Summertime is coming, which means it’s a good time to get caught up on sharing the books I read earlier in the year. At the beginning of the month, I told you about two of the novels I read back in February. Here are the other three:

The Paper Magician, by Charlie Holmberg

Ceony has just graduated top in her class at Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, with a plan to work magic in metallurgy, the most illustrious of the human-manipulated types of magic. But she was informed at the last minute that due to a critical shortage of apprentices, she was being assigned to the least glamorous type of magic — paper. And since after you’ve been bonded to your “element,” you won’t be able to perform magic in any other field, Ceony is understandably sulky. She’d dreamt of ornate metalworks and was going to be stuck enchanting legal contracts for the rest of her life.

But her new master, Magician Emery Thane, surprises her. His cottage, seemingly run-down from the street, boasts an abundance of paper flowers in the garden. His butler is an articulated skeleton made of paper. And he introduces her to the power of origami and the written word — both of which can be imbued by their crafter with powerful magic, as well we readers know.

Several months into her apprenticeship, however, an evil practitioner of the dark magics appears at their dining room table, robbing Magician Thane of something remarkably precious and life-giving, and forcing Ceony to channel all the magic she has learned to stay the damage, pursue the villain, and confront the darkness in her master’s past — and whether she can embrace her future with her whole heart — before time runs out.

The book is the first in a series, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The story bogs down a bit and can be uneven at times as the author attempts to keep up with the twists and layers of story she’s telling, but I think it works in the end. I’ll definitely seek out the second in the series, and recommend it to those who enjoy a little romance mixed into their fantasy, but don’t mind it when their story veers down a dark path for a while.

Pages: 222. Library copy.

We Met in December, by Rosie Curtis

In this cute rom-com of a book, unrepentant romantic Jess has just landed a dream job at a London publisher and is moving into one of the bedrooms in the Notting Hill brownstone her best college friend just inherited. Also sharing their house are a glamorous lawyer, a chef, and Alex, a former lawyer turned nursing student, whom Jess crushes on madly at first sight. She tries to ignore her feelings — they’d all agreed to no relationships when they’d moved in, after all — only to find them hurt when she discovers another of their housemates sneaking out of Alex’s room one night.

But Alex is mostly a nice guy, and he and Jess become friends as he invites her to get to know her new hometown by going on walks together. He finds her a fun friend, but he’s got an ex-wife and a misbegotten fling to add complication to his life.

The story, which takes place over the course of a year and which bounces between Jess’ and Alex’s narratives, has a lot going on. Jess has a beloved grandma and a kooky, neglectful mom and two childhood BFFs — a footloose actress and a more uptight friend with a fiance and a life plan. It always gives the story a new path to explore, but it also definitely makes it a less taut tale. And while it may have two narrators, it decidedly remains Jess’ story first and foremost.

If you want a fluffy will-they, won’t they story in a great setting that could very well be made into an equally sweet made-for-tv Christmas movie in a year or two, this is definitely the book for you.

Pages: 390. Library copy.

Girl with Gun, by Amy Stewart

In the first of a series of historical fiction about one of America’s first female deputy sheriffs and her family, Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp find themselves on the wrong end of a car-wagon crash with the weaselly manager of the local silk mill. This leads to a cascading series of events that include threats from gangsters, a stolen baby, an undercover assignment in New York, newspaper attention, a friendship with a reform-minded local sheriff, and a court case — all in pursuit of a $50 wagon repair. Through it all Constance Kopp keeps her head and strong sense of justice and mostly manages to keep curmudgeonly Norma and dramatic Fleurette safe. But these three sisters will never again be able to remain anonymous and hidden away on their New Jersey farm.

If you like stories of women who come into their own, who find an inner strength they didn’t know they had, and who end up kicking ass and taking names and the added bonus of knowing it’s based on a real person, this is the book for you. I’m eager to track down the second book in the series once libraries are open again, and I hope that Amazon continues to develop the series/movie they optioned from it.

Pages: 408 pages. Personal copy.

February Totals

Books finished: 5
Pages read: 1372

I’m feeling a little bored these days, as one rolls into another with little interruption. If my life were a body of water, it would be a cow pond. (This is fine. I will take a cow pond over the ocean during a tsunami any day.)

But I decided the way to spice things up was to finish a couple lingering projects. I started Chasing Vermeer over the winter at some point, back when we were still allowed to linger in cafes with other patrons. I hadn’t quite made it to the 50-page mark when I put it aside, probably for work travel, and it got buffeted to the edge of my attention span for a while. I decided to restart it tonight, in part because I could make up the read pages pretty quickly, and also because while I remembered the broad strokes of the set-up, I didn’t recall the details with the accuracy needed to solve a heist mystery. I’m enjoying this second take at the novel and expect to speed through it quickly.

The knitting is my lightning shawl, which I pull out every year, swearing this will be the time I finish it. But this time I mean it. When I last worked on it, I remember I’d reached a point where the transition between yarn scraps stood out too much. I’ll need to look at it more carefully in the morning to see whether I ripped it back and went with a different transition (which is what I think will have happened) or if I still need to pull out a few rows and carry on. But either way, there is probably a good amount of indoor time during this three-day weekend, and I have several audio books I’m working through, and I don’t think it’s out of the realm of the possible if I commit to knitting instead of napping that I could bind this project off before June rolls around.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting as we head into the traditional start to summer.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share our love of something bookish.

It doesn’t get more basically bookish than this:

The Top Ten Reasons I Love My Library:

1. This is where they keep all the books.
2. The D.C. Public Library hosts my weekly Twitter book club, #brownbagdc. They have other Twitter book chats, too, and added a few more while the library was shut down. They also added biweekly trivia nights.
3. I still have a dvd player, and they buy dvds so I can watch movies without having to pay for them.
4. They gave us three days’ warning before they shut down for the pandemic. This allowed residents to create a literary run on the bank, as it were, as the bookish folks did the equivalent of hoarding toilet paper. (There were more checkouts that weekend than during the entire month of February.)
5. They let me stream movies on Kanopy and stream and download music on Freegal.
6. They just eliminated late fees. (They already had a very liberal policy, but now fines are just gone.)
7. When the library shut down, DCPL went into their online system and reactivated accounts that had been turned off. Too many late fees? No longer a problem for nearly 4,000 accounts! Expired account? Welcome back, 87,000 neighbors! And if you’ve never had a card, they allowed you to open an account to borrow materials online for the duration of the shutdown.
8. The library will let you print materials for free (when they’re open). You can print things from their computers, or you can send things from your home machine/mobile device to the printer queue.
9. They have reciprocity with most of the other nearby library systems. This means I’ve been able to add accounts in neighboring Maryland and Virginia counties, upping my ability to borrow materials — and, in the case of the Montgomery County Public Library, giving me access to Acorn TV for free.
10. Pretty much every librarian and library staff member I’ve met at the two dozen branches I’ve visited have been super nice and helpful. The work they do is hard, as is any public-facing job. Urban libraries, in particular, though, operate as de facto daytime homeless shelters and the staff are as knowledgeable about social work resources as they are about what’s on the shelves — and they don’t get the recognition they deserve.
11. And a bonus — their buildings are beautiful and often win architectural awards. They’re nearing an end of a complete gut of the main branch, and I’m so excited to see what aspects they bring back (the MLK mural? the clock?) and what new things they introduce. (There’s a slide, people! I’m so hoping they let adults use it, too!)

What do you love about your library?

I did not get any reading done today, although I did listen to Nic Stone talk about her novel, Shuri, which I’m really looking forward to reading, as part of the Gaithersburg Book Festival, which will be broadcast on YouTube over the next four weekends.

Today’s Bout of Book challenge invites us to consider any goals we set for ourselves at the outset of the readathon, and if we didn’t to think about a mini one for today.

I had not set any challenges, so I don’t have to figure out how to live up to past me’s expectations. Present me thinks that I can probably finish one of my current reads before I head to bed tomorrow night. I’m down to the last quarter of The Cruelest Month, for instance, and have several print books that could be crossed off with a little focus. Seems challenging, but reasonable, don’t you think?

[Editor’s note, Sunday night: Success!]

The leg of my second Smock Madness is nearly done. It suffered a bit earlier in the week from my tiredness when I blithely knit along in what I thought was the right smocking pattern until I looked at it and thought, that doesn’t look right. Luckily it was only a half dozen rows, plus some tinking a little while later when I forgot to wrap some stitches. But I have a listening work call at the end of the day tomorrow, at which point I expect to be ready for moving on to the heel. Exciting, right?

I finished the print book I was reading last week, so am now cycling back to another book I started at the beginning of the pandemic, when I didn’t have the fortitude to read, A Murderous Relation by Deanna Raybourn. I’m also listening to a mystery, The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny, but it’s a contemporary, so it feels okay to dive into a second, since it’s set at the turn of the last century. Plus, the Veronica Speedwell novels are part mystery, part romance, and part adventure tale, so it’s really not the same as a straight-up police procedural, no matter how literary it is.

Head over to As Kat Knits for more knitting and reading progress from around the world!

In his middle age, Corey has become a lap cat. Specifically my lap cat. (To be fair, Rudi’s lap is much leaner than mine.)

He will escort Rudi to bed but then come back out to the couch and bed down.

He prefers it when I am reclining more, so he can stretch out the length of my torso, but he’ll take what he can get. but he’s definitely grumpy if I curl up on my side.

He prefers to snooze on the couch, but he’s not above an evening nap snuggled on the bed curled up in the crook of my knees under a blanket or dozing off on my lap during a work video call in the rocking chair.

He doesn’t mind if I read or am on the computer, although he draws the line at two computers, which makes the work I need to finish before going to sleep a little challenging.

In Bout of Books news, earlier, I listened to some more of Yes, No, Maybe So while doing some chores. I don’t know if I’ll finish it this week, but it may happen if this is the only night where I’m working in the wee smalls.

Today’s challenge asks:

Which book(s) would you like to see made into a movie (or TV show)?

Ooh! Here are a half dozen off the top of my head:

Sherry Thomas’ Lady Sherlock series should definitely be adapted as a costume drama by the BBC. They’d need to a fundraiser, though, just to cover the dessert budget line. Also, I’m going to be super critical about casting in this film.

Jasper Fforde has said that he will not adapt his Thursday Next series for the screen, because it will never live up to what’s on the page. I know the BBC (or maybe ITV) adapted the first book of The Last Dragonslayer, though. I’d love to see that — and if it’s good to have them do the rest of the series.

Michael Scott’s The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series would make a fun series with its international settings and its cast of literary characters.

Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus was optioned, but I’m guessing it fell through. It would make an amazing movie, but should mostly be filmed in black and white, with only specific circus-themed scenes in color.

Brian Selznick’s two other prose-illustration tomes have been made into well-received films, so I definitely hope someone is working on one for The Marvels.

Finally (just because I need to finish that work and go to bed) speaking of Marvel, they keep pushing back their Ms. Marvel film adaptation. With so many of this summer’s films moving to a 2021 release and no work being done anywhere on new shoots, I can only assume this is going to push its release back even further. I mean, they did eventually film me a Black Widow movie before Scarlett Johansson totally aged out of the role, so here’s hoping…