a brief catch-up

Hello! There have been many things afoot, including taking a week off while my parents visited, and standing on beaches and boats and knee-deep in the ocean with good company while dogs frolicked joyfully around us. So, you know, life has been rough. I actually sort of have a tan. (It's mostly freckles.)

All this glorious ocean-going has not, however, given me much time for reading or blogging. Since I last posted, I have read:

Infinite West: Travels in South Dakota, by Fraser Harrison, my Early Reviewers book from Librarything. It's a slim travelogue by a Brit, with sections on Deadwood, Wounded Knee, and the Badlands. Harrison writes well and wryly, although much of the time his subject matter doesn't allow for humor. I enjoyed this book quite a bit.

Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal. A cute riff on Jane Austen in which the Regency world has magic. The rivalry between our heroine and her sister (which, methinks, was the inspiration for the whole book) was a little too transparently Kowal thinking, "What would happen if Elinor and Marianne Dashwood were competing for the same man?"; and the hero wasn't developed enough for me. But this book was nonetheless adorable and a very soothing read.

Lord Tony's Wife, by Baroness Orczy. I invite you to revisit the previous entries about tight pants if you want more information about the Scarlet Pimpernel novels. I'm not proud of reading this nonsense, but sometimes you just need to fluff it up.

And I finished Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris, by David King. It tells the story of Marcel Petiot, a Paris doctor who murdered dozens of people (the exact number is unknown). He lured in his victims by claiming to run a network helping people escape occupied France, so naturally they were carrying all their money and belongings when they came to him, and he profited from that. It is a totally whacked-out story, and I was amazed I'd never heard of Petiot before, but the interest lies in the story and not King's way of telling it. As a narrator he is a bit dry, although his description of occupied Paris is excellent.

And that's it for now. We will return to something approximating our normal schedule of books, dog stories, and random silliness about my life soon enough!