I loved the friendship that grew between Cecelia and Heris. This had a fun plot; it was basically fox hunting ~in space~ and a little bit of mechanical whosiwhatsits to satisfy the science-fiction genre. However, a man showing up as a love interest (and not just a character from the past) about twenty pages from the end of the novel with almost zero indication that Heris had even HAD a past with that man or even men in general?

Ridiculous.

I expected better from you, Elizabeth Moon. I expected that there would be no men to get in the way of the burgeoning relationship between Heris and Cecelia.

It's kind of fucked up that Mama & Papa changed Small Bear's name just because of the birth of a sibling - and in such a proprietary way, too. Way to give the kid a complex before he even hits bear puberty.

Then again, these are characters called "Mama" and "Papa", so maybe changing your name for major life events is a weird bear cultural thing that's totally normal for them. Maybe I'm just being an ethnocentric human, god.

Most boring in the Mahu series. Too much internalizing thoughts about babies and not enough tension in the crime solving. Meh.

I picked up this novel knowing I would likely hate it, but one star is all I can handle giving The Infamous Italian’s Secret Baby (and yeah, I totally grabbed it because of the title, sue me).

Sometimes a girl just wants to read the book equivalent of a Lifetime Movie, okay?

I had to check multiple times that this book was not labeled “urban fantasy”, because the way Bella was rooted to the spot whenever Gabriel approached her spoke of some creepy vampire hypnosis or fae enchantments.

Bella could feel the heat radiating from his body, could smell his tangy aftershave, the male scent of him that invaded and claimed the senses, filling her with a warm lethargy, a need to move closer to all that heady maleness.

A need Bella was unable to resist as she felt herself swaying towards himk. She made an effort at the last moment not to do so … What was happening to her?

She never reacted to men like this. At least, she never had before …

IT’S BECAUSE HE’S NOT A MAN, BELLA, HE’S SOME SORT OF SEX DEMON, OUT TO STEAL YOUR LIFE FORCE.

Or maybe just to accidentally impregnate you and never call ever again. How pedestrian.

Bella’s reasoning for not informing Gabriel about their son is shaky at best, incredibly self-centered at worst. He promised to call, with what seemed to be relative sincerity, when he left her in his bed to work. It was that day that he was involved in a horrific racing accident that killed two other drivers and left him in a short-term coma, where he then had to deal with the possibility of life-long paralysis and recovery from severe burns. Contacting a one night stand, especially when you’re unable to actually pony up the booty for a booty call, seems like an incredibly low priority under those circumstances. I usually despise the male counterpart in this genre, but dude, give him a break.

Bella may as well just be a stubborn pair of surprisingly full, yet sensitive breasts, for all the character she was ascribed. Outside of my brief sense of sympathy for his situation, I didn't like Gabriel much more. A bundle of alpha male stereotypes, his clear disregard for a woman’s personal boundaries and his tendency to fall into Broodmeister 9000 mode made him far more unattractive than any of his scars could have. Truly, a match made in heaven.

Spoiler alert: In the end, they have three more kids, but these ones aren’t a secret.

NEW THINGS I LEARNED:
You can buy a Caribbean island complete with a picturesque bungalow for the low, low price of $3.5 million dollars. According to the website, it's "not often that a picture postcard private island is offered for sale and rarer still at an affordable price." Jump on this bargain while you still can!

Just as charming as the first book. An excellent combination of subtle fondness for felines and unsubtle humor about their shenanigans. My favorite poem (because we are only as old as we feel, which for me is apparently twelve):

Real Close
If you listen very carefully
If you bend down very close
If you wait until the very moment
I ram my nose up another cat's butt
You will hear my muffled laughter
Because even I can't believe
This is how we all decided to tell each other "Hello!"

This was such a lovely confluence of an old hobby (profanity) and a new one (cross-stitching). Easy, useful directions, delightful photos and just a smidge of cynicism.

Precious frilly bookmarks and Lucite coasters and angels ... it was just too much sweetness in one place. It needed to be messed with. [...] I found one of those really ornate kits that come with an alphabet so you can stitch in your name and wedding date. (I don't know about you, but I'd rather have my dental X-rays hanging on my wall.)

Too fucking right.

Little known fact about me: I adore etiquette books. Rules of a society broken down in bite-sized pieces, just waiting to be used for someone's historically accurate and violently graphic monsterotica? (Or, like, literary fiction, I guess.)

This is an amalgamation of Professor Hill's advice, written originally in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, aimed at the American and English public.

[Hill] literally defined the lifestyle of a generation, a lifestyle against which the rascals of the Roaring Twenties would ultimately rebel.

Drinking, dancing and profanity are a lot of fun - I think Professor Hill was missing out.

Most of what you'll find here is either common sense ("Never pick your teeth or clean your nails in company") or the prudish conservative values you expect from the era ("Never allow the conversation at the table to drift into anything but chitchat. The consideration of deep and abstruse principles will impair digestion.")

Some, though, are an interesting look at a culture that may not be so foreign as we think, despite their fussy dinner rules. In a case of Victorians: They're Just Like Us!, I present their version of craigslist's missed connections:



Infinitely preferable to cat-calling.

I adore this cover. Veronica Fish is an artist I've been seeing around in comics more and more lately and I can't get enough of her style. She is a perfect addition to this series.

Reggie is himself, but more. I don't know if my expectations are so low because the originals were basically caricatures of people, but I am still loving the depth Waid has given the cast. Reggie Mantle is, and always will be, kind of a dick, but he's also got a lonely upbringing and a desperate thirst to be someone to round himself out.



(He's almost certainly talking to Jughead - their dynamic has always been my favorite.)

Was George Foos, the man who owned the titular motel, a social historian or a deviant who got off on invading other people's privacy? After careful consideration, I've decided he was both. Being pervert doesn't preclude his observations being culturally relevant, even if they were acquired in an unsavory manner.

I found Foos's commentary on the wounded Vietnam vets visiting his motel with their wives to be especially interesting, but perhaps I am still reeling from The Sympathizer.

Observations of these sorrowful and disastrous subjects is a very difficult and unpleasant task, and consequently, all that remains is regret and pity. There is nothing more disturbing than hearing a subject disclose that he has been betrayed by his country.

He says, as he watches "the subject" have sex from his secret viewing room above their beds. Nothing more disturbing indeed.

Talese allows the conclusions from the selected observations to stand while also analyzing the Voyeur himself, remarking that over the years, Foos "appeared to be distancing himself from himself, changing from first-person to a third-person narrator." Later, Foos starts in on an existential bent ("I've pondered on occasion that perhaps I don't exist, only represent a product of the subject's dreams.") and it makes me curious to see the pieces of his manuscript that Talese did not share. It's this portion that led me to believe that he's not just a sex pervert after all.

Mostly, though.

P.S. I find Talese's reference to Kitty Genovese to be surprising - as a literary journalist of some renown, he should be aware now of how incorrect the original reporting was; while some of the surrounding people may not have rushed to help her, Kitty died in the arms of her neighbor, who did.