2014

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Not a lofty, ambitious to-be-read list consisting of 100+ book titles. Just a simple plan for the upcoming week — what I’m reading now, what I plan to read next, and what I’m hoping to squeeze in among the nooks and crannies.

How did I do with last week’s agenda?

The Shambling Guide to New York City The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry

The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty: Done! My review is here.

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin: Done! My review is here.

Visible City by Tova Mirvis: Done! My review is here.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: After weeks of picking this one up and then putting it back down, I finally sat down to re-read Fahrenheit 451 — probably about 20 or so years after the first time I read it. Still shocking. Still amazing. I’m so glad I finally read it again!

Fresh Catch:

A few new ARCs came my way this week, plus the newest volume of an amazing graphic novel series!

The Art of Floating The Last Policeman (The Last Policeman, #1) Henna House Saga, Volume 3

What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #1) The Mapmaker's Daughter The Ghost Train to New Orleans (The Shambling Guides, #2)

I’ve just started The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. I’ve been thinking about reading this one for years, and for some reason, it just really seemed to suit my mood this week.

After that, I’m planning to read The Mapmaker’s Daughter by Laurel Corona, which sounds completely fascinating.

And then I’ll be ready for something fun and quirky, and what could be better than the 2nd book in the Shambling Guide series? I’m so looking forward to reading The Ghost Train to New Orleans by Mur Lafferty.

And also in the works:

The Outlander Book Club’s re-read of An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon continues! Coming up this week: Chapters 54 – 58. Want to join in? Contact me and I’ll provide all the details!

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

29Mar2014

Book Review: Visible City by Tova Mirvis

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Visible City by Tova Mirvis

Visible City

In Visible City, people hidden away inside their own little worlds slowly emerge and find connection. On New York’s Upper West Side, thousands of people go about their lives, passing each other on streets and in cafes, yet never really seeing or being seen.

Nina is a stay at home mother with two young children, having given up a law career in order to embrace full-time motherhood. Yet she finds herself at loose ends, and has taken to gazing at the windows of the building across the street, watching the lives of other people and imaging what their stories might be. She’s particularly fascinated by a couple in their fifties, who spend each night side by side on their couch reading books, seemingly enjoying their time alone but together. Nina wonders what their marriage is like, how they’ve reached this level of quiet contentment — until one night, instead of the couple, she sees a younger woman and her lover, who seem both angry and full of passion. What is their connection to the older couple, and how do they fit into the story Nina has composed about the world she watches from her windows?

Bit by bit, we meet the others who circle through Nina’s view: There are Leon and Claudia, the couple from across the street, each experiencing professional challenges while at the same time caring for their daughter Emma, whose return to their home sparks concern and confusion. There’s Emma herself, on the run from her academic dissatisfaction and from the engagement that she may no longer want. There’s Nina’s husband Jeremy, who puts in long hours at his law firm while yearning for excitement and discovery. There’s Wendy, mother of twins, who is so tightly wound and outwardly perfect that she just might explode one of these days.

All these lives and more intersect and collide. Each person is the center of his or her own life, and as each chapter unfolds, we see how the people in the background of one scene have equally compelling stories, passions, and pursuits of their own.

The action is rather minimal, unfolding in small vignettes roughly centered around a new building going up in the neighborhood and its impact on the residents — yet that’s only incidental. Mostly, Visible City is about the people, all of whom seem to have a core of unhappiness in their lives. In a city of millions of people, these characters all have an unfulfilled desire to be known, to be truly seen, to reveal their true natures and break free of the strictures of their seemingly fine lives. No one is happy; each is hiding a secret desire or fear; frustration, loneliness, and alienation seem to rule the universe that these characters inhabit.

I’ll be honest — there was only so far I could bring myself to care about any of this. For the most part, Visible City felt like yet another story of well-off New Yorkers dealing with the type of woes that plague people who don’t really have a lot to worry about: Motherhood is hard. My dissertation doesn’t really interest me any more. Visible City is all about people who have pretty good lives, but are still unhappy. If ever a group of people deserved the hashtag “first world problems” applied to their lives, this one does.

I’ve enjoyed this author’s previous novels, particularly The Ladies Auxiliary, but somehow never felt particularly drawn in or engaged by Visible City. The writing is elegant and thoughtful, but ultimately the subject matter left me cold.

Visible City should appeal to readers who enjoy contemplative novels with a focus on internal reflection. For those who prefer their reads more plot- or action-driven (and apparently, I fall into this category), this probably isn’t the book for you.

_________________________________________

The details:

Title: Visible City
Author: Tova Mirvis
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date: March 18, 2014
Length: 256 pages
Genre: Adult contemporary
Source: Review copy courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt via Netgalley

28Mar2014

Book Review: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

18293427 When I finished reading this book and then went back and looked at the book blurb:

In the spirit of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Gabrielle Zevin’s enchanting novel is a love letter to the world of books – and booksellers – that changes our lives by giving us the stories that open our hearts and enlighten our minds.

… my first thought was “Damn.” Because in my head, I wanted to say something about this being a love letter to book lovers, and it’s already been said. Double damn.

But really, how can I complain — when I have just read a book that I LOVED so, so much?

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is one of those quiet, unassuming books that you think will be sweet and pleasant — and then BAM! It sneaks up on you, grabs you by the heart, and makes you feel so many feels.

A. J. Fikry, when we first meet him, is a sad, lonely man. A. J. owns Island Books, the one and only bookstore on Alice Island, a short ferry ride away from Hyannis, Massachusetts. The store is not doing very well, and neither is A. J. Since his wife’s death almost two years earlier, A. J. is drifting through his life, drinking himself into oblivion once a week, being grumpy to his customers, and just not finding a reason to care.

All that changes when a drunken night during which a valuable Poe manuscript goes missing triggers a bizarre chain of events which leads to the discovery of a toddler abandoned in the bookstore — who soon becomes the center of A. J.’s life.

As A. J. starts waking up to the possibility of a happy future, his business picks up as well, and little by little Island Books becomes the center of bookish activity on the island. My favorite bookish happening is the Chief’s Choice book club, started by the local police chief and consisting of a book group for cops — which no cop really can decline to participate in, since the chief is the one organizing it.

Meanwhile, a very persistent sales rep from a small publishing company seems to make a very large impression on A. J., and their business relationship slowly blooms into something more, with lots of awkwardness and false starts, but always with a shared passion for books.

Can I just say yet again how much I loved this book? Excuse me for gushing, but The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry seems tailor-made for anyone whose life revolves around reading. (Yes, that includes me, and I suspect it includes anyone reading this review!) Amidst the story of A. J.’s personal journey is a meditation on reading and how a life can be shaped and measured by the books read along the way. So much of what I feel about reading is encapsulated here, and it’s simply beautiful to meet so many characters who feel this way too.

The writing is clever without being forced, yet I found myself laughing out loud at various points, such as :

Ismay has stylishly cut, spiky red hair, pale skin and eyes, long, spindly limbs. All her features are a little too large, her gestures a little too animated. Pregnant, she is like a very pretty Gollum.

Or:

Lambiase is recently divorced. He had married his high school sweetheart, so it took him a long time to realize that she was not, in fact, a sweetheart or a very nice person at all.

And yet, even with the humorous tone always present beneath the surface, the emotions are real and visceral:

A. J. watches Maya in her pink party dress, and he feels a vaguely familiar, slightly intolerable bubbling inside of him. He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it’s love. Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother. It’s completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.

Ultimately, though, what I love most about this wonderful book (and yes, I pretty much loved it all) is what is has to say to about readers and their reading passions:

When she told me it was her favorite, it suggested to me strange and wonderful things about her character that I had not guessed, dark places that I might like to visit.

People tell boring lies about politics, God, and love. You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question: What is your favorite book?

Don’t miss out: Read The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry. Filled with beauty and sorrow, love and humor, and an abiding love for books and readers, this book was an unexpected delight for me — and apparently is now one of those books: Books that fill you up with so much emotion and enjoyment that you want to run right out and start putting copies in people’s hands.

_________________________________________

The details:

Title: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry
Author: Gabrielle Zevin
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Publication date: April 1, 2014
Length: 230 pages
Genre: Adult contemporary
Source: Review copy courtesy of Algonquin Books via Netgalley

27Mar2014

Flashback Friday: Word of Honor

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is a weekly tradition started here at Bookshelf Fantasies, focusing on showing some love for the older books in our lives and on our shelves. If you’d like to join in, just pick a book published at least five years ago, post your Flashback Friday pick on your blog, and let us all know about that special book from your reading past and why it matters to you. Don’t forget to link up!

My Flashback Friday pick this week:

Word of Honor by Nelson DeMille
(published 1985)

Synopsis (Goodreads):

He is a good man, a brilliant corporate executive, an honest, handsome family man admired by men and desired by women.But a lifetime ago Ben Tyson was a lieutenant in Vietnam.There the men under his command committed a murderous atrocity — and together swore never to tell the world what they had done. Now the press, army justice, and the events he tried to forget have caught up with Ben Tyson. His family, his career, and his personal sense of honor hang in the balance. And only one woman can reveal the truth of his past — and set him free.

Many years ago, I went through a reading frenzy related to the Vietnam War. History, memoirs, biography, and fiction — Vietnam was my reading obsession for a time, and when I stumbled across Word of Honor, there was no way I could resist.

The secrets and deceptions in this novel revolve around a covered-up massacre similar to the historical atrocities committed at My Lai. In Word of Honor, we meet a decent man with a shameful past, and as the truth emerges, questions are posed about forgiveness, responsibility, and justice. The fictionalized historical events are fascinating, as are the court martial and legal proceedings that follow. Ultimately a military and courtroom thriller, Word of Honor is fast-paced and absorbing, while at the same time providing an intriguing look into the psychology of men at war and the damage that lingers long afterward.

What flashback book is on your mind this week?

Note from your friendly Bookshelf Fantasies host: To join in the Flashback Friday fun:

Grab the Flashback Friday button
Post your own Flashback Friday entry on your blog (and mention Bookshelf Fantasies as the host of the meme, if you please!)
Leave your link in the comments below
Check out other FF posts… and discover some terrific hidden gems to add to your TBR piles!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

27Mar2014

Thursday Quotables: Grasshopper Jungle

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

The National Guardsmen’s machine guns spit bursts of metal-jacketed bullets at the Unstoppable Soldiers. The sound was electric and terrifying. The bullets may just as well have been candy sprinkles on unstoppable frosted cupcakes, because they had absolutely no effect at all on the monstrous praying mantis beasts with blade-spiked arms.

Tyler Jacobson and Travis Pope walked through the spray of bullets like they were cats walking through darkness; like beauty pageant queens parading through swirling showers of glitter.

My review of this strange and wonderful book is here.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

26Mar2014

Book Review: The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty

The Shambling Guide to New York City Visiting a new city can be so hard. How do you know if a hotel is right for you? What are the must-see attractions? Which restaurants serve entrails and hedgehogs?

Fear not, Underground Publishing is here to help! In Mur Lafferty’s delightful The Shambling Guide to New York City, there’s another side to the city — and the about-to-be-published guide book covers it all.

Zoe Norris, travel book writer, has moved home to NYC after leaving her previous job in disgrace after a disastrous affair with her boss — who left out little details like being married when he seduced Zoe. Now unemployed, Zoe stumbles across an ad for a job opening with a new travel publishing company. Sounds perfect — except every time she tries to apply for the position, she’s told that she’s not right for the company. Indignant, Zoe pursues the job with even more determination (Hey, is this discrimination? What about Equal Employment Opportunity laws?), but gets a shocking awakening when she lands the job and learns the truth: Underground Publishing caters to the supernatural world, here known as “coterie” (watch out — the term “monsters” is considered highly offensive), and Zoe will be the only human employee.

Zoe’s coworkers are a veritable menagerie of coterie: Her boss Phil is a scary vampire, the writers are zombies (who are pretty great guys so long as they have a steady supply of brains), and then there’s the water sprite and the death goddess who become Zoe’s strongest allies at the office.

As Zoe navigates her new work life, it’s an eye-opening experience, to say the least. Coterie are all around, but most humans are too oblivious to see what’s right in front of them. And as if “normal” supernatural life wasn’t enough to take in, a new threat has emerged, and the zombies are getting a little… hungry.

Plus, Zoe’s next-door neighbor is awfully cute but seems to be keeping secrets, and unfortunately, has seen Zoe in some rather compromising conditions. (Important to note: The coterie workplace doesn’t have sexual harassment laws, so if your coworker is an incubus who makes you want to rip off your and/or his clothes whenever you’re in the same room, you’re pretty much on your own.)

Meanwhile, Zoe isn’t just the helpless (and potentially tasty) human that her boss and colleagues believe her to be, and with the help of a strangely agile homeless woman, she’s getting a crash course in defensive weaponry and learning to kick coterie butt… just in case.

The Shambling Guide to New York City follows Zoe through her initiation into the hidden world of coterie, with selections from the guidebook interspersed between chapters. The writing is light and tongue-in-cheek, with the ironic, hip attitude that signals a fun romp through urban fantasy.

Early on, I commented that “there is a fine line between funny and dumb, and the book I’m reading is teetering on the brink.” Fortunately, the plot takes off fairly quickly, and it’s easy to become engaged in Zoe’s crash-course in survival among the coterie.

“Um,” she said, cursing her awkwardness. She should have been smoother, but she had never before stood in a sewer, dirty and bloodied, covered in demon gore, and attempted a first kiss. She didn’t know the etiquette.

With breezy humor and plenty of action, The Shambling Guide to New York City is an engaging and entertaining romp. There’s some serious sexytime in the mix (remember that incubus I mentioned?), quippy repartee, and an amusing array of creatures, demons, Public Works employees (you’ll see), and all sorts of undead and the otherwise non-human.

In terms of tone and pacing, I was reminded most of Nicole Peeler’s Jane True series (which I adore). If you’re a fan of urban fantasy, and like the idea of a human rising to the occasion in a non-human world (and really getting her grrrl power on), check out The Shambling Guide.

Meanwhile, I’m all in… and really looking forward to getting my hands on the newly released book 2, The Ghost Train to New Orleans. More Zoe and the gang? Yes, please!

_________________________________________

The details:

Title: The Shambling Guide to New York City
Author: Mur Lafferty
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: 2013
Length: 350 pages
Genre: Urban fantasy
Source: Purchased

24Mar2014

The Monday Agenda 3/24/2014

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

How did I do with last week’s agenda?

Despite another week of real-life craziness, I did manage to read some great books!

Night Broken (Mercy Thompson, #8) Grasshopper Jungle The Summer I Wasn't Me

Night Broken by Patricia Briggs: Loved it! My review is here.

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith: Weird and wonderful. My review is here.

The Summer I Wasn’t Me by Jessica Verdi: Done! Watch for my review and blog tour post about this terrific YA book on April 5th!

The kiddo and I have more or less ditched Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper, although we may end up giving it one more shot. We also read the first chapter of Treasure Island, but we’re feeling very non-committal at the moment.

Fresh Catch:

No new physical books this week, but I did get a few e-ARCs that look pretty terrific:

What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?

The Shambling Guide to New York City The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry Visible City

I’ve just started The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty, and so far, it’s a riot.

After that, I’ll be diving into:

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Visible City by Tova Mirvis

And also in the works:

The Outlander Book Club’s re-read of An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon continues! Coming up this week: Chapters 49 – 53. Want to join in? Contact me and I’ll provide all the details!

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

22Mar2014

Book Review: Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Grasshopper Jungle Well, this is certainly one of the oddest books I’ve read in a long time.

In Grasshopper Jungle, we meet 16-year-old Austin Szerba, who lives in Ealing, Iowa and is very much in love with his girlfriend Shann… and with his best friend Robby. Austin spends much of his time either confused or horny, or both. Ealing is a dead-end town that dried up after its major business, McKeon Industries, shut its doors and left most of the Ealing residents unemployed — as a result of which, stores have shut down, people are constantly being foreclosed or evicted, and the entire town has a feeling of hopelessness.

And then one day, things take a decided turn for the apocalyptic. In a weird confluence of events, Austin and Robby get beaten up, some nasty boys steal a McKeon Industries artifact that contains a lethal mold, and a chain of events starts that leads to the end of the world as we know it. This particular end of the world takes the form of 6-foot-tall praying mantises with exoskeletons strong as armor who only want to do two things…

It’s up to Austin, Shann, and Robby to save the world — or not, maybe. Or possibly just figure out what the heck is going on and salvage what they can. Oh, and also figure out what their own little triangle means, and whether anything good can possibly come of it. And yeah, maybe repopulate the planet, if necessary.

Along the way, we get Austin’s family history, all the way back to his great-great-many times great-grandfather in Poland, his descendants and their twisted history, and all the little turns of fate or coincidence that lead them to Ealing, Iowa and a plague of unstoppable, lethal, giant insects.

Austin is an historian, recording everything in his notebooks with a commitment to honesty, while at the same time noting that all written history is, of necessity, an abbreviation. No one can ever record every single thing, so what we end up learning is the bits and pieces that the recorders felt most important, but not necessarily the entire truth.

In Austin’s version of history, we read about Presidents and testicles, agricultural experiments and cave paintings, the Rolling Stones and skateboards. We also learn about love and devotion, confusion and yearning, friendship and bravery, and how dangerous a crazy person with a science lab can be.

The writing is funny, random, and rather Vonnegut-like in places. Odd facts and figures are inserted here and there in Austin’s narrative, and he returns over and over again to repeat certain phrases and thoughts throughout the book. Chief among these:

It was not a good idea.

You know what I mean.

Nobody knew anything about it.

And then there’s the word used by Austin and Robby more than any other in the book, “uh”, followed by the closely related “um”, which are all-purpose responses appropriate for almost all occasions:

Shann squirmed in her seat. She said, “Uh. Am I wrong about something, or do you two boys actually know something more than I do about what he’s talking about?

I said, “Uh.”

Robby said, “Uh.”

Grasshopper Jungle is strange and hilarious, often disgusting, completely rambling, with odd flights of free association and bizarre facts, and a connect-the-dots feel to it that shows either that all life is connected and that the smallest moments may have huge meaning and consequences… or that everything is random and trivial, and that nothing we do matters in the long run. But not really — even in the midst of giant bugs destroying humankind and chowing down on everyone they encounter, there’s a sense of joyous celebration of life that keeps Grasshopper Jungle flying along despite the body parts and cataclysmic events.

Grasshopper Jungle is weird and wild, but utterly wonderful — in its own bug-infested, sex-obsessed, end-of-the-world way.

_________________________________________

The details:

Title: Grasshopper Jungle
Author: Andrew Smith
Publisher: Dutton Books
Publication date: February 11, 2014
Length: 388 pages
Genre: Young adult/science fiction
Source: Library

21Mar2014

Flashback Friday: The Ruby in the Smoke

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

My Flashback Friday pick this week:

The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman
(published 1985)

Synopsis (Goodreads):

Sally is sixteen and uncommonly pretty. Her knowledge of English literature, French, history, art and music is non-existent, but she has a thorough grounding in military tactics, can run a business, ride like a Cossack and shoot straight with a pistol.

When her dear father is drowned in suspicious circumstances in the South China Sea, Sally is left to fend for herself, an orphan and alone in the smoky fog of Victorian London. Though she doesn’t know it, Sally is already in terrible danger. Soon the mystery and the danger will deepen – and at the rotten heart of it all lies the deadly secret of the ruby in the smoke…

Before the amazing His Dark Materials trilogy, there were the Sally Lockhart books. The Ruby in the Smoke is first, followed by The Shadow in the North, The Tiger in the Well, and The Tin Princess.

Set in Victorian London, there’s intrigue a-plenty, as Sally investigates the mystery of her father’s disappearance and faces danger of all sorts, as well as a whole range of shady, nefarious people. I must admit that I never read past the first in the series, but I did like it quite a bit, and have always meant to read on.

Have you read the Sally Lockhart books? Should I finish the quartet?

And a little aside for Doctor Who fans: Hold onto your heads so they don’t explode — the TV movie version of The Ruby in the Smoke (2006) starred Billie Piper and Matt Smith. Awesome, right?

What flashback book is on your mind this week?

Note from your friendly Bookshelf Fantasies host: To join in the Flashback Friday fun:

Grab the Flashback Friday button
Post your own Flashback Friday entry on your blog (and mention Bookshelf Fantasies as the host of the meme, if you please!)
Leave your link in the comments below
Check out other FF posts… and discover some terrific hidden gems to add to your TBR piles!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

20Mar2014

Bookish Bits & Bobs

Posted in Bookish Thoughts by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

So much exciting book news lately! Well, exciting in my little corner of the bookish world, in any case… so I thought I’d write a quick post to tell you all what really had me jumping for joy (or scratching my head) in the last couple of weeks:

It was announced that David Nicholls, author of the wonderful One Day, will have a new book out this fall! Us is scheduled for publication in September; read more about it here.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this one: Anne Rice is writing a new Lestat book! Prince Lestat is due out in October, and will be the first in a new series revisiting the author’s vampire superstar. Read about it here. I don’t know — I loved Anne Rice’s first few vampire books back in the day, but so many years have gone by that I don’t really feel a need to revisit that world. Plus, to be honest, I haven’t loved the last few books of her that I’ve read. How about you? Will you read a new Lestat book?

Now this really is exciting! According to Patricia Briggs’s Facebook page, the author has just signed a contract for a new Alpha & Omega book, the 4th in the series. The book will be called Dead Heat, and will be published in spring 2015. *happy dance*

Beowulf by… Tolkien? According to this report, J. R. R. Tolkien’s previously unpublished translation of Beowulf will by published by HarperCollins in May.

Quick: When you think of Keith Richards, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? I’ll bet it wasn’t “children’s book author”, was it? In one of the more surprising book announcements of the year, it turns out the Keith will be publishing a books for kids called Gus & Me this fall. Gus & Me will tell the story about Keith’s grandfather and how he introduced Keith to music. Okay, maybe not as juicy as Life, but I’ll still check it out!

That’s it for now! What book news are you most excited about?