of those mines that Pringle's father owns who decides to leave that awful life for the city? Why did this story have to be told from a place of privilege and money? Does that help the story of the Great Chicago Fire? Pringle looses very little during the fire but what about the people whose lives were destroyed? Why not a story about picking up the pieces after the fire?

- Every person involved with a union is either charmingly childlike in their understanding of how the world works in compared with Pringle or treacherous, unreliable, dangerous jerks. That is all. Gwen and Peter Pritchard open their house to Pringle and her brother. They give them both lodging and employment. But the are portrayed as simplistic.However, Gwen's brother is revealed to be HIGHLIGHT FOR SPOILERS the murdering murderer of Pringle's parents and Rabbit. Rabbit is a murderer and he is the only person in the book actually involved in strike. FOR REALZ. So when this is revealed, the Pritchards kick Pringle to the curb and she wanders into the Great Fire to work out her sadness. And the Pritchards are portrayed as the villains. Damn working people sending rich girls to fiery deaths!

Let's all read Lyddie by Katherine Patterson instead.

Fighting for your right not to die of byssinosis

And Flesh & Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy.

Grumpily yours,
Miss Corene

OMG FLAVIA (Speaking from Among the Bones)

GUYS DID YOU KNOW THERE WAS A NEW FLAVIA DE LUCE BOOK?

I try to keep up, but as I am not, like Corene, immersed in an environment when the publication dates of all and sundry new tween and YA novels come flying constantly at my face, I often miss them entirely, even when they are awesome amazing incredible clever murder mystery books about genius chemist girl detectives like the most excellent Flavia De Lucie in Alan Bradley's new Speaking from Among the Bones.

This time, I was unaware until some weeks ago when I saw a girl on the SeaBus reading it, and immediately rushed out to buy it.

And then all the bookstores were closed, so the next day I tried to get it out of the library, but all the copies were checked out and I am too impatient for waitlists about 60% of the time.

So I bought it at a tiny local shop on Vancouver Island while visiting my mother.

BUT THE POINT IS I have read it, it's amazing, and guys, this post could be full of so many spoilers, but I'm going to restrain myself because this book is slated to be Book of the Week in our next podcast. Cut for maybe, sort of, vaguely, potentially spoilers.

Your Morning Peruse

So, in case you weren't aware, there is a book called I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems By Cats.

Yep.

That's a thing.

In honour of this, NPR has a delectable comic tribute to cats and the poets who loved them.

No surprise, Margaret "Momma can get nasty!" Atwood makes the list with this painfully true quote: "I have a lot of cats. What else can you do with a B.A. these days?"

I think she may have a shot as a professional goalie.

Your Morning Peruse

Good morning, Bookslingers!

After a brief break (mostly to recover from the new Flavia de Luce book but more on that later), we have your mid-morning peruse.

Via Flavorwire a fantastic gallery of 25 Vintage Photos of Librarians Being Awesome.

Possibly the most awesome photo of the bunch is this one:


The caption reads: "The Librarian at Tuskegee and his assistant, 1910".

SOMEONE WRITE THIS BOOK NOW.

These two look like they got up to some cracking crime-fighting adventures between shelf reading and storytime.

Your Morning Peruse

Sebastian Faulks  is writing an authorized Jeeves and Wooster sequel.

Let me express my feelings on the subject through the dramatic stylings of classically-trained actor, Alan Rickman.