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...Alexander London letter, let's about-face and guffaw over the Smart Bitches' review of the Jude Deveraux, The Raider - Barbie® and Ken® Doll Giftset.

SO. MANY. PICTURES. DEPICTING. SO. MUCH. HILARIOUSNESS.

Glamour in Glass: Glamourist Histories, #2, by Mary Robinette Kowal

I loved Shades of Milk and Honey, the first book in Kowal's Regency era fantasy series, and I mostly loved this one, too. Like, 95% loved it.

Pros:

I continue to adore the magic system: It's quiet and somewhat sedate, but in creative, inventive hands, allows for WICKED COOL USAGE.

I love that in addition to the fantasy, it works very much as historical fiction—Jane and Vincent are in Belgium for their honeymoon, and Napoleon figures in heavily—and as a romance.

More pluses: The language and the writing, the attention to detail and the pure, awesome geekery of the author. In the Author's Note—DO NOT MISS IT—Kowal talks about how she created a dictionary comprised of Jane Austen's books and ran her manuscript of Glamour and Glass against it. She researched the history of every single word that the dictionary didn't contain, and she lists some that surprised her (and some that she kept anyway). She also talks a bit about how her world diverges from our own, and about what anachronisms she knowingly included. (Which is so much cooler than a blanket "IT'S ALT-HISTORY, ANYTHING GOES!" attitude. Ahem. In my opinion, anyway.)

Cons:

You know that storyline where the heroine gets deliriously happily married and everything is awesome and so on BUT THEN she starts thinking OH NOES, MAYBE HE DOESN'T ACTUALLY REALLY LOVE ME? It's one of my least favorite storylines, and that's much of what goes on with the romance thread in Glamour in Glass. To be fair, Vincent is EXTREMELY withdrawn and irritable and distracted—which is especially bad considering they're on their honeymoon—so it's understandable that Jane would have those feelings, but it's not my fave. That is, of course, MY STUFF, and it totally works in terms of characterization—even drawing on the first book, because for various reasons, Jane doesn't have loads of confidence in herself as A Lovable Person—so really, unless you also dislike that storyarc, it's not much of a Con at all.

Also, while I love that the cover art incorporates bubbles (there's a whole important thread about using spheres of glamour), I can't help but feel that the model is WAAAAAY more conventionally attractive than Jane. I loved the cover art on the first book because I felt that it really captured that. Her dress, though, is BEAUTIFUL, and I have no beef whatsoever with it. Except that I don't own one.

Recommended to:

Fans of the first one, fantasy-loving fans of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, anyone who likes fantasy that really delves into the mechanics of magic systems, fans of any of the above who also have an interest in artists and their techniques.

Sapphique: Incarceron, #2, by Catherine Fisher

I finally, finally got around to the sequel to Incarceron! Finn is now outside the prison, but is not really any less of a prisoner: he's suddenly living in a world of strict social protocol and every misstep he makes acts to further convince everyone—including Claudia, who until now has been his strongest supporter—that he's an impostor, rather than a long-lost prince.

Meanwhile, Finn's allies within Incarceron are still searching for a way to escape: they're hunting for Sapphique's magic glove, which might not even exist... but the prison is working against them, and it wants to find a way to escape itself.

Pros:

Like the first book, the world-building is HUGE and RICH and DARK and COMPLEX. The cultures on the inside and the outside of Incarceron are distinctly different, but it's always clear that regardless of what side of the wall each character resides on, every single one of them is a prisoner in some way. Including Incarceron itself, which is a mindbleep and a half.

In addition to the world-building, the storyline is exciting, and the characters are worth caring about, the pacing is, like, BREAKNECK, and the whole thing is BANANAS in the best kind of way. Incarceron was super, but Sapphique was even better.

Cons:

Erm. None for me, though it's not going to be an across-the-board crowdpleaser: see above about the DARK and BANANAS.

Recommended to:

Fans of the first one. I wouldn't recommend it as a stand-alone.

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G&G: Amazon, Publisher.

S: Amazon, Publisher.

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Book source:

G&G: ILLed through my library.

S: ARC provided by the publisher a looooong time ago.

I love Lydia Bennet.

I can't help it. I know I shouldn't, because SHE IS SUCH AN ASS. 

But I love her BECAUSE she's such an ass.

So, when I found out about The Bad Miss Bennet, a novel STARRING Lydia, obviously I HAD TO READ IT.

It's set three years after Pride and Prejudice, and a few months after Lydia's husband, George Wickham, died at at battle of Quartre Bras. Not due to any dashing act of heroism—that would have been totally out of character—but because he got thrown and then trampled by his own horse. Which seemed fitting*.

So, now Lydia is stuck living with boring Lizzie and pompous Mr. Darcy and, worst of all, the insufferable Miss Georgiana. After three years of relative freedom—Wickham wasn't a particularly good husband, but he wasn't particularly concerned with his wife's habit of flouting social conventions, either—staid life as an impoverished relation at Pemberley chafes.

Also, mourning is a HUGE DRAG. Black is just NOT. HER. COLOR.

So, the moment that opportunity strikes, Lydia heads out on her own, determined to live life on her own terms.

Sadly, The Bad Miss Bennet did not live up to my expectations. It was extremely scattered, in that it didn't seem to know if it wanted to be a sex romp or a mystery or a romance: it had elements of all three, but never settled on one long enough to dig in, so the plotting wasn't particularly strong. The story would meander in one direction for a while, and then it felt like the author just... got bored, switched gears, and meandered in another direction for a while, and then got bored again. And the end of the story felt the same way, just: BORED NOW, THE END.

Which, to be (possibly excessively) blunt, was pretty much my attitude by the time I hit the halfway mark.

So, the plotting didn't do anything for me. But what about the voice, right? I mean, if ANY of the non-Lizzie Bennet sisters ought to have a strong (if asinine) voice, it's Lydia. Not so here. She's got a few super lines, but overall, it certainly wasn't strong enough to carry the entire book.

Characterization? There's no growth whatsoever, and while that made sense in the context of the original text—everything got fixed for Lydia in Pride and Prejudice, so while she had the opportunity to learn lessons, she was never forced to—I found it hard to believe that she wouldn't have matured at all during her three years of marriage, and especially hard to believe that she wouldn't mature at all over the course of her independent adventures. Basically, she started the story as a caricature, and she ended the story as a caricature, and while that can make for a hugely entertaining secondary character, it doesn't work so well in a heroine.

TL; DR: Overall, totally forgettable. Lydia deserves better.

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*That said, I did love that Lost in Austen made him out to be a nice guy.

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Author page.

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Amazon.

Publisher.

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Book source: ILLed through my library.

From Deadline:

Husband-wife scripting team Ken Marino & Erica Oyama have been hired to adapt the book Go The F To Sleep for Fox 2000 and Twilight Saga producer Karen Rosenfelt and All You Need Is Kill producer Erwin Stoff. The book, which was written by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortes, is categorized as a children’s book for adults.

I used to post about older books a lot more. Somewhere along the way, though, in an effort to keep up with the never-ending supply of review copies, new books at the library, and new books that I buy, I've gotten away from that. And I feel like I'm missing out.

So, for the foreseeable future, anyway, I'm going to start covering older titles on Fridays.

This week's book is—obviously—Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which I've been meaning to read ever since it came out. I remember pestering my former library director to buy the series for the library, and she did, but somehow—despite all of the factors that make it a perfect ME book (obnoxiously smart girl detective, philatelic mystery, sisterly squabbles, impoverished British upper class, small town gossip, boys' school hijinks)—I've never made the time for it until now.

June, 1950. When we first meet eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, she's tied up, gagged, and locked in a dark closet. Not for long, though: her older sisters Ophelia and Daphne may have her beat in terms of pure physicality, but they'll never be a match for her brain.

So when a real tangle of a mystery arrives at Buckshaw—quite literally at the front door—Flavia isn't just intrigued: she's ecstatic. She doesn't know what the dead jackdaw means, or why it has a Penny Black postage stamp impaled on its beak. But she does know that it means something to her philatelist father: and whatever it is, it isn't good. When she finds a dying man in the cucumber patch later that night—a man who she saw arguing with her father just hours before—the mystery becomes that much more intriguing... and with her father as the most logical suspect, her need to find out the truth becomes that much more urgent.

Surprisingly enough, this book didn't win me over until about the halfway mark. Before that, despite Flavia's obvious charms—she's bright, enchantingly vicious, a great liar, and impressively obnoxious—she felt more like the idea of a person than an actual person. Also, and more off-putting, Bradley's third-person narration was slightly condescending towards her, like, "Oh, look at this child who thinks she's so clever. Let's titter at her innocent obliviousness." Sadly, I can't identify anything specific, but SOMETHING put my back up, clearly.

But! There is a distinct turning-point for both problems: after a long conversation with her father—well, it's more of a monologue on his part—there's a shift, Flavia suddenly blooms into a real, three-dimensional person, and there's a subtle change in the narrative voice as well: it starts treating her as an equal. To be fair, before that conversation, Flavia had been looking at the mystery as a game of sorts, and after it, she begins detecting in earnest. So, to a degree—even though it made me uncomfortable—the condescension in the beginning was warranted. Or at least understandable in hindsight.

Other thoughts: I pegged the murderer immediately, but that didn't bother me, since the whys and hows were still left to untangle. Flavia's interactions with Inspector Hewitt are wonderful, the class issues are nicely handled, as is the depiction of post-WWII life. By the end, I had developed some serious affection for almost all of the characters, and I'll definitely be reading the sequels.

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Author page.

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Amazon.

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Book source: Personal copy.

As you may have noticed, I've been making an effort lately to highlight some of the books I've covered in the past. After all, we don't want to be all new, all the time, right? That gets boring.

Anyway, as today is the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, I'm pointing you back to my post about Katharine Weber's Triangle, which I adored:

I loved Katharine Weber's writing, period—I'm not usually drawn to reading about science and math, but I found the segments about George's music (and about Rebecca's job as a genetics researcher) just as fascinating as the personal relationships and the history. The transcripts of Esther's interviews and testimony brought her to life for me. It was short (less than 250 pages), but it was tight, so tight that I felt much more strongly about these characters than I have about many in other, longer novels.

At the Telegraph:

In reality, she said, teenagers were fragile, self-centred and even left contemplating their own mortality as they struggled with growing up.

"I think that as an adolescent you are very fragile, generally speaking," she said. "Obviously it's a time when your empathy is not terribly well developed.

"You are spending a lot of time thinking about yourself."

From yesterday's Publishers Lunch:

...THIS SIDE OF MARRIED and LADY OF THE SNAKES author Rachel Pastan's ALENA, pitched as a contemporary "restaging" of Daphne Du Maurier's classic Rebecca. 

Unlike New Girl and Frost and The Dead and Buried, though, this one (I assume) will be geared at the adult market.

Elizabeth Peters Week continues!

If you've been meaning to get in on the action, NOW IS THE TIME. As I've received so many lovely contributions (Did I mention that I'm totally still taking them?), I'll be running some of the longer ones over the course of the week, and linking everything up together at the end.

From BAK's post:

When I was a sixth grader at a small, private school, I was depressed and miserable. I was having a difficult time socially and emotionally and all I ever wanted to do was read. I was obsessed with Ancient Egypt from a very young age, so when my mom saw a paragraph in The Washington Post about a book called The Mummy Case, she took me straight to Borders to pick it up hoping that this outing might brighten my day. Boy, she didn’t know what she was starting!

Read the rest over at her blog!

Elizabeth Peters Week continues! 

If you've been meaning to get in on the action, NOW IS THE TIME. As I've received so many lovely contributions (Did I mention that I'm totally still taking them?), I'll be running some of the longer ones over the course of the week, and linking everything up together at the end.

Here's what Debra has to say:

I just discovered these books thanks to your posts, so my love for EP's books is new and raw and exciting and I'm sharing it with everyone I know. And most of the people have already read her books, so I'm being met with that same kind yet glazed look that friends give when you're gushing about a new girl/boyfriend. But I don't care. My love is real and amazing and new and no one can tell me it's not.

I fangirled about The Seventh Sinner at my blog (Library Lass) Adventures in Reading, and I am eternally grateful for the introduction to Elizabeth Peters's world.

And here's a snippet from said blog post:

Jacqueline! The purse! The stare! The sharp tongue! The knitting! The hair! If I could be anyone in the world, it would be a combination of Jessica Fletcher, Evy Carnahan, Flynn Carsen, and Jacqueline Kirby. And I would rule the world.

Debra Touchette blogs at (Library Lass) Adventures in Reading and Guys Lit Wire, and can be found on Twitter at @threelefthands.

Elizabeth Peters Week continues!

If you've been meaning to get in on the action, NOW IS THE TIME. As I've received so many lovely contributions (Did I mention that I'm totally still taking them?), I'll be running some of the longer ones over the course of the week, and linking everything up together at the end.

Originally, I'd planned on posting about the fourth (and last, *sob*) Jacqueline Kirby book today, but my real-life schedule interfered. Hopefully, tomorrow! In the meantime, here's a round-up of all of my posts about Vicky Bliss, Elizabeth Peters' art historian extraordinaire (who, of course, is also an amateur sleuth and has an on-again/off-again romance going with a DASHING ART THIEF).

Borrower of the Night: Vicky Bliss, #1:

Vicky, I love you. I love you and Elizabeth Peters. I love you, Elizabeth Peters, and Schmidt, who doesn't have a big enough part in this book. I love you, Elizabeth Peters, Schmidt-who-doesn't-have-a-big-enough-part-in-this-book, and Sir John Smythe, WHO ISN'T IN THIS BOOK. How could that have slipped my mind?  That's probably exactly why I've re-read the other books in the series 40 hundred times, but only read this one, like, 20 hundred times.

Street of the Five Moons: Vicky Bliss, #2:

More reasons to love Vicky: although her physical assets frustrate her in the academic world, she has no problem putting them to good use while investigating crimes -- she giggles and sighs and inhales deeply and men just fall over themselves to give her information. She learned how to pick locks in tenth grade from a boy called Piggy Wilson. She is clearly a huge reader -- not only does she compare John to Wimsey in the above passage, but she's always making and recognizing literary references.

Silhouette in Scarlet: Vicky Bliss, #3:

Make sense? It doesn't matter. We've got Vicky, John, Schmidt, buried treasure and a villain who gives Vicky advice about her love life. Also, Elizabeth Peters is totally aware of the cliches of the genre and mocks them while still using them quite effectively. Who needs sense? Oh, swoon. These books make me almost deliriously happy.

Trojan Gold: Vicky Bliss, #4:

Oh my God, I'd forgotten how much I LOVE THIS BOOK!!

Okay. So, Vicky is minding her own business (as usual), when a bloodstained package arrives for her in the mail. The stain is so large that the return address is obscured. So that's mysterious.

Night Train to Memphis: Vicky Bliss, #5:

And the second half is VERY awesome -- if you haven't realized that Schmidt is the coolest guy ever before reaching this point, it'll happen here. (And if it doesn't, I don't know if we can be friends anymore.  Seriously.) If Schmidt isn't a draw (WHAT??), there're some great moments between John and an old school chum... and yes, OF COURSE between John and Vicky. AND there are a few moments that suggest John's family may be related to the Peabody-Emerson clan.

The Laughter of Dead Kings: Vicky Bliss, #6:

SCHMIDT!!!! SCHMIDT!!!! HE IS THE AWESOMEST PIECE OF AWESOME EVER AND I'M SO GLAD THAT ELIZABETH PETERS CLEARLY LOVES HIM JUST AS MUCH AS WE ALL DO!!!! AND HIS NEW OBSESSION ALMOST KILLED ME!!!!

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Author page.

...I was listening to an interview with one of the authors of Big Data, and it made me realize that I'm turning into my father.

Author: If Big Data correlations identify me as a 44-year-old male who's a journalist and who has grand eyes for things I can't afford, it may think that I'm going to be susceptible to embezzlement, and maybe I will get a knock on the door by the police, who say, 'We have reason to believe that you're about to commit a crime.' This is sort of like pre-crime in Minority Report.

Interviewer: Oh, that Tom Cruise movie from a few years back.

Me, bellowing: IT WAS A BOOK FIRST, YOU DINK!

And now I'm all het up.

When I tell him, Dad will be so proud.

Well, either that or he'll tell me that I shouldn't get so worked up about these things.

To which I'll respond: I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU, DAD. I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU.

From the Guardian:

[Sebastian] Faulks, who is becoming used to slipping into the skin of classic authors, after publishing a bestselling James Bond novel in 2008, was approached by the Wodehouse estate to take on the first ever authorised Wodehouse follow-up. Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, described as "a homage to PG Wodehouse" by the author's estate, will be published on 6 November by Hutchinson, also home to Wodehouse's later novels.

I'm perfectly fine with unauthorized fan fiction (like this and this), but for some reason the idea of an AUTHORIZED Wodehouse sequel is making me twitch.

Can you explain my brain to me? Please?

(Relatedly? My ringtone is currently the Jeeves and Wooster theme song.)

Elizabeth Peters Week continues!

If you've been meaning to get in on the action, NOW IS THE TIME. As I've received so many lovely contributions (I'm still taking them, but only through today!), I've been running some of the longer ones over the course of the week, and I'll be posting the rest and linking everything up tomorrow.

I should begin by admitting that I’m a little bit irrational about Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels. I’ll go even farther than Leila and say that I refuse to admit that her opera omnia has flaws. I’m not militant about it, but it’s not a discussion I can have.

Ever since Leila brought up the subject, I’ve been turning over what I could write about and coming up with zilch—not for lack of material, mind you, but because I was swamped. How much do I love Sir John? How I love that Peabody goes to Egypt for me (since I hate travel, sand and sun)? That her heroines range from gorgeous, naïve Damaris Gordon to gentle, middle aged ladies like Ruth Bennet?

Then I decided I was going to talk about how her heroines tend to have jobs that matter to them, but it turns out that thinking about this when you’ve been unemployed for eight months is a terrible idea.

So I think I will just leave it at this: I love the work that Elizabeth Peters has done for the last forty years so much that it destroys my critical judgment and undermines my moral faculties. You see, when Leila moved back to Maine . . . I deliberately hid all her double copies of EP/BM books that I didn’t own yet myself.* Which (I recognize in a hazy kind of way) is actually theft.**

There you have it. Huge fan. (Terrible person maybe, but huge fan.)

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*Full disclosure: I also did this with the Joan Aiken books.

** Seriously though? Even if they’re identical editions?

CC is CC, and I am as irrational about her as she is about Elizabeth Peters.

Elizabeth Peters Week continues!

If you've been meaning to get in on the action, NOW IS THE TIME. As I've received so many lovely contributions (I'm still taking them, but only through today!), I've been running some of the longer ones over the course of the week, and I'll be posting the rest and linking everything up tomorrow.

So here we are, at the end—unless Elizabeth Peters decides to revisit the character—of the Jacqueline Kirby series. Due to the success of her books—you never doubted that she'd make the bestseller list, did you?—she quit her job as a librarian and is a full-time writer.

Although her new celebrity status is great for her (already healthy) ego, she's been feeling discontent lately, and has been thinking seriously about packing it all in, getting out of the public part of the writing game and moving to the country. But that's before she ends up on the shortlist to write a sequel to Naked in the Ice, a brilliant work of historical romance written by Kathleen Darcy, who tragically disappeared seven years ago and is presumed dead by suicide.

Before long, Jacqueline is holed up Kathleen Darcy's hometown of Pine Grove—I know that you didn't doubt that she'd get the gig—and before long, she's convinced that Kathleen Darcy was a victim of Foul Play. Not only that, but she's starting to get the feeling that whoever got to Kathleen has now set his—or her!—sights on Jacqueline.

Which, OBVIOUSLY, is not a situation that she will let stand.

So, while Die for Love is all about the publishing world from the perspective of an outside observer, Naked Once More is about the publishing world (and about writing) from the perspective of an insider. For that alone, the book is worth reading. And as you'd expect, there are loads of rants and asides and quips about the little irritations and annoyances of the writing life, as well as some great bits along the lines of HELLO, IT'S MY JOB, OF COURSE I'M GOING TO CHARGE YOU FOR AN INTERVIEW. No romantic statements about An Artist And Her Muse from our Ms. Kirby: on that topic, she's wonderfully dry and cynical. Also, at one point Jacqueline lists off a list of 'Great Authors', and it goes something like: Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Barbara Michaels... AHAHAHAHAHA!

Since Jacqueline is on her own this time—no Watson character, and a whole lot of solitude—Naked Once More is a much more sedate read than Die for Love, more introspective (well, as introspective as this series gets), and it's got far fewer farcical scenes and elements. It actually has a much more Gothic feel, what with the cast of characters and Kathleen Darcy's mysterious disappearance and the adventures by moonlight and the decaying buildings and the various ongoing personal dramas going on in town. Of course, none of those divergences from the usual formula stops the book from ending in the traditional fashion: with Jacqueline bossing all of the suspects into sitting down and shutting up while she lectures them about How She Figured It All Out.

I love her. I love her curiosity and her love of knowledge and her love of food, I love that she can pick up a book and lose an entire day, I love that she is equally comfortable drinking beers and shooting pool with a small town's ex-sheriff as she is swigging martinis in a swanky NYC establishment with the literati. I love that she's a walking contradiction: super no-nonsense, but prone to being silly; capable of being steely and tough, but also capable of genuine warmth, and of comforting those in need of comfort; prickly but also eminently likable; one who avoids beating around the bush, but is also capable of being extremely subtle; a huge fan of petty revenge, but... well, there's no opposing behavior there. She's a huge fan of petty revenge, period. I love her. I love her, I love her, I love her.

And now, yet again, I've finished the series... and now, yet again, I'm totally depressed that I've finished the series. Does anyone know of any readalikes? Amelia Peabody readalikes are easy to come by, but what about Jacqueline Kirby readalikes? Anyone?

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Author page.

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Amazon.

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Book source: Personal copy.

Elizabeth Peters Week continues!

If you've been meaning to get in on the action, NOW IS THE TIME. As I've received so many lovely contributions (I'm still taking them, but only through today!), I've been running some of the longer ones over the course of the week, and I'll be posting the rest and linking everything up tomorrow.

From C. P. Lesley's post:

What hooked me—more than Amelia herself, more than her relationship with Emerson, precious as those are, more even than the intelligence and humor that are Peters’ trademark—was Ramses. Precocious, verbose, independent, impossible Ramses. Also Amelia’s rather atypically maternal response to her firstborn son, and Bastet. (I will not tell you who Bastet is. Either you have read the books and know, or you should read the books to find out.)

Read the rest at her blog!

Since I know that you're all DYING for one, here's a handy index to my posts about the four books in Elizabeth Peters' Jacqueline Kirby series:

The Seventh Sinner: Jacqueline Kirby, #1:

It's the classic librarian-with-her-hair-down scene! Jean and Michael (one of the other students) barrel around a corner and run full-tilt into her, knocking her down. While Jean had noticed her in the library previously, she hadn't paid much attention to this severe-looking figure with her bun and her horn-rimmed glasses and her impeccably tailored suits... a far cry from the creature that now lies before them, with the whistle-provoking legs and the hair like "molten bronze" and the green "seawater" eyes.

Then, of course, she opens her mouth and she's wonderfully snippy and crabby (but not without a large dose of humor), refuses their help in standing and instead, threatens to lie there on the floor for the rest of the day.

The Murders of Richard III: Jacqueline Kirby, #2:

While I compared Jacqueline Kirby to Mary Poppins and Chestomanci in yesterday's post, it occurred to me while re-reading The Murders of Richard III that if Nancy Drew was a little bit more crabby and a little bit less of a goody-goody, she could have grown up to be almost as awesome. They both have ridiculous stores of random information (as a librarian, JK's are actually believable), they both have lots of random skillz (JK knows karate and can occasionally blow smoke rings), and they are both exceedingly resourceful in any given situation (JK's Purse, of course, is a factor). 

Die for Love: Jacqueline Kirby, #3:

As for the meta-factor, this one is a DOUBLE WHAMMY. There are the expected references to mystery novels and crime stories (she pulls a Columbo towards the end that is OUTSTANDING and all of her knowledge about ciphers comes from Dorothy Sayers), but there are also a plethora of rants about the romance industry, and it's hard to imagine that Elizabeth Peters wasn't taking the opportunity to get a few jabs in. (Rants include: ghostwriting, rape culture, sketchy agents, crappy convention food, the second-class status of fans... the list goes on and on.)

Naked Once More: Jacqueline Kirby, #4:

I love her. I love her curiosity and her love of knowledge and her love of food, I love that she can pick up a book and lose an entire day, I love that she is equally comfortable drinking beers and shooting pool with a small town's ex-sheriff as she is swigging martinis in a swanky NYC establishment with the literati. I love that she's a walking contradiction: super no-nonsense, but prone to being silly; capable of being steely and tough, but also capable of genuine warmth, and of comforting those in need of comfort; prickly but also eminently likable; one who avoids beating around the bush, but is also capable of being extremely subtle; a huge fan of petty revenge, but... well, there's no opposing behavior there. She's a huge fan of petty revenge, period. I love her. I love her, I love her, I love her.

If you've been reading this blog over the past week, you may have picked up on my totally measured and mature and not-at-all-fangirlish appreciation for the body of work Barbara Mertz has published under the names Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels.

I first discovered her in seventh grade. My high school was a combination high/middle school, and so in an effort to make the seventh graders a tad less terrified, the administration matched us all up with a senior Big Brother or Big Sister. For the most part—and my experience was no exception—the senior would take her Little Sister under her wing for approximately five minutes and then forget about her for the rest of the year. In other words, it was a great idea, but in practice, didn't really have a huge effect. On our first (and only) outing, My Big Sister took me to see Pretty Woman, and when she asked me what I thought at the end, I said something along the lines of, "It was kind of predictable, wasn't it?"

(It was SUCH an "I carried a watermelon" moment. I'm slightly less socially awkward now—Josh would emphasize the slightly—but I clearly haven't changed all that much.)

ANYWAY, before I went home, she gave me a copy of Crocodile on the Sandbank. So maybe she understood me a little better than I ever gave her credit for, because I took that book home and read it and re-read it until it fell apart.

I've been a fan ever since.

And I'm not alone in that.

Mallorie Colvin (@MJColvin): "I originally fell in love with Elizabeth Peters through her writing as Barbara Michaels. I devoured everything I could find by her all through middle and high school. Then, in college, I discovered the Amelia Peabody series and fell in love all over again. I was an anthropology major and a lover of all thing Egyptian as well as mysteries - it's like the series was made for me. I've since read (and loved) the Vicky Bliss books and really need to get my hands on the Jacqueline Kirby series!"

@sarahokeefe: "The running gag where Ramses, as a child, is referred to as (I paraphrase), "Aaaaah, the afreet!!!" by the locals."

@msmcclure: "Love, no adore, the Amelia Peabody series. I can't think of a new release that I'd be more excited about. In addition, I'm constantly torn between wanting a movie or TV show, but then dreading that it might be untrue to the books."

Beth C.: "I discovered Ms. Peter's Amelia Peabody Emerson series just this past summer. I can't remember where I first heard of her, but the first book in the series had been sitting in my to-read list on Goodreads for a while and I needed a summer read. Anyway, I was in awe of Miss Peabody from the start! What self-confidence, bravery, and intelligence! I confess my own mental processes had a difficulty keeping up with that of Miss Peabody. It was so refreshing to discover a character like her. I've now read most of that series and have loved how the characters have grown and evolved. I won't lie, but when I find myself second guessing a decision I remind myself that Amelia Peabody Emerson would never do that. That always gives me a little boost. Or I drink a whiskey and soda. I get a boost from that too.

Thank you Ms. Peters for creating the ultimate crime-fighting, pyramid-excavating, strong-minded detective!"

Kate VT: "I read my first EP book (The Last Camel Died at Noon) lying in a hammock in my parents' backyard, and was hooked for life. I loved Amelia and Emerson but actually found Ramses kind of annoying - how little I knew! Ramses, of course, became my favorite literary crush - a tall, dark, handsome, brave feminist? I swooned (still do!). It's so rare that the follow up to a cliffhanger lives up to the potential (cough, West Wing 5th season premiere, cough), but He Shall Thunder in the Sky is probably my favorite of the series. I haven't found my Ramses in life yet, but, as Amelia would say, where there's life, there's hope!"

Kathy J.: "discovered years ago ... read many times ...
but all time favorite is The Last Camel Died at Noon. just read it and you'll see why ...
just gotta love Amelia Peabody ...

[Readalikes] Ellis Peters, of Brother Cadfael fame, has a most charming book: City of Gold and Shadows; and then there's Dorothy Gilman's Incident at Badamya - I read it once a year ... about a 16-year-old girl in Burma during wartime and the puppet master she meets under unusual circumstances."

Heather: ""John sprang out of bed. Clad only in a wristwatch and a lordly sneer, he struck a pose like Jove about to hurl a thunderbolt and declaimed, "'Yet she / Will be / False, ere I come, to two, or three.' Aren't you scheduling your appointments rather too tightly? Far be it from me..."" Trojan Gold

Oh John, you have the ability to make me feel vaguely dissatisfied with my otherwise happy marriage."

Gail Gauthier (Author of, among others, my much-beloved A Year with Butch and Spike): "I discovered Elizabeth Peters after picking up some of her Amelia Peabody books from the library sale rack for my son. He read adult fiction, was on the young side, and I thought the historical Egyptology focused books would be both interesting and appropriate for him. Years later, he would be concerned about his grandmother reading those books, fearing they would be too mature for her. He only read the first 4 or 5, quitting after Ramses was no longer funny.

I didn't read them until years later, when I wanted to get myself into the world of Egyptology for a book I was thinking of writing. I've read all of them."

Anonymous: "My favorite EP is the Amelia Peabody series - the earlier ones, at least, up through the one where they rescue Nefret. I also really like the ones about Jacqueline Kirby (being a librarian myself), but they haven't stood the test of time as well. I rather wish she'd do a 21st century version of JK."

Michelle (@GemmaArcadian): "Elizabeth Peters created heroines who were true role models for me. They are curious, smart, independent, and willful. The romantic banter was always witty and again, intelligent. And I always closed the book having learned something new about art, geography, or history. To this day, so many years later, I still haven't read books that manage to teach, inspire, and melt my heart the way hers do.

The book of hers that always stays with me is The Copenhagen Connection. It's left me with a strong desire to see Copenhagen for myself. And it's funny, too. I always read Peters shaking my head, thinking, I don't know how she does it. But I'm sure glad she does!"

L.G. Evans: "When I first set eyes on Elizabeth Peters words I was walking the streets of Kansas City.

Actually, I was wandering through the library, but I had to play off of the brilliant opening line of Crocodile on the Sandbank.

That was my first experience with Elizabeth Peters. I laughed, fell in love with Emerson, wanted to protect - and throttle - Evelyn.

Her books became my friends that were read and reread until worn.

My husband, after years of me laughing him awake in bed, got them on audio. If you have not heard them on audio with Barbara Rosenblat you are missing out. She is exactly what Amelia had always been in my mind!

I would love to thank Barbara for the hours of pleasure her work has brought me and for adding (I hope) a touch of Amelia to my own characters.

If just one person feels as attached to my characters as I feel to Amelia, I will count myself successful.

Thanks MPM!"

L.M. Ironside: "I mostly experience the wonderful world of Elizabeth Peters through her "nonfiction" pen name, Barbara Mertz. Her writing on Egyptology is thorough, accessible, and engaging...often very funny! No one brings research into ancient Egypt to life quite the same way. I have relied on her two nonfiction books about Egypt to research my own novels, the next one of which comes out on March 11th. Thank you, Barbara Mertz!"

Rebecca Moore, middle school librarian: "I was introduced to the Amelia Peabody books by a good friend, who herself had fallen in love with them for the wittiness and the heroine's unabashed appreciation of Emerson's "attentions," as it were. While I loved all that as well, and the wonderful details about Egypt, what I really loved was that in Emerson I found a hero who was perfectly happy to be a leader, and not even vaguely conflicted about it (or all that perturbed when his wife seized the lead and ran with it). After reading and watching so many mystery series/superhero stories/supernatural series/etc. with tortured protagonists, Emerson was a self-confident breath of fresh air, and more, he backed up that self-confidence with actual ability (and a few endearing foibles). Amelia has many of those same qualities, and I find her just as refreshing."

Maureen E.: "I'm definitely a Vicky fan! I've tried a couple of the Amelia Peabody books and haven't been so enthralled by them. But something about the combination of mysteries + Vicky + the whole cast of crazy characters just does it for me. I love the kooky plots and the way Schmidt is obviously awesome and then Elizabeth Peters confirms that he is awesome (in Night Train to Memphis). There are in-jokes and allusions. And John, who falls squarely into my Lord Peter Wimsey/Howl/Eugenides loving heart. Mostly, though, there's Vicky herself, who can always be counted on to be where the action is."

And here are links to all of the Posts o' Love I ran over the course of the week:

Malinda Lo: "As an author, I'm always asked which authors inspired me, and I rarely say Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels, but I don't know why. I should probably start mentioning her! Maybe I'm a little worried that nobody knows about her anymore? Because she clearly taught me almost everything I know about romantic suspense. And she did it while being witty, feminist, and extremely smart. I love her books!"

Kate Flaim: "I devoured all the books that had been published this far, fell in love w/Ramses, and let the witty silliness (especially the early installments) distract me from the very dark times around me. I ended up buying them all on the cheap, and they still eat up a whole shelf--every time I weed my books I think about passing them on, but I think I'll plow through once more first."

Colleen Mondor: "It's Amelia that caught my attention first and what got me was not only her independence (which I adored and totally appreciated for the time period) but also that she and Emerson fall in love and get married and have a child and she never changes her independent attitude. She is still the same Amelia he falls in love with and doesn't have to become anyone else's idea of who a woman should be. This was....huge for me."

Book Addict Katie: "When I was a sixth grader at a small, private school, I was depressed and miserable. I was having a difficult time socially and emotionally and all I ever wanted to do was read. I was obsessed with Ancient Egypt from a very young age, so when my mom saw a paragraph in The Washington Post about a book called The Mummy Case, she took me straight to Borders to pick it up hoping that this outing might brighten my day. Boy, she didn’t know what she was starting!"

Debra Touchette: "Jacqueline! The purse! The stare! The sharp tongue! The knitting! The hair! If I could be anyone in the world, it would be a combination of Jessica Fletcher, Evy Carnahan, Flynn Carsen, and Jacqueline Kirby. And I would rule the world."

CC: "So I think I will just leave it at this: I love the work that Elizabeth Peters has done for the last forty years so much that it destroys my critical judgment and undermines my moral faculties. You see, when Leila moved back to Maine . . . I deliberately hid all her double copies of EP/BM books that I didn’t own yet myself. Which (I recognize in a hazy kind of way) is actually theft."

C.P. Lesley: "What hooked me—more than Amelia herself, more than her relationship with Emerson, precious as those are, more even than the intelligence and humor that are Peters’ trademark—was Ramses. Precocious, verbose, independent, impossible Ramses. Also Amelia’s rather atypically maternal response to her firstborn son, and Bastet."

Finally, here are the links to my round-ups of the Vicky Bliss books and the Jacqueline Kirby books: clearly a re-read of the Amelia Peabody series is in order! Next year, maybe... if I can wait that long! Thanks again to everyone who participated, and I hope that you will all continue to Spread The Word of the Wonder That Is Mertz/Peters/Michaels!

Good call on The Chocolate War and Stephen King's The Body.

I'd have definitely included Brock Cole's The Goats, though. (Check out the new cover!-->)

It's been years since I read it, but merely thinking about it still makes me twitch.

Click on through to the Guardian for the whole list.

So, with that in mind, I shall re-recommend both Keeping the Castle (so adorbs!) and I Capture the Castle (which I loved so much that I posted about it three pages in, and then after I'd finished it). Oh, and look, NPR posted an excerpt of it back in 2008.

More about the New York castle up for grabs over at boingboing.

Noting that Darren Shan's recent list of Outsider Reads at the Guardian "was written by, and is largely concerned with the exploits of — you guessed it! — a straight white man", Emily Temple at Flavorwire compiled a companion list that includes titles like Geek Love and Weetzie Bat.

SO, YAY! DOUBLE THE NUMBER OF RECOMMENDED READS!

...is Donald Westlake's The Hot Rock, the first book in his series of caper novels about John Dortmunder, a thief whose exploits usually end up going so spectacularly, hilariously awry that he's lucky if he breaks even on any given heist.

I... Westlake... Dortmunder... Dormunder's friends... I JUST LOVE THEM ALL.

...(brace yourself, because this is depressing)... Jane Goodall:

Jane Goodall, the primatologist celebrated for her meticulous studies of chimps in the wild, is releasing a book next month on the plant world that contains at least a dozen passages borrowed without attribution, or footnotes, from a variety of Web sites.

This time, though, it's not for Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe:

The directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced Tuesday that author Benjamin Alire Saenz will receive $15,000 for "Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club." ''Everything Begins" was published by Cincos Puntos Press, based in El Paso, Texas, where some of Saenz's stories take place.

As promised, it's going to be All Elizabeth Peters, All the Time this week!

If you've been meaning to get in on the action, NOW IS THE TIME. As I've received so many lovely contributions (Did I mention that I'm totally still taking them?), I'll be running some of the longer ones over the course of the week, and linking everything up together at the end.

It's Amelia that caught my attention first and what got me was not only her independence (which I adored and totally appreciated for the time period) but also that she and Emerson fall in love and get married and have a child and she never changes her independent attitude. She is still the same Amelia he falls in love with and doesn't have to become anyone else's idea of who a woman should be. This was....huge for me.

I started reading the books in college and every girl I knew - ALL OF US - were continuously involved in long discussions about how to get what boy, what we should wear, how we should act and on and on. We changed who we were all the time, we constantly pretended to be who we weren't, we were obsessed with obtaining a mythical romantic relationship that usually involved the girl waiting by the phone all the damn time. And there I would be, reading about Amelia - brilliant as ever, waiting around for no one and still getting the damn guy while she made all sorts of brilliant scholarly discoveries and thwarted the villains. She inspired me, plain and simple, and for all the plot contrivances and anything else folks want to harp on, she still does. 

Colleen Mondor is the author of The Map of My Dead Pilots. She is the driving force behind Guys Lit Wire, blogs at Chasing Ray, and tweets at @chasingray.