The Creative Tarot

author: Jessa Crispin

The Creative Tarot takes a new approach to reading tarot cards that I just loved. This book focuses on using the tarot to spark creativity. There’s very little about spreads, but a lot about how each card connects to the creative process.

My personal sense of tarot cards (and I realize that mileage varies here) is that their power is more psychological than supernatural. Author Jessa Crispin takes a similar attitude towards the cards – it’s loose enough so that I doubt you’ll be offended if you ascribe a more empirical and mystical meaning to them, but it’s also accessible to more skeptical souls like myself. She sums up the history of the cards by showing how the cards’ development and art mirrored artistic movements of different times, and she uses examples (including literature, music, performing arts, and visual arts) to help explain the meaning of the cards.

Each card gets a short chapter with a black and white illustration from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. At the end of every chapter Crispin lists “Recommended Materials” that are selected to give the reader a different way to think about the card. For instance, for The Hermit, she suggests Walden, by Henry David Thoreau; Gravity and Grace, by Simone Weil; and “the photography of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore.” Other cards may involve films or plays or paintings or music. She does this because “I believe strongly in cross-pollination. I think writers should be inspired by visual art, filmmakers by music, sculptors by poetry, and so on.”

I thought this book was accessible, fresh, fun, and helpful. I particularly enjoyed her advice regarding The Fool. She says that The Fool is a great card to follow at the beginning of a project, or when you are stuck in the middle and you need to let go and trust your intuition. However, she adds, “Don’t let your optimism shade into naïveté. The Fool is not a great person to be when you are signing contracts, right?” Noted! This book is a great resource whether you like elaborate spreads or just like to pick random cards and admire the art.

– Carrie S

Nonfiction

Daring in a Blue Dress

author: Katie Macalister

Daring in a Blue Dress is going to be a romance that hits a lot of catnip buttons for readers: it has a shy, beta hero, there’s restoration of a crumbling Tudor-era mansion, there’s a troupe of medieval reenactors, there are secret passages and smuggling, and there is an octogenarian lady who is Having None of this Shit. I loved the first two thirds of the book, but it fizzled at the end for me.

Alden Ainslie just blew his wad on a Tudor mansion that he’s planning on restoring. Problem is, the former owner, Lady Sybilla, refuses to leave and he doesn’t feel right about kicking an 80-year-old out of her house. Also she rented the grounds to a medieval arts troupe that teaches sword fighting and archery and the like. Working for the troupe is Mercy Starling, perpetual college student, and she and Alden immediately develop pants feelings for each other.

I loved Alden. He’s painfully shy, especially around women. He bought the house specifically to avoid people. Mercy is excellent at recognizing his social anxiety and working with him, which I loved.

As I said, I liked this book, but struggled at the end. I felt like a lot of exterior conflict was dumped on top in order to give the hero and heroine something to do. I would also classify the book as more whacky/silly than outright funny. Still, readers looking for a lighter contemporary might find this right up their alley.

 

– Elyse

Contemporary Romance, Romance

Karma Girl

author: Jennifer Estep

Karma Girl is very silly and yet I could not stop reading it. It doesn’t make much sense and the characters are all kinda dumb and yet I was highly entertained. Either it’s a book with modest ambitions that meets them well, or my headache meds were working better than I thought.

Karma Girl is about a reporter named Carmen who is obsessed with the idea of karma even though she clearly does not understand what that word actually means. On her wedding day she realizes that her fiancé is cheating on her and that he’s a super hero in disguise. Carmen exposes his true identity to the world and makes a career of exposing others. All this ends when she exposes the identity of a superhero who commits suicide because of the reveal. She winds up trying to bring down a super villain while having a romance with Striker and dealing with her feelings of guilt over the suicide.

Even if we cut Carmen some slack for having to operate within certain genre conventions, she’s still a bad reporter. But hey, everyone in this story is as dumb as a bag of hammers (insert Captain Hammer joke here). The romance goes back and forth for no reason and the characters have exactly one personality trait each with the exception of Carmen. And Carmen is annoying. When she told a woman that walking down a street at night is “just asking for trouble” I seriously wanted to punch her in the teeth.

And yet, I kind of enjoyed this silly romp through superhero romance. I loved Lulu, Carmen’s Girl Friday. Lulu whizzes around in a wheelchair and has her own romance with Henry, a nerdy superhero who connects with computers. I’d have preferred to read a story about them, as they seem engaging and smart. The book is fast paced, with a nice sense of humor and a goofy comic book tone. Everyone who isn’t a villain has their hearts in the right place, at least metaphorically, and I love stories about good people. I can’t say this book is great, but when you need some fluff to get you through a bad day, it’s pretty fun.

– Carrie S

Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Urban Fantasy