Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

Quick reminder: The deadline to participate in my giveaway from the Adult Book Fair is Wednesday, August 5. There's an easy-peasy Google form to fill out to participate.  The orange cat package has a lot fewer entries than the purple bookshelf package if that will help you make a decision!

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I was reading in a Reddit thread about experimental fiction and Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable by Mark Dunn was recommended. The Redditor said it was a fun book. Let's see, shall we?

So far it looks fun.

Ella is a girl living on an island off the coast of the United States that was the home to Nevin Nollop, the man who created the pangram "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." The memorial to Nollop starts falling apart and as the letters on the memorial fall, the imperialistic town council begins banning the letters in writing and speech. The first time you violate the ban, you receive the warning; the second time, a public punishment; and the third time, you are banished from the island.

The book is told through letters and notes that people on the island are writing to each other and people in the United States, including people who have been banished. 

The back of my copy of this book has Kirkus Reviews calling this book "lighthearted" and Publishers Weekly calls it a "whimsical fable." 

Ummm.

This is a dark dystopian. 

The town council begins by shutting down the town library and destroying all the books. 

When citizens say that the letters falling off the memorial isn't really a sign from Nollop that he is unhappy, but rather is about how the adhesive is just not meant to be holding on for that long, the town council starts denying the truth of the science in favor of superstitious nonsense.

Meanwhile, literacy starts going down and people have to start subbing in letters and sound homophones. Communication starts to fail as people do not have synonyms for words with banned letters in them. 

As people leave town, either because of banishment or because they can no longer make a living on the island, the town council begins taking their land and homes, saying that is has been abandoned. The people who are left struggle to communicate at all. 

I thought this was brilliant in theme and execution. But I found it horrifying and terrifying. I certainly did not find it "whimsical" or "lighthearted." Some of the wordplay was pretty fantastic and the writing was clever, but the reason behind it was so dark that I'd never apply comedy to this. 

Maybe it's hitting differently in 2026 instead of 2001 when this was published. The Trump administration's rapid dismantling of higher education and cultural products is shocking. Maybe in 2001, I wouldn't have worried so much about a dictatorial government. I don't know. 

It's an interesting book. A prophetic book. But maybe not the fun book I thought it was going to be. Or, alternately, I don't have a sense of humor or whimsy. (I don't think that's the case, but maybe!) 5/5 stars

Lines of note:

...with the prohibition, the reading of all books containing the unfortunate letter will have to be outlawed as well. (page 9)

Right. Start by attacking books and education.

They shut the library down today. (page 17)

Librarians are truly protectors of free speech and liberty. Thank a librarian. 

Today The Tribune published the names of fifty-eight of the sixty men, women, and children charged this week with first offense. (Two names were unpublishable due to the presence of a particular letter within.) All were speakers of banned words - words overheard upon the lanes, in schoolyards and church pews, and on the common greens. Neighbor turning in neighbor, perpetuating old grudges and grievances with this new weapon...(page 21)

Hm. Have we seen this playbook before?

Someone is relaying threats to the Council. Each counciliteur has gotten a copy: "Cease the insanity or you will perish." As a result, the - I must now call them what I am only too happy to call them: police goons - the police goons have gone house-to-house in their investigation, yet have yet to turn up anyone except the usual suspects - that is, virtually everyone on in the isle...the Council has put crepuscular-to-auroric house arrest upon all Nollop citizens not in league with the cult. (page 125)

Heavy, heavy sigh. 

Things I looked up:

cenotaph (page 3) -  an empty tomb or a special monument built to honor a person or group whose body is buried in another place

 

bandiford (page 5) -  is a made-up fictional noun from the novel used to describe a architectural base, pedestal, or tier featuring inscription tiles

sarilla geese (page 9) - fictional phrase from the novel. It is used metaphorically by a character to describe unthinking, conformist crowds.

aposiopesis (page 17) - a figure of speech where a sentence is left unfinished, implying unwillingness or inability to continue; suddenly breaking off in speech

partete (page 48) - I don't know this one? It's made of lace, so clothing or home decor? Do  you know?

Hat mentions (why hats?):

orange hat (x2 on page 142, 148)

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Do you know what a partete is? Do you want to read a book about a crumbling society in 2026? Have you ever heard of this book? 

The Phone Book by Ammon Shea

The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads by Ammon Shea is definitely the sort of book that you hear about and think it's quirky, but will never read. Well, that sort of book is catnip for me. 

Shea walks us through the history of the phone book (first it was just a list of people who had phones!) and reminisces about watching it decline. I don't actually remember when we got our last yellow pages, but we haven't had one since we moved to our current house. 

I recently saw this question on our town's Facebook page:

An answer: A cohesive directory of all the stores, restaurants, services that already exist. LOLOL. Suggestions were that the Chamber of Commerce collate this. 

Anyway, this is a surprisingly funny book because Shea makes snarky asides in footnotes and he's sort of a weird dude and some of that comes across. I was glad I took the time to read this because it really is true that a good writer can make anything interesting, isn't it? 

4/5 stars

Lines of note:

...I hope we can all agree that it's too bad that another one of the recommendations of the November 1878 telephone directory has not survived to the present day; the book advised that the proper way to end a conversation was with the phrase "That is all."  (page 19)

YES!! Sometimes I don't really mean it when I say good-bye, what I really want to say is that is all. 

You can still send telegraphs in many other countries, such as Telegrams Canada.*

*Its website says, "You'll see why even after 160 years, telegrams never go out of style!" which is a statement that makes me wonder what other things this company is delusional about. (page 49)

That footnote made me cackle. I looked it up, though, and it does appear as if Telegrams Canada is still in business, so maybe the company is on to something. 

When telephone books were in their infancy, there was no need of numbers - all one had to do was give a name to an operator, who would then connect the call. Many of the first telephone books had no numbers at all. (page 54)

Can you even imagine just a list of names? 

One of the first people in the late nineteenth century to recommend using numbers to indicate each and every subscriber was a physician in Massachusetts, Dr. Moses Greeley Parker. During an outbreak of measles in the city of Lowell, Dr. Parker worried about what would happen if more than one of the city's four operators succumbed to the disease. The telephone system would be paralyzed, since there were no surrogate operators who knew all the numbers and connections to replace them.

At first his suggestion was met with incredulity. Most people were of the opinion that subscribers would sooner give up their telephones entirely rather than submit themselves to the dehumanizing indignity of being identified by a number. Eventually, the obvious necessity of anyone being able to find all the subscribers in a telephone exchange won out, and numbers began to be used. (page 54-55)

Crazy. Social security numbers weren't even a thing until the 1930s. 

Since the lettering system in Chinese is ideographic (it represents ideas through pictures rather than through individual letters) it was not an option to have an alphabetized telephone book. So Wong would arrange the names geographically, based on where in Chinatown each phone was located. (page 71-72)

There's a great 99% Invisible episode on alphabetical order. I think about it a lot. 

I have a habit of smelling books before I read them. Perhaps I should call it by some other name than habit, something that denotes a degree of pleasure. It is not a fetish, nor is it a proclivity, as  I draw no illicit pleasure from it. I simply like to smell books before I read them. When presented with a new book (and I count as new any book that I've never held before), the first thing I do is open the pages to some random spot, insert my nose close to the binding, and take a good, hearty sniff. (page 126-127)

This is one of the weirdest things an author has confessed to, I think. 

...occasional visits to Gimbels department store on Eighty-sixth Street with my grandmother...(page 142)

iykyk

I've begun to anthropomorphize these books, and I wonder on occasion if they are curious and apprehensive about their fate...

When I happen across books that have been thrown away, I always feel a touch of despair that these volumes are so unloved that no one wants them...(page 178-179)

YES!! Maybe I'm weird like the author. 

Things I looked up:

cotter pin (page 24) - a simple, unthreaded metal fastener with two tines. It is inserted through a pre-drilled hole in a bolt, shaft, or clevis pin and its legs are bent outward to secure an assembly. It is primarily used to prevent other fasteners from loosening. It looks like a bobby pin. 

Schuylkill River (page 28) - a river in eastern Pennsylvania in the United States. It flows for 135 miles from Pottsville southeast to Philadelphia where it joins the Delaware River as one of its largest tributaries

Karle Hoefle phone book covers (page 83) - From 1959-1971, Karl Hoefle, a commercial artist from Dallas, designed covers for Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages in several cities. 

photo of Thomas Dewey sitting on phone books (page 86) - Oh, man. Life magazine did Dewey wrong here. In 1944, he was the Republican governor of New York state running against FDR in the presidential election. In the March 20 edition of Life, there was a long article about Dewey in the governor's mansion in Albany. The caption reads: The Executive Chamber, rarely used except for clemency hearings, is a cavernous, mahogany-walled relic of past governors and state grandeur. Around window (clockwise) are portraits of Lafayette and Governors Odell, Cleveland, and Seward. The desk in this room is so large, the chair so deep, that Tom Dewey sits on two telephone books when being photographed here. (italics mine) Ouch.

My level of dedication is that I looked up the March 20 edition of Life to see this photo. YOU ARE WELCOME.

Princess phone (page 114) - The Princess telephone was introduced by the Bell System in 1959. It was a compact telephone designed for convenient use in the bedroom, and contained a light-up dial for use as a night-light. It was commonly advertised with the slogan "It's little...It's lovely...It lights"

By User:Mcheath - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25763482

A woman named Jolis Paons created an entire dress out of nothing more than part of a copy of the white pages (Indianapolis, I believe). From a slight distance it looks like a delicate fabric, light gray folded hundreds of times with crisp lines that make it look like a new and special material. On closer inspection, the numbers begin to become apparent, but it still doesn't look like anything like a mass of crumpled and folded paper, which is essentially what it is. (page 186)

I want to wear this dress. 

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

That an instrument as common and simple as the telephone needed instructions may come as a surprise, almost as if it turned out that nineteenth-century Americans needed written assistance to put on their hats. (page 37)

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Do you have a phone book in your house? When is the last time you used it? Would you wear that dress? 

The Enchanted Greenhouse (Spellshop #2) by Sarah Beth Durst

Just earlier this month I read The Spellshop, which is the first book in the Spellshop series by Sarah Beth Durst. It was just cozy enough for me immediately download the second book in the series, The Enchanted Greenhouse, as soon as I finished the first one. 

You may recall that there was an enchanted sentient spider plant named Caz in the first book. Caz was created by Terlu, a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium. She was convicted of illegal magic and sentenced to be turned into a wooden statue who was displayed in the library as a warning to others. Well, you may also remember from the first book that the empire fell. When that happened, the spell holding Terlu stopped working and Terlu wakes up to find herself on a mostly deserted island filled with greenhouses in the freezing cold of winter. 

And then there are more magical plants. And a grumpy gardener who bakes. I am verklempt. These books are so nearly perfect. I just wish Terlu had a bit more of an edge to her. She's kind of too nice and perfect and forgiving, which is a great tone for this type of cozy fantasy, but does sort of annoy me a tiny bit after awhile. 

But! You know what? If you like cats with wings, talking plants, ghosts of sorcerers, and a dream of living on island with just one other person, you'll like this book. 4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

But Terlu had pushed too hard to be friends and had ended up pushing her away. You’re a lot, Eilia had told her, after she’d asked to meet up for the third time in the same week and baked her a tray of ginger cookies with orange zest. It’s nothing personal, Eilia had said, but at this point in my life, I don’t have the time and energy for a lot. (location 1186)

I think I'm a lot? Probably.

A tiny dragon, about the size of a teacup, shot between the stalks. It breathed a candle-size spurt of fire at Lotti and then soared upward. (location 1989)

TINY DRAGONS! Bestill my heart. I didn't even know this was going to be a dragon book, but here we are.

After Laiken died, my father said his spirit lingered to lecture him about the care of orchids for three hours, before finally falling silent.” “Orchids are fussy,” Lotti said, dismissing the one she’d paused beside. (location 2300)

I knew reading The Orchid Thief would pay off for me eventually.

Thing I looked up:

halophyte (location 3175) - a salt-tolerant plant that grows in soil or waters of high salinity, coming into contact with saline water through its roots or by salt spray

Hat mentions (why hats?):

On top of a pile of watering cans, gloves, hats, pine cones, and various glittering rocks—the dragons’ treasure—was the little resurrection rose. (location 2093)

The child, wearing a new hat and mittens, was skipping through the snow. (location 6354)

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If you could have a tiny dragon the size of a teacup as a pet, would you? Or would you prefer a cat with wings? They don't get along, so you have to choose. 

In Which My Small Town Auditions for Stars Hollow (and a Bookish Giveaway!)

I fear my Gilmore Girls reference may be too dated? Stars Hollow is the fictional town where Lorelei and Rory Gilmore live in Gilmore Girls, just to be clear. 

This past weekend my town hosted a Grown Up Book Fair event that involved roughly a dozen locations in walkable distance downtown. It was organized by a woman who owns one of our three coffee shops in town (I mean, four if you count Dunkin', but I'm not counting Dunkin', sorry) and hats off to her because this event was HOPPING. 

How much of this schedule did I participate in? As much as possible, I tell you. I don't know why I'm blocking out the business names except I'm still pretending there's a facade of privacy on this blog and that 90% of my readers don't know my exact address, let alone the incredibly accessible name of my town. 

 

The weekend began with Bookish Pilates for me at the local community center. The air quality was okay on Saturday, so I met up with my friend Gina and we did it! I've never done a Pilates class, so this counts as "try a new fitness class" on my goals list for the year. Woot woot! What makes Pilates bookish? Great question. The playlist was made of songs that were on movies or tv shows based on books. Pretty tangential, but the instructor was quite proud of it, so I feel obligated to share. (Her name is Abby and she is based out of The Place in Oconomowoc. She was great.)

I stopped at the Farmers Market to buy honey, and then I went home and changed clothes because I was a sweaty mess and I gulped down a Gatorade like I had not had water in decades. Then I met up with Anne and we started doing other things!

First up, DIY confetti bookmarks at the library. I thought this was such a genius event! It was a little bit messy and I'm sure they're going to be picking glitter confetti off the floor for the rest of the month, but I am in love with my bookmark. The library was also having its monthly Friends of the Library book sale and the place was hopping. The library isn't open on Sunday, but I saw them back at the fair on Sunday with a booth at the community center.

Then we wandered around the vendors. There were vendors at SO MANY places. I have to admit it made my heart swell to see so many people walking around with tote bags downtown. Parking lots were full, stores were busy hives of activity, and it was like I was living my favorite small town dream. 

Then Anne and I met up with some other folks for book trivia. I want you to know that our team kicked ass even though Sarah and Mark had "other plans."  We were the Octobooks (we sort of panicked when we needed to decide on a name - there were eight of us, so it sort of worked) and we took home first place. Look, it was great and I know I had hyped it up last week, but the hype really did pay off. (I lost a point because I messed up the order of New Moon and Eclipse in the Twilight series and I was almost sort of proud that I just couldn't remember. It didn't seem like anyone else at the table had ANY clue, so at least I had something.)

So, you'd think I'd have done my business at this point, but NO. Gina and I met on Sunday morning and we toured the vendors again and I purchased MOAR things. 

Here are some vendors I super duper am excited about.

Bewitched Between Bindings is a Milwaukee-based company that sells book-inspired candles by genre, author, or character. BUT! I don't want you to think this is just some random scent - she only creates scents if they are described in the book or she has heard from the author directly. I was so fascinated by this woman and kept calling her a creative genius. I suspect I will place a large order with her store around Christmas. 

Sunshine Cookies is a local place that had some very hysterical book-related cookies, but also had some truly divine macarons (I had a salted caramel one). Huge thumbs up. 

There were local authors, people selling Kindle cases, lovely stained glass with book themes, totes, stickers, greeting cards, and all sorts of blind dates with books. There were artists doing bookish flash tattoos. I think Gina might have actually gotten one if they had had any appointments left. 

There was a lady who will DISCOVER YOUR FOUR LETTER READING PERSONALITY. Stephany, are you reading this? You need to get her on your podcast. 

Friends, it was a great time. The vendors were super friendly and excited to be there. The attendees were polite and patient. There were long lines at some places and everyone was just so chill and happy to be there. If you can get yourself to a grown up book fair, I recommend it!

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On to the giveaway. As I was wandering about, I was making purchases. I have two fun collections to share with you.

Collection #1 - The Purple Bookshelf

A heart-shaped bookshelf ornament, stickers, two pens and a highlighter, a lovely bird magnet, some reading tabs, and a notebook all in a purple pencil case. I don't know for sure, but I bet I'll add some merchandise about how awesome my town is, too. 

Collection #2 - The Orange Cat

A glasses wearing cat asleep on a pile of books ornament, stickers, two pens and a highlighter, a lovely bird magnet, some reading tabs, and a notebook all in an orange pencil case. I don't know for sure, but I bet I'll add some merchandise about how awesome my town is, too. 

Do you want a chance to win one of these delightful packages? Fill out the Google form.  Deadline is Wednesday, August 5. I'm happy to ship internationally. I'll probably remind you between now and then. 

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Have you been to a grown up book fair? Would you be a good addition to a book trivia team? Do you know the order of the books in Twilight? 

Kittentits by Holly Wilson

We read Kittentits by Holly Wilson for my IRL book club. Wilson is a local author, as in, she lives in my town and works at the university where I work. I consider her one of "my" faculty, since she's in one of the departments that I collaborate with regularly. So I'm going to be honest in this review, but I want you all to know that I know Holly and like Holly and we had her come to our book club to talk about the book.

It's 1992 and ten-year-old Molly is struggling. Her mom died when she was a baby, there was a fire at the last place she lived that killed people, including her cousin, and now she's attached herself to an ex-con who lives with her family in a halfway house. I don't want to talk about the rest of the plot of this book, but it is absolutely batshit and I honestly did not know what was happening half the time and the other half, I had no idea what was about to happen. There is a World's Fair in Chicago, a hot air balloon accident, a lady in an iron lung, conjoined twins, lots of tween cursing, and a seance co-hosted by a real ghost. I mean...this review says it all:

Here's the thing. This is not necessarily a book meant for me. Molly's really grieving and there is not a single responsible adult who is helping her out. There are some people who might be offended by the language Molly uses (as a 10-year-old!), but that language was pretty common in the 1990s, at least with a particular class of people in some geographic circles. It felt like this book was a bit of a fever dream to me and I honestly felt like after about 60 or 70 pages, this was just a story Molly was telling herself instead of real events. It hasn't been since The Library at Mount Char that I felt so off-balanced by a book where I couldn't possibly predict what insane thing was going to happen next. 

Kevin Wilson (he of Nothing to See Here fame) wrote in a blurb on the back that Kittentits was "wildly funny" and I have to admit that I found it unbearably sad and not funny at all. I just kept thinking about how Molly really needed just one person to pay attention to her. BUT! I also did not find Nothing to See Here particularly funny, so if that is a book you enjoyed, maybe you would enjoy this one. 

There are many things I did like about this book. Molly's voice is crystal clear. The cursing is creative. I really loved how many interpretations of the book there are.

1. Holly herself said that the events in the book happened in her mind. Molly may not reliably retell the exact details, but the events happened.

2. I think Molly's mom died and then she was involved in a fire and the rest of it is just a dream Molly had. 

Is it weird that I disagree with the author's interpretation of her own book? Maaaaybe. 

It's really an interesting book and I thought we had an interesting discussion about it, so it might be a good book club book option if you're looking for one. Just, you know, with the caveats about the things people might get upset about. 

(Also, does anyone want to get sad that this book - set in 1992 - was tagged as "historical fiction" in Goodreads? The 1990s are historical? I'm basically prehistoric at this point, I guess.)

3.5/5 stars, but 5/5 for having Holly come to our book club

Lines of note:

The VCR's built in and there's a chair and study table, a READ poster with Bo Jackson reading The Old Man and the Sea. (page 34)

Why is this a line of note? Because I talked with Nance about The Old Man in the Sea just last week (the comments of this post). Also, do you remember when I down a rabbit hole about READ posters when I reviewed Dear Fahrenheit 451?

I've been staring at the sky waiting for the mail guy for hours. Now I'm on the porch floor gargling my spit and scissoring my legs. (page 56)

Gosh, do kids even know what it means to be this bored in this day and age?

One day I ask Evelyn where does wind come from and she says the ocean and I say Eff no, I say it blows from the vast flatness of the Great American Plains. (page 62)

Who can possibly know where wind comes from? It is one of those things I will never understand. 

But the camp brochure, the Quaker girls: they wore their hair in beautiful smoothed ponytails and carried what I discovered later were lacrosse sticks. Behind them were other nice-haired girls eating apples, like they had gotten back from picking these apples then spread out these blankets to sit. Their teeth were big and white biting into the apples, two or fewer cavities in those mouths for sure.

In real life I'd never seen girls like this before, all cereal with no sugar, no marshmallows. Girls I knew were white girls like me, all ratted hair and pebbles sunk deep into the skin of our knees. Or Black girls, cleaner but lippy. Not afraid of anything. (page 263)

I loved this description so much. Do you ever remember looking at college brochures and thinking "I do not look like these people"? Or how all wedding photos looked glamourous and perfect and thinking that you would never having those types of photos? But then!! I was in a college brochure! I was in glamourous wedding photos! But I still sort of see myself as the white trash girl with the ratted hair, too.

Then after he's done Bozo the Clown will come out and make jokes to the audience, he'll go down our line and shake each one of our hands. (page 311)

Bozo the Clown recently came up in the comments section of Elisabeth's post. I just did a rabbit on Bozo and learned a lot. Strap in.

The character was created by Alan W. Livingston, and portrayed by Pinto Colvig for a children's storytelling record album and illustrated read-along book set in 1946. The character first appeared on US television in 1949 portrayed by Colvig. After the creative rights to Bozo were purchased by Larry Harmon in 1957, the character became a common franchise across the United States, with local television stations producing their own Bozo shows featuring the character. Local TV stations could put on their own local productions of the show complete with their own Bozo. Harmon bought out his business partners in 1965 and produced Bozo's Big Top for syndication to local television markets not producing their own Bozo shows in 1966, while Chicago's Bozo's Circus, which premiered in 1960, went national via cable and satellite in 1978.

YOU GUYS. THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE BOZO. 

Obviously the one in Chicago was the best and most famous (say the Midwesterner). 

Things I looked up:

Blue Sunshine (page 49) - Blue Sunshine is a 1977 American horror film written and directed by Jeff Lieberman, and starring Zalman King, Deborah Winters, and Mark Goddard. The plot focuses on a series of random murders in Los Angeles, in which the only common link between the perpetrators is a mysterious batch of LSD that they had all taken years prior. There's something about bald people? This film has a cult following and I sort of feel like I want to watch it? But that's crazy because I've watched a total of two movies in the last five years.

ear trumpets (page 58) - I had NO IDEA this was a thing. a tubular or funnel-shaped device which collects sound waves and leads them into the ear. They are used as hearing aids, resulting in a strengthening of the sound energy impact to the eardrum and thus improved hearing for a deaf or hard-of-hearing individual. Ear trumpets were made of sheet metal, silver, wood, snail shells or animal horns. They have largely been replaced in wealthier areas of the world by modern hearing aid technology that is much smaller and less obtrusive, albeit more expensive.

A sound trumpet does not "amplify" sound. It takes the sound power received over a large area and concentrates it into a smaller area. The received sound is louder, but no power has been created in the process. DID YOU ALL KNOW THIS AND NOT TELL ME?

from Cattle Kate to Sheriff Bridger (page 68) - Cattle Kate is a western wear store in Boise, Idaho. It's named after Ella Watson, a woman who was lynched after being accused of cattle rustling, but was probably killed for standing up for herself in a male-dominated world. Sheriff Bridger may or may not be made up.

Wolfgang Paalen fumage (page 182) - Paalen's technique, which Paalen described as “dictation by candle,” in which he would hold a candle flame up to a treated canvas while the paint was still wet, marking the surface with soot; painting with smoke

Paalen, 1937

Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (page 316) - a play by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, written in 1895 and first produced in 1896. The Seagull is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatizes the romantic and artistic conflicts among four characters

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Resident Friend Liesel was here before the fire, a snub-nosed woman who wore braided wicker hats. (page 57)

green pointy hats (page 68)

white paper hats (page 73)

sea captain's hat (page 145)

fat guy wise men with hats like giant red pin cushions on their heads (page 303)

winter hat (page 305)

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Have you ever had an author come to your book club? Do you think this seems like a book you would enjoy? 

The Spellshop (Spellshop #1) by Sarah Beth Durst

Cozy fantasy is a tough genre. You have to have some stakes, so it's not boring, but the stakes have to be relatively low so that your readers are not stressed out. I feel like House in the Cerulean Sea and Legends & Lattes pull it off. Notable, I did not find either of their sequels particularly engaging, though. You can't always make magic twice, you know? 

So I went into The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst with some trepidation. It comes up as a suggestion A LOT when you start searching for cozy fantasy. Could it possibly be a non-boring, but somehow hopeful and safe feeling book? At the end of the book, the author wrote "This book is my gift to anyone who wants to escape and sink into a world filled with kindness and enchantment." (location 6191) Did she pull it off?

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Kiela is a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium. Her assistant is a sentient spider plant named Caz. When rebels set the library on fire, Kiela and Caz escape with a handful of spellbooks to Kiela's childhood home on a remote island. She finds life there has changed because the sorcerers are not controlling the weather. Crops are failing, the merhorses aren't breeding, and Kiela decides she can do something about that with the help of her spellbooks. Only that's not really legal. What's going to happen to Kiela and Caz?

Let me tell you, this was the perfect amount of tension and lightness. She's making jam and talking to a spider plant? SIGN ME UP. I want to live on this island and do spells on trees to make them stronger. There are cats with wings.  She falls in love with a handsome stranger WHO BUILDS HER BOOKSHELVES? Heavens. I'm getting verklempt over here. 

Look, this isn't great literature. I probably wouldn't recommend it to Uncle Rick (sorry! but it's true), but if you like gentle stories with happy endings and nice people and magical creatures you'll like this. 4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. It was only that she liked books more. (location 133)

Well...I mean...huh. Who here doesn't agree with this?

Her father had once told her he hoped she found someone who made her smile. Just that. No fireworks like in tales and ballads. He didn’t wish her the shiver of romance or the endless ache of desire. “You should marry your best friend,” he told her. All those grand emotions, he said … they’re fun, but eventually they fade. They always fade. What was better, he’d said, was companionship. He’d wanted her to find someone who would be there for her, who’d laugh with her through the years. (location 1464)

Sheesh. My father just wanted me to get out of the house.

His relentless chatter reminded her of a bird excited for spring. (location 1622)
I always like a description of a person with an animal component. I especially like this one because it isn't mean. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

She wore a wide red dress and a matching red hat with a brim. (location 655)

Kiela had seen one once, in the hat of a library patron—brighter than peacock blue, with a shaft that looked to be made of gold. (location 1416)

She was wearing a wide-brimmed purple hat on her human head...(location 2896)

Eadie in bright green with a matching hat...(location 3686)

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Are you interested in cozy fantasy? Would you like one of your houseplants to talk? How do you feel about cats with wings? 

The Unseen World by Liz Moore

I read The Unseen World by Liz Moore because the guest on Sarah's Bookshelves really recommended it. I cannot resist it when people are enthusiastic about their favorite books. I have read The God of the Woods by this same author in the past and really enjoyed it, so I thought reading an older book by the same author would be a fun thing to do.

Ada is raised by her father, a computer scientist named David who is working on a very early AI named ELIXIR in 1980s Boston. David's past comes into question just as his health and memory begin to falter. Ada is taken in by one of David's colleagues and together they begin to unravel the mystery of her father's life. 

In The God of the Woods, I thought it took a bit (70-80 pages) to get into the thing. In this book, the first fifty pages were a real snoozefest. I found myself starting to think that the person who recommended this book was insane. And then I was crying on page 111 and full out sobbing by page 140. 

In same ways I have been lucky. My parents died at relatively young ages (56 and 67) and I never had to watch them go through a mental decline. My mom did suffer some brief hallucinations towards the end, but she knew they were hallucinations and honestly had so much fun with them that I couldn't help but wonder if my mom would have enjoyed psychedelic drugs when she was younger.

(This is a funny story, I think. But maybe it's only funny to me? I don't know. I'll tell and you can let me know. My mom lived on a tiny house on my sister's property and right next to her tiny house was another tiny house that my brother-in-law's mother lived in. My mom and my BIL's mom - let's call her C - got along well enough, but C found my sister challenging and didn't leave her cabin very often. My mom frequently hallucinated a man who would come and gossip about C. He called her names and was often unkind. My mom sort of knew this man wasn't real, but she would repeat the gossip as if it were from a trusted source. When I'd call my mom, this is what she would talk to me about. You know what? This story isn't funny. I'm leaving it.)

So I was caught by surprise at how emotional this book made me about aging parents. Maybe because I never really got to see it? (Add this to When the Cranes Fly South as books about aging that have made me sob.)

Anyway, outside of the slow start and the epilogue, this was such a lovely book. (Much like in Harry Potter, you should skip the epilogue entirely and let the book stand on its own without that tacked on garbage.) (How many parenthesis can I put in one post? Can I set a record?)

4.5/5 stars

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Things I looked up (I might be on some list at Homeland Security after this):

There had been suicides already since the HUAC was formed. (Among themselves, they never called it the House Un-American Activities Committee, they called it the Inquisition.) Five, ten, fifteen suicides within the State department alone. (page 380) - I'm just going to leave this link here. 

Thomas Patrick Cavanagh (page 393) - an aerospace engineer who was sentenced in 1985 after being convicted of trying to sell stealth bomber secrets to the Soviet Union. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Robert Cordrey (page 393) -  a Marine private who was convicted of attempting to sell classified information about nuclear, chemical and biological warfare to the Soviet bloc and sentenced to 12 years by a military court.

Ernst Forbrich (page 393) - an East German spy who was arrested in Clearwater Beach, Florida in 1984 after he paid an undercover agent posing as an Army intelligence officer for a classified document. He later admitted selling documents to East German intelligence over a 17-year period. Forbrich was convicted of espionage and sentenced to prison.

Bruce Kearn (page 393) -  a Navy operations specialist assigned as command Secret control officer on board the USS Tuscaloosa, was arrested in March 1984 and convicted at a general court-martial for dereliction of duty, and willfully delivering, transmitting or communicating classified documents to unauthorized persons. While absent without leave, Kearn left behind a briefcase which was found to contain 147 classified microfiche (copies of nearly 15,000 pages of Secret documents), seven Confidential crypto publications, and child pornographic photographs and literature. He was sentenced to 18 months based on a plea bargain.

Karl Koecher (page 393) - usually referred simply as Karel Köcher, sometimes written as Karl Koecher (born 21 September 1934) is a Czechoslovak mole known to have penetrated the CIA during the Cold War. The Guardian wrote up a long article about his batshit life. 

Alice Michelson (page 393)- Michelson was arrested in 1984 for trying to deliver material she obtained at Baltimore-Washington International Airport from an American double agent to the Soviet KGB. She was later involved in a spy swap. 

Richard Miller (page 393) - an American FBI agent who was the first FBI agent indicted for and convicted of espionage. In 1991, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was freed after serving less than three years.

Samuel Loring Morison (page 393) - a civilian analyst with the Office of Naval Intelligence, was arrested in October 1984 for supplying Jane's Publications with classified photography showing a Soviet nuclear powered carrier under construction. The photographs were subsequently published in Jane's Defence Weekly. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment.

Charles Slatten (page 393) - an Army PFC who was arrested in 1984 for stealing military devices to sell to the USSR. He was sentenced to nine years in prison and given a dishonorable discharge. This was not the end of his criminal career, though, and he later set off a pipe bomb and was convicted of making, possessing, and conspiring to use a “weapon of mass destruction.” He was sentenced to another 24 years in prison in 1996.

Richard Smith (page 393) - Smith was a former army counterintelligence agent who was arrested in April 1984 for passing classified information to a KGB officer in Japan on several occasions. He claimed he was working for the US government as a double agent. He was found not guilty on charges of conspiracy and espionage.

Jay Wolff (page 393) -  former Navy enlisted man, was arrested in 1984 in Gallup, New Mexico, for offering to sell classified documents dealing with US weapons systems aboard a US Navy vessel. Wolff, who was discharged from the Navy in 1983, met with an undercover agent and offered to sell classified material for $5,000 to $6,000. According to the FBI, a tip led to the meeting with Wolff at a convenience store where he was apprehended. Wolff pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to sell classified documents and was sentenced to five years in prison.

fontanelle (page 408) - (colloquially known as a "soft spot") is a normal anatomical feature on an infant's skull where the bony plates have not yet completely fused

Hat mentions (why hats?):
Santa hat (page 62)
knit black hat (page 269)
hat and parka (page 271)
took her hat off (page 273, 321)
red winter hat (page 312)
overcoat and hat (page 321)
knitted Red Sox hat (page 356)
wearing his hat indoors (page 372)
hat rakishly askew (page 398)
pilgrim's hat or a Santa hat (page 406)

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Have you read other books by Liz Moore? Should I be reading more of her books?

What I Read: June 2026

6/1: The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean (library ebook, 1998) - What a snoozefest. 2/5 stars

6/2: Dog Show: Poems by Billy Collins (library, 2026) - Perfection. No notes. 5/5 stars

6/7: The Wonder State by Sara Flannery Murphy (library, 2023) - I sped through this book in a day. Lovely. 4/5 stars

6/10: Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence - and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene M. Pepperberg (library, 2008) - Super interesting look at the life of an animal biologist. I think this would be an interesting book for some of our STEM students to read because there's a lot about trying to get funding for work with animals. 4/5 stars

6/13: Into the Blue by Emma Brodie (library, 2026) - Sometimes you just need a romance novel. 3.5/5 stars

6/14: Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles #5) by Ilona Andrews (library ebook, 2022) - This series is so good. There were a lot of characters to keep track of in this book, but the author kept us paying attention to the main plot. I really am enjoying this series. 4/5 stars

6/19: How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin (library, 2024) - The middle third of this book was such a bore. And the main character was an idiot. And I do not think I understood the ending. The premise was actually pretty good, but the execution was not. 2.5/5 stars

6/20: Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City by Robin Nagle (university library, 2013) - I love shit like this. The more niche an anthologist embeds themself, the more I love it. 5/5 stars

6/24: In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware (library ebook, 2015) - Look, thrillers are not for me. I was annoyed that so many pagers were the main character just going through possible scenarios. I KNOW THE SCENARIOS. I want action to happen. Also, I sort of knew what was going on from the beginning - like the bad person was clear? Ugh. Not my jam. I know this about myself, but I still can't help but want to read thrillers like the other cool kids. 2.5/5 stars

6/27: Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove (library, 2025) - In 2026, I am not a fan of anthropomorphizing AI. This book was batshit insane (werewolves, aliens, vampires, mummies!), but I just felt sort of dirty reading it. 3/5 stars

Total: 10 books (although Dog Show is a very short poetry collection, so do with that what you will)
Average star rating: 3.45/5 stars

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Did not finish:

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese - I listened to 2.5 hours of this book before giving it up as a bad job. It's 31 hours long, so I was at about 8% when I gave up. Maybe I need to read it with my eyes.

The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl - This was far too cozy for me. Maybe a winter read? DNF at 15%. 

The Summer of Broken Rules by K.L. Walther - I am not a lady who can read instalove YA romance. There. I said it. I dropped this book like a hot potato as soon as another book became available on my Libby app for me to borrow. DNF at 36%.

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I read three non-fiction books this month and a poetry collection. Who am I? What sort of middle-aged person have I become?

Have you read any of these books? Which one would you like to read?

Picking Up by Robin Nagle

Why did I request Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City by Robin Nagle from the university library? If you did not chant "because the author was on You're the Expert" you have not been paying attention. 

If you get me talking late at night, I'll start talking about how worried I am about infrastructure. The electrical grid, water treatment plants, and the safety of nuclear warheads. I will discuss the food chain, the issues of local agriculture, and how many chickens have had to die in my county in recent years due to bird flu (2025 and 2026). I will rant about roads and bridges and sewage pipes. 

So when I picked up this book about Nagle, who really wanted to understand how sanitation works in New York City, my husband did nothing but sigh at me. Just like for a bit of time all I wanted to talk about was pigeons, he knew that all I'd want to talk about was trash. 

First up, I'm going to say something controversial. New York is gross for lots of reasons, many of which are enumerated in this book. It is impossible for the sanitation workers to keep up with trash in a city that size and the whole place smells disgusting. I have never had a good time in NYC and I refuse to apologize for this opinion. But imagine a time WHEN IT WAS WORSE. 

Back in the Tammany Hall days, NYC was ripe with corruption and the folks responsible for dealing with trash usually just took the money and did nothing. Until the hero of our story, Street Cleaning Commissioner George Waring, came along. Waring cleaned house and suddenly the streets were infinitely cleaner than they had been. These are photos that show the same places in 1893 and 1895. What a difference Waring made.  

Source

Anyway, New York was rife with vermin and disease and street cleaning and trash removal is super important. 

Nagel embedded herself in the world of sanitation workers by obtaining a job with the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY). I have mentioned how much I love an ethnography and this is absolutely no different. She is puzzled over why sanitation workers are invisible in the city when she sees what they do as the most important thing in public health and safety. She introduces us to sanitation workers, rules and regulations, and the city's four hundred year-old struggle with trash removal. What an absolute treat (if you're an absolute nerd). 5/5 stars

Lines of note:

The garbage here and in every other dump in the world over reflects lives lived well, or in desperation, or too fast, or in pain, or in joy. Even without the status of worth or a claim of possession, each bag stuffed with trash, each wad of spent tissue, every shred of shrink-wrap, every moldy vegetable and maggot-covered turkey leg, hints of countless stories. Archeologists of contemporary household wasted have demonstrated this; indeed, insights that the field has given us about our own past often rest on analysis of nothing more than the garbage of civilizations long dead. (page 7)

There's another You're the Expert episode about an archeologist who gets really excited when finding dumps and privies. I feel like all of my interests are determined by YTE at this moment in my life. 

Effective garbage collection and street cleaning are primary necessities if urban dwellers are to be safe from the pernicious effects of their own detritus. When garbage lingers too long on the streets, vermin thrive, disease spreads, and city life becomes dangerous in ways not common in the developed world for more than a century. It is thus an especially puzzling irony that the first line in defense in any city's ability to ensure the basic health and well-being of its citizens is so persistently unseen...(page 17)

I can't even imagine modern life without trash pickup every week.

An alarming number of people seem to become cretins when they slip behind the wheel of a car. (page 20)

Dr. BB and I had been discussing how there is no one more entitled than an American behind the wheel of a car just before I read this. We're the same way, too. As soon as we start driving, we're dicks. Why is that? 

No city can thrive without a workable solid waste management plan. If sanitation workers aren't out there, the city becomes unlivable, fast. (page 24)

I mean, NYC is unlivable anyway, right?

Being a sanitation worker is more dangerous that being a police officer or firefighter. (page 57)

The BLS calculates that as of 2011..."refuse and recyclable materials collectors" hold down the nation's fourth-most-dangerous job, after fishermen, loggers, and aircraft pilots. (page 58)

Just FYI for the people who so admire police and fire.

Things I looked up:

peristaltic (page 5) - refers to peristalsis, an involuntary, wave-like muscle contraction that moves contents forward through a tube. This biological mechanism is most commonly associated with the digestive tract, but the term also describes specialized industrial pumps that mimic this exact squeezing motion

Blue-Collar Journal by John Coleman (page 17) - Blue-Collar Journal: A College President's Sabbatical is a 1974 book by John Royston Coleman, then president of Haverford College, detailing his experience working undercover in blue-collar jobs like a garbageman, sandwich maker, and construction worker during a sabbatical to bridge the gap between academia and the working class. (It goes without saying that I want to read this book, right?) 

Stuff by Frost and Steketee (page 239 - Chapter 1, FN 19) - Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee is an academic look at hoarding through a psychological lens. Hm. Maybe this would be good for me to read? Maybe not? 

Sorting Things Out by Bowker and Star (page 251 - Chapter 16, FN 3) - Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star is about classification. That could be boring. Or interesting. Who knows?

Vogons (page 138) - The Vogons are an alien race from the planet Vogsphere who are employed as the galactic government's bureaucrats in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 

"Blizzard of 1888" (chapter 18) - That link has it all. Great resources.

Hat mentions (why hats?):

In the summer especially, flesh shines as sweat trickles down necks, squeezes from inside elbows, drips from brows, chins, and earlobes, darkens T-shirts, soaks bandannas and hat crowns. (page 53)

The adjacent picture shows a white man in hat, gloves, and boots (no apron) with a wide washtub, also heavy with debris, balanced on his head. The text does not say whether he's wearing padding under the hat...(page 55)

Suddenly san men who'd had long hair since they'd been hired years before were told to cut it, make it disappear under a hat, or take a rocket. (page 133)

It's not as if New Yorkers are going to run out of their homes and stop you from picking up their garbage because your hat's on crooked. (page 133)

Red-jumpsuit-clad Times Square Business Improvement District workers give away hats, boas, pom-poms, balloons, eyeglasses...(page 146)

...standing in the back of our little group, my hat pulled low, I considered the foreman's youth and suppressed a smile. (page 197)

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What's your take on reading books about niche communities or industries? Would you like to read this book? Do you think I'm wrong about New York City?

Into the Blue by Emma Brodie

Sarah talked about Into the Blue by Emma Brodie on Sarah's Bookshelves. It has been weeks since I'd read a romance novel and I just needed something.

 AJ lives in a small Massachusetts town, writing fan fiction based off an improv comedy show that starred a reclusive actress who lives in her town where she's working at a video rental store. She dreams of leaving Massachusetts to be a writer. One day her peaceful work life is shattered when Noah Drew of the HOLLYWOOD DREWS walks in and starts working next to her. They have an immediate bond, but one day Noah disappears. When they meet up again as adults, what is going to happen with these two? 

Interesting characters: AJ is interesting. Noah is a dick who won't communicate. I cannot with Noah. Also, I cannot with "woe is me, being famous is so hard."  

But you know what's really not interesting to me? The whole idea that you will just immediately feel a connection. The whole instalove thing? The whole fated to be together thing? It's not interesting. Good relationships are built on way more than how good someone smells. (Although, to be scrupulously honest with you, my husband smells sooooo good. But it was not instalove for us.) I just don't want people out there who haven't fallen in love to think that if it doesn't happen the second you make eye contact, there's no chance. There is a chance! GIVE IT A CHANCE. 

Believable conflict: Yes, there would be conflict if one of the people in the relationship keeps running away whenever tough conversations have to happen. Sometimes you have to get through tough shit to get to the good shit, but HOW WOULD HE EVER KNOW THAT?

Emotional tension: Sure, sure. There's a lot (too much?) of will they or won't they in this book.

Happily ever after: Hm. That's an interesting question and I think it would definitely depend on your definition of happy. I'll say that I would probably categorize this under literary fiction rather than romance if I had to shelve it at the non-existent NGS bookstore. 

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There were a number of tropes here I didn't love, but I did read it all, so that's something, right? 3.5/5 stars

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(Note about page numbers. I accidentally ordered the large print edition of this book from the library. I used to feel terrible when I did that because I was taking it away from someone who really needs it, but let me tell you - the large print is AMAZING. I am officially old. Anyway, I'm going to give chapter numbers instead of page numbers.)

Line of note: 

Most people did not have hidden depths; they had hidden shallows. (Todd's Coverage, Episode 5)

This is so cynical, but I laughed anyway. 

Hat mention (why hats?):

...producing a crochet needle and a hat he was making for baby Claire. (New York, New York January 9, 2012)

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Do you feel guilty if you accidentally order the large print? What does happily ever after mean to you in a romance novel? 

Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg

Would it surprise anyone reading this to know that Irene Pepperberg, the author of Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence—and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process, was on You're the Expert would it? I was very interested in her work, so I grabbed her autobiography from the library.

Irene Pepperberg received a doctorate in chemistry before she decided she was really interested in animal intelligence and communication after seeing a documentary on television. She started doing research with an African Grey parrot named Alex.

Okay. Where do I start? 

First, the organization was...not great. It starts with a chapter about how Alex died and how The New York Times posted his obituary. It was all about how sad Pepperberg was. And you know what? I get it. I don't even want to think about what my reaction is going to be when my girls die (*if* they die - heaven knows Zelda might be immortal). BUT. WHY START THERE? The whole book was just a downer. Instead of starting with a funny bit about Alex bossing around the other parrots in the lab or something, she just starts with "I'm going to tell you about a dead parrot" and the whole book was framed around that.

Also? She's sort of mad that no one would take her seriously at first because she has a PhD in chemistry instead of biology? I mean, can you blame them? Then she gets a job in a biology department and doesn't think she's qualified to teach the introductory classes and gets mad at the department because they don't support her. CAN YOU BLAME THEM? (I think I would probably not be friends with Pepperberg.)

But. It's also a great story about perseverance. When she's bouncing around from fellowship to adjunctship to visiting professorship to whatever, she's applying for grants, she's fundraising, she's doing all the things. I think this would be a great book to give a student who is studying animal biology and wants to do research-oriented work. There are a lot of lessons about how academia sucks balls in there. 

It's also a story about a parrot who learns a lot and teaches the humans around him a lot. If you don't think I'm here for a story about a stubborn animal who *can* do things, but sometimes refuses to, let me reintroduce you to my own personal stubborn menace. 

"Hannah, look at me!" "No."

I have very mixed feelings on this book, but I was generally invested and kept wanting to read more to find out what impish things Alex was going to do next. 4/5 stars

What I looked up:
Pei's Toilet - MIT's Media Lab is housed at 20 Ames St. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Designed by the famous architect I.M. Pei, it is colloquially known as Pei's Toilet to the locals.

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Are you a bird person? What's your preference of animal friends? I'm not sure what my preference is, but I think birds are pretty far down on the list.