"The Silent Gondoliers" by William Goldman

I'm vexed with myself that it's taken me this long to read this book.  Because it is an absolute gem.  It's a tall tale told by a master satirist.  It sparkles, it swoops, it shines in all the right places.  I read the whole thing in one sitting, chuckling with glee over and over.  Well, silently chuckling because I was at my daughter's gymnastics lesson and I didn't want to distract the gymnasts.  Probably some of the other parents thought I was having quiet little coughing fits or something.  But I wasn't, I was laughing and laughing.  

And then?  The very last line brought tears to my eyes.

It's all about a young man named Luigi who is the finest gondolier in all of Venice.  But poor Luigi has a terrible secret.  He also has one great dream -- the one thing he wants with all his heart.  And he can never have it, because of his secret.  But then comes a fateful day when only Luigi can save everything he holds dear, and in the process, he might just get a chance to live out his dream.

Particularly Good Bits:

I'm old now, or at least that's what my eyes tell me when they greet my face in the morning mirror.

Quietly, George of the Gritti replied: "We are gondoliers and we make our own decisions; explanations are not a part of our vocabulary."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a few mild cuss words.

This has been my 18th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.  I'm halfway to my goal of 36!  This certainly does bode well.

"Vera" by Elizabeth von Arnim

Well, that was... foreboding and dark and oddly mesmerizing.

Honestly, if von Arnim wasn't such a ridiculously good writer, I would not have finished this book.  It's very squirm-inducing, in that you KNOW the main character is making a terrible mistake, and you feel so helpless because you can't stop her.  Or at least, I did.

Vera is about a barely-of-age young woman, Lucy, whose father dies, leaving her protectorless for a few days.  Into this void steps Everard Wemyss, a capable and confident man who comforts Lucy and plans her father's funeral for her and generally takes charge of her affairs, all only a couple of weeks after his wife Vera has died in a fairly awful accident.

Everard gradually takes over Lucy's whole life, convincing her to marry him after only a few months.  It's not until after they're married that Lucy starts to see that Everard's complete control over every situation extends to complete control over her.  He insists on being obeyed, agreed with, coddled, and kowtowed to.  In fact, he is basically a two-year-old in a man's body, one that gets insidiously cruel when annoyed or irritated or contradicted.  

It's a chilling portrait of a casual sociopath who doesn't even realize what a monster his is, and who utterly hoodwinks most people into thinking he is an ordinary, even worthy, member of society.  Mostly because he believes himself that that's what he is.  Lucy realizes too late that Vera's death may not have been the accident Everard says it was, as she starts to understand what Vera's life must have been like, married to Everard for fifteen years.

I've read two really interesting things about this book that made me want to finish it even though it's a terribly unhappy book and I didn't like any of the characters.  (Not even Lucy, though I pitied her a lot.)  First, I read that von Arnim based this on her own deeply messed up second marriage to a similar man.  And, second, I read that this probably was an inspiration for Daphne du Maurier when she was coming up with Rebecca.  I can definitely see how this could have inspired du Maurier -- you can practically hear her reading it and saying, "Well, what if the husband was like this instead?  What if the second wife was like that?  What if the first wife was this kind of woman?"  That was quite fascinating to me, as a writer.

I expect it really would be very effective as a lesson on "what kind of person not to marry."  Or on "what kind of person not to become."  And I did have a lot of fun after I finished it by inventing a what-happens-next for it.  I gave Everard an unpleasant and well-deserved death, freeing Lucy to gradually recover from how shriveled and piteous she'd become.  That was a good time.

But I will never read this unhappy book again.

Particularly Good Bits:

You couldn't passionately protect Vera.  She was always in another room (p. 99).

The books people read -- was there ever anything more revealing? (p. 247)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for a few mild cuss words and a lot of creepy behavior.

This is my 40th book read for my third Classics Club list, and my 17th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

Always Looking for More Book Recommendations?

If you're always hunting for the next book you want to read, or if you like getting recommendations for several books on the same subject or in the same genre, you probably should check out the book recommendation website Shepherd.com.  It's a newer website that has oodles and oodles of lists, most of them featuring of five books around a subject that an author is knowledgeable about or a fan of themselves.

Yes, these are lists provided by authors, of books that they are recommending to you!

Just today, they've added a list of "The best books about women in the wild west" that was contributed by ME!  You can read it right here.  You know I'm always learning more and more about the Old West, and I especially enjoy finding out about life for women in that time and place.  This list has the five books I think best explore that topic.

What other kinds of lists can you find at Shepherd.com?  Well, my friend Vanessa Rasanen made a list of "The best books with characters you'd want in your crew."  Rachel MacMillan made a list of "The best novels set in Vienna that will create a lifelong love for the city."  Roseanna M. White made a list of "The best books about British Intelligence in WWI."  

SO many topics, so many cool lists to read!  So many books to discover!

"The Continental Op" by Dashiell Hammett

This was an enjoyable collection of short stories featuring Hammett's never-named detective, or operative, who works for the Continental Detective Agency.  Hammett himself was a Pinkerton Agent, and I have always assumed that he based the way the Continental folks work on how the Pinkertons worked, which is a lot of fun.  Cuz the Pinkertons kind of fascinate me.  

Anyway, I didn't particularly love any of the seven stories in this, but I had a great time reading them.  My favorites were:

• "The Golden Horseshoe," in which the Op sets out to find a runaway husband and uncovers a pretty sinister extortion plot.
  
  
• "The House in Turk Street," in which the Op starts looking for one guy and ends up in the middle of a big mystery concerning a totally different guy.
  
  
• "The Whosis Kid," in which the Op follows a hunch and cracks open a gang of thieves.
  
  
• "The Farewell Murder," in which the Op gets hired to prevent a murder, and does, but not the murder he was hired to prevent.

I found it interesting that the Op tended to follow hunches and let events play out around him, not taking an active role until toward the end of the story most of the time.  It was almost like he was as much an observer as the readers, which is a unique way to handle a detective story, especially a hardboiled one.

I also liked that you get to see the Op working with other Continental operatives as part of an organization.  It's really different from the usual lone private investigator so many hardboiled mysteries feature.

Particularly Good Bits:

It would have taken good shooting to plug me at that instant.  I was bouncing around in my seat like a pellet of quicksilver in a nervous man's palm ("The Golden Horseshoe," p. 84)

According to the best dramatic rules, these folks should have made sarcastic speeches to me before they left, but they didn't.  They passed me without even a farewell look ("The House on Turk Street," p. 107).

I'm at that middle point around forty where a man puts other feminine qualities -- amiability, for one -- above beauty on his list ("The Whosis Kid," p. 205).

"Always in a hurry when we're quitting for the day," Begg said, his freckles climbing up his face to make room for his grin ("The Main Death," p. 241).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some bad language, quite a bit of violence, and veiled innuendo here and there.

This is the 16th book I've read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Lost in a Good Book" by Jasper Fforde

After rereading The Eyre Affair last month, I simply had to continue with the series.  These books are so much nerdy, bookish, readerly fun!  I must admit I haven't laughed aloud as much over them as I did when I first read them, years and years ago, but that's okay.  I still love them.   And I did laugh now and then.

Thursday Next has a lot on her plate in this one.  Her dad's being hunted, her husband's in danger, her boss keeps yelling at her, her aunt and uncle disappear on purpose, and she discovers she has a major life change on the way.  Also, Goliath Corp. decides to blackmail her.  And then she gets apprenticed to Miss Havisham.  And has to stop the world from ending.

I can't even begin to make this book make sense in a review.  I promise it makes a kind of cool and surreal sense while you read it, okay?  The ending has a cliffhanger, so I'm really going to have to reread the next book, The Well of Lost Plots.  And then I expect I'll reread Something Rotten too, because it's got lots of Hamlet in it :-D

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for some quite bad language, some innuendo and suggestive dialog, bits of violence here and there -- the bad language isn't pervasive, but I still wouldn't let a young teen read it.

"Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson

I love this book.  I loved it as a teen, I loved it in my twenties, and I love it now.  And, my goodness, is it ever fun to read aloud!

When David Balfour's father dies, he sets out to find his uncle, whom he has never met.  His uncle Ebenezer turns out to be a horrible miser, unkind and unfriendly, even hateful.  He has David kidnapped and shipped off to a slave colony in the Carolinas, but the ship never leaves Scottish waters.  A Highland gentleman, Alan Breck Stewart, befriends and rescues David, and the two run around Scotland having adventures and trying to make their way back to the lowlands.  Alan Breck then helps David Balfour acquire his rightful inheritance, but they have to part ways, which always makes me sad.  Still, it's such a jolly adventure.  And I do love Alan Breck.  My goodness, he's such a splendid character.  So fierce and loyal!  Not that I don't love David Balfour too, because I do, but my heart really belongs to Alan Breck in this book.

In fact, I discovered that there's this little phrase I'm fond of saying that I totally got from this book as a teen, and then forgot over the years where I had gotten it.  When Alan Breck kind of remembers something, but doesn't want to swear to it, or if he doesn't want people to know he knows something for sure, he'll say "it sticks in my mind that..."  I say that fairly often!  And now I know where I got it from!

Now that I've finished reading this aloud to my kids, we're going to have to watch the classic Disney movie version.  It's not on Disney+ because of course not, but I do have it on DVD, so yay!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for gunplay, swordplay, shipwreck, and other bits of violence.

This has been my 39th book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list.

"Fluff with a Side of Treason, Vol. 1" by Jenni Sauer

I love the way Sauer describes her stories in this collection, as fanfiction for her Evraft books.  Yes, fanfiction.  Even though they're written by the author.  She does not intend for these stories to be taken as canon, but just to be fun stories using familiar characters where she can explore whatever themes interest her.  Such a fun concept!

I actually loved all the stories -- not a single dud here!  Still, these were my particular favorites:

+ "First Date" -- I loved seeing Will Garrick and his future adopted daughter Rinity meet, and I love how kind he is to her and her mom right from the start.

+ "Happy Cavarden, Gibbs" -- This is basically a Christmas story, and anything with gift-giving and wishes granted is almost guaranteed to make me happy.

+ "Wedding Night" -- A fluffy and snuggly story with lots of surprises and upended expectations.  So sweet!

+ "Glitter" -- It's a completely improbable little story, and yet it totally works!  

Yup, this little collection enchanted me.  AND it made me realize I need to reread Rook di Goo, so I think I'll be diving back into that book soon!

Particularly Good Bits:

"Who... doesn't want ice cream?  It's a universal food.  There's never a time when a sane person doesn't want ice cream.  What's wrong with you?" ("Bad Day," p. 59).

"Which one of you is responsible?"

Trapp snorted.  "Us?  Responsible?  How can you ask that with a straight face?  I've never been responsible a day in my life" ("Trapp Jr.," p. 97).

She wasn't afraid because she didn't have to do it all alone anymore.  For the first time in her life, she had people who were worth living for ("Captured," p. 138).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 -- there's no bad language or smut, but some of the stories do contain violence or memories of violence, and there are some other things that readers probably need a bit of maturity to handle, like talk about a miscarriage.

This is my 15th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.