Miranda Phipps

Miss P has a reading problem.  Namely, she doesn’t like to read.

This greatly distresses her Mama, a veritable reading freak. 

Luckily, Miss P has an excellent first grade teacher who recommended books on CD!  (Part of our theory is that Miss P likes to be Very Good at the things she does, and so she abandons reading whenever it begins to feel daunting.  Reading the book along with the CD helps her to get through those tough words that would otherwise hang her up.)

This recommendation has been sheer genius–not just because Miss P now likes to read, but because it has brought about an introduction to Skippyjon Jones, the Siamese cat who thinks he’s a chihuahua.  Yes, really.

Judy Schachner’s Skippjon books are just fantastic, and her readings are excellent.  (They rival Neil Gaiman’s recordings in my mind.)

Her love of (and dexterity with) wordplay and rhythm are really exceptional, and I would recommend checking these out if there are any little people in your life.  She’s also, and this part really makes me jealous, a brilliant illustrator.

I’ve been saving the best for last in this little blog post and that is an excerpt from the book.  Don’t you just love these opening lines?  (BTW, the reference to “box” is a reference to Skippyjon’s litter box.)

Skippyjon Jones did his very best thinking outside the box.  And this twisted his mamma’s whiskers tighter than a Texas tornado.

Enjoy!

So it’s been about a month of insanity, but I emerged from the chaos late yesterday afternoon and found a couple of hours today in which I could finally sit down and figure out Twitter.  I now understand the hoopla.  I’m still trying to figure out the best way to post a picture.

In other news, I inhaled the new Loretta Chase: Don’t Tempt Me. 

Who cannot but love a heroine who has been a harem girl?  And here is my favorite laugh-out-loud bit (one among many laugh-out-loud bits, so it was difficult to choose):

Zoe went on determinedly, “Yusri Pasha gave me as second wife to Karim, who was his eldest son by his first wife.  But Karim could not make his . . . his . . . “–though Marchmont kept his eyes half closed, she knew the Duke regarded her intently–”his instrument of delight.  The limb a man uses for pleasure and to make children.  What is it called?”

Shrieks from the sisters.

Zoe ignored them.  “No one will ever tell me what it is in English,” she said.  “If I ever learned the word, I have forgotten it.” 

He made an odd sound in his throat.  Then he siad, “Membrum virile will do.”

And in addition to being funny, Chase is quite brilliant at describing how Marchmont has only been halfway seeing anything in life for the past decade–an insight not only into Marchmont’s character flaw, but something that ties into the external plot later on in the novel.

I’m trying to keep my pinky toe in the writing world.  It’s been tough the past few weeks due to work becoming busier again.  (Usually there’s a bit of whining from me when there are more hours than I want, but not these days with many employers letting people go.  I’m glad to be earning my keep–and my weekly paycheck–so I find myself saying yes ma’am, I’ll certainly take that project.)

I did manage to inhale Elizabeth Hoyt’s latest:  To Beguile a Beast.  The bits told in Abby’s point of view were especially well done, I thought. 

I never quite got used to the hero’s singular “eye” looking at the heroine.  Completely accurate of course and very much a product of my own, difficult to break, readerly assumptions.

A lovely cover, too.  Hoyt’s really been lucky in her past few covers–great art and delectable colors.  Some people get worked up about the whole half head thing, but I far prefer to see a victim of the art department’s guillotine than some raggedy mulleted professional wrestler type.

I also dove into Teresa Medeiros latest release.   (Target had so many of my favorite authors at 25% off!  Woot!) 

I somehow missed her last historical (Some Like it Wicked), so my most recent experience with her writing was her venture into vampire-land.  Those were much darker books, and it was fun to be lightly delighted by Medeiros again.  This reminds me that I must now go back and read those vampire books having watched Buffy.  I have a feeling that Adrian (was Adrian the vampire broher?–I think so) may bear some resemblance to Spike, and I’d love to see Spike gain his HEA if only vicariously.

In terms of my own writing, Margie Lawson’s keeping me busy with her many rhetorical devices.  My reward?  Understanding what Neil Gaiman meant when he referred to lilotes in his journal the other day.  Miranda scores!  Now just to use it in my own writing.

I’d been rewatching Firefly while working out in recent weeks, and even after watching all of the juicy extras on the Serenity DVD, I was jonesing for more.  So as a reward for a long week at work, I ordered the two comic books that Joss Whedon wrote.  These bridge the time between the end of the Firefly series and the Serenity film, so I knew that they wouldn’t leave me hanging–the overall story arc is there.

Consistent with my other experiences reading comics, I find that I’m a word-girl and that even though I enjoyed these, they still didn’t make me a convert.  I almost wonder if comics are something you need to grow up with to have them tap into your imagination as an adult.

I can say without the risk of spoilers that I enjoyed the exploration of Mal’s personality and his willingness to make choices which wouldn’t necessarily be supported by the other members of the crew (indeed, choices that had negative consequences for the crew), but that did have the effect of keeping Mal’s surrogate family intact.  It’s Inara who fittingly observes this, but I didn’t see it coming, so it was fun to be surprised as a reader.

On a related note, I loved watching Joss talk a little bit about his inspiration for Firefly coming out of a non-fiction book he read about the battle of Gettysburg and the fascination that we all have with the South–the losers.  

This observation gets lost in romance where there are so many alpha males running around, but there is something very intriguing about the underdog.  Lisa Kleypas really taps into this type of hero, but I’m struggling to come up with anyone else who does.  Something to ponder this week.

I cruised through Carolyn Jewel’s Scandal yesterday afternoon.  It’s such a different romance–very quiet in its tone, but truly a mesmerizing read.  I loved this line especially:

She was near enough now to see his eyes.  Black rimmed his irises, the color bleeding slowly into a solid and unrelenting gray eerily flat of expression, or rather, she thought, the color, like silver gone to tarnish, made them impervious to reflection of his inner thought.

I think there was another bit about layers of silver tarnish in his eyes that I liked as well, but I couldn’t find that one.

And, I really liked the final reveal that Sophie, although she remained true to her vows in practice, did not do so in principle.

As You Desire is one of my all-time favorite romances, and I’ve pretty much gobbled up every one of Connie Brockway’s historicals since that time.  (I read her first contemp, Hot Dish, and I liked that too, but it turns out I’m just not much of a contemporary reader.)

I’ve been looking forward to So Enchanting for a few months and it didn’t disappoint–I love her voice in which she manages to be just a little bit snarky without taking me out of the historical moment.

Here are my favorite lines, brimming with classic Brockway:

Grey stared broodingly at the ceiling while at his side Hayden and Amelie began yet another long-winded conversation wherein they yet again discovered they enjoyed absolutely everything the other enjoyed, including, but not limited to, Gilber and Sullivan, music, American penny dreadfuls, long walks on misty mornings, quince jelly, badminton and Jack Russell terriers.  The only interruptions to this inanity were the breathless silences during which, Grey imagined, the pair stood gazing raptly into each other’s eyes.  Rather like poleaxed beef.

Poleaxed beef!? Poleaxed beef!?  I couldn’t get enough of that line.

My complaint about the entire thing was that I ordered the book off of Fictionwise and read it on Stanza.  There’s some problem with the translation of quotation marks and accents such that I get a stream of symbols instead of the appropriate symbol.  Although I definitely got used to it, it did pull me out of the story some.  I’m trying to weigh the benefits of having the books on my phone against the being able to read the thing seamlessly, and I have to admit it’s a toss-up right now.

I knew that the total eBook lovefest would have to end sometime.

Despite a truly hideous day filled with staph infection (my daughter’s not mine) and a crazy project at the day job, I managed to sneak off and see Neil Gaiman read from The Graveyard Book up in Boulder.

It’s odd seeing the physical manifestation of a voice that I’ve come to know through reading his books and following his blog on a daily basis. Odd mostly in that there are no real surprises. Except for the black leather jacket, which really shouldn’t have been a surprise anyway.

And when he told me that Boulder would get to hear the second half of a chapter out of the middle of the book, I felt a little blossom of disappointment, but Neil took care of that very quickly. It was phenomenal, even if I did have to spend the whole time closing my deal on the blackberry.

I ate most of this up in one huge serving of sleeplessness while DH was out of town last week and just finished it up this past weekend. I loved the concept of vampires of beautiful, glittering, irresistible creatures.

Meyer reminded me of how powerful an experience it is to follow the protagonist into a new community and to experience the emotional satisfaction that comes of having your protagonist be accepted by that community. Meyer also does a nice job of knitting all that into the high school experience–one every reader can draw on. I also thought the first person POV worked especially well in this book.

I consumed a huge portion of this book on a plane ride back from Tampa, Florida over the long weekend and finished the thing last night while hubby and I laid in bed and read for three totally indulgent hours. Usually I have to read in 35 minute intervals while walking on the treadmill, so to have such dedicated chunks of time to read was sublime.

McMaster is an expert storyteller—she makes it look so easy and she has such a good sense of what to tweak to make the world she is describing seem real, but not so much that you can’t relate. I LOVED the concept of groundsense (an ability the hero has to sense living creatures—and, critically, non-living creatures–around him), but I had a hard time with the winter/spring romance. As someone who reads for romantic tension, I felt like the novel didn’t offer enough of that in the last act. Part of this, of course, is the difficulty in writing a trilogy about the same couple. There are just going to be points with less dramatic tension. I struggled with the Warprize series for the same reason. But that complaint aside, McMaster is so good, I think I’ll be borrowing the next book in the series from my s-i-l.

I just Eloisa James’s latest book in the Desperate Duchesses series. I powered through it in two days, so clearly I liked it. Her style is so readable–the dialogue is especially entertaining.

I did miss the exchanges between Villiers and the Duchess of Beaumont, though. It troubled me that Jemma didn’t seem to care that Villiers was on death’s door. Villiers is the character I want to read about, and when he spends an entire novel in a delirium, I can’t help but feel a little disappointment.