Mary Russell is a (half?) Jewish (half?) American girl who takes up with Sherlock Holmes. Like him, she is brilliant and unemotional; she becomes his protégé at age fifteen, and they solve cases together. In The Beekeeper’s Apprentice they run up against a villain more villainous and clever than all the clever villainous villains heretofore encountered by Holmes (he says) (though obviously not because I have heard he got outwitted one time), and they work in tandem to thwart the villainously clever villain. This did not bother me because I have hardly read any Sherlock Holmes stories (apart from Hound…
26 CommentsReading the End Posts
Whoa, how did I not review this yet? I thought I had – but apparently I only thought about it, A LOT, and then forgot to do it because I was reading through the Amelia Peabody books. (Still fun!) The Magicians is about a boy called Quentin Coldwater who is obsessed with a series of books about a fictional land, Fillory. One day, he interviews for and gets into a school of magic, Brakebills, and he spends the next lots of years learning magic, and practicing magic, and eventually (is this spoilers? I feel like no, because you see it…
18 CommentsI like a bonfire! Sadly, the American fall holiday is Halloween, which does not entail bonfires. Candy, yes. Slutty costume versions of really strange things like bumblebees, yes. But no sparklers, very few sausages, and rarely fireworks or bonfires. And no burning effigies at all, unless Bonfire Night happens to coincide with the Bama game. Whenever Bonfire Night rolls around, I get nostalgic for the Little Grey Rabbit books. Did anyone else read these? They are charming – all about a rabbit and a hare and a squirrel that live together and have little adventures. In one book they go…
14 CommentsI was determined to finish this book before the end of Halloween which I have now done. This is my bonus book to wrap up the RIP Challenge, which, along with everyone else, I thank Carl for hosting. I’ve had fun reading all my spooky books and reading what everyone else thought of spooky books they read. Lots of Shirley Jackson. Lots of Wilkie Collins. These are the books I read: Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger I’m Looking Through You, Jennifer Finney Boylan The Seance, John Harwood Silent in the Grave, Deanna Raybourn and this one, my bonus one; and…
19 CommentsAll of them actually. I have three. Because I’m just lucky like that. And they are all fantastic in different ways. But in this case I am referring to my mother’s mother. For one thing she is beautiful – we are always inspecting her wedding pictures and things when we come to visit her, and then we tell her that she is more beautiful than Ingrid Bergman. And she laughs at us but dude, it is so true. Ingrid Bergman would cry like a little girl and slap on gallons of makeup if she saw how beautiful Grammy was on…
14 CommentsREREADING IS AMAZING. Sometimes I forget how many amazing books I have already read, because I am busy reading new books, which are also (sometimes) amazing. But this is what I’ve been reading lately. Magician’s Ward, Patricia C. Wrede Much like Mairelon the Magician. Too many names of people, but I don’t care because I am more interested in Kim’s learning magic and having a Season and Coming Out at a ball and having Offers of Marriage to turn down. In pretty dresses. Can there be more pretty dresses? And God, pretty shoes? I need new shoes so much. My…
33 CommentsMy fourth book for the RIP Challenge, because apparently I just cannot get it together to read The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher right now. Silent in the Grave is the first of (so far) three mysteries with Lady Julia Grey, whose husband passes away at the start of this book. After his death, private investigator Nicholas Brisbane tells her that he believes her husband was murdered. She rejects this possibility out of hand; but a year later, after her mourning time is over, she finds clues in her house that make her wonder – was he murdered? And if so,…
11 CommentsAnd also, by a wild coincidence? The birthday of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s erstwhile lover, creepy anti-Semitic xenophobe in his middle-ish years, and slightly more subdued jerk after that. LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS WAS NOT A VERY NICE PERSON. He had an extremely difficult life BUT NOT EVERYBODY WHO HAS A BAD CHILDHOOD TURNS OUT TO BE AN ASS. This one time, Lord Alfred Douglas decided he hated all the gays everywhere and was renouncing any such tendencies on his own part, and as part of his new resolution, he SUED EVERYONE and then embarked on a MEAN CAMPAIGN OF…
18 CommentsY’all, I’m applying for graduate school. It is stressful as hell. I’m telling you because the more people I tell, the more shaming it would be for me not to go through with it. And yes! I am using shame as a motivator! If it can beat the crap out of me every time I do something wrong, then by God I can make it work for me to do something constructive AND AWESOME. Since launching on this project of telling everyone, I have outlined my personal statement, asked for two recommendations, started an online application, and found the hard…
31 CommentsI read this book mostly in bed over several nights, while the weather outside was obligingly turning into fall. Although there are things about the cold weather that are miserable (mainly miserable for my hands and feet, which get very poor circulation as my blood is too busy keeping the rest of me warm like a furnace), they are all outweighed by the snuggly loveliness of cuddling down into your bed when it’s cold outside. (It’s not cold outside yet, by the way – just coolish and lovely – but I am anticipating the necessity of getting out my cache…
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