Holy Mother Cover! • HC vs PB Cover Changes: We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman » The Novel Hermit

Holy Mother Cover! • HC vs PB Cover Changes: We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman

September 16, 2022 Leave a Comment

holymothercover

Inspired by What She Reads, Pure Imagination Blog, and Stacked.

I admit I’m a book cover snob. Who isn’t though?

Book covers are the first thing that attracts readers to a book. A good cover can draw someone is, just as a bad cover can easily draw someone away. It can essentially make or break a book. Holy, Mother Cover! is where I showcase the book covers that stand out (or make me cringe), and discuss cover changes.

(A big special thanks to Georgie at What She Reads for bestowing me this fabulous name and to Charlotte at The Simple Tales for creating the beautiful feature banner you see before you.)

**HC vs. PB: We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman**

Reviews

REVIEW • I Was Made For Him (Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente)

September 10, 2022 Leave a Comment

Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente • November 9, 2021 • Tordotcom

Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.

It’s just that he’s away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.

But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband’s face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can’t quite meet her gaze….

But everything is perfect. Isn’t it?

myreview

First sentence: “The Following Agreement is made this first day of the first month between the members of the Arcadia Gardens Homeowners Association [hereinafter known as “the Association”] and the titleholders of 1 Cedar Drive [hereinafter known as “the Residents” and “the Property,” respectively].”

Comfort Me With Apples is a novella that you absolutely need to go in blind because life in Arcadia Gardens is not what it seems to be.

To everybody, life in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. It’s a community that has strict rules, but despite that, Sophia doesn’t have much to complain about—she has a husband who she loves even though he’s been a bit distant lately, a house that’s perfect aside from certain furniture being too big for her, and neighbors to gossip with about the goings arounds in town who keep asking if she’s happy.

When she finds unexplainable items—locks of a woman’s hair that isn’t her own, a finger bone tip—and unsettling people turning up who look at her like they know her, her perfect and happy life is thrown into question.

Comfort Me With Apples gives you a bit of Stepford Wives-vibes—from the way the women, specifically Sophia, is super submissive to the whims of her husband. It makes these characters seem like they’re stuck in a simulation with the Bluebeard lore mixed into this.

The way that Catherynne M. Valente weaves her words together to create this bizarre, unsettling world that’s filled with uncertainty and symbolism is nothing short of brilliant. Her writing is consistently lush, and it always amazes me how she creates these twists and turns that leave me in awe, especially how everything is revealed. It made me go back and reread to see the hints that I missed throughout the novella.

Should you read Comfort Me With Apples? Uh, sure. Though, fair warning, this novella does have biblical references (that I know may dissuade people).

Discussion

TOO MUCH TBR • September 2022

September 6, 2022 Leave a Comment

For those who do not know, Too Much TBR is a way to help me see which books I really need to read and tackle them. Is it effective? Perhaps. It helps a lot seeing a visual of the books on my TBR pile.

Let’s get down to it.

Discussion

BOOKS IN HAND • What Books Customers Are Buying in August 2022

September 3, 2022 Leave a Comment

During the last week of February 2018, I pondered about what type of post to make for “Books in Hand.” At first, I planned to discuss all the books customers came in asking for or buying, but that’s a bit too much because everybody came in asking for different books, and I didn’t remember all of them. My boss showed me a way to check our store’s best selling books, and I found out what we sold a lot of!

And that’s what this post is—seeing the top selling books of August 2022!

FICTION

Reviews

REVIEW • The Vine Cutting Heist at Chateau l’etrange (The Suitcase Clone by Robin Sloan)

August 16, 2022 Leave a Comment

The Suitcase Clone by Robin Sloan • August 2, 2022 • MCD

At last, the story that definitively bridges the world of Sourdough to that of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. It’s all one Penumbraverse.

James Bascule is adrift. College beckons—but not quite strongly enough to actually get him to campus. A trip to Europe showed him a world bigger than his Northern California upbringing—and yet, one broken heart later, Northern California is where he’s returned. Back to his old bedroom, paying his bemused parents rent with his new hobby, baking bread with the sourdough starter that is his only souvenir of what was apparently just a summer fling.

The future is being built an hour or two down the highway—it’s 1985; the twenty-first century is just around the corner!—but that’s not his world either. While sitting in a Sonoma County bar, indulging in a little aimless day drinking with a junior college acquaintance, he meets a man. A man with . . . something like a plan. Has James ever heard of a “suitcase clone”? It’s a cutting of a vine used to clone and propagate noteworthy grapes—say, from a legendary European vineyard to an upstart Napa Valley operation. This man has an operation. He has a suitcase. He just needs an enterprising young accomplice up for an adventure.

myreview

First sentence: “There are many tables set tonight (and it is always night somewhere); think of them.”

Welcome back to the Penumbra universe. There was a mysterious hole-in-the-wall bookstore and a sourdough starter that formed faces in the bread, and now there’s grape vine cuttings that a mysterious gentleman wants from a legendary vineyard from France.

Set in the ’80s, The Suitcase Clone follows James Bascule—a young man from Northern California trying to figure out what to do with his life—meets a mysterious man in a bar in Sonoma County who tasks James to go to a legendary vineyard in France, steal a grape vine cutting, and bring it back to him.

The Suitcase Clone is story filled with appreciation for wine—specifically the grape vine cuttings that the title refers to. As someone who isn’t familiar with wine or the terminology that comes with it, I’ve learned a lot just by reading this novella. Take for instance the term “suitcase clone”—a “cutting of a vine used to clone and propagate noteworthy grapes”—I had no idea what that meant, but was intrigued that this novella centered around it and created a heist (of sorts) out of it.

You meet eclectic characters in the book—the mysterious Gregory Wolfram who tasks James with the mission, the synthesizer-playing Elettra Brixi who becomes James’s partner in this heist, and a few others you meet at the legendary Chateau l’etrange who are more than meets-the-eye. All of them contrast the simple James with their worldly knowledge and connections.

There’s something so captivating about Robin Sloan’s writing. I love the way he crafts his stories and the slightly bizarre magical realism elements he weaves into them, and in The Suitcase Clone, you can feel his appreciation for the subjects he writes about—bookstores, sourdough starters, and now grape vine cuttings and the wine world. It’s full of wonder that consistently leaves me in awe.

Should you read The Suitcase Clone? Absolutely. Think of it as a short story about a grape vine cutting heist with a bit of magical realism woven into it.

Holy Mother Cover

HOLY, MOTHER COVER! • HC vs PB: Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli

August 10, 2022 Leave a Comment

holymothercover

Inspired by What She Reads, Pure Imagination Blog, and Stacked.

I admit I’m a book cover snob. Who isn’t though?

Book covers are the first thing that attracts readers to a book. A good cover can draw someone is, just as a bad cover can easily draw someone away. It can essentially make or break a book. Holy, Mother Cover! is where I showcase the book covers that stand out (or make me cringe), and discuss cover changes.

(A big special thanks to Georgie at What She Reads for bestowing me this fabulous name and to Charlotte at The Simple Tales for creating the beautiful feature banner you see before you.)

**HC vs PB: Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli**

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