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Nov. 5th, 2010 02:43 amThis is a placeholder post for today's book review. Book read, review mentally composed, wrists so bad I should not be typing this. Applying heat and rest. Review tomorrow. (Not typing-caused. Knitting. Dammit.)
Nov. 5th, 2010
placeholder
Nov. 5th, 2010 02:43 amThis is a placeholder post for today's book review. Book read, review mentally composed, wrists so bad I should not be typing this. Applying heat and rest. Review tomorrow. (Not typing-caused. Knitting. Dammit.)
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
comments over there.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
Yesterday's review. Wrists still bad, but bracing and heat helped. Many thanks to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
17catherines and jinian for the recommendation, as this is really, really not something I would ever have picked up without a rec, and I enjoyed it.
This is I think the third? in its series, but it was a perfectly reasonable starting point that did not appear to depend heavily on the previous. The protagonist is a blacksmith who makes her living at craft fairs, which got its attention by myself, because I enjoy blacksmithery. The awesome one of my two fathers-in-law is a blacksmith, and this book got the preoccupations right, although the protagonist is slightly less obsessed with making her own tools to do things to iron than my father-in-law is. (He says that when you buy a forge, you fill a bowl with marbles, and then every time you forge yourself a new tool you remove a marble from the bowl, and when you've lost all your marbles you're a master blacksmith. He hit that point years ago.) But some of the speeches she makes about various metal-related things could have come out of his mouth, so I approve.
Also, this book took place entirely at a reenactment of the Battle of Yorktown, and I recognized that too. One of the funnier things in the book is that the protagonist's boyfriend's mother is, for those of you who read Connie Willis, essentially Lady Schrapnell by way of the Anachronism Police-- there will be no cell phones here on her watch!-- and it is consistently well-timed and well-implemented screwball comedy in the old sense.
Honestly, that's most of what I have to say about this: consistently well-done old-style character-based comedy which manages not to annoy me about gender or race, which neither has the book break under the weight of the nastiness of having a corpse turn up nor has everyone be all right with a corpse turning up to a psychologically unrealistic extent, and which is not intending to be deep in any sense and is therefore profoundly relaxing. It is exactly what I was looking for for a tired reading day, and is better than it had to be. These go in the mental slot labeled 'ideal beach reading'.
( Cut for an excerpt by way of example. )
17catherines and jinian for the recommendation, as this is really, really not something I would ever have picked up without a rec, and I enjoyed it.This is I think the third? in its series, but it was a perfectly reasonable starting point that did not appear to depend heavily on the previous. The protagonist is a blacksmith who makes her living at craft fairs, which got its attention by myself, because I enjoy blacksmithery. The awesome one of my two fathers-in-law is a blacksmith, and this book got the preoccupations right, although the protagonist is slightly less obsessed with making her own tools to do things to iron than my father-in-law is. (He says that when you buy a forge, you fill a bowl with marbles, and then every time you forge yourself a new tool you remove a marble from the bowl, and when you've lost all your marbles you're a master blacksmith. He hit that point years ago.) But some of the speeches she makes about various metal-related things could have come out of his mouth, so I approve.
Also, this book took place entirely at a reenactment of the Battle of Yorktown, and I recognized that too. One of the funnier things in the book is that the protagonist's boyfriend's mother is, for those of you who read Connie Willis, essentially Lady Schrapnell by way of the Anachronism Police-- there will be no cell phones here on her watch!-- and it is consistently well-timed and well-implemented screwball comedy in the old sense.
Honestly, that's most of what I have to say about this: consistently well-done old-style character-based comedy which manages not to annoy me about gender or race, which neither has the book break under the weight of the nastiness of having a corpse turn up nor has everyone be all right with a corpse turning up to a psychologically unrealistic extent, and which is not intending to be deep in any sense and is therefore profoundly relaxing. It is exactly what I was looking for for a tired reading day, and is better than it had to be. These go in the mental slot labeled 'ideal beach reading'.
( Cut for an excerpt by way of example. )
Yesterday's review. Wrists still bad, but bracing and heat helped. Many thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
17catherines and jinian for the recommendation, as this is really, really not something I would ever have picked up without a rec, and I enjoyed it.
This is I think the third? in its series, but it was a perfectly reasonable starting point that did not appear to depend heavily on the previous. The protagonist is a blacksmith who makes her living at craft fairs, which got its attention by myself, because I enjoy blacksmithery. The awesome one of my two fathers-in-law is a blacksmith, and this book got the preoccupations right, although the protagonist is slightly less obsessed with making her own tools to do things to iron than my father-in-law is. (He says that when you buy a forge, you fill a bowl with marbles, and then every time you forge yourself a new tool you remove a marble from the bowl, and when you've lost all your marbles you're a master blacksmith. He hit that point years ago.) But some of the speeches she makes about various metal-related things could have come out of his mouth, so I approve.
Also, this book took place entirely at a reenactment of the Battle of Yorktown, and I recognized that too. One of the funnier things in the book is that the protagonist's boyfriend's mother is, for those of you who read Connie Willis, essentially Lady Schrapnell by way of the Anachronism Police-- there will be no cell phones here on her watch!-- and it is consistently well-timed and well-implemented screwball comedy in the old sense.
Honestly, that's most of what I have to say about this: consistently well-done old-style character-based comedy which manages not to annoy me about gender or race, which neither has the book break under the weight of the nastiness of having a corpse turn up nor has everyone be all right with a corpse turning up to a psychologically unrealistic extent, and which is not intending to be deep in any sense and is therefore profoundly relaxing. It is exactly what I was looking for for a tired reading day, and is better than it had to be. These go in the mental slot labeled 'ideal beach reading'.
( Cut for an excerpt by way of example. )
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
comments over there.
17catherines and jinian for the recommendation, as this is really, really not something I would ever have picked up without a rec, and I enjoyed it.This is I think the third? in its series, but it was a perfectly reasonable starting point that did not appear to depend heavily on the previous. The protagonist is a blacksmith who makes her living at craft fairs, which got its attention by myself, because I enjoy blacksmithery. The awesome one of my two fathers-in-law is a blacksmith, and this book got the preoccupations right, although the protagonist is slightly less obsessed with making her own tools to do things to iron than my father-in-law is. (He says that when you buy a forge, you fill a bowl with marbles, and then every time you forge yourself a new tool you remove a marble from the bowl, and when you've lost all your marbles you're a master blacksmith. He hit that point years ago.) But some of the speeches she makes about various metal-related things could have come out of his mouth, so I approve.
Also, this book took place entirely at a reenactment of the Battle of Yorktown, and I recognized that too. One of the funnier things in the book is that the protagonist's boyfriend's mother is, for those of you who read Connie Willis, essentially Lady Schrapnell by way of the Anachronism Police-- there will be no cell phones here on her watch!-- and it is consistently well-timed and well-implemented screwball comedy in the old sense.
Honestly, that's most of what I have to say about this: consistently well-done old-style character-based comedy which manages not to annoy me about gender or race, which neither has the book break under the weight of the nastiness of having a corpse turn up nor has everyone be all right with a corpse turning up to a psychologically unrealistic extent, and which is not intending to be deep in any sense and is therefore profoundly relaxing. It is exactly what I was looking for for a tired reading day, and is better than it had to be. These go in the mental slot labeled 'ideal beach reading'.
( Cut for an excerpt by way of example. )
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are