Eddis, Attolia, Sounis

I hope you all have been enjoying Ursula Le Guin's Lavinia as much as I have. You can always count on Le Guin for her glorious writing.

From The Guardian: The utterly convincing world that Le Guin creates, in her crisp, delicately flavoured, perfectly unfussed prose, is a homespun one." And this: "Le Guin makes sense of him in her subtly moving, playful, tactfully told story, a novel that brought me to tears more than once. Lavinia is a delightful heroine: pragmatic, sensible, gentle, courageous. Virgil would never have written her: she is a modern projection of a modern intelligence and sensibility. But it is very much to Le Guin's credit that her Lavinia never strikes a false note."

And Kirkus calls Lavinia "arguably her best novel."

Join us on Sunday, March 5 for the discussion. Remember, we're meeting at New and Improved Times, to free up your dinner time/evening.

Noon PT
1:00 MT
2:00 CT
3:00 ET

You can find the chat in The Conspiracy Room , password to enter the room is here.

Hope to see you there!

I had the pleasure yesterday of meeting up with semperlego and bookishbabe and we talked and talked and talked for hours about books. Gosh, I've missed that! After much discussion about Queen's Thief, we went on to talk about other favorites and what we've been reading lately. So, I thought it was time to give and get some recommendations from all you smarty pants readers.

What have you been reading lately that you loved or hated?

I've read two books lately that I liked very much. Year of the Reaper by Makiia Lucier was very Queen's Thief-like. Great character development and a compelling story. I guessed all the twists, except for one, but enjoyed it anyway.

I told the others yesterday that I seldom read historical fiction, but I read one book last month that was the exception to my rule. The Rose Code by Kate Quinn tells the story of three women codebreakers during WW II who help the British break the ever-changing Axis codes. The story travels back and forth between the war and several years later and I especially liked the three different women characters, who are based on real people.

It was great meeting Semper and Bookish!

A reminder that we're getting ready for our first chat centered around Diana Wynne Jones' marvelous Howl's Moving Castle series. The chat will be held in the Conspiracy Room on Sunday, January 16 at 7 PM EST, 6 PM CT.

We will discuss the first book, Howl's Moving Castle, and probably especially how adorable and slithery that Howl is. And how Howl-like that Gen is. And lots more.

I just watched the Miyazaki movie version last night and highly recommend it, if you can get your hands on it. Part true-to-the-novel and part bizarre Beatles-Yellow-Submarine-ish, it was a real treat. Ooh, and Megan shated a funny story at the Books of Wonder panel back in November where she talked about DWJ meeting Miyazaki when working on the movie.

Here's a link to the rest of the reading schedule and chat dates, and a link to the password for the chatroom. Join us!