panSupposed to be more accurate than the other translation I read nearly 20 years ago, restoring a lot of cut material. There may have been good reasons for the cuts. The only interest I could summon up was seeing how the musical adapted the material.
pickOn her way to report a scam, Vera meets a young woman hovering outside the police station, uncertain whether to report a missing person. Of course, Vera provides comfort and undertakes to look for the missing young man herself but soon discovers he is dead.
The story follows the formula established in the 1st book but does allow some darker elements to creep in despite the general level of hilarity - it is if anything even funnier than the 1st.
#lunchandabook
Vera was making me hungry for Chinese food.
Char siew noodles, chicken and chive dumplings (kao choi kau), wo tip dumplings
pickI've watched some of the author's videos on YouTube and there isn't much more in this book than in the videos. The videos also have the advantage of being able to show clips from some of the shows discussed, which is useful if I haven't seen them before. It's not a bad book, just kind of pointless if you can see the videos.
Vera Wong Zhuzhu should be having the time of her life.
#FirstLineFridays
#ShyBookOwl
pick#inmemoriam
I read this 15 years ago and was rather lukewarm about it. This time round I found it much funnier, though I'm not sure whether I've developed a sense of humour or am just more tolerant of inanity.
Previously a so-so but now maybe a very low pick.
pickTheir whole family are insomniacs who have to wear a LOT of sunscreen when they go out. Their father goes into anaphylactic shock when a neighbour includes garlic in a Thai salad but Rowan and Clara Radley only find out the truth when Clara is attacked on her way home from a party.
I was expecting this story of ethical vampires trying to pass as human to be funnier than it was, but it was still very enjoyable.
so-so79 y.o. Arthur comes out as gay to his children but his daughter does not react well, little suspecting that her 21 y.o. son is trying to nerve himself to tell her something.
The premise of an older man coming out was intriguing and as far as I know rarely explored in fiction. Contrasting it with his grandson's experiences made the story-line even more interesting. Unfortunately it was let down by stilted and at times rather preachy dialogue.
pick#seriescompleted
Karen Slocombe witnesses the bombing of a local supermarket and then a few days later the murder of a trader in the farmers' market. Did she see something that is going to make her the killer's next target?
This seems to have been the last in the series and perhaps justifiably so because it dragged rather as if the author had run out of steam.
Stephanie's enthusiasm was all the more irritating for being so normal.
#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl.
pickThe missing daughter of a local beekeeper reappears claiming that she was abducted by her cousin, who had in fact been the first to report that she was missing.
A pleasantly twisty story with all the main suspects telling different stories? The dramatis personae are listed at the beginning but the information would have been better presented as a family tree. Trying to keep straight who was what relation to whom was a nightmare.
pickA good introduction. I think I kept my head above water for most of the book. Unfortunately most of the examples of postmodernism in action were from novels and artworks I was not familiar with so I struggled a bit with that chapter.
so-soSheltered housing for the elderly is being built on the site of the old rectory. Some old friends move in and also some new characters.
This is book 8 in the series and I must admit it's not scratching the nostalgia itch the way the others have done. I'm starting to forget who is who, and the ebook formatting is not helping with no white space to show when we move from one scene to another. I'm not sure whether to continue.
pickWe all know the story, it's been adapted for films and TV goodness knows how many times. Scrooge's name has become part of the language. And yet, even after having read it three or four times, I still found the story of Scrooge's reformation moving.
Marley was dead, to begin with.
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@ShyBookOwl
#coffeeandabook
#seasonalreading
3w
pickHay-on-Wye bookshop owner Quinn Oxford meets hugely successful (and very handsome) romance author Noah Sage at the town's winter literary festival. Quinn falls for Noah but his more immediate problem is that his stepfather is going to evict the bookshop from its premises on Christmas Eve.
We are very much in Hallmark Christmas movie territory here, but I loved every cheesy moment (despite the miming incident).
🌲Jerry gestured for them to follow him, and with his back turned, Quinn looked to Ivy, his eyes wide.
‘What are you doing?‘ he mouthed.
‘I have a plan,‘ Ivy mimed. 🌲
How do you mime “I have a plan“?
pickThis novelisation of her life follows Katheryn from the age of seven to her death aged around 20 or 21.
The trouble with reading novels about historical characters is that you know what has to happen however much you don't want it to. Many times I wished Katheryn would make different choices but often in this book she is portrayed as knowing what not to do and yet going ahead and doing it anyway. Sad.
#WhereareyouMonday
Tudor London (map from wikipedia)
@cupcake12
so-soSt. Maël, half-blinded by the rigours of an Atlantic voyage, baptises a flock of great auks (aka penguins), and so God makes them human. This is the story of Penguinia.
The beginning is mildly amusing but after about the half-way mark as we get closer to the author's own day the premise is abandoned and the book more and more blatantly refers to contemporary French politics,
⬇
pickA collection of SFF short stories from China, translated by Ken Liu.
An enjoyable collection, though despite the final essay in the book, I'm not sure what makes most of the stories particularly Chinese apart from the names of people and places.
The stories I liked best were:
⬇
⬇
pickPeter Grant and his family, his father's jazz group, and assorted people from the Folly go North to Aberdeen partly as a holiday and partly to investigate rumours of a giant cat killing livestock. The local police need his specialist skills and knowledge when a man with gills is found dead on the seafront.
It's always enjoyable to explore more of this world and meet new characters.
It all started when Dr Brian Robertson, retired GP, enthusiastic amateur ecologist and self-confessed cryptid aficionado, stumbled over a dead sheep a few kilometres west of the town of Mintlaw, Aberdeenshire.
#FirstLineFridays
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pickEmmy Abendanon is an 11 yo Dutch girl living in Batavia in 1942 who is interned during the Japanese occupation. The story is loosely based on the author's grandmother's experiences.
I felt the story only came into its own once Emmy is taken to Tjideng. Since the book is meant for readers of around Emmy's age certain aspects are omitted and others played down but enough remains to make it a suspenseful and harrowing account. ⬇
so-soEvangelina Sage gets a job with the Villain to help her invalid father and younger sister.
It was funny and I did enjoy it while I was reading it but every time I put it down I had no real impulse to pick it back up and continue. I do have book two in the series, which I bought by mistake thinking it was book one, so I will at least read that at some point.
It was an ordinary day when Evie met The Villain.
#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl
pick10,000 years ago aliens committed a great wrong against the human race. Now they have returned to Earth to atone by taking select Earthlings to act as Witnesses on other planets.
The first part in which we follow the work of one team of Witnesses was by far the best. The second and third parts lagged a bit and were not as exciting as they could or should have been.
so-soTwo 16 y.o. have a brief flirty meeting in a NY post office and then try to track each other down again.
It had its moments but with the chapters alternating between the two main characters' pov, they need to be more distinguishable and their respective side characters need to stand out more. I kept having to backtrack to remember which was Arthur and which was Ben, whose head I was supposed to be in, and who the different side characters were.
