Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 12

The Divine Right of Kings

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. – Ursula K. Le Guin

I’ve been thinking about those sentences a lot over the last couple of months.

Last year I read Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century and right now I’m working on Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything. Piketty makes it clear that the current system will expand income and wealth inequities unless we take action; Klein is arguing that we need to rein in corpo...

Sara Gets a Cygnus!

Sara Stamey

No wonder she’s smiling!

Our own Sara Stamey has garnered a CYGNUS Award for Speculative Fiction for her upcoming new BVC novel THE ARIADNE CONNECTION! The novel is now up for the CYGNUS Grand Prize.

Let’s all cross our fingers and think bookish thoughts in Sara’s direction.

WWW Wednesday 1-7-2015

by Brenda W. Clough

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?

• What did you recently finish reading?

• What do you think you’ll read next?

• What are you currently reading?

The Art of the English Murder: From jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock, by Lucy Worsley. This turned up on the new book shelf at the library and I could not resist. And because it is new it is bumped up to the front of the TBR line, s...

BVC Eats: Gramma Dornfeld’s molasses gingerbread

The good stuff. For heaven’s sake don’t use “light” molasses.

Winter wasn’t winter without Gramma Dornfeld’s gingerbread. It was dark and fluffy and a little bitter, and we ate it hot out of the oven, sitting around the Franklin stove, fetching wood now and then, and listening to Papa Dornfeld singing along to German drinking songs played at deafening volume on the Victrola.

Gramma Dornfeld’s Molasses Gingerbread

1/2 cup Crisco-type shortening or softened butter (Crisco works better)

1/2 cup suga...

Winter Reading, part 3

The Spiral Path: A Tale of Ritual Magic, by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel (Book View Café, 2015). In this third book of “Night Calls,” the adventures of Alfreda Sorensson, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel has brought originality and insightfulness to the series. Set in an alternate, magical Colonial America, these are no ordinary Young Adult fantasies, and Allie is no ordinary heroine. In Allie’s confident and inimitable voice, Kimbriel weaves together the necessary survival skills of living in the fore...

BVC Welcomes Sheila Gilluly

Please join Book View Café in welcoming new member Sheila Gilluly.

Sheilataught high school English for thirty years in a small rural district in Maine, for which she devoutly hopes there may be time off Purgatory, both for herself and for her poor students. Now she is retired and gets to spend her time gardening and answering imperious calls from four hens and one very funny cat named Gracie.

She is the author of two fantasy trilogies, the Greenbriar Queen (NAL/Signet/Roc and Headline) and Th...

BVC Announces The Boy From the Burren by Sheila Gilluly

The Boy From the Burren

The First Book of the Painter

by Sheila Gilluly

Aengus, a hard-bitten young thief with a gift for sand painting, expects a fine new life of adventuring when his drunken father sells him to Bruchan, a wandering storyteller.

But instead of illustrating his new master’s tales at fairs, Aengus finds himself embroiled in a desperate secret war. For Bruchan leads an embattled religious community which is fighting to keep alive their secret knowledge and ancient way of life. Thre...

BVC Announces Deverry: Three Tales by Katharine Kerr

Deverry: Three Tales

by Katharine Kerr

Three stories from Katharine Kerr’s world of Deverry, including one that has never seen print before.

Buy Deverry: Three Tales at BVC Ebookstore

Why Do You Have Him If You Can’t Ride Him?

It’s amazing how many times horse people are asked some form of this question. “Why don’t you take him to shows?” “Why aren’t you working him?” “Why is he just standing around eating his head off?”

Horse people themselves are almost as prone to this as non-horsepeople. The presumption is that a horse is a riding animal, a using animal: transportation. A horse who doesn’t “earn his keep” is not worth keeping.

So why would anyone keep a horse she doesn’t ride?

To stay on the negative side of the l...

Annals of Pard: Christmas 2014

Pard’s Christmas, 2014

by Ursula K. Le Guin

What’s Under the Tree?

Helping Charles Unwrap

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/PardXmas-PardHelpsCharlesUnwrap-Computer.m4v

It’s Been so Exciting, I’m Tired and Going to Take a Bath

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/PardXmas-Bath-Computer.m4v

Pard’s New Year Greeting:

So here’s a paw, my trusty friend,

And gie’s a paw o’ thine!

We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet

For auld lang syne.