Review: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

by Carol15 Comments
I am obviously not the right audience for The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. In a nutshell, a girl named September is at home alone; her mother is at work in a factory and her dad is off at war. The Green Wind shows up at her window and invites her on an adventure in Fairyland. Of course, off she goes. In Fairyland there is off course an evil Marquess she must defeat, but she gathers up a couple a few friends to help her. She also meets all kinds of magical creatures and fantastical places, which is kind of obvious, really , considering it is Fairyland. Adventures and dangers abound. There must be blood, the girl thought. There must always be blood. The Green Wind said that, so it must be true. It will all be hard and bloody, but there will be wonders, too, or else why bring me here at all? And it's...
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Teaser from Holmes on the Range

by Carol11 Comments
There are two things you can’t escape out here in the West: dust and death. They sort of swirl together in the wind, and a fellow never knows when a fresh gust is going to blow one or the other right in his face. So while I’m yet a young man, I’ve already laid eyes on every manner of demise you could put a name to. I’ve seen folks drowned, shot, stabbed, starved, frozen, poisoned, hung, crushed, gored by steers, dragged by horses, bitten by snakes, and carried off by an assortment of illnesses with which I could fill the rest of this book and another besides. So it’s quite a compliment I bestow when I say that the remains we came across the day after the big storm were the most frightful I’d ever seen. (Tuesday Teaser from Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith)...
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Cooling Down with AC: “Three Blind Mice”

by Carol7 Comments
I'm pretty sure that I've read "Three Blind Mice" before. I couldn't remember any of the details but it just felt familiar, and I wasn't surprised by the ending. A blinding snowstorm was not an auspicious beginning, but Molly and Giles Davis were determined to make a go of their new guest house, but among their first guests at Monkswell Manor was a murderer. The man, or woman, had already killed one "blind mouse" and is planning on catching number two and three. Christie does an excellent job of making the atmosphere menacing. You can understand why the character's jump at every little noise, why they each suspect each other. She makes all of the people in the Manor plausible suspects,and interesting characters. It's interesting to see how they each become more and more scared, more suspicious of the others, but at the same time some enjoy the mystery, the tension, the excitement. It's a departure from the ordinary. The twist at...
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Monday Morning

by Carol17 Comments
This week is Vacation Bible School at our church. Which means after work every day we head over there. It runs 6-8:30, but both David and I volunteer, he coordinates the wood craft project and I help with registration and other randomness, we're usually there by at least 5:30 and are lucky if we're home by 9. It makes it a long week, but definitely worth doing. My giveaway is still open for a few days. The random winner gets to pick a book of his or her choice, up to $20 from The Book Depository. It's open internationally, so enter here. Anyway, I got one book in the mail this week, The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma, thanks to the publisher. David saw it and asked why I got it. Time travel is not usually my favorite, but how could I pass this one up? "Set in Victorian London with characters real and imagined, The Map of Time is...
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Cooling Down with AC: A Caribbean Mystery

by Carol7 Comments
I adore Miss Marple. She seems like a sweet, gentle old lady, but she's bright and knows human nature. In A Caribbean Mystery, Miss Marple is on vacation, enjoying relaxing in the Caribbean sun thanks to her nephew's generosity. There's only one problem - she's bored. It may be paradise, but nothing ever changes. But then Major Palgrave dies under suspicious circumstance, and Miss Marple takes it upon herself to figure out who the killer is. Miss Marple is on center stage in this one, in a new setting making new friends. Of course, everyone has their secrets, here mostly romantic ones, and there are plenty of suspects. None of the characters really struck me, except Mr. Rafiel, a rich elderly man who becomes Miss Marple's ally in catching the criminal. I can't say that the plot here is the strongest. It wasn't too tough to figure out the killer, even if there were red herrings aplenty. There were simply only so...
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Out my window

by Carol7 Comments
I was at home on Friday during lunch and took a minute to look out my front window, and honestly there was nothing particularly interesting to see. It was a grey, dreary day, so no one was out walking their dogs, no kids on the road. I didn't even see any birds. The only thing that caught my eye were my flowers. My front flower bed is in bloom. It's also more than a little weedy, but that's beside the point. On the drive back to work, I did see the most interesting thing. I tried to get a picture, but was too slow. Two bog old crows were pecking around in the grass near our office parking lot. Nothing extraordinary in that, but then one pulled his head up and there, in his beak, was one of those little bouncy balls, about an inch in diameter. I just kind of stared in surprise. The ball was clear with some yellow...
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