Looking for Your Next Book

What is there to say about a book like this?  This is a humor book, masquerading as a "birding dictionary" - meaning a dictionary of terms common to birders (ie obsessed bird watchers). Author Rosemary Mosco is clearly familiar with birders (perhaps she is one herself) and picks up on a lot of their language and abbreviations (I have some very avid birders in my family and can't escape a lot of their birding discussions). For the most part, this is a delightful, humorous collection of terms - terms that can be taken in more than one way: chat/ (...) 1. One of many songbirds belonging to various unrelated groups. (...) 2. A group text that people use to let each other know about a rare bird sighting (...) raptor /( ... ) This term should not be confused with 1) a nickname for the dinosaur velociraptor , popularized by the (famous movie) franchise, or 2) a member of Toronto's NBA team. Unlike movie dinosaurs, most hawks cannot open doors, and their free throw percentage...

This is the second InCryptid novel to be from Mary Dunlavy's point of view. Mary, for those who aren't familiar with Seanan McGuire's various series, is a Crossroads Ghost who has been the babysitter for generations of Price-Healy Family children. (And the Price-Healy Family is an old family that has been studying and conserving InCryptids.) In their attempt to help preserve the cryptid community, the Prices are at war with the Covenant of St George - a human group out to preserve the sanctity of humankind but ridding the world of the paranormal community. While Mary has earned her break from being a babysitter for the Prices, she wasn't quite expecting to be called up to be at the forefront of new attacks. She's one ghost being asked to take on the entire East Coast Covenant, so she'll recruit some friends and make new acquaintances. Each time I read a book in one of Seanan McGuire's series I think "this might be my favorite of her series." And ea...

 It is 1929 and the Cockney private detective George Harley saves a young girl's life. The act begins an investigation that brings Harley to such disturbing places he could never have imagined. A series of grisly murders against children are occurring in Harley's part of town. Scotland Yard has asked Harley to keep them informed and to be their eyes and ears on the ground. But palling up with the Dicks at the Yard puts George in a precarious spot as he doesn't want the locals, who have been willing to keep him informed, to think he's too deep in their pockets. But ... children! Dismembering children! Even in this community "peopled with lowlife ponces, jaded streetwalkers, and ... a world of grubby bedsits, all-night cafés, egg and chips, and Gold Flake cigarettes" (according to Goodreads) there needs to be a reconciliation with morality. This is George's neighborhood and he's determined to get to the bottom of it. But it won't be easy. Anyone will...

 It took me awhile to decide to watch the Bridgerton series on Netflix. I was aware of the interest but I didn't think I would be interested in a romance series, but one night, while looking for a new show to watch, my wife and I decided to check out Bridgerton ... and we enjoyed it. And of course, being a reader, I thought I should check out the book(s) that the series is based on. We are in the Regency era (just prior to the Victorian Era) and there are certain codes of conduct for the upper class, particularly in romance. Here we follow Daphne, the fourth child but first daughter of eight children. Daphne's father is no longer alive and so the eldest son, Anthony, is taking care of seeing her married off to an appropriate person.  But Daphne wants nothing of it, and so she concocts a plan with Anthony's close friend, Duke Simon Basset, in which the two of them will pretend to be romantically entangled so as to ward off the other men and women who might be considering th...

Scarlett McCain and Albert Browne have always managed to get out of as much trouble as they've gotten in to. But whether luck or skill (or a combination of the two) they are about to meet the trouble that even they can't escape. While Scarlett follows up on leads to find her brother, Albert returns to the harrowing Stonemoor Prison where he developed his abilities but was treated worse than a lab rat. The pair continue to defy the Faith Houses and The Tainted are creatures of horror right out of their worst nightmares. Even after building of community of outcasts and rescued slaves, Scarlett and Browne will have to face some of their worst nightmares alone. And it is very unlikely they will survive. Have I really only been waiting three years for this book? Because it seems like forever. I think that without a doubt, Jonathan Stroud is the best YA fantasy/thriller author today. His characters are outstanding. Despite their youth, they have an incredibly rich background. Scarlet...

 This is precisely the sort of book I would have bought when my children were younger. Dragon's are a great fantasy creature, providing plenty of imagination fodder for young readers. This book not only offers a series of short, fantasy adventures, but it provides a bit of history as well.  It's always fun when a child can learn something without realizing they're learning. Author Theresa Breslin tells ten short stories, each from a different region (China, Scotland, Egypt, Poland, Mexico, Scandinavia, Russia, Greece, Japan, India). In addition to the story itself, there's a very brief explanation of how the dragon fits into the regions' cultures. No book like this would work well without art. Here, artist Kate Leiper illustrates each of the stories with some lovely, soft work reminiscent of Tomie de Paola. Each dragon is uniquely depicted, helping to clarify their different origins. I can picture myself reading these stories to my children and how each child might ...

At three years old, Anastasia Miller began to tell anyone who would listen that she was an alien that had taken over Anastasia's body and that her 'people' were going to return to take her to her true home. That was more than three decades ago and for more than three decades no one listened. Not listened and believed. Now, scientists have picked up signals from outer space - signals too specific to be anything natural - and suddenly people are beginning to believe Anastasia, but now it might be too late. It also becomes clear that travelers from space aren't coming back just for one child - there are many across the world who've known they are not of Earth, only Anastasia has been so vocal about it. With the arrival of what appears to be an invasion, Anastasia begins to change, shedding her earthly skin and revealing the plant-like nature of her true being. And with her shedding, is taken by a government 'alphabet' agency to be studied - hoping a defense aga...

When the older O'Shaughnessy brothers went off to war, they left their sister, Maeve, in charge of their private detective business. When the brothers saw a poor Italian kid getting picked on in boot camp and was likely not going to make it home alive without a little help, they reached out to the kid's brother, Vic Marino, an ex-cop, and suggested a trade. They'd look after the kid if Vic would look after Maeve, their younger brother Jimmy, and the business. Maeve isn't too keen on having this no-nonsense, rough-talking ex-cop all up in her business, but she admits that running a P.I. business is beyond her skill set. Vic, on the other hand, knows a lot of people (even in the police department still [the 'ex' not necessarily being his choice]) and knows how to get the information they need and proves invaluable to Maeve. Vic even helps young Jimmy learn how to stand up and be a man. The case that comes to Maeve (and by extension, Vic) comes from a local, Mrs. S...

Humanity is on the verge of losing the battle against the climate crisis and the world's wealthiest are using the working class to focus on protecting their wealth, rather than addressing the problems. When the planet reached Point 0, a great number of working class people banded together to do everything they could to reverse the course, taking back control from the uber wealthy. Among those people were Emi's parents - her father a hero in the fight against the raging forest fires, and her mother, separated from her parents as child in the immigrant camps, emerged as a hero as well as still fights for better politicians and for those who let the earth nearly collapse to pay for their crimes. Emi Vargas is learning about the Great Transition, as it has come to be called, in school and is writing a paper for class. It is here that Emi begins to learn what a part her parents played in the Great Transition, and she interviews her family to get the inside story. When a Great Transi...

 I've never heard of Rax King or read anything by her prior to this, but I do enjoy essays and yes, the quote from The Washington Post on the cover of the book "Bettie Page meets Carrie Bradshaw" helped to sell me on this. I was incredibly impressed very early on with the first few essays. I connected with Rax as she wrote about school: I desperately wanted to pay attention to whatever my teachers were saying about, I don't know, the Spanish-American War probably. (Anytime you can't remember what your teachers were blathering on about, it was the Spanish-American War. Doesn't it just sound like the kind of lesson you zoned out for?) The ADHD lad must have desperately wanted to pay attention, too. He acted out and I caved in. And the 'helpful' mentors who think you're just not organized and need a to-do list: "...Get a task, write it down, do a task, cross it off. All day, every day." I squinted at his list. It was evening, and still the ...

 I have such an affinity for photography. I especially like the grittiness and rawness that one can get with black and white photography. When I saw that these photos were from the 1970's in California (mostly San Francisco), I really wanted to take a look. The book opens with three essays - one each by Rachel Kushner, Sally Stein, and Steven A. Heller. These are all a little disappointing. While they touch lightly on the works and photographer Barbara Ramos, they lean heavier on reflections of place and time - memories brought about seeing the work. But this is the problem with the book in general. Other than what we see, we get no background on the works. If I were walking in a gallery to look at these photos, I wouldn't be looking for anything other than what the photos bring to mind. But in a book I want more clarity. What caught the photographer's eye that she took the photo of the people waiting for the bus at Nob Hill? "Couple with Baby" doesn't look at...