"Mary Russell's War and Other Stories of Suspense" by Laurie R. King

You likely know I'm a fan of Laurie R. King's novels of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes.  I've read all of them.  And now I've also read this perfectly charming collection of short stories that also feature that delightful detective duo.

I'd read about half of the stories in this collection before, as King has released some of them for free or for very low prices as ebooks over the past few years.  But there were several here that were new to me... and even if there weren't, I would have loved this volume anyway because I would always rather read a physical book than an electronic one.  Blame being an old fogey if you want.  But the titular story, "Mary Russell's War," is a collection of journal entries with lots of photographs included, and I really liked being able to see those on paper, and to study them in some detail, instead of peering at them on my phone's tiny screen.

Anyway.  My two favorites in this collection were "The Marriage of Mary Russell," which I'd read before, and "Stately Holmes," which I had not.  The former isn't a mystery so much as an adventure in which Russell and Holmes' wedding plans go a bit awry... but all's well that ends well.  And the latter sees Russell and Holmes interacting with family members at Christmas time, and solving a small mystery about a visit from St. Nicholas while they're at it.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for a lot of stuff about WWI, some moments of suspense and peril, and other detective-story type things.

This is my 11th book read for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020

"The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder" edited by William Anderson

Oh.  My.  Word.

So, my mom picked up this book at the Wall Drug bookstore in Wall, SD, a couple months ago.  She showed it to me when I was visiting her last week, and I ended up reading the whole thing over the course of about three days.  It was fascinating and encouraging and wonderful.

It was fascinating because of how well I feel like I got to know the woman behind the books I've loved basically all my life.  These letters start in 1894 and go 1956, and they are staggeringly varied.  Some are to friends, some to her husband Almanzo, some to her daughter Rose, some to perfect strangers who sent her fan mail.  The ones I liked best were the ones to children who wrote her about her books.

It was encouraging because she struggled so hard with writing By the Shores of Silver Lake, which is my favorite of her books.  I'm struggling with the book I'm writing right now, and knowing that I'm not the first writer to struggle with a book that's a ways into a series is a comfort.

It was wonderful because Laura Ingalls Wilder was such a sweet, tart, friendly, shy, intelligent, obstinate, REAL person, and you get that sense of her from these letters.  I'm so happy I read this book.  I might have to get a copy of my own.

Particularly Good Bits:

As you read my books of long ago I hope you will remember that the things that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then.  Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.  (1950 letter to the Pomona Public Library) (p. 323)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG.  There's a very light smattering of strong language.

"Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions" by Amy Stewart

I loved Girl Waits with Gun.  I adored Lady Cop Makes Trouble.  But I only enjoyed Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions.  And I think the main reason is that it was not told in the first person by Constance Kopp!  Instead, it was third-person.  And it delved into the point of view of not just Constance, but also Fleurette Kopp and a variety of other characters.  And those characters were central to the story, but they weren't wonderful like Constance.  I'm happy to see that the next book in the series, Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit, looks to be back solidly in first person.  I hope to read it soon.

Don't get me wrong -- Constance Kopp is still the sort of resourceful, level-headed, determined woman I have always striven to be.  And she's finally a full-fledged deputy, with a badge and everything.  I just wish she'd been more central to the story.  Instead, we spent a lot of time with two women who got themselves arrested on charges of improper behavior, basically.  One of them was innocent.  One of them was not.  The book spends a lot of time delving into why a young woman would want to strike out on her own, how limited her options for self-sufficiency were in the early 1900s, and how unfair it is that, even though it takes two to tango, the men involved are never called to account for immoral behavior.  Not that I'm adverse to delving into such unfair truths about the past.  But... I missed Constance.

Still, I flew through three hundred pages of this in just a few days, so it was not boring or something I'm sorry I read!  I just wasn't enchanted by it.  I did really love the historical notes at the end, where Amy Stewart detailed what was totally historical and what she'd fictionalized here and there.  And I liked that World War I played a role in the distance.

Particularly Good Bits:

Mothers go about constantly wondering:  How did this child of mine become a man -- or woman -- of the world? (p. 116)

Nothing -- not a tour with a theater troupe, and certainly not an offer of marriage -- stood a chance against Norma's formidable vocabulary of refusal (p. 151).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  A very stern PG-13 for a lot of discussion of unmarried people behaving like married people.  None of it is lascivious or meant to be titillating, but it's more information that even young teens might need to read about.  Can we call it PG-16 instead?  Anyway, no bad language and not really much violence to speak of at all.  For mainstream fiction, it's astonishingly clean, just like the previous two books in the series.

This is my second book read and reviewed for the 2019 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

"An Hour Unspent" by Roseanna M. White.

TODAY is the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War I.  Or, the Great War, as they called it then.  Perfect time to review this book, as it takes place during WWI.  In fact, I tried to hold off on finishing this book until today, but the truth is, I finished it a couple days ago because I couldn't stop reading it.  However, I did manage to hold off on reviewing it until today so I could mark this very important day in a special way on my blog!

I would have finished it even faster if this book had come in at the library for me a little sooner.  And if, right after it came in, I hadn't gone to my parents' for a week and left it behind.  In fact, I started reading it almost two weeks after I got it from the library, and then it came due when I was only ten chapters in, and I couldn't renew it because other people had holds on it too.  What's a girl to do?

A girl is to know, ten chapters in, that she loves this book so much, she must own a copy of it, and order one from Amazon, and finish reading it once it arrives on her doorstep, obviously.  Hurrah for Prime shipping.

So.  This book focuses on Barclay Pearce, older "brother" of the women featured in A Name Unknown and A Song Unheard.  I kind of wish he'd been on the cover, but I guess the publishers wanted the books to be all matchy and feature only women or something.  And there IS a woman who's a major part of the book, but... but... Barclay is the center of it, and they should have put him on the cover, so there.

I'm not reviewing this very well.  So, basically, it's about former thief Barclay Pearce walking literally into the muddled life of Evelina Manning, an upper-middle-class London clockmaker's daughter who is reeling from a broken engagement.  Really, Barclay is there to help her father with an important gizmo that will revolutionize air warfare.  She decides to flirt with him to prove to herself that she is independent and desirable and mistress of her fate.  And then she falls in love with him, and there's a middle section where everything went wrong and I wanted to shake her.

But like I said, this is Barclay's story, really.  He is such a glorious character, struggling with his own private issues, trying to reconnect with his past, but all the while opening his home and his heart to those in need.  Wonderful guy.

The ending has a few thrilling heroics tossed in for good measure, much like the endings of the previous two books in the trilogy.  And it all ends satisfactorily, so yay!

Particularly Good Bits:

Blast it all.  Why had she made friends with these people?  They didn't follow the rules, didn't ever grant her the comfort of her preconceived notions.  Even before she'd known the whole truth about them, she'd recognized that, so why had she become so attached? (p. 306)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate it:  PG for some peril and violence.  No bad language or questionable content.  There's some kissing, though.

"A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War" by Joseph Laconte

Oh. My. Goodness.

You know how sometimes, lots of people tell you to read a book because they're sure you would love it, and so you find the book, and then you put off reading it for like a year because you're afraid you might not like it as much as they expect you to like it?

Or is that just me?

Anyway, that happened for me with this book, and it just goes to show you how foolish I can be sometimes.  Because this is a great book.

I've been gravitating toward books about WWI lately, I think.  Not intentionally, they just... keep cropping up.  I'm happy about this because I feel like I don't know enough about WWI, and this is all filling in a gap in my knowledge of world history.

ANYWAY!  I'm rambling today.  Sorry.  THIS book is fantastic.  It focuses chiefly on J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, as you may have guessed, especially their experiences as soldiers on the front lines during WWI and how those affected the rest of their lives.  Especially their literary lives, of course, since that's what most of us know Tolkien and Lewis for.  

But it doesn't stop with those two.  It shows, gently and persuasively, how the catastrophic destruction of that war caused millions of people to turn away from God and look to science and technology for their salvation here on earth.  And how that change in the world around them informed the things Tolkien and Lewis wrote about.

I learned so much from this book!  In fact, I told my husband he needs to read it too.  I'm confident he'll also find it fascinating.

(From my Instagram account.)

Particularly Good Bits:

Tolkien and Lewis were attracted to the genres of myth and romance not because they sought to escape the world, but because for them, the real world had a mythic and heroic quality (p. xvi).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for discussions of war-related violence, suicide, and so on.  No cursing or anything like that, just a lot about the realities and horrors of war.

This is my 13th book read and reviewed for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2018.

And this review is also part of my Tolkien Blog Party.  Tomorrow is the last day to enter the giveaway and the games, so if you haven't done so already, have at it!  I'll choose giveaway winners on Saturday, and post the game answers and scores too.

Finally, this is part of my continuing quest to read a goodly number of the books I've collected that have to do with Middle-earth and J.R.R. Tolkien, which I've dubbed My Years in Middle-earth.

"A Song Unheard" by Roseanna M. White

Well, I didn't like this as well as A Name Unknown, and that is entirely because of the characters.  Specifically, because of Lukas De Wilde.  I eventually ended up liking him okay, but wow, the dude did not understand the meaning of the word 'no,' did he?

Time and again, Willa Forsythe told him she was not romantically interested in him, and time and again he ignored that and insisted on wooing her anyway.  If a notorious playboy singlemindedly pursued a girl today, we'd call him a stalker or a creeper, but because this is historical fiction, it's supposed to be okay?

Nope, rubbed me wrong.

Willa herself didn't really win me over either.  I like con artists, but I don't like liars, and she did too much lying and too little conning for me to really warm to her.

Now, once she told Lukas the truth?  I settled right in and liked this book from then on.  It helped that Barclay was on the scene then too, and he elevated the story from oh-can't-they-just-either-get-together-or-give-this-up tiresomeness to something I dug.  I really am looking forward to reading An Hour Unspent, which I hear focuses on Barclay instead of one of his sisters.

I also very much liked Lukas' little sister Margot -- her habit of praying by using numbers really intrigued me.  God understands every language and created mathematics, so of course you could pray with numbers if that makes sense to you.  I'd just never thought of it!  So I liked that.

The basic plot of this is that thief Willa Forsythe is charged by the mysterious V to find and steal a secret code from famous Belgian violinist Lukas de Wilde, who has escaped the German occupation of Belgium and is raising money in Wales to help other Belgians.  Lukas' mom and sister are still in Belgium, he knows not where.  Willa is a violin prodigy herself, and I did enjoy lots of the musical content of this book.

(From my Instagram account.)

Particularly Good Bits:

She felt, as she listened to the ninety musicians following the motions of the maestro into a frenzy of musical bliss, as though she were seeing true beauty for the first time.  She felt bigger and smaller all at once.  More alive.  Closer to death.  Fear and peace, love and sorrow.  She felt like she never had before.  And it left her with energy coursing through her veins, stinging her fingertips (p. 115).

"My mother always says that the one you're meant to marry is simply the one you do marry -- it's not a matter of romance, it's a matter of deciding to love and make it work" (p. 122).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for veiled references to Lukas's playboy past, spending nights with random women, as well as for violence and suspense.

"A Name Unknown" by Roseanna M. White

Zowie. 

I'd read a LOT of glowing reviews of this book, but weirdly enough, I wasn't actually sure what it was about.  Something involving traitors?  I don't like traitors.  I didn't want to read it.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut Eva Schon gave me a copy for my birthday, swearing up and down that I would love it.  And I trust her taste pretty well, so I let the book sit on my shelf for about four months, then finally tried it because I always feel guilty when it takes me a long time to get around to reading a book someone gave me.

Um, yeah.  I loved it.

LOVED IT, I SAY!

It's not about traitors, it's about a professional thief (yum) putting her con artist skills (swoon) to work finding out IF a certain British gentleman with a German family is a traitor.  It hooked me early and hard, and I gobbled this book up.

Especially once I met Peter, the gent in question.  Peter stutters.  I have this very strong protective instinct for people with speech impediments.  I don't even know why, because I've never stuttered, and I didn't grow up around anyone with a speech impediment, but boy howdy, you give me a person who has one and I will champion them across the universe.

And when that person (real or fictional) is also a writer and a dyed-in-the-wool sweetheart?  I'm a gone goose.  Especially when they're a sincere Christian who relies on God to understand them when other people don't.

But the presence of a con artist and a stuttering writer are not all I loved about this book.  I loved the writing, the way the author didn't mess around with non-essential scenes.  In fact, the pacing reminded me a lot of Jane Austen -- events that aren't material to the plot get summed up rather than laid out, while conversations that advance character development get set forth in detail.  People like to tout the "rule" of writing that says you should "show, not tell," but the truth is, you CANNOT show everything.  Well, I mean you can, but not if you want people to actually read and enjoy your stories.  You have to know when to slow down and when to speed up, and White totally gets that.

And then there's the love story.  It's so... real.  So slow and hesitant and delectable.

You'd better believe I'm eagerly waiting for the next book, A Song Unheard, to come in at the library for me.

(Mine from Instagram)

Particularly Good Bits:

Nothing like nature's savagery to soothe the beast within (p. 23).

She pasted on a smile so sweet it made his teeth hurt.  And so false he had to wonder if she had a trunk of them in her mind's closet, just ready to be pulled out and put on like a costume (p. 79).

He had never doubted God heard him.  The rest of the world -- they were the ones who couldn't make out his intent through his stammering tongue.  But what must it feel like to doubt that basic truth?  That God heard.  Got answered.  God could be trusted (p. 155).

Silence was a lot like a sibling, she'd decided -- sometimes you didn't want it hanging about, getting in the way.  and other times it was the best companion imaginable (p. 336).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for a bit of violence and danger, as well as some people making vieled remarks implying that people have behaved improperly.  No bad language, no adult content, no gore.