octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Well this was certainly creepy! I wasn't expecting to enjoy it so much, as the blurb sort of gave the impression of another murder mystery in which women were the tortured and brutalised victims of serial killers, and that trope gets old quickly. It's true that such is the case here, but it's leavened somewhat by the fact that two of the three main characters are women, and they're the ones who stop the killer. I'd like it a little more if one of those women hadn't been one of his victims, but from what I understand of the series, starting from the next book it becomes a partnership of two women in law enforcement, and I'm interested in reading that. Jane Rizzoli is certainly compelling, even if I don't entirely like her. Sympathetic as I am to women battling sexism in the workplace, she's not actually that nice a person... and I like that. I like that the heroine isn't relegated to this unfairly put-upon saint of a character. Male detectives get to be difficult, unpleasant people all the time in fiction, so it's fun to see equal treatment here. Unlike romance, which I've been reading a lot of recently, I don't need the protagonists of murder mysteries to be likeable people. I'm actually more interested when they aren't, which just goes to show the impact genre has on how characters are received...

I found this deeply, deeply entertaining, and it was entirely down to the main character. Phryne Fisher is amazing, and I like everything about her. It's not very often you get a character who is so horribly, amusingly aware of everything going on around her. I love her obsession with clothes, and the fact that she picks up strays and finds them employment at any given opportunity. I think that's the key to describing her really - she's an opportunist on every level, and I'm excited to read more of the series, though I do wonder just how much crime there can possible be in the Melbourne of the time. The supporting characters are also very likeable, coming from a range of backgrounds as they do. The only fault that I could find is that it was obvious to me who was running the cocaine ring a lot earlier than the text revealed it, but when there's abusive back-alley abortionists to catch, I can certainly understand a minor lack of focus from the heroine. Some things, after all, are more important.

Back in the 1930s, the author spent her late teens and early twenties working as a kitchen maid and then a cook in some of the large and/or aristocratic houses of the day, and she recounts in this short memoir just what that was like. She comes across as cheerful and hardworking, and if the prose isn't terribly accomplished there is some interest in looking at the book from a food history point of view - the fumbling attempts at gingerbread, the emphasis on seasonal vegetables as they were what the estates were growing at the time, how literal ice-boxes were used to keep groceries cool. More appealing to me, however, were the aside comments that Wadlow made about her life - her disdain for kohlrabi (can't say that I blame her there), her avowal that Downton Abbey got kitchen life all wrong, her total over-it attitude with regard to scrubbing, and - most shocking to me! - the fact that her cook's uniform was a white dress. If I had to spend my days cooking and sieving meats to make fine pates and so on, and I had to do it without the benefit of electricity, washing machines, and dryers, white is the very last colour I'd be wearing! They should have let the poor girl use something else...

Well this is unusual, and a murder mystery that's right up my alley. It's set in a national park, and the detective is actually a park ranger. Anna comes across the body of a colleague, supposedly killed by a mountain lion, but she knows lions and she knows ranger behaviour and something, Anna thinks, something is very wrong here. It's actually a fairly short book, and I twigged who the killer was about halfway through, but the real attraction here is the focus on and sympathy for wildlife, the natural description, and the very earned ending for the poachers. Apparently it's the first in a series. I have yet to read the rest - though I will - but I admit to being sceptical at just how many murders can actually take place in one small park. Still, for more of the setting, and more of the focus on the natural world, I'm prepared to suspend all sorts of disbelief because this was great. Really, really enjoyable.

Very, very funny romance about a young woman who goes to stay with her cousins and finds herself - far more competent than they are - managing both them and their love lives. In a small way, the interfering nature of the heroine reminded me of Jane Austen's Emma, who I don't much care for, but Sophy's saving grace is that she has a sense of humour about it all where Emma really doesn't. (I know Emma's supposed to be witty, but it's a papered-on sort of wit that never goes beyond skin-deep in my opinion.) It's quite obvious from the get-go who Sophy herself will end up with here, but it's still deeply entertaining to watch it happen, and - aside from a few unpleasant pages in the middle, heavily laced with anti-Semitism as Sophy bargains with a moneylender - this is very close to perfect.

Oh, I did not care for this. I should make it plain that I don't think it's badly written, though its arguments are at times blurred and inaccurate, and personally the constant prayer was a bit repetitive. The people who enjoy this sort of thing would most probably like it immensely, but it's not for me. I've been treating 2020 as my year of reading more romance, and I've basically been randomly picking romances from Goodreads lists and swallowing them whole. I've since read historical, contemporary, western... but I've not read an inspirational romance before. (I've not even read an inspirational novel of any kind before, but try new things and all that.) This reading gap is not hard to understand, as I'm an atheist with a strong belief in separation of church and state. According to this book, that means I'm either a backroom dealing Enemy who uses orphans and bribery as pawns to get my way, or I fall into that trope-which-does-not-die, the atheist who is not really an atheist because they hate God instead of simply disbelieving in him. So it was hard not to roll my eyes at the constant misrepresentation, which felt a little bigoted to be honest, or the pervading air of persecution felt by the religious characters, who seem to interpret the idea of the state not forcing religion on individuals as really meaning the state wants to prevent them from expressing their religion at all times, in all ways, forever.

I did not entirely lose all patience, however, until I reached the point where the main character read a letter his dying mother wrote to his then 13 year old self, saying that though she worried for him and his little sister, who were about to be left alone in the world, she was excited to get to heaven - excited, implicitly, to leave her grieving children behind. What a letter to write at such a time! This crosses from determined ignorance into active unkindness as far as I'm concerned, and it's a little bit difficult to stomach.

Finally, I have to apologise to Ms. Kingsbury, as I thought the legal case at the centre of this romance was the most ridiculous piece of trumpery I'd ever heard of, and I thought poorly of her that she expected me to swallow it. Turns out it's based on a real life case, which is enormously depressing on just about every level. I can only say that all the people involved in that lawsuit, on every side, deserve the "ridiculous" label, and I sincerely hope they've made better use of their limited time on Earth since then.

This is a really appeaing book about a ten year old boy, August, who is starting school for the first time. He's previously been home-schooled, because his massive facial deformities make attending school a substantial emotional challenge. He's a little bit excited, a little bit reluctant, and the year goes by pretty much as you'd expect - friends are made, bullies overcome, and the year ends well for everyone. It's a feel-good read that emphasises kindness and friendship, which I enjoy, and I like that it's told from multiple points of view, including August's older sister Olivia (who is struggling with being constantly overlooked) and his friend Jack (who is targeted by bullies pretty much by association). I did think that - with the exception of Olivia's boyfriend - it was fairly hard to distinguish the different voices, as they're all much the same, but it was still an entertaining and immensely affecting read.

Three and a half stars, rounding up to four. I'm in two minds about this one. To be honest, I bounced off it emotionally, and didn't manage to connect to a single character. On the other hand, the structure of this story is so interesting - it's told from multiple perspectives, including that of the house itself, and these perspectives ebb and flow until sometimes, after the point-of-view shifts, it can initially be difficult to tell who, exactly, is speaking. I don't want to spoil too much, but that blurring is kind of the point, so I was reading this with a kind of distanced and impressed fascination, because the sheer level of technique on display here is really impressive. It's one of those books that I admire rather than love, but the admiration goes very, very deep.

The first story here, "Tower of Babylon," is outstanding. I was completely enthralled. Slightly unfortunately, it's also the best of the collection for me, so the rest of the book doesn't quite live up to it. Which is not to say that some of the stories aren't excellent. They are - I particularly enjoyed "Seventy-Two Letters" and "Hell Is the Absence of God."

I think what struck me most is the strength of concept behind each story. Each has a very clear idea, ruthlessly researched and intelligently explored. I could only bask in the sheer cleverness of what's going on here, but I have to admit sometimes it lost me. Not in the concepts, but in the execution. Some of the stories, as admirable as they are, can be a little dry in their presentation. ("Understand" felt interminable for this very reason.) This became particularly clear in the titular "Stories of Your Life", in which a mother's relationship with her daughter was contrasted with her linguistic work with an alien species. The former was much more appealing to read than the latter, and all the astonishing results of that linguistic work didn't stop me from wanting the narrator to dwell a little less on it and get back to the emotional core of the story. I really enjoy concept driven works, but ideally I would like to feel an emotional connection as well. This collection is one of those works that I really admire but - with the exception of that first story, the mother/daughter relationship described above, and the end of "Hell" - I didn't actually feel.

I never read this as a child, so when Book Riot's Read Harder challenge for 2020 turned up, and one of the tasks was a middle-grade book not set in the US or the UK, I figured it was probably time. After all, the thing is so famous - famous enough that I knew exactly what the title character looked like, even though I knew nothing else about her. Pippi is just that recognisable... and she's entertaining, too, though I wonder how much the entertainment value has dropped off with adulthood. Would I have found this funnier, or more appealing, as a kid? I don't know. I loved Roald Dahl, who had a similar sort of understanding of the ridiculous, but Pippi herself is kind of exhausting, and I only spent an hour or so with her. I like her, but I'm also not surprised that the sailors let her go off on her own. They probably spent the time since having a nice rest...