Emma Types Stuff

How many stars you give a book can be big drama in the book community. Give it one and (according to some) you might as well be sledgehammering the author in the face, give it five and it feels like you are judging a werewolf romance you greatly enjoyed as on par with Austen and Harper Lee. I have a rating system that works well enough for me ( one for unfinished , two if it's meh, three if it was fine, four if I loved it, five if it resonated with my soul ) but I still catch myself out on occasion. A book I cheerfully rate four stars can, with a bit of distance, have a bitter aftertaste that makes me feel cheated. With some space and thought, a book I didn't appreciate can grow and mature. Gideon the Ninth [Tamsyn Muir] is the first book I've read that left me with no idea how I truly felt about it. In one light it's fascinating and unique, and in another it's all style and no substance. Is it cleverly plotted or just several shocking moments in a trench coat? Is t...

I think most fantasy readers have a moment when they truly grasp how horrifying the end of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is.  As children, it's disappointing to see our heroes become kings and queens and then return to ordinary WW2 England, without a faun in sight. As adults... well.... who hasn't been horrified at the idea of them being thrust back into their pre-pubescent bodies? Not to mention losing all of their friends and having at least a decade of their life vanish?  I bet King Edmund was in the midst of some complex trade deal he was actually hoping to pull off before being dumped back to the land of rationed sweets.  He - the boy who betrayed his whole family - eventually gets to go on some more Aslanian adventures. Not so poor Susan, who fails the Narnia personality test off-screen, for the crime of, I dunno, being too girly . The land of Christian allegories is actually quite judgey...who'd have thunk it? So what has this rant got to do with Every Hea...

There was a point about two thirds into this queer romance when I suddenly realised that I didn't want the main characters to get together.  This was a bit of a shock as I am generally easy to please when it comes to romantic pairings. If you tell me that two warm-blooded, consenting humans are meant for each other then I will happily go along with it. I ship mainstream ships. I even ship multiple heterosexual pairings, which as a queer woman in fandom is faintly hilarious, if not actually embarrassing. So for a romance book to set up a meet cute, and then get me to the point where I'm actively rooting against them... that takes skill. Of course, this is what the author [Alexis Hall] was intending all along. Because Paris Dalliencourt is About to Crumble is a baking show romance that is far from cookie-cutter. Paris is, to put it simply, an anxious mess. He worries about absolutely everything. He gets by in life via insane posh-boy privilege and the emotional support of his bes...

Following on from my successful December Reading Challenge , I am attempting Fantasy February in which I will read ten fantasy novels throughout the (worringly short) month of Feb.  To see the challenge, or take part, you can check out the Storygraph challenge here .  The Prompts: 1. Urban Fantasy or Magical Realism Tuesday Mooney Wore Black Tuesday Mooney is a Millennial goth, raised on Buffy and The X-Files and - of course - The Addams Family . She's now a fairly everyday charity office worker and so when an eccentric millionaire leaves his money to anyone who can complete his scavenger hunt, she leaps at the opportunity. This was a lot lighter on fantasy than the description had me believe, but there was a tiny bit. Overall a fun read with fantastic, lifelike characters. 2. A Book Set at a Magic School that ISN'T Harry Potter  Every Heart a Doorway The Home for Wayward Children houses teenagers who visited magical lands - a whole generation of Alices, Lucys and Dorothy...

It seems to me that I type the words ' this isn't my usual thing at all, but I loved it ' on a regular basis. So regular, in fact, that you might secretly think that I'm in denial about what my usual thing actually is. But for me the story concept trumps all else. I'll happily try genres I traditionally hate if the summary makes a good case for it. And this one did.  Our Wives Under the Sea [Julia Armfield] is literary. It's also about the sea - the clue being in the title - which isn't a subject I find particularly interesting. But the summary did its job, offering a queer love story filled with subtle horror and a Lovecraftian undercurrent. I sat up and took notice.  It's about a lesbian couple, Miri and Leah. They are British millennials - cosmopolitan, married, and relatively settled in life. Miri writes grant proposals and Leah is a marine scientist, who vanishes on submarine missions for weeks at a time. But then Leah vanishes for a long, long time...

There are very few authors that I dip into pretty much every year, and even fewer who publish enough to allow me to do so. Terry Pratchett was one, and Alexander McCall Smith's genteel No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books are like a yearly visit to old friends.  Gail Carriger's extensive Parasol Protectorate universe is the other.  For those of you who recognise the books, I can sense the surprise. Vampire/Werewolf Steampunk novels are the very essence of that Devil Wears Prada ' groundbreaking ' meme. I probably wouldn't have picked up the first (Soulless) had I not been seeking salvation in a second-hand bookshop while on a very tedious day trip.  The cover has a woman in Victorian garb, ripped straight from a DeviantArt Steampunk page, and a title in hot pink. Luckily I was being dragged round charity shops, at the seaside, in March and therefore up for literally anything that sounded more fun than that rainy experience.  So here is my guide to the series,...

On paper, Convenience Store Woman (Sayaka Murata) isn't my thing at all. My dislike of contemporary literary novels is well-documented and while I appreciate the Japanese love of mystery novels , I'm not unusually obsessed with Japanese culture.   Yet, it's a contender for the best book I read last year.  Convenience Store Woman is a love story between a woman and a convenience store. Sounds crazy, right? Not in a totally ick way (like women who marry bridges) but with a hint of ick. Just enough to leave you unsettled, while also kind've rooting for it. You can't help but ship this woman with a place that sells sushi and toiletries, when that place makes her so very happy.    Keiko is a thirty-something woman in Japan. A couple of telling stories from her childhood show how she struggles to understand others. She's too literal, to the point of accidental assault, and doesn't feel things in the same way as other children. The book never diagnoses her with a...

Bear Town (by Fredrik Backman) shouldn't appeal to me.  In fact, if I'd actually read the plot description before using my Audible credit on it, I wouldn't have bothered. But I was looking for a wintry, Scandi book for my December reading challenge and this was a title I'd seen several times, so I took a punt.  It's slow. It's got a huge cast. It's about ice-hockey.  I effing LOVED it.  Bear Town, a small town in Northern Sweden, is dying. 'If you reach Bear Town, you've gone too far' pretty much sums the place up. The factory jobs are dissapearing, shops are closing, and house prices are nosediving.  But their junior (seventeen-year-old) ice-hockey team has a real chance. They are about to play a game that could turn them into the best team in the country. Kevin, their star player, has a future so bright that a professional ice-hockey career is almost certain. If they win this game, they'll become an ice-hockey destination. Money will po...

Here is where you can see a list of everything I read in 2023 and find links to any blog posts mentioning those books. To see my 2022 list, go here .  January I'm Glad My Mom Died Observations by Gaslight  Hither, Page [Page & Sommers 1] A Dead Djinn in Cairo [The Dead Djinn Universe 1] The Honjin Murders [Detective Kosuke Kindaichi 1] The Missing Page  [Page & Sommers 2] The Factory Witches of Lowell  All Systems Red [The Murderbot Diaries 1] Our Wives Under the Sea  [1] Curtsies & Conspiracies [ Gail Carriger's Finishing School 2 ]  Britt-Marie Was Here Paris Dalliencourt is About to Crumble [Winner Bakes All 2]  The Dictator's Wife February Tuesday Mooney Wore Black  Paladin's Grace [Saint of Steel 1] A Natural History of Dragons [Lady Trent 1] Every Heart a Doorway [Wayward Children 1] The Haunting of Tram Car 015    [The Dead Djinn Universe 2] The Cat Who Saved Books Tea and Sympathetic Magic [Teacup Magic 1] When Wom...

Waiting for Ted (Marieke Bigg) has a cover that reaches out and grabs you by the throat. A 1950s, pie-holding Stepford Wife with two giant red holes where her eyes should be, like a domesticated version of The Fly. You know at once that whatever it's about, it's going to be messed up. I had some reservations because it's a literary novel. I don't read much in the way of (contemporary) literary fiction. Having never studied literature at anything beyond a high-school level, it usually leaves me feeling stupid and like a faker. I'm the person at the posh-people party who doesn't know which forks to use and who doesn't know how to ski. I almost didn't write this review, because I was quite sure that I'd make some extremely obvious blunder and reveal how much I don't understand. Still, this feeling of living a lie gives me something in common with the characters. Waiting for Ted focuses on Rose. She's an upper-class woman (' shooting on the e...