Thursday’s Tale: King Garnet Stories

The King Garnet Stories by Marianne Parry are not traditional fairy tales, but they have that same feel - kings and queens, a touch of magic, a lesson to learn. The King Garnet Stories are fun. The first is my favorite. The King's legs grow way to long and everyone is worried. He is under a spell, but who is casting the spell made it a funny little story. In the second story, King Garnet comes up with a plan to stop his wife from being so bossy. He decides not to talk anymore. He lets his daughters, the doctors, and the witches in on the secret. In the end, the Queen goes back to the nice woman she used to be. It's a cute story even if the portrayal of the Queen is a little sexist. The last story ends with a light-hearted, almost Renaissance fair type battle. Everyone enjoys the day and the decide to make it an annual event. The illustration at the...
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The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O’Keeffe by J. Michael Orenduff

I'm sad. Why did no one tell me about this series before? The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O'Keeffe is smart, laugh out loud funny, and a good mystery. It throws in bits of history, literary references, and culture, and word play. It's just fun. Hubie is a criminal. He digs up pots illegally and sells them, but he justifies it well. He says, and I think believes, that the women who made the pots would rather have them in a household that cherishes them than a museum where they are rarely visited, or, even worse, left in the ground unappreciated. He's also a talented potter in his own right, making reproductions. The dead man is one of Hubie's associates, the one who had a buyer for the Tompiro pot. Hubie doesn't seem to broken up over the death, but I'm kind of assuming he was a character we would have met in a previous book or two. We've got his widow, a couple...
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Arena by Holly Jennings

If you're here for the A to Z Challenge, scroll down to the next post. Thanks! Arena is totally outside of my usual reading zone. It's YA and science fiction- neither of which I read. I'm not even much of a video game player, but something about the description grabbed my attention, maybe the hint of  "dark secrets" or just the quote in the blurb: She’s died hundreds of times. And it never gets easier... Whatever the reason, I picked it up, and wow, am I glad I did. It's not a perfect book, but I really enjoyed it. The Rage tournament is a virtual gaming event, kinda of like capture the flag, expect each team has a tower they're defending. It's televised each week and is really violent and graphic. The gamers are truly athletes, they have to train in real life to be able to do all the figthing in the virtual world. They are celebrities, catered to but also tied to their...
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Candy Corn Murder by Leslie Meier

Candy Corn Murder is the first Lucy Stone I've read, even though it's #22 in the series. The cover is just too cute to pass up. That being said, maybe if I had read earlier ones in the series, I would have enjoyed this one more. The author spent a lot of time introducing the characters and getting us involved in the town life. As this was my first time in Tinker's Cove I appreciated it, but I feel like if you had read the others, you might be thinking "get a move on." Of course, I can't tell which are recurring characters and which are new to the series, so maybe it was all necessary. The murder itself and the solution was interesting, as was the reason a certain somebody was against the Halloween festival. I liked seeing Lucy hunt down the clues and put it altogether, but it was a bit rushed. My main problem, though, was I didn't really like...
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The Visitant by Megan Chance

I don't usually read ghost stories, but this seemed like a perfect fit for RIP X and I do love Venice as a setting. To me, The Visitant had three parts: the setting, the ghost story, and the romance. The story is set in Venice but most of it takes place in the Basilio palazzo. It's the perfect setting: a crumbling old mansion, too cold and grey, in a city that, while romantic, is also decaying. The servants are hostile to Elena and the aunt is just flat out odd. There is a lot of time establishing the atmosphere. Elena is hoping to see Venice but seems trapped in this house. the setting is probably my favorite part of the story. The ghost story was not scary enough to keep me up at night, but progressed well. The ghost was clearly angry, and, unlike Elena, the reader knows it's a ghost from the beginning - the title tells us. It doesn't take...
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Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favorite Songs by Erik Didriksen

Pop Sonnets is a cute, quirky little book. Didriksen takes popular songs from over the years, oldies through today's hits, and Shakepereanizes them, with the appropriate vocabulary and meter. There are few books I read parts of out loud to my husband, but this was one of them. It's fun to see how he takes songs we know and transforms them. Here are the opening lines of a couple of my favorites: Guns 'n' Roses, "Sweet Child o' Mine" Her smile, it doth recall a simpler time - the bygone years when I was but a boy; each day held some discovery sublime, each exploration brought some newfound joy. Spin Doctors, "Two Princes" Two noblemen before thee genuflect, entreating thee in ernest for thy hand. The first, he garners riches and respect; the other's only flights of fancy plann'd. Hmm, showing my age there, aren't I? The Eagles' "Hotel California," is immediately recognizable. I drove my carriage o'er the darken'd road when faintly I observ'd a distant inn. When I arriv'd, their greeting did forbode the vile debauchery I...
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