Angieville

Somehow it's New Year's Eve again, and here we are. I don't especially feel like getting into what this bloody year was like and how I thought it couldn't get worse than last year, but then 2017 came and was all . . . ahem. Well, you know the rest.  Suffice it to say, I feel like my favorite reads of the year reflect what I needed and what all you wonderful writers and readers had and needed to give. Just ten titles this year, you guys. A literal Top Ten, which I don't believe I've ever actually achieved. It is the last day of the year, and I present you with one highly distilled list of impeccable reads. Photo by  @aamith (in the order in which I read them) Pretty Face by Lucy Parker A Season of Daring Greatly by Ellen Emerson White A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner Hunted by Meagan Spooner A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas No Limits by Ellie Marney All the Crooked Sain...

Look, I knew this day was coming. I mean, there was a chance that it wouldn't. If I hadn't given in and read Sarah J. Maas ' A Court of Thorns and Roses series, I might never have gone back and given the Throne of Glass series a second chance. Which would have been a dashed shame (more on that later). But reading Feyre's story and loving it in the precise way I did was the nail in the coffin of not returning to Celaena's story as well. Thank you, Reading Gods of Second Chances. I think you're all familiar with my history with this series. In fact, some of you have a similar story. I snagged an ARC of Throne of Glass (one of the ones with the original terrible cover) at BEA way  back in the day and started it almost immediately. I ran out of steam a ways in and gave up for lack of anything holding my interest. And, somehow, my reaction was strong enough to withstand literal  years of ensuing hype and rave reviews from readers and writers I truly esteem. F...

It's been a full year of delicious anticipation, this waiting for the second volume in Sherry Thomas ' delightful Lady Sherlock series. I thoroughly enjoyed A Study in Scarlet Women  last year, and I had just a really good gut feeling about where the sequel would take my favorite characters—from the absolutely flawlessly rendered Charlotte Holmes and the impenetrable Lord Ingram, to Mrs. Watson, Livia and Bernadine Holmes, and poor, beleaguered Inspector Treadles. I was so pleased to be back in their company once more when I finally cracked open my copy of  A Conspiracy in Belgravia and commenced reading. It took her awhile, but now Charlotte is living in something more akin to the manner she would prefer. Together with her companion Mrs. Watson (and Mrs. Watson's irrepressible niece and aspiring physician Miss Redmayne), Charlotte is becoming extremely well-versed in the solving of all things mysterious around London. The only black marks on her new life are the dista...

I'm a bit giddy just typing this. Emily Wilson—a professor of Classical Studies and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania—has become the first woman to translate Homer's  The Odyssey into English, and I can hardly wait to get my hands on a copy. This article in The New York Times is well worth a read, if you (like me) are interested in all things Penelope, Odysseus, and grey-eyed Athena. Just take a look at the opening lines of Wilson's translation: Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools, they ate the Sun God's cattle, and the god kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginn...

I thought today would be the perfect day to review this unicorn of a book. It is All Saints' Day—a fitting day to revisit all the crooked ones, no? It is also the first day of November and so, today, . . . well, you know the rest. What I'm saying is, today is kind of the perfect day to do all the Maggie Stiefvater -related things! Which is, of course, why I'll be attending her signing event later this evening at my local indie , key in hand. I know. I win today. I do. What I do not do is take it for granted. My good fortune or this book. This beautiful, beautiful book. But before we get into my reaction, I want to make a brief request. If you haven't yet had a chance to read Maggie's post on how this book came about and what it was originally going to be and what it actually became, I straight up implore you to do so. It is one of my favorite things I've read this year and it is something I needed to read this year. My favorite line? "I discovered that ...

I am having difficulty achieving some semblance of coherence when it comes to this beautiful book. My feelings for it are threatening to overwhelm me on every level this morning. I didn't sleep last night. And I mean that literally. I didn't sleep a wink. Twice, I tried to force myself to do the right smart thing and wait to finish on the morrow. But my head and my heart would have none of it. They were both buzzing far too loudly to even think of sleep. I bought McKelle George 's debut novel Speak Easy, Speak Love on the day it released based on three things: it has  easily my favorite cover of the year (I swoon, I swoon over this cover), it was edited by my Martha (say no more), and it is a Roaring Twenties adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (as Ms. George herself puts it—Shakespeare's most romantic comedy). I really feel like I could just leave it there, and that those of you in possession of a soul would immediately run to the bookstore (as one does) and set...

For the past couple of days I have been somewhat swallowed up in Eva Ibbotson's The Morning Gift . This was the one Ibbotson historical I'd somehow missed. I'm going to finish it tonight, so a review will be forthcoming. But until then, please have this—Christopher Plummer's unparalleled recitation of "Brown Penny" by W.B. Yeats. A line from this poem makes a brief but shatteringly perfect appearance in The Morning Gift, and I can't . . . I can't get it out of my head.