Midnight at the Blackbird Café (Re-read)

Midnight at the Blackbird Café
by Heather Webber
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250198594
Publication Date: July 16, 2019
Pages: 336
Genre: Magical Realism
Publisher: Forge

Nestled in the mountain shadows of Alabama lies the little town of Wicklow. It is here that Anna Kate has returned to bury her beloved Granny Zee, owner of the Blackbird Café.

It was supposed to be a quick trip to close the café and settle her grandmother’s estate, but despite her best intentions to avoid forming ties or even getting to know her father’s side of the family, Anna Kate finds herself inexplicably drawn to the quirky Southern town her mother ran away from so many years ago, and the mysterious blackbird pie everybody can’t stop talking about.

As the truth about her past slowly becomes clear, Anna Kate will need to decide if this lone blackbird will finally be able to take her broken wings and fly.

I’ve been struggling all week with the logic failure of a local government that builds a heated, indoor pool billed as a rehabilitation pool, then not only opens it up to children, but books it just about rock-solid with swimming lessons, leaving the oldies and the injured cowering in corners of the pool while parents let their young ones run amok like it’s a water park, not a rehabilitation pool.

All that to say I needed a comfort read this weekend. The kind of comfort only magical realism can provide at the moment. Midnight at the Blackbird Café was sitting on my shelf, and brought to mind by my recent read of Webber’s newest magical realism book, The Lights of Sugarberry Cove. I read Midnight when it first came out in 2019, and I’d forgotten enough that it was time to re-visit it.

In my original review, my biggest issue was that “The power of love is a wonderful thing indeed, but my nature is not one that is comfortable with being immersed in heart tugging storylines.” This time around, that wasn’t so much an issue; either I was prepared for it, or I’ve read enough contemporary/MR since that I’m more accustomed to it.

What I did notice this time around, following as it did on the heels of The Lights of Sugarberry Cove, was the pacing. This one started off much more slowly for me. In fact it dragged for the first few chapters, until the two main characters started interacting with each other. Once we’re there, the story finds its groove and it hummed along nicely for me.

I probably should have knocked the rating down to 3.5 stars because of the two, I like The Lights of Sugarberry Cove better, and because there’s no way any reader doesn’t know how this story ends. But it’s meant to be a feel-good novel, and a comfort read. I was comforted and felt better after reading it, so I’ll keep it at 4 stars.

Liz Hedgecock Magical Bookshop Books 1 and 2

Elentarri first brought these novellas to my attention and they sounded like fun.

Every Trick in the Book
by Liz Hedgecock
Rating: ★★★
Series: Magical Bookshop Novellas #1
Publication Date: August 4, 2020
Pages: 200
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Self-published

Turning over a new leaf doesn’t always go according to plan...

When Jemma James takes a job at Burns Books, the second-worst secondhand bookshop in London, she finds her ambition to turn it around thwarted at every step. Raphael, the owner, is more interested in his newspaper than sales. Folio the bookshop cat has it in for Jemma, and the shop itself appears to have a mind of its own. Or is it more than that?

Gradually Jemma starts to make a difference ... and then the anonymous letters start arriving. Who is behind them, and why?

As the threats escalate, and the shop becomes increasingly turbulent, Jemma and Raphael must work together to find the culprit. And what else will Jemma find in her investigations?

Every Trick In The Book is the first in the Magical Bookshop humorous mystery series, set in modern London.

The first book in the series, I was a little stumped, at first, as to what the actual plot of the story was going to be, as a lot of it was setup: Jemma losing her job, stumbling across Burns’ Books (perversely fabulous name), and finding a job at the quirky and odd bookshop. I immediately liked Raphael, loved Folio (the cat) and found Jemma irritating, as I think she was meant to be. The plot of the story doesn’t come until a bit past the halfway mark, and felt a bit rushed, but I enjoyed getting there, and I enjoyed watching Raphael squash Jemma’s constant attempts at being a corporate drone. The ending left off with a cool discovery that’s not properly described to the reader, so I was grateful to have the second one already queue’d up.

Brought to Book
by Liz Hedgecock
Rating: ★★★
Series: Magical Bookshop Novellas #2
Publication Date: September 15, 2020
Pages: 160
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Self-published

Not all new brooms sweep clean…

Business is booming at Burns Books — so much so that Jemma and Raphael hire a new assistant. And that’s when things start to go wrong.

Luke’s helpful, he’s knowledgeable, and the customers like him. So why is the shop up to its old tricks, and a few new ones? And what's the matter with Folio?

Jemma and Carl take it upon themselves to investigate, and end up finding out a lot more than they bargained for. Will working at the bookshop ever be the same again?

Brought To Book is the second in the Magical Bookshop humorous mystery series, set in modern London

The plot of this one kicks off a lot sooner, although magical or not, the bookstore’s turnaround felt completely unrealistic. Still, I wasn’t reading the story for the realism, which is fortunate, because while the first book could have been arguably magical realism, this novella is firmly in fantasy territory, with the introduction of new characters and magical world-building with a loose structure and rules, both of which are tested, which leaves Jemma stumped, Folio diminished, and Raphael in an angry panic. I thought the climax cleverly done and overall the story was fun.

There’s a few more books in the series, and I’ve got them on the list for future reads when I want to dip into something fun, frothy, and frivolous.

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London
by Garth Nix
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781760631246
Publication Date: September 1, 2020
Pages: 374
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Eighteen-year-old art student Susan Arkshaw arrives in London in search of her father. But before she can question crime boss Frank Thringley he's turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the outrageously attractive Merlin.

Merlin is one of the youngest members of a secret society of booksellers with magical powers who police the mythic Old World wherever it impinges on the New World - in addition to running several bookshops, of course! Merlin also has a quest of his own: to find the Old World entity who arranged the murder of his mother.

Their investigations attract attention from enemies of the Old and New Worlds. Soon they become involved in an even more urgent task to recover the grail that is the source of the left-handed booksellers' power, before it is used to destroy the booksellers and rouse the hordes of the mythic past. As the search for the grail becomes strangely intertwined with both their quests, they start to wonder… Is Susan's long-lost father a bookseller, or something altogether more mysterious?

I think I’m being unduly harsh on this book. I bought it on the strength of the title and the blurb, but when it arrived I discovered Nix is an Australian author. I have a very sketchy relationship with Australian fiction; sketchy as in ‘I rarely like it’. But still, it sounded so good…

… and I almost DNF’d it on the second page of the prologue. The writing was too too. Too flowery, or verbose, or trying too hard. Maybe all of the above. Still, it seemed a little harsh and judgy and I paid for the damn book. The start of chapter 1 was not encouraging either. I have an aversion to numbered lists and the one on page 8 (the only one, thankfully) screamed of pretentious, or overly precocious, writing.

Still, aware of my bias, I persevered, and by the end of chapter 1, the writing had evened way out, and the story had found its footing. I found myself drawn in by the characters, cheeky though Merlin is (I don’t think we’re meant to believe he’s the Merlin, just of, perhaps, his lineage). I still think the author tried to hard to be relevant and current, while writing a book placed in an alternate early 1980’s, but that also fades away as the story progresses. By about 1/3 of the way in, I was left with what the story should have been all along – a rather entertaining fantasy adventure written for the late teen readers – or at least the characters are all late teens. The book won an Aussie book award for “older children”, which to me is NOT late teens, but early teens. I’d easily give this to my 12 year old niece to read, though some of the innuendo might fly past her unnoticed. Or not.

I was disappointed by the lack of time spent in actual bookstores. Considering 2 or the 3 main characters are book-sellers and 8 out of 10 of the rest are as well, there was only 1 scene that took place inside bookshops. The rest is a series of attacks, kidnapping attempts, and general mayhem that starts and ends in London, taking in the Lake District in the process. It was fun, but entirely lacking in bookstores.

I suppose the ending was predictable, but not so much as to dim the journey getting there. I have no idea of this book was meant to be a standalone, or the start of a new series, but it’s obviously left open to be one, even though no dangling threads remain. If a second book is published, I’d likely read it. I found the characters endearing, and maybe in the next book, they might spend time in the actual bookshops.

The Lights of Sugarberry Cove

The Lights of Sugarberry Cove
by Heather Webber
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250774620
Publication Date: October 26, 2021
Pages: 263
Genre: Magical Realism
Publisher: Forge

Sadie Way Scott has been avoiding her family and hometown of Sugarberry Cove, Alabama, since she nearly drowned in the lake just outside her mother’s B&B. Eight years later, Sadie is the host of a much-loved show about southern cooking and family, but despite her success, she wonders why she was saved. What is she supposed to do?

Sadie’s sister, Leala Clare, is still haunted by the guilt she feels over the night her sister almost died. Now, at a crossroads in her marriage, Leala has everything she ever thought she wanted—so why is she so unhappy?

When their mother suffers a minor heart attack just before Sugarberry Cove’s famous water lantern festival, the two sisters come home to run the inn while she recovers. It’s the last place either of them wants to be, but with a little help from the inn’s quirky guests, the sisters may come to terms with their strained relationships, accept the past, and rediscover a little lake magic.

This is a gentler, sweeter, more idealised version of Sarah Addison Allen’s brand of magical realism. Having read quite a bit of Webber’s other work, I was prepared for the almost-but-not-quite saccharine theme, but after the ‘meh’-ness of my previous two reads I was in danger of slumping, and was in the mood for some magical realism. This fit the bill nicely and I found myself delightfully pulled into the story, something I needed.

The book bounced between the POVs of the two sisters and how they deal with coming together after 8 years to help their difficult mother after a minor heart attack. Everybody’s carrying guilt over something and not telling anyone else about it. And of course there’s a love interest left behind, and a marriage in jeopardy. But while the tropes are all there, Webber avoided dealing with those tropes in a cliched fashion. Nothing outrageous (beyond being magical realism, of course), but just subtle choices that made for an interestingly predictable story instead of a boringly predictable one.

It all comes together a little too neatly at the end, but the story redeemed itself for me with the twist in the last few pages. Webber surprised me and delighted me with that twist, so it gets 4 stars in spite of the too tidy ending everybody gets. It is a feel-good kind of novel, after all.

And now I suspect I’ll be re-visiting Sarah Addison Allen’s books.

Howards End is on the Landing: A year of reading from home

Howards End is on the Landing
by Susan Hill
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781846682650
Publication Date: January 1, 2009
Pages: 236
Genre: Books and Reading, Memoir
Publisher: Profile Books

Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again.

A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life. Wandering through her house that day, Hill's eyes were opened to how much of that life was stored in her home, neglected for years. Howards End is on the Landing charts the journey of one of the nation's most accomplished authors as she revisits the conversations, libraries and bookshelves of the past that have informed a lifetime of reading and writing.

I had issues with this book and with the author. Mostly the author. She starts off strong, impressing me with the fact that the first book she chooses from her library to read again is a Dorothy L. Sayers. She goes on the name more than a few books we both have on our shelves, and I’m just settling in with delight, when she suddenly turns uppity. And I don’t mean with the name dropping – she’s met famous authors and they make up important moments in her memoirs, that’s fine. But in the fourth or fifth chapter she opens with “Girls read more than boys, always have, always will. That’s a known fact.” Well, that’s a bold and rather inflexible statement. I don’t quarrel with girls reading more than boys historically, or even presently, but to state categorically that they always will, and state it’s a known fact rankled. I knew Susan Hill is an author and publisher, but I didn’t know she was a prognosticator too.

If only this was a one off, I’d probably have forgotten by now. Alas it was not. In a chapter about writing in books, she says “Bookplates are for posers.” Wow. She then explains how she unapologetically scribbles in all her books, folds down pages, cracks spines, etc. But Bookplates are for posers. Nice to know where Susan Hill draws the line. Personally, I’d never use a bookplate or write in my books, or dog-ear pages, but I’m also not going to judge anyone who chooses to do those things to their books. I’m totally ok judging Susan Hill for her self-defensive and hypocritical judging of others who enjoy bookplates, though.

In another chapter she talks about covers and fine bindings, offering a backhanded compliment to The Folio Society by praising their products, but suspecting those who own them as “not being a proper reader”. To which she can kiss my south-side. I own Folio Society editions and I read them. In fact the list of authors and stories I’ve discovered because of my Folios is long and distinguished.

In between all these grievances, and in spite of all the books we have in common, she fails to connect with me, the reader. While I admire her honesty and forthrightness about her trouble with Jane Austen’s work – even though it mystifies me – I can’t help but think her failing is the same one she perceives in Austen’s work: “… I never feel empathy with, or closeness to, an Austen character.” I could not find a closeness or commonality with Susan Hill.

I finished the book out of sheer cussedness, I think. I have her second memoir, Jacob’s Room is Full of Books, but I can’t see mustering any enthusiasm for it after this one. Perhaps out of perverseness, to see who she manages to belittle or insult next, but I doubt I’ll ever be that curious.

The God of Lost Words (Hell’s Library, #2)

The God of Lost Words
by A.J. Hackwith
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781984806413
Series: Hell's Library #3
Publication Date: November 2, 2021
Pages: 353
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Ace

Claire, rakish Hero, angel Rami, and muse-turned-librarian Brevity have accomplished the impossible by discovering the true nature of unwritten books. But now that the secret is out, in its quest for power Hell will be coming for every wing of the Library.

To protect the Unwritten Wing and stave off the insidious reach of Malphas, one of Hell’s most bloodthirsty generals, Claire and her friends will have to decide how much they’re willing to sacrifice to keep their vulnerable corner of the afterlife. Succeeding would mean rewriting the nature of the Library, but losing would mean obliteration. Their only chance at survival lies in outwitting Hell and writing a new chapter for the Library. Luckily, Claire and her friends know how the right story, told well, can start a revolution.

Pfft. When I read the first book of this trilogy, I had high hopes, even though I had a problem connecting with the main character. There was so much to love in the first book. The second book was blah; I still didn’t connect with the main character, and worse still the rest of the characters went flat for me as well, and I’d intended to stop after 2. And then I found out it was planned as a trilogy, so there was only one more book and the completist in me reared her stubborn head.

I should have smacked her and told her to shut it. Everything went wobbly for me in this one and by the midway point, I found myself irritated by little things that in a book I was enjoying I’d have glossed over. Nothing about the story development surprised me or delighted me. 2/3s of the way in, the author’s efforts at inclusivity, while admirable, often left me stumbling over the text and the pronouns.

Also admirable was the author’s obvious passion for stories and her desire to share with the reader the necessity of stories to the human experience, but she got way too mushy about it for my tastes – and I had to laugh, because in the Acknowledgments she admits that she wrote this book during the lockdowns, leading her to be mushier than usual and apologising not at all the us cynics.

Towards the end, she skirts with breaking the fourth wall, which I generally don’t mind, but it seemed like she was espousing a brand of atheism almost directly to the reader, which I do mind. I like her alternate philosophy as a construct for a story, but draw the line there.

I still stand by the beauty of the story’s premise; I just couldn’t connect fully with the characters and despite my willingness, failed to be drawn in by this particular story. But the completist in my is happy to know how it ends, and rests easy.

A Swift and Savage Tide (Captain Kit Brightling, #2)

A Swift and Savage Tide
by Chloe Neill
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781984806703
Series: Captain Kit Brightling #2
Publication Date: November 30, 2021
Pages: 342
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Berkley

Captain Kit Brightling is Aligned to the magic of the sea, which makes her an invaluable asset to the Saxon Isles and its monarch, Queen Charlotte. The Isles and its allies will need every advantage they can get: Gerard Rousseau, the former Gallic emperor and scourge of the Continent, has escaped his island prison to renew his quest for control of the Continent.

Gerard has no qualms about using dangerous magic to support his ambitions, so Kit and the crew of her ship, the Diana, are the natural choice to find him—and help stop him. But then Kit’s path unexpectedly crosses with that of the dashing and handsome Rian Grant, Viscount Queenscliffe, who’s working undercover on the Continent in his own efforts to stop Gerard. And he’s not the only person Kit is surprised to see. An old enemy has arisen, and the power he’ll wield on Gerard’s behalf is beautiful and terrible. Sparks will fly and sails will flutter as Kit and crew are cast into the seas of adventure to fight for queen and country.

I read the first in this series purely on the strength of how much I enjoy Neill’s other series; the premise of this one didn’t appeal to me on the surface, but so many of my UF series have either finished, or just take a long tome between books. I’m glad I did – I really enjoyed the first one, and when I saw this one was out, I snatched it up.

A Swift and Savage Tide takes up where A Bright and Breaking Sea left off. The easiest way to describe the premise is to call it an alternate reality where magic exists but is banned from use; Napoleon by any other name is still Napoleon, and the Great Briton by any other name is still the UK. In this reality, women are equals to men on the sea, and captain Kit Brightling is a well respected and daring captain of the Diana. Or course there’s a romantic interest, and of course he’s a Viscount, but he’s a reluctant one (of course) and more interested in serving his queen in his capacity of Colonel in the army, but his intelligence work puts him on the Diana and he and Kit have to work together to hunt down a threat they thought was dead before he destroys the Queen’s navy and invades.

There’s nothing deep here, except perhaps the sea they sail on. It’s just a rollicking good time, with likeable characters, a decent plot, and the kind of well-written atmosphere one can escape into and lose some time in. As with all Neill’s series, I enjoy the camaraderie the characters share, and healthy relationships abound, with a delightful lack of nemesis’. I was sorry when it ended, and I hope it won’t be too long before the third one comes out.

The trouble with anthologies … and Charles Dickens

Great Stories of Crime and Detection
by H.R.F. Keating, Various Authors
Rating: ★★★★½
Publication Date: January 1, 2002
Pages: 1784
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Folio Society

I’ve accumulated a solid collection of thick crime anthologies over the years and I’ve really enjoyed all of them – I get the chance to find new authors, experience a wide variety of writing styles and have access to mysteries and authors I might not otherwise be able to find.

But the one problem I’ve had again and again is that I pick up one of the large anthologies and often can’t remember which stories I’ve read and which I haven’t. While I appreciate the anthologies as a chance to expand my mystery horizons, I know I also tend to gravitate to the same types of stories – so when I see one that looks good I find myself double guessing myself: did I think that the last time and have I already read this?. I know I could look up reviews, but that takes way too much time no matter how organised my online ‘bookkeeping’ is.

A few weeks ago, it occurred to me that the simplest solution was the best: I had MT pick up a pack of index cards, and I started slipping on in the front of each anthology. Now when I read a story, I jot in down on the index card, along with the date read and a quick rating.

This has been very handy, and I figure, if someday my books travel beyond my library, maybe someone will get a kick out of finding my ‘ephemera’ and comparing notes with me.

All of which brings me to my mini-review of the first story I’ve read in Great Stories of Crime and Detection, V. I. Volume I covers “The Beginning” up until 1920, and starts with the obvious, Murders in the Rue Morgue, which I’ve already read, so I chose the second story To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt by Charles Dickens. Don’t ask me why, because, with the exception of A Christmas Carol I can’t tolerate Dickens’ paid-by-the-word writing style. Maybe I felt the need to torture myself with mind-numbing prose?

If I did, I failed, because this story was delightful! Written with an economy of style I can hardly credit to Dickens, but fully fleshed out and wonderfully creepy. At 10 pages long it’s a compact ghost story about a man who sits on the jury of a murder trial, and how the victim sees to it that justice is done. It’s an unconventional follow-up to the conventional starter, and it makes me eager to find out what’s to follow. I doubt I’ll follow them in strict order, but I have high hopes that they’ll all be wroth reading, and I look forward to filling up my index card.

It has left me feeling completely flummoxed by Charles Dickens though.

No Time to Spare: Thinking about what matters

No Time to Spare: Thinking about what matters
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9781328661593
Publication Date: January 1, 2017
Pages: 215
Genre: Essays
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

From acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin, a collection of thoughts — always adroit, often acerbic — on aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation.

Ursula K. Le Guin on the absurdity of denying your age: “If I’m ninety and believe I’m forty-five, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub.”

On cultural perceptions of fantasy: “The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?”

On breakfast: “Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime.”

Ursula K. Le Guin took readers to imaginary worlds for decades. In the last great frontier of life, old age, she explored a new literary territory: the blog, a forum where she shined. The collected best of Ursula’s blog, No Time to Spare presents perfectly crystallized dispatches on what mattered to her late in life, her concerns with the world, and her wonder at it: “How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.”

Previous to this book I knew of Ursula K. Le Guin, but had never read her work; she’s primarily known for her science fiction writing and I’m known for not liking science fiction. But I’d read something about her somewhere that left me with the impression that she had an interesting voice outside her known genre, and I’d heard great things about this collection of essays, so I bought it a couple of years ago, and it’s sat on my TBR ever since.

Recent events however, have left me ping-ponging back and forth between light reads and chewier reads in an effort not to dwell on all the things that are outside my control at the moment. One of those things outside my control at the moment is my attention span, or the lack thereof, so I thought this a perfect time to pull this one off the shelf (which was within reach, thankfully).

I enjoyed this book, with a few blips along the way, from start to finish. Le Guin was a very talented writer with a timeless voice, and even when I didn’t agree with her, I enjoyed reading what she had to say. Of course, the essays about her cat Pard were my favourites, but those about ageing put things into a perspective I’d never seen better articulated, and I wanted to go back in time and hug her for her essay on belief vs. thought.

I’m still unlikely to ever read her fiction, but there’s at least one more collection of essays I’d love to get my hands on, if only to visit with this wonderful author and her mind one more time.

Game On: Tempting Twenty-eight

Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight
by Janet Evanovich
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9781398510128
Series: Stephanie Plum #28
Publication Date: November 17, 2021
Pages: 286
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

When Stephanie Plum is woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of footsteps in her apartment, she wishes she didn’t keep her gun in the cookie jar in her kitchen. And when she finds out the intruder is fellow apprehension agent Diesel, six feet of hard muscle and bad attitude whom she hasn’t seen in more than two years, she still thinks the gun might come in handy.

Turns out Diesel and Stephanie are on the trail of the same fugitive: Oswald Wednesday, an international computer hacker as brilliant as he is ruthless. Stephanie may not be the most technologically savvy sleuth, but she more than makes up for that with her dogged determination, her understanding of human nature, and her willingness to do just about anything to bring a fugitive to justice. Unsure if Diesel is her partner or her competition in this case, she’ll need to watch her back every step of the way as she sets the stage to draw Wednesday out from behind his computer and into the real world.

It’s another Stephanie Plum, and I wanted something easy that had a chance of making me laugh out loud. I got it.

Evanovich appears to have needed a break from the Morelli vs. Ranger writing, and instead brought Diesel back for the pursuit of an internationally infamous computer hacker, lurking in the Berg, killing off rival hackers that managed to hack his system. A nice change from the mobsters Stephanie is usually running from. Also a nice change was the flip of luck between Stephanie and Lulu; it’s Lulu who now finds herself target of every embarrassing, messy happenstance that the two run into.

Mostly though, it’s just an enjoyable you-know-what-you’re-getting read. It wasn’t spectacular, but it wasn’t bad either.