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review 2020-12-03 07:00
Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops
Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops - Shaun Bythell

Having read his first two books, I was surprised when this arrived at how small it was.  But good things / small packages and all that.  It may be a small, slim volume, but it's spot on and hilarious.  I've never owned a bookshop (yet) but I recognise these people from time spent in bookshops - and a library or two - everywhere.  I found myself reading most of it aloud to my husband, and we took turns naming those we know who fit Bythell's descriptions a little too well, inside or outside a bookshop.  

 

MT self-identified with type 3 of the Homo qui desidet or Loiterer, sub-type The Bored Spouse (though in his defense, he just buys his books way too fast).  I was relived not to have identified with the American sub-type of Family Historian, since I leave all that stuff to my mom, who is a first generation American, so comes by it honestly, at least.  I'd like to think I fall firmly in the bonus category of Cliens Perfectus as I generally enter a bookshop, talk to nobody, browse everything, and almost never leave without a stack, and the idea of haggling is one I find personally abhorrent, but then, doesn't everyone think they're the Perfect Customer?

 

All in all, a fun way to spend a few hours as long as you have a healthy sense of humor about humanity.

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review 2020-09-30 06:54
Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles #8)
Staked - Kevin Hearne

A couple of things occurred to me while reading Staked:  it feels like Herne doesn't really like his main character, Atticus; at least, not judging by the amount of existential pain he dumps on him.  The other is that I can see the inspiration, right down the the scatalogical humor, of the character in his new series that starts with Ink & Sigil - clearly in Owen, the arch-druid and Atticus' mentor. Owen is quite feral and off-putting, no matter how gold and good his heart may be.

 

Staked is told through the rotating viewpoints of all three druids: Atticus, Granuaile and Owen, and the meandering is epic.  We begin and end with the titular war with the vampires, but in between there's a battle-seer-horse needing rescue, ecological retribution being wrought, treaties being hammered out in Asgard, greek gods getting vaporised, and all matter of other trivia.  It wasn't boring but I disliked being passed off between characters, especially when I had little use for Granuaile's daddy issues and Owen's feral lack of expletives that didn't include his bollocks and backside, and those of everyone else's.

 

I do enjoy Atticus's adventures and character, and I like Oberon even more when I read him, as opposed to listening to a narrator scooby-doo his voice.  I enjoy his interactions with the various deities and villains, and especially enjoy the verbal sparring between himself and Leif.  It's a detriment to the books, if not the overall story arc, that Hearne felt it necessary to take all of Atticus' interesting friends away from him; he suffers from the lack of intellectually challenging interactions.   Overall, though, it was a good enough story to keep me reading, and I enjoyed the ending well enough.  If one chooses, one could end the series right here and everything save Ragnarok would be tied up neatly.  At this moment, I'm content to leave the series here, but I can't say I won't change my mind.

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review 2020-07-17 09:27
Urban Aviary: A Modern Guide to City Birds
Urban Aviary: A Modern Guide to City Birds - Stephen Moss

I bought this because it was pretty.  The author takes us on a whirlwind tour across the world, highlighting one bird in each major city that has, despite all the odds, thrived.  Each gets one page, and the facing page is a watercolour of the bird, done by Marc Martin, and each is astonishingly wonderful in its simplicity and detail.

 

As a bonus to the eye-candy, I learned quite a bit about a range of birds; even the ones I'd already heard of had facts that were new to me, so it's a win all around.  

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review 2020-07-02 03:02
Tales from Margaritaville
Tales from Margaritaville: Fictional Facts and Factual Fictions - Jimmy Buffett

A recent re-read for me, though I dare not try to add the dates, as I'm afraid BL will blow my original dates out.

 

I love these stories and continue to love them every time I read them.  They remind me of my home, and their eccentric and quirky.  What I didn't remember from previous re-reads was the Australian thread that runs through both the book and many of the stories.  Buffett opens with a quote from Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, in an introduction titled "Walkabout", and at least one - two? - stories include references to aboriginal myth.  A small thing, but a nice parallel for a Florida girl on a decade-plus walkabout down under. 

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review 2020-05-18 03:21
A Sprig of Sea Lavender
A Sprig of Sea Lavender - J.R.L. Anderson

I bought this a few years ago, when Otto Penzler was selling his collection through his bookshop, Mysterious Books.  It's a review copy of an author I'd never heard of, but the short catalog blurb made it sound interesting: mysterious death on a train, unknown works by Gainsborough, Turner and Constable found with the body, along with a  sprig of - you guessed it - sea lavender. 

 

This is a mid-century mystery, and it suffered from the usual quirks of that age:  instant, yet chaste, romance, and a complete disregard of the fair-play rules of mystery plotting.  As such, the reader, by the end, is presented with a fait accompli in both the romance and the mystery's resolution, without having any idea whatsoever how the main character got there, although he does explain it all at the very end.  

 

By today's standards, it's all a bit thin, naive and 2 dimensional, but I had fun with it nevertheless.  It wasn't trying to be anything other than an entertaining mystery and, while I've read others that are greater successes, it generally achieved its goal.  

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