Burn Baby Burn

Fire is super scary.
I am not a fan of fire.
Of course only nut jobs and criminals are fans of the kinds of fires that are highlighted in Slow Burn, the 44th Spenser installment by Ace Atkins, carrying on the wow, wow, wow of Robert B. Parker in an eerie dude-is-Atkins-channeling-Parker-from-the-grave kind of way.
Spenser is so lovable.  And this book has Hawk and Quirk and Susan, too. And I am really loving the Susan and Spenser parts.  I think they have the best relationship in any book.
I learned what "jakes" are!  And I learned about the Sparks, too!

Fire! Fire!

These guys were pretty funny.  The Great Chicago Fire was not.  The book, The Great Fire, by Jim Murphy, was excellent.  A Newbery Honor Book, and well deserved.
Mr. Murphy brings the past alive.  I had no idea about the classism factor that was a part of the fire.  I do remember the story of Mrs. O'Leary's cow and hearing Judy sing, "Shout how-now to Mrs. O'Leary's cow." But somewhere in my head I thought that maybe the whole cow story was a myth, but it wasn't.
The way that the poor were blamed for the fire was shocking, but then as I consider the human condition, I guess it isn't, still it is hard to read.
One of the players in this book was exceptionally horrid.  The newspaper reporter...I can't think of his name, and maybe that is best.  He should just be forgotten.  I wonder if this kind of blame goes on today when there are disasters.  Sadly, I bet it does.
Just like in Blizzard, it is just crazy to think about how hard it was to navigate the world before the advances in technology that we enjoy today.  Firefighters of yesterday and today are heroes, truly.  How many people would run INTO a fire while the rest of us are running away?

Bitterblue

Doesn't Bitterblue sound like one of those death songs from the 1950s and 60s?  Like Teen Angel or Last Kiss or Seasons in the Sun (well that was the 70s, but you get the idea).  I kept thinking of Poor Butterfly.  Or Wildfire.  Which is really terrible because the horse and the girl die.
Bitterblue is the third book in the Graceling Realm series, which I thought was called the Seven Kingdoms series, but it isn't.  I don't know if it ever was or if that was just something someone made up.
I loved Graceling.  And I loved Fire.
I don't know how I feel about Bitterblue, so that's why I am doing the whole "blog as I go" thing.  It is taking me a long time to get through it, but not because it is bad.  It isn't.  It is charming and funny so far.
There is a lot of humor in this book, showing what a great writer Ms. Cashore really is.  She can write it all.  I love the librarian, Death (pronounced like Teeth, but you get the idea and he fits it).
So now I have finished Bitterblue and I am so sad that it is over.  Opening this book was truly like escaping into the world of the Seven Kingdoms.  I could get totally lost in it, which is hard for me today because fantasy isn't really my thing.  So much to think about.  There is a lot of humor in this book, but it gets darker and darker as you read on.  The crimes of Leck are truly horrific.  There were times when I had to catch my breath.  This might be a little hard to get into, but man, it is so worth it.  I had to give it the 5 stars on goodreads.com.  Fantastic.

A Graced Author

Man I loved this book! I didn't think I would. I needed something to listen to one lunch hour and I picked up the full-cast audio of Graceling to serve as background noise to Zuma on my cell phone and chicken nuggets in my tummy. At first it reminded me of all the reasons why I usually hate fantasy. Weird names, like the hero Katsa and her uncle King Randa. Places with equally weird names like, well I can't spell them. Freaky people who have gifts called "Graces" which allow them to be really good at one thing or another, but by the end of my french fries I was hooked. Katsa is a Graceling (they are easily spotted because they have two different colored eyes). Some Gracelings have the gift of baking bread or hunting, Katsa's grace is that she is a freakin' killing machine!
This book is super fantastic. Katsa is a very strong female character. I wondered...who would win in a fight, Katsa or Katniss from the Hunger Games.
Even though this book as a very loving and complicated romance/relationship, I still enjoyed it. It think that because the relationship is show in a realistic way (it causes a lot of pain) I was not annoyed.
Even if you hate fantasy and hate romance and can't stomach the idea of a combination of both, you just might really enjoy Graceling. It has enough action and a very evil villain to keep you in suspense nearly up until the end.