A novel interrupted

I've been reading the Fat Cyclist blog for a long time now - it's one of the really appealing and well-written big endurance sport blogs (and "Fatty" a.k.a. Elden was instigator of the 100 miles of nowhere insanity). It is a funny and wide-ranging blog that began in part because Elden's wife Susan was battling advanced metastatic cancer; as well as chronicling endurance sport as coping strategy, the blog's raison d'etre includes fund-raising for cancer-related causes.

Susan died some years ago just before completing a novel that Elden has now published. I was keen to read it anyway out of a sense of loyalty (buying an author's book is good, but reading it is perhaps as much or more appreciated?), and I'm also happy to report that it's a really lovely young-adult urban fantasy novel of a sort I particularly enjoy. It reminded me a little of Robin McKinley's Sunshine, a book I have read at least half-a-dozen times, but it's also fresh and original in terms of voice, storytelling and worldbuilding; if you like that kind of book as much as I do, then consider purchasing a copy of Susan Nelson's The Forgotten Gift for yourself.

Curb your hypergraphia

Joanne McNeil on the blog in 2011. (Via Bookforum.)

In the pipeline

The conundrum of light reading is that one always needs a good supply of it, but that the times when it would most be a balm (busy, stressful regular life) are also the times when one is least likely to have the attention to secure a sufficient supply, especially in times of frugality (i.e. no non-essential Amazon purchasing while on half-pay sabbatical)!

I am still harping on Dorothy Dunnett and the way that having those two series stacked on the floor of my living room, with many volumes left to read, made me feel calm and happy, so I figured I'd better sink a bit of attention in securing a really good supply of light reading for the next couple months. I have put out the call for suggestions, and got some good ones (I have always avoided Jacqueline Carey's books, for instance, due to trashy covers and the suspicion that they were perhaps not quite what I most enjoy, but Charlie Jane's recommendation has now caused me to obtain as much of the Carey oeuvre as I could lay hands on), but the really obvious thing to do was to go and trawl through the archives of Maxine's truly excellent crime fiction blog Petrona.

One of my favorite things in the world is the amazing Borrow Direct, which has basically been the gateway to all sorts of amazing reading for me since the service was initiated in 1999. I am in love with Borrow Direct! (And I feel certain that if they keep statistics, I must be in the top 100 users, if not top 10...) So I had an absolutely maniacal fit of BorrowDirecting the other night, and then on Wednesday I returned a cartload of books to the library and went to the circulation desk to pick up the volumes I had requested.

I told the girl at the desk that I had requested quite a lot of books (otherwise they don't know if they're just looking for one book for you or many), and she looked at my ID card and said "You sure did!" It was a good thing I had the cart with me - I had not quite imagined the sheer bulk...

Anyway, the first volume I read was one to which Maxine had given an especially good recommendation, Liz Rigbey's Total Eclipse. I found it absolutely gripping - it is not exactly like Tana French, but it has the same quality that French's novels do of being both very much like and at the same time infinitely superior to the common fare in the genre. Then I read David Levien's City of the Sun, which I also found excellent. Only trouble is, crime novels are mostly so short! But this pile will tide me over for the next month or so...