Review: By These Ten Bones

What have I been doing lately?  Cooking, mostly.

Here, have an authentic Scottish recipe (not):

Shortbread
1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 c butter

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix ingredients with a pastry cutter (or fork) until crumbly mixture is formed.
Knead by hand into a smooth ball.
Form into an 8" circle. Cut into 16 wedges before cooking.
Sprinkly with large grain or colored sugar if desired.
Bake at 325 for 25-30 minutes.  (Center should be set when done.)
Cut into wedges again while still warm.

By Clare B. Dunkle
Review copy
Available now from Square Fish (Macmillan)
Read my review of THE HOUSE OF DEAD MAIDS and Clare's guest blog



Maddie lives in a small village in Scotland, where the people call themselves Christians but older traditions still have a strong hold.  At the market, she meets a silent boy who carves wood.  She's instantly drawn to him.  And that's before he ever talks to her.   Then an evil presence raids the village and Carver is hurt.

Clare B. Dunkle's language is simple and direct, most of the time.  She becomes more romantic when describing environments, but never reaches purple.  Her choice of diction is well-suited to BY THESE TEN BONES's setting - and the setting is definitely a strong point.  A village wherein everyone knows each other is claustrophobic to a boy with a secret.  The people of the village believe more than one thing, but the older religion might encompass a way to save Carver. 

I liked Maddie.  She's not a heroine who falls in love with danger.  She has no notion there might be danger until she's pretty far gone.  But when danger comes, she steps up.  First, she researches in order to discover the best course of action.  Then she acts, knowing the possible consequences of her actions.  She's determined to help people, even when she has reasons to dislike them.

Carver is a bit harder to like, since he keeps quiet most of the time.  At the same time, he clearly returns Maddie's affections.  He also does his best not to hurt anyone and resists Maddie's more foolhardy plans.  He's a good love interest.

BY THESE TEN BONES does its best to stand out from the paranormal pack.  While the love story is somewhat familiar, I do think it succeeds based on the strength of the setting.  But maybe I just enjoy a good werewolf story.

RIP Brian Jacques

Brian Jacques died this weekend at the age of 71.  Tor.com blogger Matt London wrote this lovely blog post about his own personal reflections on the author and his works and for the community to comment with their own memories.

Jacques is not the first author I've loved to have died since I started this blog.  It feels a little rude to make a post commemorating him when I did not do the same for them.  But I have a memory I want to share, so I'm writing this post anyway.



The first Redwall book I read was MOSSFLOWER.  My friend Xu gave it to me as a birthday gift.  A gift for my twelfth birthday, in fact.  A birthday notable because it occured a little less than three months after my parents' divorce.  At the time, I knew that my mom was going to move with my sister and I to be closer to her family.  Only one of my friends knew, and I asked her to keep it a secret.

From kindergarten to sixth grade I went to school with the same people.  I had no idea how to tell them that I was leaving.  I had no idea how to leave them.  My mom wanted to move closer to her support network, but at the same time it was going to pull me away from my network.

In MOSSFLOWER, Martin the Warrior comes to the Mossflower Woods.  He develops and leads a resistance to the wildcat Tsarmina, the wicked tyrant ruling Kotir Castle.  It reminded me of my favorite book, WATERSHIP DOWN.  Like many other books I read during that time, it also reminded me that moving could be a good thing.  Homes wait in unexpected places, if you're willing to put in the effort to create a home.

Plus, nothing could have been more distracting than hunting through the school and city libraries to read the rest of the books in order and competing with my best friend to read them first.

Lisa Simpson: Wanted for Reading

I love Tumblr.  Who can deny the awesome that is Hot Guys Reading Books or Women Reading Comics in Public?  (Although the latter is, sadly, defunct.)  Okay, I go to this one for lovely bookish pictures too.



But just a few days a new and exciting Tumblr began: The Lisa Simpson Book Club.  Go forth and find out what Lisa's been reading all these years.  If you have a screencap of Lisa reading, send it in!

More Disappointing News: The "100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader" List

A list celebrating 100 feminist YA books?  Sounds good.  Written by BitchMedia, which isn't the powerhouse it once was, but still the producer of an awesome magazine? 


But then people started complaining in the list's comments and then books were replaced.  John Scalzi wrote a nice summary of the problem.  Scott Westerfeld wrote a longer argument that further explains how BitchMedia acted unprofessionally.  Karen Healey provided her own list, on which she has read all the books she's promoting.



Be sure to check out the links because there is excellent discussion going on.  At the very least, people are talking about feminist YA and what feminism means, which isn't a terrible thing at all.

Mourning, Maybe Moving On

I grew up without Borders.  I never lived near one until I was thirteen.  I didn't like the chain at first - the selection wasn't as good as Barnes & Noble, Bookstop, or most of the other stores I went to.  Then they started offering coupons over e-mail.  Then they started a free rewards program.  Then I started getting Borders gift cards due to a credit card cashback program.  Borders earned my loyalty by allowing me to buy more books for my money.  (It was also the closest bookstore and the employees kept offering me free coffee and cookie samples every time I went, which also generates a lot of goodwill.)

Now, Borders Group Inc. has announced that it may file for bankruptcy as early as next week. 

I may support independent bookstores, but I loved Borders.  So here's to the memories, good and bad. I can only hope that my Borders isn't one of the ones that closes its doors.

Coleman-Lochner and Keehner's article on Borders's impending bankruptcy closes with this sentence: "The retailer has also been slow to embrace digital reading, which continues to gain popularity with consumers."


I'm in the middle of embracing digital reading myself (more on that later) and my ereader is the Apple iPad.  Which means that my welcoming embrace may soon be scorned.  Apple, for all the beauty of its products, loves to micromanage content.  Now the app policy is changing so that content purchased elsewhere might not be accessible on the iPad. Considering I own several Kindle ebooks that I bought on my laptop, I am less than pleased by this news.



In good news, right now you can download a free copy of DREAMING ANASTASIA from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or iBooks to celebrate the release of Joy Preble's HAUNTED.