Am I the only one who didn't know his beard was actually blue? I'm not saying that's a red flag, but if a whole fairytale serial killer story is based Am I the only one who didn't know his beard was actually blue? I'm not saying that's a red flag, but if a whole fairytale serial killer story is based around it...
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So this guy is rich but he has a BLUE beard. <--no idea what the author was trying to say about men with blue beards, but it's a weird thing to have happening on your face. Even back then. He's having a hard time getting a wife because of said blue beard (and I'm assuming all those missing wives), so he invites two sisters to his house to show off all of his goodies. And the younger one decides that after seeing how much $$$$ this guy has that...well, his beard isn't all that blue.
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They marry and all goes well for a little while. Then he has to go away for a bit and gives her the keys to every room in the house. She can go into ANY of them! <--he says Except this one room. <--he says all menacingly NEVER GO IN THAT ROOM OR I WILL KNOW AND YOU'LL BE IN FOR IT! <--he says
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The hell, my man? Of course, she can't resist that room now. <--it's what he wants So after she throws a big wingding for all of her friends (b/c why else marry a guy with a blue beard if not to throw all the lavish parties?), she sneaks into the forbidden room. And guess what? Yes, exactly! A whole pile of dead wives. Just...hanging around all bloated and crusty. And the floor is inexplicably coated with magic blood. Magic? <-- you say Yes, magic. Because she drops the damn key on the floor and the blood won't wash off it. AND NOW HE'S GONNA KNOW.
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So he comes back and finds the key all sticky and gross and says welp, guess I'm gonna have to kill you now and she's like oh wait! give me a minute to freshen up! and he goes ok, but hurry up and she starts whisper-yelling to her older sister to check out the window and see if her brothers are on their way yet, and he's like woman, what's taking you so long? i need to hurry up and throttle you so i can find another wife who isn't so nosey and she's like coming, dear! except she's still whisper-yelling to her sister jesus christ! are they here yet? this mf is goon kill meeeee! and he's like look, i really need to get on with this because i have a blue beard and it's going to take me FOREVER to find another woman who is willing to marry this mess and our heroine is starting to lose hope because he's now choking the life out of her when her sister finally whisper yells back our brothers are here! and they bust down the door and fuck this Blue Beard uppppp. And she gets all of his money and throws more cool parties.
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So what's the moral of the story? <-- I'm assuming you ask Well, according to this, the moral of the story is that you should obey your husband or it might lead to some choking. Which is basically the advice I give my daughters as I send them out into the world. Except for all of that whole sentence because...for fuck's sake! But it's still a very readable fairytale.
Recommended. Just maybe not as a bedtime story for little kids.
Night Light Audio English 15m by Charles Perrault read by Carrington MacDuffie...more
The Empress of Blandings has been pignapped! What, what?
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This has all the earmarks of a great Wodehouse story, and I love the inhabitants of BlaThe Empress of Blandings has been pignapped! What, what?
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This has all the earmarks of a great Wodehouse story, and I love the inhabitants of Blanding Castle. Yes, even Lady Constance and Mr. Baxter. With the ever-wobbly Lord Emsworth at the helm, this installment has everything you could want in a Wodehouse novel, including my favorite character, the effervescent Honourable Galahad Threepwood. You can't go wrong with that one.
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He's busy writing his reminiscences and every peer who ever had an interaction with him in their youth is shaking in their shoes at what "funny revelation" is about to be exposed to the public's prying eyes. Oh, it's gonna be a bestseller.
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Meanwhile, you have two sets of star-crossed lovers, desperately swimming upstream like salmon to mate. Will they make it? Well, there's always the other option.
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But this is a WODEHOUSE novel, silly. True love will always prevail. A fun entry in the Blandings Castle series.
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Audiobook review: I won't be listening to any other Wodehouse books read by John C. Wells because his voice was incredibly annoying. A lot of the characters sounded like British muppets. I ended up speeding up the narration to be done with his nonsense. TERRIBLE. WORST VOICES EVER. YOU'RE FIRED. God, I'm hilarious....more
So much of this went over my head. So veryveryvery much. But I walked out of the room a tad smarter than when I walked in, so we'll call this a win. And So much of this went over my head. So veryveryvery much. But I walked out of the room a tad smarter than when I walked in, so we'll call this a win. And isn't that the point?
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Sean Carroll takes the reader on an adventure that spans years (and years and years) telling a story of all the stops and starts as dedicated scientists drum up the funding for what would eventually be CERN's Large Hadron Collider. And there have been lots of payoffs for their hard work, but the most famous is the Higgs. If you pay any attention to the science-y side of things you'll remember what a huge deal it was when they found the evidence they were looking for to confirm the Higgs boson particle.
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And while quarks, black matter, and string theory are all things I strive to get my tiny dinosaur brain to make sense of, I think I can say now at least that I understand the importance of the Higgs, even if I don't understand everything about particles or physics. Carroll has such an engaging manner that even when what he was talking about was going in one ear and out the other, I was still enjoying myself.
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Ironically enough, I wouldn't even be writing this review right now if it weren't for scientists at CERN needing to share massive amounts of data information with each other, leading to Tim Berners-Lee developing the World Wide Web. Proving once again that the search for answers for the sake of the question typically leads us to new and interesting places.
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The moral of the story is that science is fun, inspiring, and just really fucking cool. Hopefully, we will always have little kids with big imaginations and loads of curiosity, who grow into big kids with even bigger imaginations and loads of international funding, that allows them to continue discovering the secrets of our universe. Recommended....more
This is the first book that I can remember Bertie giving the audience a little recap! Of course, after 13 other books (that don't actually need to be This is the first book that I can remember Bertie giving the audience a little recap! Of course, after 13 other books (that don't actually need to be read in order), I thought it was a pretty good idea.
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His much beloved ancient relative, Aunt Dahlia, calls upon her favorite nephew to help her wheedle some of the money her future son-in-law is owed from an invention his father made while in the employ of businessman L. P. Runkle. And so off to Market Snodsbury he goes!
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And while there he gets embroiled in the local elections to help his friend Ginger stay in the good graces of his fiancee, the overbearing beauty Florence Craye. <--who is under the mistaken impression that Bertie secretly loves her. The drippy Madeline Bassett also rears her flower-filled head and strikes fear in the heart of our eternal bachelor. If you don't know, Madeline is under the very mistaken impression that Bertie longingly pines for her, and only her engagement to Roderick Spode saved him from a trip down the altar the last time they met. But since it would be bad form to pipe up and let a lady know that you'd rather spend a stretch in prison than spend your evenings in their company, Bertie is seemingly stuck becoming engaged to these women whenever their respective fiances tick them off.
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At the heart of this one is the often-referenced book kept by members of Junior Ganymede Club, of which Jeeves is a member. It is a club for butlers and valets and the book contains the escapades of the various members' employers. Bertie features heavily. The point of the book is to let prospective job seekers know what they are up against should they agree to employment with one of these noodles, and the contents are kept secret from the general public. Bertie has loudly complained throughout the series that something will someday go sideways, and this is THAT book. Although, things don't go quite the way he envisioned.
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Very funny story that I think most Jeeves & Wooster fans will enjoy. Recommended....more
I saw this and thought it would be a fun little lecture series - and it was! But not in the way I thought it would be. I didn't read the blurb, I just lI saw this and thought it would be a fun little lecture series - and it was! But not in the way I thought it would be. I didn't read the blurb, I just looked at the title and mistakenly assumed it was about Vlad the Impaler. No.
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And while you might think that I should have learned my lesson about that sort of thing by now, my itchy trigger finger has honestly opened the door to a lot of books that I probably would never have found if I had done my due diligence instead of just grabbing something because it looked cool.
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Ok. So what this actually is, is a lecture on the history of vampires in folklore. It centers on the history and cultural effect of Bram Stoker's Dracula, but they also go into the history of vampires from the oldest known folklore (where vampires were a lot like the fae), to fairytales (Snow White), to Anne Rice's Interview, to Marvel's Blade, to the sparkling reimagined vampires we have today.
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And while Stoker and his Dracula get the most page time, they also delve into other cool stories, like Polidori's Byron-inspired Vampyre. I've always wanted the skinny on that whole relationship, so that was worth the price of admission right there.
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This was fun. And the two lecturers were kind of adorable with the way they did this little back-and-forth with each other. At first, I thought it might be annoying but they were just geeky enough to pull it off. And it's not a long lecture, clocking in at only about 4 and a half hours. So if you're looking for something a bit different to kill time on a long car ride, this would fit the bill.
The skinny gist is that thanks to different experts in their respective fields sharing information with each other, they've found that some of their information about The Black Death wasn't accurate. Several long-held assumptions about the spread were wrong, including Gabriele de Mussi’s famous plague story of the Mongol siege of Caffa where corpses were catapulted over the wall as the world's first attempt at biological warfare. Good stuff, and a reminder that not even history is written in stone.
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Ok, so this was recorded in 2022. That means that COVID-19 was still big news and highly politicized. And an unfortunate portion of this (very short) lecture is focused on scolding people who weren't doing what the experts were telling them to do, and making comparisons between the two pandemics. I get where she's coming from, but the righteous anger at the end of the lecture came off as a tad cringy if I'm being honest. I really wish she'd just stuck to the new information because I don't think this lecture will age well, even though I very much agree with the sentiment that blaming the others for our problems seems to be an irksome part of the human condition. Recommended for Plague Doctors....more
It doesn't really tell you in the Audible Audio Original description but this is a graphic audio story with a full casExcellent mother/daughter story.
It doesn't really tell you in the Audible Audio Original description but this is a graphic audio story with a full cast (Nick Choksi, Harsh Nayyar, Annapurna Sriram, Bernard White, & Rita Wolf). I went into it thinking that it was a regular audiobook but I seriously regret nothing because even though this was only a few hours long, it was fantastic. The entire story is told through phone conversations and voicemails, which you would think might be terribly annoying. But no! So good! Soooo good! I'd already seen the movie (and loved it, btw!), so I was pretty thrilled to have accidentally stumbled onto this little gem as an Audible freebie.
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The story starts out innocuously enough with a young woman in California being lovingly harassed by her mother who lives in Delhi to please take finding a husband seriously.
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She's happy as she is, but (un)willingly goes to meet one of the many men her mother has found on matchmaking sites for coffee. And while waiting in the coffeehouse for the guy her mom wants her to meet, she runs into the most wonderful man, and they begin a fairytale relationship.
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But something about the relationship flips a switch in her mother, and she seems to be losing it. She doesn't trust this guy even though he is quite literally everything that someone could want in a son-in-law. He's rich, handsome, comes from an excellent family, and has fallen head over heels for their daughter. She demands her daughter break it off, claiming to her husband that her abusive ex-boyfriend has been reincarnated in this new boyfriend.
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Is she crazy? Did her past relationship break her mind? Or is this the epitome of the sinister cycle of violence repeating itself? Listen to it. You'll like the way this one ends....more
Liar, liar, pants on fire. Arabella is the beautiful eldest daughter of a respectable country vicar. Her mother has moved heaven and earth to get her aLiar, liar, pants on fire. Arabella is the beautiful eldest daughter of a respectable country vicar. Her mother has moved heaven and earth to get her an invitation to her godmother's house in order to find her a wealthy husband. This will mean that she will hopefully be able to help her younger siblings make eligible matches, as well. But it doesn't mean that Arabella is mercenary, or that her mother expects her to marry someone horrible.
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She gets her feelings hurt when her carriage breaks down, and she and her chaperone had to seek shelter in the home of a rich hottie named Mr. Beaumaris, who thinks the whole thing is a ruse to get an introduction and wangle a bit of alone time with him. She overhears him telling his friend that she smells of desperation. So she gets pissed and decides to tell Beaumaris and his friend Mr. Fleetwood that she's an heiress. And that's she's SICK AND TIRED of all the sycophants chasing her for her big bags of money. Then she hops into her (now fixed) carriage and heads to London, never to see the a-hole again. She thinks.
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Mr. Beaumaris is intrigued. Now, he doesn't believe for a minute she's got a penny to her name, but he's rich as hell and couldn't care less. He hops in his carriage and heads to London, as well.
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Arabella having grown up in a home that prized being kind above all else can't help but be completely herself in London. And if that means rescuing a dirty, troublesome, chimney boy from the cruel man who owns him, and then foisting him on Mr. Beaumaris - she will. And if that means rescuing a half-starved mongrel dog, who is being tortured by cruel teenagers, and then foisting him on Mr. Beaumaris - she will. And if that means...well, you get the picture.
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Unfortunately, Mr. Fleetwood doesn't realize Arabella is fibbing and goes around town telling everyone that she is a "secret heiress", so now she's got to fight off, not only fortune hunters, but her conscience. Because as it turns out, she is starting to fall in love with the prickly Robert Beaumaris and doesn't know how to tell him she's as poor as the proverbial church mouse.
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What ensues is a Regency Rom Com that should have fans of the genre grinning while they read. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but I honestly smiled a lot while I was listening to this one. The story is adorable, and I loved all the characters. 10/10 Recommended for fans of Regency Romance....more
Marduk vs Tiamat! Straight outta Ancient Mesopotamia, this action-packed thrill ride (not really) is one of the oldest creation myths that we know abouMarduk vs Tiamat! Straight outta Ancient Mesopotamia, this action-packed thrill ride (not really) is one of the oldest creation myths that we know about. Tune in to hear about waters mingling (wink, wink), an elder god getting pissed about how loud his kids are, and how humans were created as a slave race to feed and clothe the gods. Good stuff.
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Now, this version was the one translated by Leonard William King and (from what I could find) is apparently quite respectable, but I'm not at all an expert. I would assume there are better/more complete translations available now, and I've got my eye on a few that I've already put on my wish list. It's hard for those of us who can't read and write in ancient Sumerian and Akkadian to fully grasp what the smarty-pants people are getting up to on archeological digs, but goddammit, I'm going to give it the old didn't-go-to-college try. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it.
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The narrator isn't all that fantastic but I can't imagine that "Museum Audiobooks" is really doing a booming business with stuff like this, so I won't complain....more
Who knew a toothache could cause so many problems? When the Earl of Havershot goes to America to break up the potentially unsuitable engagement of his Who knew a toothache could cause so many problems? When the Earl of Havershot goes to America to break up the potentially unsuitable engagement of his cousin Eggy, he doesn't expect to end up swapping bodies with child actor, Joey Cooley. What, what?
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But let's back up. First, he'll fall in love with the predatory actress April June, find out his cousin is planning to marry his lovely ex-fiancee, get a terrible toothache, then end up in a dentist's chair under laughing gas at the same time as 12 year old Joey. And as you all know, when two people go under anesthesia at the same time, the conditions are ripe for a soul swap.
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The premise sounds funny, and there are moments of that P.G. Wodehouse gold that shine through, but this just isn't going to end up being a personal favorite of mine. It was a bit too weird and all of the jokes didn't land for me. I did enjoy the commentary on how horrible it would have been to be a child actor, even back in the day. And it had some cute moments. But for whatever reason I thought it was kind of too odd for it to go on as long as it did and because of that it just didn't work as well for me as most of his other stories do.
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Still. I'm trying to work my way through all of his stories, so I'm not sorry I read it.
Recommended for Wodehouse completionists and fans of Freaky Friday....more
Let me suggest you read Lovecraft's The Horror at Red Hookbefore reading this. Why? Well, Victor LaValle basically took a stoCthulhu be praised.
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Let me suggest you read Lovecraft's The Horror at Red Hookbefore reading this. Why? Well, Victor LaValle basically took a story with racist undertones and rewrote it from the view of a young black man from Harlem. Quite a fresh spin, indeed. And I will say that having the events from the original fresh in my mind added an extra layer of Easter eggy goodness to this one. I'm not at all sure if this would have seemed half as clever if I hadn't known what the source material was like, so your mileage may vary.
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As to whether or not this was an incredible horror story...? I don't know. It was a very interesting retelling. But it was also a short story about another short story. So, you're not really getting anything super-meaty. People are fucking around with ancient books and mystic portals that open doors to places that will bend your mind and body in ways you can't describe. So. It isn't really described. Use your imagination, sir. A lot of your enjoyment may just depend on whether or not Lovecraftian horror is your jam.
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I can say with some certainty that if you like audiobooks, you will enjoy this one. It's narrated by Kevin R Free, who was (as always) excellent.
A pretty decent collection of bite-sized sci-fi stories.
3 stars Ark by Veronica Roth An asteroid is going to hit the planet. Can Aerosmith write anotherA pretty decent collection of bite-sized sci-fi stories.
3 stars Ark by Veronica Roth An asteroid is going to hit the planet. Can Aerosmith write another #1 before it hits?
4 stars Randomize by Andy Weir Quantum entanglement, Keno, and a casino owner. What can go wrong?
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If you're into sci-fi shorts, you could do worse than this collection. They weren't all winners for me, but they were most definitely all readable. Recommended....more
Who else hit the pre-order button like this? It opens in South Carolina, I couldn't resist.
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Steve and Amy Wheeler make one of the most charming cWho else hit the pre-order button like this? It opens in South Carolina, I couldn't resist.
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Steve and Amy Wheeler make one of the most charming crime-solving duos I've read. A father-in-law and his daughter-in-law? That is a bit different. And while over the course of the novel, you learn a lot about each of them, you can tell that this is just the tip of the personality iceberg with both. Amy is a badass who loves her work as a bodyguard. Who doesn't want to go to exotic locations and throw grenades out of helicopters? She's also a very compartmentalized person. And so is her husband's dad, Steve, a widowed ex-London cop turned village detective. Steve is owned by a cat named Trouble who has allowed Steve to believe the relationship was his choice.
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Amy and Steve have both been through things that have required them to shove their emotions into a tiny little box and suck it up, so they've formed this close bond through daily phone calls where they absolutely do not talk about their feelings. And they will both die on that hill. But they'll also both die on a hill protecting each other if necessary.
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So when Amy is targeted by a (dare I say?) supervillain and set up for a string of murders that she didn't commit, there is only one person in the world she would trust to help her save her life. I mean, she adores her husband, but he's in finance... I really liked her husband, though. They have their own strange, special relationship with each other. And they’re both so confident in it that instead of being weird, it’s just…adorable.
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Another character I loved was Amy's body-to-guard, Rosie, who has been threatened by a Russian mobster that she carelessly lampooned and wrote into one of her books. Oops. Rosie D’Antonio is a best-selling novelist who is sort of putting off this vibrant faux Jackie Collins vibe that I just loved. How old is she? Who knows? Anywhere from 65-85, she ain't telling, that's for sure. Age is just a number, and that number is directly related to how much booze you can still drink and whether or not you can crash at your good friend Barb's (that Barb for barbiturates, not Barbara, btw) shamanic therapy resort when things get hot. Full of life, full of energy, and I'm sure full of Botox, she’s still rocking her best life.
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Ok, so if you're like me, and already a huge fan of Osman's Thursday Murder Club Series, you'll definitely want to check this out. HOWEVER. This isn't exactly another cozy mystery series. But it does sort of come off like a cozy thriller. Is that a thing? I feel like it should be a thing. It's fun. <--that's what I'm trying to say. I think you'll like it. I did. Highly Recommended....more
Going on holiday with your ex is never a good idea. Especially if you're Agatha Raisin and corpses pop up around you like daisies.
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Agatha gets inGoing on holiday with your ex is never a good idea. Especially if you're Agatha Raisin and corpses pop up around you like daisies.
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Agatha gets into a hissing match with an obnoxious woman and her family who are sitting in the hotel restaurant, causing James to get into an actual fistfight outside the hotel. Later Agatha mislays her scarf. Yes, the scarf that is then found wound tight around the neck of the same obnoxious woman the next morning when she's discovered dead on the beach. Well, then. That doesn't look good, does it?
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Of course, if you've made it to book #17, you're not really worried that Agatha is going to do hard time for some annoying woman's murder. You know what your are worried about? JAMES LACEY. Agatha! Take your sexy legs on a walk and use your beady bear eyes to find a guy who isn't a human-sized turd.
I loved it. I thought it was the perfect length to showcase the origins of one of the main characters of the Rocinante.
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Ok, so I didn't read theI loved it. I thought it was the perfect length to showcase the origins of one of the main characters of the Rocinante.
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Ok, so I didn't read the blurb and therefore didn't know who this story was about when I downloaded it from the library. Those of you who know me will not be shocked at my lack of knowledge going into a book, but at least I'm not accidentally reading them out of order, so...progress. I was just looking for a few hours in the world of The Expanse universe. I said all that to say that I was FLOORED at the end to discover who this character was. Floored, I say! But then again, I didn't realize I was reading about one of the main characters. So. That might have something to do with it.
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It's only about 2 and a half hours long but it packs a punch. Recommended for fans of The Expanse....more
I'm not the right audience for this. I've picked it up 3 times and listened to about 35 minutes of it altogether. But she keeps whining aDNF 3%
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I'm not the right audience for this. I've picked it up 3 times and listened to about 35 minutes of it altogether. But she keeps whining about how she can't trust Xaden because he didn't share rebel secrets with her, and she can't trust her brother because he faked his death and she had to mourn him for years. Seriously? If what they're saying is true, millions of lives are on the line if this rebellion fails. But no. Nobody trusted a kid and you had to be sad for a few years. Oh god. The horror! The pity!
When she got all snippy at the leaders of the rebellion for thinking they could "decide her fate" while she was "in the room" - in other words, decide if they should send her back into the school and trust that she wouldn't rat them out to her mother (the general!) - I decided I couldn't do another 27 and a half hours of this.
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