A Book a Day...

There’s an abandoned kitchen in a restaurant in San Francisco, one where there are bunch of decommissioned robots (a couple of them former military bots). So, of course, when they come back online unexpectedly, they make the restaurant into quite the awesome place for humans to come and eat the robot’s hand-pulled noodles. Those humans are trying to recover from a civil war (California seceeded from the union and there was a devastating war), and these noodles seem to be helping in a way that only some great and comforting food can. Of course, it’s not that easy, there is a lot of anti-robot hate, and their noodle restaurant is targeted by one star reviews, but, they’ve made enough of a community that will rally around them and their noodles.

This was fun and cozy, and it was a novella as well. It’s a little bit a found family book, a little bit Sci Fi, a little bit foodie, and a little bit political/economic too. And it’s an entirely fun read.

You may like this book If you Liked: Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden, Legends & Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes by Travis Baldree, or Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen

Read these biographies in the wrong order, whoops. This one was written second, and its title very well represents what it is about. It's about Mary Astor, but her life in the movies. And, it’s such an amazing autobiography.

Astor was not the perfect person, and, there were a lot of parts of the book that made me very very much wince because she’s either too hard on herself (she was just barely a teen when she started in Silent Films, and, most of those she played opposite… weren’t young), or because she’s not hard enough on herself. Two things are usually the only things people in general know about Astor, The Maltese Falcon, and the Purple Diaries. This biography gives such a wider and deeper look at who she is.

Dominic and his children are caretakers of an island that is between Australia and Antarctica, Shearwater Island. On the island is one of the largest seed vaults. The island was also a research base, but, the storms are getting much, much worse. Dominic and his family is getting ready to leave because it’s too dangerous, when they find a woman lost in the storm. Rowan. Rowan has secrets, why she came to Shearwater, etc. But, so does Domnic, then, the radios are sabotaged… oh, and, Rowan finds a freshly dug grave too. (Whew, spooky).

I mean, calling this suspenseful definitely undersell just how the suspense was just sorta pulled out like a taffy or rubber band. And, the question was, after which twist was it going to break. Definitely kept me turning the pages.

You may like this book If you Liked: A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar, Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei, or The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Today a big day

Horse race, and Eel Festival

This was hilarious, weird, and sometimes I wondered if I had accidentally taken some… helpful substance or something, heh, but, truly, it was such an off the hook just going full bore hilarious.

It is both a parody of a British Baking show, as well as a really well plotted mystery too. Shauna is a middling baker who, when there is an attempted murder under the tent, convinces the producers to let her solve the crime if she can. And it is a hilarious comedy of errors. Such a fun read. And… there’s a second “volume” too, so, watch these Saturdays for that in the future (once I can get my hands on it), and we’ll see if that’s just as off the hook hilarious too.

You may like this book If you Liked: A Murder Most Fowl by Carmela Dutra, Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews, or Garfield, Fully Caffeinated by Jim Davis

This is set in the Kelvin aka Star Trek 2009 movie universe. And, we get to meet a very interesting Klingon in the book. He is not like any other one we've met (or not many of them for sure). Kirk and the Enterprise are really far out when they have to fight the Klingons both on a planet (poor Bones) and also against them on the Enterprise. Don’t want to give too much away, so, I’ll leave it there.

It was a cool look at Kelvin Klingons (say that three times fast), and we even got a Kelvin Orion dude too. It was a very fun read.

Would there even be any fantasy books if someone, at some point in the book didn’t think, ‘what could go wrong if I just do a little magic’. Doh! And whoops.

Isabella Nagg is one of those people who has that thought, and, of course, it would be a boring book if she was right, no harm no foul, okay, next book). Everything goes sideways though when she gets a visit from said cat, the Wizard’s former cat. And suddenly, Isabella and the cat have to save their village before it’s too late.

Okay, so, come to find out quite a few people really really liked the footnotes, and, I’m not saying I disliked them, I thought they were fun, but, yeah, it definitely took me a bit to get into them. (They reminded me of… I think it’s Ryan North and his bottom of the page footnotes in his comics). I did very much like the cat companion, although I wasn’t totally sold on the plants in the book. And, I did think that the villain was villain enough. On the whole the book reminded me a lot of a sort of cozy Douglas Adams sort of fantasy book. And also sort of Fantasy Cottagecore? Is that a thing? I’m not up on the whole naming of stuff, I just read it and leave the naming to others.

You may like this book If you Liked: Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree, Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill, or Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

A boy in a red hoodie takes his dog for a walk in a city. And as he does, he observes all the windows and what is or isn't going on in them. The illustrations also have a bunch of stuff going on in the world that's not in the windows.

The book is cool, but it was really the illustrations that were so much fun. The world that is in all those windows is wicked rich. Such a fun read!

You may like this book If you Liked: Milo Imagines the World by Matt de la Pena, Kitten and the Night Watchman by John Sullivan, or City moon By: Cole, Rachael

Barbara, 13 years old, is not the favorite daughter of the Van Laars (who own Camp Emerson, a summer camp). But, when she suddenly disappears from her bunk in 1975, the search is on for her in the Adirondack woods. Judy Luptak, the police detective assigned to the case is also on the case. And, it’s also made more twisty because years and years before Barbara’s disappearance, her brother also disappeared. Twice. In one family? Yep, that’s definitely a heckuva start to a mystery.

The characters were awesome, and the mysteries most definitely kept me guessing. It was like layers upon layers and made it a really great read.

You may like this book If you Liked: All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker, Knife River by Justine Champine, or Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King

Bugs and Elmer Fudd

The man of many voices

Supergirl is so sick of Superman this and Superman that. She decides that she should show her cousin and the Kent/Lanes what Krypton is all about by going to Argo (which, like in the TV Series Supergirl is on another planet in space, although, in this comic’s universe, I think it’s farther away than in the TV series).

And they do set out to go visit Argo, and even Natasha Irons gets to come along. But, then the trip goes sideways because someone wants to honor Superman., again. Except, nothing seems to be right when they get to the planet that wants to do the honoring. Will they ever actually get to Argo?

I have to say that the ending was sort of different than usual, as far as the how of the bad guy stuff was resolved, but, it surprised me in a totally good way. Awesome graphic novel. (And now I need more Supergirl/Natasha “Steel” Irons). Ooh, and, how could I forget. I first saw Sarah Leuver’s art online somewhere, and was so psyched to see it here in this comic!

Ooh, grumpy, wicked grumpy Doc McCoy, well, he's not quite Doc McCoy yet. He's Leonard H. McCoy, a Cadet at Starfleet Medical (well, Starfleet Academy at least) who is homesick and then when an underclassman with a lot of blond hair gets McCoy in trouble he's suddenly on the Disaster Relief Club (seriously, a club, heh...). And then, once their training is over, suddenly, they already have to go on a mission to a planet that is wicked unstable.

Oh, and, Spock is on McCoys team (along with a woman named Lisa. And, she was great, her twist at the end of the book cracked me up quite a bit). McCoy and Spock get along even less than their playful banter on the Enterprise during the TV show years. Heh. It was a fun read and while it did have Spock in it, it was nice that it mostly focused very well on McCoy. A fun middle grade sort of read.

You may like this book If you Liked: Lifeline by Bobbi J.G. Weiss, Space Camp by Ted Pedersen, or Crisis on Vulcan by Brad Strickland

Definitely a sucker for a mystery with magic in it. Or a magical novel with some mystery within it. This is that. It’s Chicago, 1940s, and Helen, well, she sold her soul to save her brother’s life (as one does… heh). Unfortunately, her time is coming to an end, but then she gets offered one last job. And, it’s one that just might mean that she doesn’t have to give up her soul. All she has to do is find the White City Vampire, a serial killer. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right?? Oh, and small thing, she has three days to do it.

It’s only a novella, but, that doesn’t matter because the story is just packed into a slightly shorter package. And, whew, yep, quite the story. There was always the ticking time in the back of my head as I read about Helen trying to figure out the who and they why of the White City Vampire. And the characters, whew, the good ones, the bad ones, the gray ones. So awesome. Such a fun fun read.

You may like this book If you Liked: The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers, Turns of Fate by Anne Bishop, or Strange New World by Vivian Shaw

Calling a book perfect is neither fair to the author or to prospective readers. And yet, this is the very best book about Amelia Earhart and the story of her last flight that I've read so far. And it's as near to perfect as a book can get I think.

It tells 4 stories, as the subtitle says. Three of those are theories about what happened to Amelia (and sort of Noonan, although, like in most other books, he's an afterthought sorta). That she was captured by the Japanese, that she was stranded on one of the small islands/atolls in the Pacific that are around Howland Isle, or that she ran out of fuel and went into the vastness that is the Pacific Ocean. The fourth story is that of Amelia herself. Starting from her as a kid until the last message she sent. And then there is the final chapter, and the end of the book in general. It almost perfectly sums up how I feel about actually finding Earhart vs. what her life being cut short has helped create. An absolutely amazing book.

You may like this book If you Liked: The Flight: Charles Lindbergh's 1927 Transatlantic Crossing by Dan Hampton, Amelia Earhart: The Turbulent Life of An American Icon by Kathleen C. Winters, or East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart by Susan Butler

This was creepy. I mean, definitely in the best way possible, but… shiver.

It takes place across 30 years. First we meet Beth, an orphan who goes to stay with the Averell family at Raven Hall. Then decades later we meet Sadie, she’s hired to come to Raven Hall and play a part. Then the secrets start being revealed (or not revealed) as Beth and Nina, another kid who is Beth’s age, become friends. And, Sadie goes to Raven Hall in 2019 because she’s an actress, but, why.

This was not a novel to read while watching TV or doing something else. It was twisty, and, honestly, I did wonder how the present and past were going to twist themselves together. But, while I know not everyone liked it, I did like the ending, and, although it was a slow burn, I never thought about putting down the book.

You may like this book If you Liked: Black Rabbit HallM by Eve Chase, The Distant Hours by Kate Morton, or The Woman in the Mirror by Rebecca James