Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 10

My September Reading Log

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My September #TBRChallenge Book was Black Maestro: The Epic Life of an American Legend by Joe Drape; I also read and wrote about Wink: The Incredible Life and Epic Journey of Jimmy Winkfield by Ed Hotaling in the same post.

Fanfiction:
The Lych Yew Gambit by Delphi for mimsical was an very excellent AU outsider-POV on Severus Snape. I liked this a lot and really wanted to know more about the narrator, a Soviet defector who used to be a chess champion.

A case of you by lotesse is a series of...

Romancing the Beast – Embracing Monstrousness in Romantic SFF

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I have a new post up at the SFWA blog: Romancing the Beast – Embracing Monstrousness in Romantic SFF.

#TBRChallenge – Animals: Black Maestro: The Epic Life of an American Legend by Joe Drape

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And now for something completely different! I went with horse racing as the sport for this month’s theme. Black Maestro: The Epic Life of an American Legend by Joe Drape is a biography of Black jockey Jimmy Winkfield (1882 – 1974), winner of the Kentucky Derby in both 1901 and 1902, the last Black jockey to do so and one of very few who managed it back-to-back.

Winkfield was the youngest of seventeen children; his father had been freed from slavery via joining the Union army during the Amer...

My August Reading Log

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Fiction:
Abandoned in Death by J. D. Robb is the fifty-fourth in that series, wow, and there are currently two more scheduled to follow. These are comfortingly repetitive despite being about sometimes truly gruesome serial murders, because the killer is always caught and jailed in the end. I also find it interesting to watch the near-future worldbuilding shift and change as it gets closer to present-day. This series began publication in July 1995; the story is set in the mid-twenty-first ce...

#TBRChallenge – Blue Collar: Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart

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Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart is one of those books I pre-ordered and then kept on my TBR for years afterward. Stewart is one of my all-time favorite fantasy writers, but he has gotten away from writing novels in recent years, and I don’t know if he’ll ever write another. These days, he writes interactive fiction and “mixed reality” games. My response to this change in his career was hoarding this last novel, waiting for the perfect time to read it. Rejoice! The time is now!!!

This review ...

My July Reading Log

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Fiction:
Abandoned in Death by J. D. Robb is the fifty-fourth in that series, wow, and there are currently two more scheduled to follow. These are comfortingly repetitive despite being about sometimes truly gruesome serial murders, because the killer is always caught and jailed in the end. I also find it interesting to watch the near-future worldbuilding shift and change as it gets closer to present-day. In Romance, the plot is Happily Ever After; in Mystery, the plot is Justice is Served. ...

#TBRChallenge – Vintage: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

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On one of the few occasions when I met the late Ursula K. LeGuin, I asked if she would recommend me a book to read. She suggested Lolly Willowes: Or the Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner, published in 1926. Though I bought a copy of the book fairly soon after, it was soon buried under books I was reading for review, and has been languishing on my TBR shelf for a number of years.

I am here to tell you that this was a splendid recommendation. Despite knowing many people who love Sylvi...

My June 2022 Reading Log

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Fiction:
Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials is second in this mystery series set in contemporary Singapore. Aunty Lee provides catering, including a dish that can be deadly if prepared improperly, and two people die after eating it. As you might imagine, the dish did not kill them. As in the previous installment, the mystery is very character based, with Aunty Lee being a classic Nosy Old Lady Who Solves Mysteries character; I like her and her sidekick Nina a lot. One of the murder victims is a ga...

#TBRChallenge – After the War: The Great Silence by Juliet Nicolson

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The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson is nonfiction about, well, the time after the First World War. I took this month’s theme very literally!

I bought this book because I’d read a previous work by the author, The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm, which I wrote about in this 2011 post. At that time, I was doing research for a fiction project set just before World War One and looking forward to read...

My May Reading Log

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Fiction:
Strong Wine by A.J. Demas is third in a trilogy about former solider and all-around mensch Damiskos and his spy/dancer lover Varazda, set in a world reminiscent of Classical Greece. I’d recommend reading this series in order, as a lot of book one, both characters and plot, is revisited in book three. Damiskos has been visiting Varazda in Boukos and wants to move into his household there; Varazda and his household want this too, but they haven’t yet sat down to discuss it. Also, Dam...