Scored a B – My Book Report, by Jean Age 20-Something

Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell

Title: Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell
Scored a: B
Status: Finished

The cover of Secondhand Spirits - in person the grey swirls have sparkles! — The cover of Secondhand Spirits – in person the grey swirls have sparkles!

Before I left town on a trip to San Diego, I was overcome with an urge to read about mysteries with ghosts. Fortunately my mother has one of the biggest cozy collections I have ever known and that included more than a few supernatural mysteries. What I chose was Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell and Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris. After doing a more thorough reading of the plot of Grave Sight, I chose not to read that one ever, but Secondhand Spirits kept me nicely occupied on the plane as well as being the first paper non-comicbook I read in years.

The summary:

Love the vintage- not the ghosts

Lily Ivory feels that she can finally fit in somewhere and conceal her “witchiness” in San Francisco. It’s there that she opens her vintage clothing shop, outfitting customers both spiritually and stylistically.

Just when things seem normal, a client is murdered and children start disappearing from the Bay Area. Lily has a good idea that some bad phantoms are behind it. Can she keep her identity secret, or will her witchy ways be forced out of the closet as she attempts to stop the phantom?

The summary turned out to be misleading, as it turns out she cannot see ghosts.

I did like it, though. The cast of characters was appealing, her love interest wasn’t a dick, I enjoyed the job she did, and I only snickered a little every time she referred to the ‘burning times’ in reference to witch history.

It was a little light on the actual villain of the story, but the monster portion of the story was pretty cool. It was La Llorona, the weeping woman who drowns children. A note on the use of a Mexican spirit, at first for a lot of the book I thought Lily was Latina, but it turned out that while her grandmother was, she is only Lily’s grandmother via adoption. So it was a ‘oh, it’s her culture!’ followed by ‘oh, it’s sort of her culture’ but you know, a good scary ghost.

I’ve bought the sequel to read soon. Right now it’s chilling its heels in my kindle account.

Year of the Griffin

Title: Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones
Scored a: B
Status: Finished

The sequel to Dark Lord of Derkholm was a typical Diana Wynne Jones sequel, in that it was just elaborating the world the first one took place in and wasn’t a continuation of the struggle in the first. Definitely not a complaint, that’s part of what I love about her writing.

Now, you’ll notice this has a lower score than the first one but that’s because some of the brutality in the book didn’t seem to mesh with the writing in other sections, so it’s a technical score that lowered it.

This is also, apparently, a book where Everyone Gets Paired Off, Even The Cameos. But since none of the pairings are repellant, I’m not docking points for that.

So! The plot is that Elda, Derk’s youngest daughter and griffin (although not the youngest anymore. Still a griffin) has gone off to wizarding college. She meets up with five other students and becomes fast friends, but each one (except her) has people back home who’d really rather they not be there. By lethal force, if necessary.

On top of that, most of the teachers are incompetent and amoral.

The students are great. I loved them. The dwarf Ruskin and Claudia the marshlady were my faves that weren’t Elda. The teachers were a recurring ‘toxic authority figure’ that shows up in Diana Wynne Jones’ books a lot, but just because I’m used to that doesn’t make them less frustrating to read, because oh boy do I feel for the people they’re being inflicted on.

Like Dark Lord of Derkholm, Year of the Griffin had a more solid, if abrupt, ending than a lot of her books do. So. Huzzah.

And the premise, which was griffin goes to wizarding school, delivered. Oh goodness, did it deliver. The similar premise, ‘wizard raises griffins as own children’ from the first is what grabbed me the first time. I’m running out of Diana Wynne Jones books I haven’t read yet, but the stuff remaining has been real gems.

Oh god I miss Diana Wynne Jones she was such an amazing author.

If I could make a book wish, I’d like for her to have written another book about the adventures the other half of Derk’s family had that got mentioned as a ‘that’s where they are’ when Elda’s relatives would show up. Because it sounded neat. And I wanted to hear more of the continent of griffins. And more about Elda’s new little winged siblings. But I do not get book wishes.

Anyway! The two griffin books are just aces. I totally recommend them.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Fuan no Tane

A wight from Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs ended on a sour note because I didn’t realize it was part of a series so the ‘TUNE IN NEXT TIME’ ending was more’n a little annoying.

That said, I liked it! Ransom Riggs is good at atmosphere, and his description of the world around Jacob is great. The vintage photographs used to illustrate the characters and concepts throughout are a nice touch.

The plot is, Jacob’s grandfather always told him stories about the magical children he grew up, as well as monsters he fought. When Jacob grew up, his father told him that the children’s magic was that they were Jewish, like Jacob’s grandfather, and the monsters were the nazis.

Then Jacob finds out his grandfather was telling the truth.

Like I said, I overall liked this and my only stylistic complaint is the mythos in the book didn’t mesh fully with itself.

The other thing I read was Fuan no Tane by Masaaki Nakayama without realizing I’d read a book until I was entering Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children into the spreadsheet and went ‘oh wait, that counted, didn’t it!’. It’s a collection of ghost stories in scenes, some stories no more than two pages. One of the stories is here, it takes place in a hospital.

Don’t expect an origin or explanation to the ghosts, it’s just a nice little capsule of horror. My favourite is early on, The Giant. I will enclose it in this post, since there’s no legal English version of this comic and I can’t just tell you to buy it.

Below is The Giant:
Continue reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Fuan no Tane

The Adventures of Sally

“I have been asked,” repeated Mr. Faucitt, ignoring the unmannerly interruption [of who had asked him], which, indeed, he would have found it hard to answer, “to propose the health of our charming hostess (applause), coupled with the name of her brother, our old friend Fillmore Nicholas.”

The gentleman referred to, who sat at the speaker’s end of the table, acknowledged the tribute with a brief nod of the head. It was a nod of condescension; the nod of one who, conscious of being hedged about by social inferiors, nevertheless does his best to be not unkindly. And Sally, seeing it, debated in her mind for an instant the advisability of throwing an orange at her brother. There was one lying ready to her hand, and his glistening shirt-front offered an admirable mark; but she restrained herself. After all, if a hostess yields to her primitive impulses, what happens? Chaos. She had just frowned down the exuberance of the rebellious Murphys, and she felt that if, even with the highest motives, she began throwing fruit, her influence for good in that quarter would be weakened.

The Adventures of Sally by PG Wodehouse

The news tonight made me sick, so I read a book. I know that’s my response to everything, but there you go.

Not much to say about this, except it was nice to see Wodehouse write from the perspective of a woman for once. I love the Jeeves and Wooster stories, but women don’t usually come off very well in them, so I was curious how this would be. Turns out Sally’s quite lovely and well-rounded.

It went on a bit with some fat-shaming, but overall I liked it and it distracted me a bit. I liked Sally, her brother, and all the people in her life.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is my latest read book and I quite liked it. It’s about an eleven year old girl (twelve by the end) in 1899 Texas who wants to become a naturalist, aided and encouraged by her cantankerous grandfather she barely knew before he comforts her one summer day after her failure to get Darwin’s controversial new book from the library. It starts with her trying to understand where these new types of grasshoppers had appeared, big fat yellow ones, different from the small green ones she was used to.

She’s the only girl in a family of even kids and right in the middle, and three of her brothers are sweet on her best friend. In-between trying to master science, she has to deal with her mother trying to make her into the girl her mother didn’t get a chance to be thanks to the Civil War.

Speaking of that, the book dances around the fact that her family fought on the south’s side. They have a black cook, Viola, who is treated with a lot of respect in the book but the specter was held over the book. The uneasiness that left in me was the only sour point of the novel, however. Otherwise it is a perfectly sweet book, with Calpurnia coming off as a very realistic young girl.

Also, apparently it’s got my taste nailed because:

Are all books I strongly recommend, especially Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin which is still one of the best books I have ever read.

Summer book count: Working on #49.

Johnny and the Dead

Johnny and the Dead by Terry Pratchett

Second book in the Johnny Maxwell trilogy changes nothing about my requests for some changes to the protagonist, but it’s significantly smoother than the first, Only You Can Save Mankind. In this one Johnny goes from leading an alien race to safety to helping out the local dead in the town graveyard.

It has some good philosophical bits, a lack of Kirsty (that’s not a good thing), and the usual cute interactions between Johnny and his friends, who are still twelve. It isn’t until the next book coming up, Johnny and the Bomb, where they finally get to upgrade to thirteen and get seriously involved in the adventures besides thinking Johnny’s a bit strange.

In Johnny and the Dead, Johnny starts seeing dead people, and then the dead people start realizing they can do a lot more than lay around waiting for judgement day. Wackiness ensues.

I’m actually halfway into the third and final book of the trilogy, which I thought I’d be done by now but grandparents came over and one must entertain ones grandparents or they start biting.