It’s Whatcha Reading time!
This is where we get to talk about what we’ve been reading, whether it was a good reading month, a slow one, or just plain terrible. It’s also a post that is terribly bad for all of our wallets.
Carrie: I am reading A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey by Jonathan Meiburg. ( A | BN | K ) As a result I have a new animal obsession, the Caracara, which is a like a crow brain and a raccoon’s dietary habits crossed with a vulture’s dietary habits and all shoved into a hawk’s body.
Catherine: I am very bad and am marathoning ARCs that are still a couple of months off. So I just finished Devil in Disguise by Lisa Kleypas which was great fun, and am now giggling my way through Lucy Parker’s Battle Royal, ( A | BN | K ) which could have been written just for me – witty banter and sarcasm and also amazing cakes and desserts. This is definitely going to be a comfort read for me.
Elyse: I feel bad hyping this when it’s not out till 8/24, but I just finished Bombshell by Sarah MacLean ( A | BN | K ) and it was a total squee.
It has four women who are working to take down the patriarchy one asshole at a time and a very pine-y romance.
Claudia: Catching up on The Devil Comes Courting, which I finally got from the library! Their first meeting had me smiling!
Susan: The Hellion’s Waltz, which is WONDERFUL! It has queer women conning a slimy business owner out of his ill-gotten riches to support their workers’ society, and such a lovely romance!
Shana: I am racing against the library clock to finish Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia. ( A | BN | K )
What are you reading right now? Let us know in the comments!
If you would have asked me how long it has been since I posted to WAYR, I would have said like 3 months, but it was 1 month ago! Time is flying!
Excellent:
None
Very Good:
Pudding Up with Murder by Julia Spencer: The third (and final?) in the cozy Undercover Dish mystery series, this entry was so refreshing after the bad second book (I tried this one because the first book in the series was perhaps the best in the very specific sub-genre of amateur-sleuth-with-a-fun-career-in-a-small-town I had ever read). The victim is a wealthy man with multiple ex-wives and multiple children by said exes. This one also continued the romance-arc of the MC from the first two books. The only thing that kept driving me crazy is that all of these siblings were referred to as step-siblings, but since they all had the same father they should have been called half-siblings – unless I have missed a change in family nomenclature – don’t know why it got so under my skin, but it did. This is a fun cozy series – nothing heavy here and the writing certainly isn’t spectacular, but a nice read.
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling: a fun mix of essays and personal stories from her childhood to her time as a writer of and actress in The Office. I would say some of the material does not date well – especially her discussion of body image, but other parts of the material are hilarious.
Good:
Murder on the Last Frontier by Cathy Pegau: The first in the Charlotte Brody mystery series set in Alaska just after WWI, this one started slow and grew on me by the end. On the one hand, the mystery was not great – the villian was telegraphed pretty clearly from the beginning. But I really enjoyed Charlotte as a character – a journalist who wanted to chronicle the stories of women on the frontier. I plan to read the next in the series.
Meh:
None
The Bad:
None
@JB Hunt: She’s writing Galen’s book right now!
I’m rereading all of the Psy-Changeling books in preparation for Last Guard.
Last Guard involves more Mercants, btw.
@Katie C – ‘half-siblings v. stepsiblings’ got on your nerves because you pay attention to detail, something more writers ought to do.
@Katie C & @Musette: I hate it when a writer’s tics are so obvious that I can’t ignore them. (I’ve almost made peace with writers using “you and I” instead of “you and me” as the object of prepositional phrases!) There’s a writer whose books I’ve read and enjoyed, but she’s constantly using “smirk” as a synonym for “smile” and I’ve lost count of the number of times there’s a “sad smirk” or a “loving smirk” in her books—which of course makes no sense because of the meaning of “smirk” versus the meaning of “smile.” Certainly a “Hello, Editor/Proofreader” moment.
@DiscoDollyDeb – omg, YES! on ‘I v. me’ – all anybody has to do is lose the ‘you’ and see if it reads grammatically correct. Ain’t that hard, people. and…. ‘smirk v. smile’. It can’t be that difficult to use a dictionary.. can it? I haz one on my desk and that’s why Floyd made .com (for those who abhor the turning of pages)
I think there must be a cluster of friends who are vetting/copyediting these books, more concerned about supporting the writer than giving constructive criticism. Reminds me of when I brought a cheesecake to a pastry chef friend for critique… and he actually critiqued it! I remember having to pick all my vital organs off the floor before I realized that he was doing exactly what I’d asked him to do – and that his advice was invaluable.
Maybe that’s what’s missing in so many of these poorly-written books? Dispassionate, constructive criticism? Or do the imprints just not care? Or do they even know? So. Many. Questions.
@Musette: I always read the acknowledgments at the end of a book and it’s amazing how many writers thank their Facebook Beta Readers for proofing & editing! Authors—don’t rely on people who follow you in Facebook to get into the weeds of your writing & grammar. But even books that make reference to professional editing & proofing services often have the old “I versus me” issue. A couple of years ago I read a romance with a hero named Theo and more than once in the heroine’s narration, the construction “Theo and I’s” was used as a possessive, as in “Theo and I’s house.” The cherry on the sundae was in her acknowledgments the author thanked someone she referred to as her “Fairy godmother of grammar”! (Godmother, turn in your credentials.) It was actually a good (angsty & melancholy) book…but that clumsy crime of grammar has stayed with me.
I find those kinds of errors and tics particularly apparent when I read a bunch of books by the same author right in a row. I binged 6 or 8 Sarah MacLean novels a while back and by the end of it, if another door closed with a “snick,” I was going to lose it. (See also: constructions like “sighed her pleasure”). Similarly, Julia Quinn uses “ground out” with astonishing frequency in the Bridgerton series.
@DiscoDollyDeb#47. I’m too old for this. Are you kidding … ? ‘Theo and I’s’??? Where on this quasi-civilized planet could that even be ….. I mean, who would ever say ‘I’s house’? ‘He was at I’s house way too early’?
WTHeck? I’m going back to Decadent. At least ‘Fucking her ass! Saving her life!’ is grammatically correct. 😉
@Musette – thank you for the laugh, omg that “Decadent” line!
@DiscoDollyDeb – For a good writer-editor relationship, see Ursula Vernon’s Twitter (better known as T.Kingfisher). She sometimes posts snarktastic email exchanges with her editor. There were some gems re: one of the recent Paladin books. Editor caught a lot of repetitive tics, and semicolon abuse, and had a very relatable reaction to a slow burn romance (just bang already!)
Found the Twitter link https://twitter.com/UrsulaV/status/1352707917494046721?s=20
@Escapeologist—that thread totally made my night! My personal favorite:
Editor: TIME FOR THE FUCKING
T. Kingfisher: it’s only page 16!
Editor: WE LIVE IN THE END TIMES. GO STRAIGHT FOR THE DICK.
I am dying.
@FashionablyEvil: I am DED. DAYed!
“GO STRAIGHT FOR THE DICK”
words to live by !!
@Escapeologist – here is the link
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/decadent_by_shayla_black/
the review is Life Goals for me. The comments nearly finished me off.
You’re welcome 😉
Just finished The Lantern Men, by Elly Griffiths. It’s a mystery/police procedural with a forensic archaeologist as the protagonist. This is about the 10th or 11th in the series and there is one more after this so I’m catching up.
Also reading Race Against Time, written by a journalist who began looking into the unsolved cases of the civil rights movement. Equal parts fascinating and infuriating.
@DiscoDollyDeb I’ve been driven crazy lately by the misuse of “myself” instead of I as the subject. “My brother and myself went to the beach.” UGH!
@Musette Oh my god, how could I have forgotten the most iconic romance tagline of all time? And for some reason that review thread is even more hilarious now, especially when Nora Roberts randomly shows up in the middle of it, and then is all politely, “Sorry, carry on with the porns.” It’s like being in the audience for a Romancelandia pantomime.
I started THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO last weekend and hit the 1/3 point yesterday at page 414 woo hoo! What a wild ride.
@Lucy – I know! I am really, really new to the genre(s) so when the Blacks were suggested (by a goodreads pal whose taste I admire) I just grabbed them out of the library in a nearby town. The clerk (a nice, middle-aged man) was giving me SUCH covert looks… Well!
I didn’t have the nerve to bring them back to the library in person – put them in the drop box.
But that line will stay with me forevah!
My mother says that one girl she had in a Freshman English class – many years ago now – not only inevitably used “its” and “it’s” interchangeably, but occasionally also used “i’ts.”
Count of Monte Cristo is one of the shortest reads for a long book that I can think of, and such fun.
@Susanna – I’ve also seen “its'” show up sometimes.
All, the easiest way to check is to substitute “he” for “it”. If you would use “he’s” (for “he is” or “he has”) then use “it’s” (for “it is” or “it has”). If you would use “his” then use “its” for something belonging to it.
Example for all three uses:
“It’s been fun but now it’s time to go so put the toy back on its shelf.”
@Jcp, this is how I fund my book budget. For e-books, I collect credit card reward points and cash them in for Amazon gift cards. The credit card I use is Chase Freedom Visa. It has no annual fee. I use for all my grocery shopping and gas so it adds up quick, and whenever I have $50 worth of points I cash it in. I haven’t paid out of pocket for a Kindle book in years.
For paper books, I swap my used paperbacks on paperbackswap.com. You might have to go on a waiting list for a new and popular book, but my tbr pile is so huge I don’t mind. There is a small annual fee, I think $25, but it’s worth it because I’m also in a couple of histrom chat groups where we exchange tips about books on sale and new releases, and swap books with each other, which is a legit way to bypass the waiting list.
@Darlynne:
This comment is being submitted extremely late, but I wanted to let you know that I have recommended Martin Turnbull’s work here before when discussions of Old Hollywood came up. I found out about this series when it was still being written, probably around the time of the release of the first book, and bought all the books until I could own them all and read straight through, which I did around the release of the last book. At this point, I read them all one after the other, and really enjoyed the look into that setting. I’m so glad you’re enjoying the books, which I think get better as the series goes on. I listen to them in audio, which are available through whispersync if you by the kindle versions, which was an enjoyable experience, but I will note that the narrator changes a few times if that sort of thing matters to you. In other words, the narrator is not the same for all nine books.