BW30: Sunday's Book Babble - Inniskeen Road: July Evening


 It's book week 30 in our 52 Books quest and I stumbled across this poem by Patrick Kavanaugh that I fell in like with:

Inniskeen Road 

The bicycles go by in twos and threes -
There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn tonight,
And there's the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
Half-past eight and there is not a spot
Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown
That might turn out a man or woman, not
A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.

I have what every poet hates in spite
Of all the solemn talk of contemplation.
Of being king and government and nation.
A road, a mile of kingdom. I am king
Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight

*****

Reading Nalini Singh’s Last Guard which makes me want to go back to the beginning and read the first four books again in the psy changeling trinity series.

 “Termed merciless by some, and a robotic sociopath by others, Payal Rao is the perfect Psy: cardinal telekinetic, CEO of a major conglomerate, beautiful—and emotionless.

For Canto Mercant, family and loyalty are everything. A cardinal telepath deemed “imperfect” by his race due to a spinal injury, Canto cares for the opinions of very few—and ruthlessly protects those he claims as his own. Head of intel for the influential Mercant family, he prefers to remain a shadow in the Net, unknown and unseen. But Canto is also an anchor, part of a secretive designation whose task it is to stabilize the PsyNet. Now that critical psychic network is dying, threatening to collapse and kill the entire Psy race with it.

To save those he loves, Canto needs the help of a woman bound to him by a dark past neither has been able to forget. A woman who is the most powerful anchor of them all: Payal Rao. Neither is ready for the violent inferno about to ignite in the PsyNet . . . or the passionate madness that threatens to destroy them both.”

 

Haven’t made much progress in the 14th and last book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light which will probably take me a while since it’s a chunky book.   

Guest Post -James M's review of IDW Sonic issue 42

 


Welcome back, fans. Its IDW Sonic time again and, after adventuring into the Classic Sonic timeline, we're journeying back into the main timeline with issue 42 that serves as part two of Zeti Hunt.
This one was intense and epic, the Zeti attacked Resistance HQ and Doctor Starline returned... to kidnap Belle. 

That's right, baby. Doctor Starline's back and he kidnapped Belle, mostly due to the fact he never forgot her after the events of the Chao Races and Badnik Bases arc written by Evan Stanley. Nice to see Ian start to build off what Evan established between his departure and return. Its so cool to build on something established in a comic that often builds off what the Sonic games have established despite its non-canon status.

Ian and his crew did an excellent job with this issue and there were a few cool Easter Eggs throughout, can't name them all, but there was a Star Fox Easter Egg in Tails' Central City workshop. The characterizations were beautiful and the writing team pulled no punches, it was intriguing to see Starline be shocked to learn that Zavok was still alive after the Bad Guys miniseries. 

C'mon, you can't kill off a licensed character unless you have necessary permission and I'd be shocked too if I found out that someone I thought was dead was still alive. Can't keep a good villain down, am I right? Also, seeing Tangle and Whisper is very sweet, they are great characters and so is Jewel the Beetle. This issue was full of great moments and story scenes that will never be forgotten.

My score for IDW Sonic issue 42 is a 9.5 out of 10.
See you in issue 43, folks!


BW29 Sunday's Book Babble - The Wheel of Time

 



It's book week 29 in our 52 Books Quest and highlighted  William Makepeace Thackeray's The Cane Bottome Chair this week. 

Reading the 14th and last book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light which will probably take me a while since it’s a chunky book.  I’m in a reread mood as well and just finished Cherry Adair’s Hush, which was just as good the second time.

“Thrill seekers Zakary and Gideon Stark travel the globe in search of extreme adventure, but a trip to Venezuela to jump off the world’s highest falls catapults them into a perilous game of life or death—where they don’t know the rules.

Kidnapped with a woman Zak knows nothing about, the brothers are held prisoner deep in the jungle. A risky, deathdefying escape separates them and nearly claims Zak’s life . . . until his recovery reveals a baffling new sixth sense.

Now, to find his missing brother, Zak and the mysterious Acadia Gray will have to out-smart, out-gun, and out-maneuver not just the brutal kidnappers but also a new player who joins the adrenaline game: a ruthless opponent who wants the Stark brothers dead—at any cost.”

Also finished reread of the first book in Keri Arthur’s Souls of Fire series with Fireborn. 

“ Emberly Pearson—a phoenix capable of taking on human form, and cursed with the ability to foresee death…

Emberly has spent a good number of her many lives trying to save humans. So when her prophetic dreams reveal the death of Sam, a man she once loved, she does everything in her power to prevent that from happening. But in saving his life, she gets more than she bargained for.

Sam is working undercover for the Paranormal Investigations Team, and those who are trying to murder him are actually humans infected by a plague-like virus, the Crimson Death—a by-product of a failed government experiment that attempted to identify the enzymes that make vampires immortal. Now, all those infected must be eliminated.

But when Emberly’s boss is murdered and his irreplaceable research stolen, she needs to find the guilty party before she goes down in flames…”

BW28: Sunday's Book Babble - the joy of maps

 

World of Harry Potter 

It's week 28 in our 52 Books quest and this week we're talking about Maps. Whether you explore by foot, car, train, sailing ship or  space ship, authors and characters like to explore and helpfully provide us with maps of their worlds and their journeys. 

Some fun links about maps:

20 Literary Maps

16 Essential Literary Maps for Bookworms

 77 Best Cartography Books of All Time

10 Books for Map Enthusiasts to Read at Home

Bookriot's Grounds for Murder: Maps and Floor Plans in Mystery Novels.

And last but not least, one of my favorite things is creative cartography which was introduced to me in a writing class and I thoroughly enjoyed exploring Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer.

I finally started the 14th and last book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light. Which happens to have a beautiful map in the front of the book.  Also reading ebook Cogman’s 7th book in the Invisible Library series, The Dark Archive.  Waiting in the wings is Ben Aaronovitch’s 2nd book in the Rivers of London series, Moon over Soho, which has a map on the cover. 

 

Bookish Notes - Two hanky reads

 

Saatchi Art Artist Georgiana Chitac "ABSENCE

Looks like we are in for another heat wave.  I finished The Little Paris Bookshop which was so very good and also a two hankie read. Sniff sniff.  One of those books that's so full of  emotion and epiphanies,  and bookish advice, I'll have to read again.   It wasn't maudlin or dark. Yes, parts were sad, but full of hope as the characters worked through stages of love and loss and grief.   

"What task do the departed want us to do?"

"To carry them within us-that is our task. We carry them all inside us, all our dead and shattered loves.  Only they make us whole. If we begin to forget or cast aside those we've lost, then..then we are no longer present either.  All the love, all the dead, all the people we've known. They are the rivers that feed our sea of souls. If we refuse to remember them, that sea will dry up too."

Went on to read Karen Hawkins 2nd book in her Dove Pond series, A Cup of Silver Linings, which was another two hankie read. I inadvertently seemed to have a theme going on here.  A story about grief, love, family, and acceptance with the loss of one young character's mother and another character's betrayal by her sister.  

I balanced it out with a rewatch of Mamma Mia, one of my favorite movies given that I grew up on ABBA music constantly running in the background in our house. 

On to the Wheel of Time! 

BW27: Sunday's Book Babble - Fictional Librarian of the month - Israel Armstrong

 


It's week 27 in our 52 Books quest and the fictional librarian of the month is Israel Armstrong from Ian Sansom's Mobile Library Series. 

Finished Kat French's cozy romance  - Bed and Breakfast on the Beach.  A light hearted read for the most part.

"Winnie, Stella and Frankie have been best friends forever.
When their lives unexpectedly unravel, they spontaneously decide to buy a gorgeous B&B on a remote Greek island. Drenched in hot sun, Villa Valentina is the perfect escape from reality. But when Winnie meets Jesse, their brooding neighbour, she finds that Greece is full of its own complications – not least how attractive he is…

Meanwhile, Frankie and Stella are discovering that Villa Valentina has its own secrets – starting with the large supply of gin in the cellar and the arrival of a famous rock band. A band with one very good-looking member who just might distract Frankie from thoughts of her husband…"

In the middle of The Case of the Missing Books in which poor Israel is met with one disaster after another.

Also started the Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George:

"Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.

After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself."

Bookish Notes: Matt Haig's Midnight Library

 


I just finished Matt Haig's Midnight Library.  At first I thought it was going to be terribly depressing but turned out not to be. Nora's given up on life due to a series of disasters and ends up in the Midnight Library. Kind of a philosophical limbo in which she can choose from millions of books, filled with different scenarios to see what her life would have been like it she had made a different choice.  She takes a multi universe trip, stepping into her alternate selves, trying on different lives.  

"Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place."