Fiction:
A Trifle Dead by Livia Day is a humorous small-town mystery. I enjoyed all the quirky characters and the to-me-unusual setting of Hobart in Tasmania; there’s also a lot of excellent, excellent food description, as the first person narrator owns a cafe and likes to experiment. I feel smug about the mystery because I figured out who the villain was, but that didn’t impair my enjoyment. The only thing that annoyed me a little was the Scottish character whose dialect was written out.
After that, I fell into another reading slump, so I re-read The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. So far as I recall I only read it once, when it first came out, so there’s a lot I didn’t remember about it. The re-read went very quickly, and while it was in progress I didn’t feel the need to stray to anything else. I bought an e-edition of the next one in the series for possible holiday re-read.
I had a couple of DNFs, but I’ll give them another month or so before I record them, in case I go back and finish.
Comics:
Runaways: The Complete Collection Volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughn has been on my TBR for a while, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. For those not familiar with the series, it’s about a group of kids who find out their parents are supervillains, so they run away and try to defeat them…except one of them might be a traitor to the cause. In the group of kids, girls outnumber boys! Though I identified the Mole among the kids before it was revealed, I guessed other things wrong, and was pleasantly surprised by several plot twists. I have Volume 2 waiting for me; there are four in all.
Nonfiction:
Work/Text: Investigating the Man from U.N.C.L.E. by Cynthia Walker is the book form of the author’s dissertation, so is likely not for everyone, but if you’re a fan of the show as well and like to read about media studies, as I do, then it’s lovely. I had met the author years ago at a convention for media fandom and heard about her research then. I’ve been looking forward to the book ever since! It’s repaid my wait. Once you get through the theoretical section, it’s fascinating to see how many people from how many angles affected what eventually appeared in the aired episodes, and how the success of those episodes altered the rest of the television landscape – and how the rest of the television landscape affected it in turn, for example the success of Batman with Adam West influencing the third season of U.N.C.L.E.. I particularly liked the section about the various tie-in novels, including the juvenile one (THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.: The Affair of the Gentle Saboteur) that I read multiple times as a kid, despite having never (at that point) seen the show.
Poetry:
Aboard the Transport Tesoro by Lisa M. Bradley at Uncanny Magazine.
Artifacts by Judith Roney at Mythic Delirium.
