tiny_bookbot – Page 11 – Cannonball Read 17

For a YA Victorian-era mystery with diversity, turn here

A Spy in the House (The Agency #1) by Y. S. Lee

January 30, 2021 by tiny_bookbot 1 Comment

I am apparently just reading a lot of books set in Victorian England lately. I choose not to question this, and simply to embrace it while it lasts, because I’ll find another miniature streak to go on at some point. Besides, this is paired with quite a bit of Irish fiction that is not set in the 19th century, so I’m fine, right? At any rate, Y. S. Lee’s A Spy in the House follows the adventures of Mary Quinn, a young woman who is saved from […]

An amiably low-stakes romantic adventure in Victorian London

The Gentleman and the Thief (The Dread Penny Society Book #2) by Sarah M. Eden

January 26, 2021 by tiny_bookbot 2 Comments

I’m teaching a lot of fairly heavy texts this term, and texts that are outside my area of specialty, and so in this time of COVID especially, when I read for myself, I find myself reaching for books that are pretty low stakes. I haven’t got a lot of energy for being haunted by a book most days (exceptions carved out for poetry). And that’s how I wound up borrowing the ebook of Sarah M. Eden’s The Gentleman and the Thief from the local library. It […]

A post-apocalyptic Irish Frankenstein tale

Spare and Found Parts by Sarah Maria Griffin

January 24, 2021 by tiny_bookbot 3 Comments

In her post-apocalyptic debut novel, Sarah Maria Griffin never lets you forget that her protagonist, Nell Crane, is running out of time. The ticking of Nell’s mechanical heart never lets her forget, either: she is coming up on her twenty-first birthday and must present a “contribution” to her community in the Pale (the shattered remnants of Dublin), go to the Pasture where her Nan presides like a priestess, or become one of the workers on the colossal statue of Kathleen ni Houlihan (also called Kate), […]

More than just a pandemic novel

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue

January 17, 2021 by tiny_bookbot 1 Comment

The timing of The Pull of the Stars is so perfect as to be suspicious. A novel set in 1918 Dublin, at the peak of the first wave of the Spanish flu, arriving in late July of 2020 after our first stint of lockdown? Uncanny, almost. But of course Donoghue had conceived the novel two years earlier, during the 2018 centenary commemorations of the 1918 pandemic, and had submitted her final manuscript to her publishers in March of last year–at which point her publishers (Little, Brown/Pan […]

Finding fresh eyes for stories in Meander, Spiral, Explode

Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison

January 14, 2021 by tiny_bookbot 1 Comment

I bought a lot of books in 2020. So many books. Some people caved to instagram ads for that hit of serotonin; I went shopping on Bookshop.org and Thriftbooks and various indie bookstores appealing for help in staying afloat (Literari, the Mitten Word, and Vroman’s all got some of my cash, for sure). I have yet to get around to reading so many of these impulse buys (mostly of books I’m quite happy to now own). Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode (from indie press Catapult) was one […]

Immense beauty and infinite kindness

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

October 25, 2020 by tiny_bookbot 1 Comment

I first read Susanna Clarke in my senior year of undergrad. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell was a new release, and I decided I could not wait for the paperback edition to read it: I lugged that fat hardback around for two weeks as I slowly worked my way through it, savoring it, never wanting it to end, which I suspect is how many of us who read it felt. Clarke created a world that felt so real, right down to the prose style, that the […]

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Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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