Yay!

I'm biases about Discworld reading order, because the Witches books are my favorites and I want EVERYONE TO READ THEM.

Still haven't read The Shepherd's Crown. We were traveling, so no books that will make me cry on trips, and then I came home to the tie-in novelization for Crimson Peak. Which is so full of delightfully purple, overwrought prose that Anne Rice is gnashing her fangs in jealousy.

I will say, there are bits where the posthumous editing is evident, it's not poorly done, it's just, his voice is so distinctive, you know? You can just tell when it's not him. It's mostly just in the bits where they're explaining the as previously seen parts, though, so you can just skim through.

Has anyone else bought and read the eARC of Bujold's Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen yet? I just finished it earlier this evening.

I didn't realize Manners & Mutiny was the last of the Finshing School series. It does wrap up rather nicely, and makes me want to read Soulless again.

Have read Shepherd's Crown. Glad I did, and also glad I waited a bit. Even so, the About the Author being in past tense hit me harder than I would have thought likely. Anyway, it's quite a good Tiffany Aching story and makes me want to read all the witch books again.

Aww

I’ve just started TSC. I’ve read all of the witch books in a row over the past couple of weeks and loved them like I haven’t loved anything in a really long time, and I’m more than a little sad to read this one.

Yo, twitterers:

For every use of the hashtag #GiveaBook on Twitter between November 16th and December 24th, Penguin Random House will donate one book to the literacy nonprofit First Book, up to 35,000 books.

A bit of bad judgement in x-mas shopping, and thought I'd give warning in case anyone is tempted to make the same mistakes I did. Briefly, if you find an obscure book by an author who is generally good or at least OK at a bargain price, stop to consider that maybe it is obscure for a good reason.

Mistake 1) Stranger in Paradise - by Robert Parker. Parker always had an oversized streak of misogyny in the Spenser books. But I had not read him in years, and in this one, that streak takes over the book. Man makes Hemingway look like a radical feminist by comparison. And Jesse Stone does not even give good smartass.

Mistake II) No Graves as Yet by Ann Perry. Opener to a WWI timeline series. This one is from 2003, so presumably there are more in the series. This first one seems to be dedicated to showing how much worse Pacifists and Socialists are than murderers. And that sometimes war is the only alternative to dishonor - and oh, BTW, England had to take part in WWI cause otherwise she would have broken her promise to Belgium a stain and dishonor that could never have been wiped away. Cause I guess England never broke any treaties before that. Looks to me like it was written to defend UK entry into the Iraq war.

These were overstocks I got for 50 cents each. So not a tragedy,but some shopping I thought was finished is not. The Ann Perry was a pre-publication review copy personally signed by the author in great condition - inlcuding dust jacket. When an autographed mint condition pre-publication release of a book goes for 50 cents maybe that should have been a clue.

I got eight books total at the 50 cent each price, and hope some of them will prove worthy of giving as gifts.