The BR Pile

Patricia Briggs, Moon Called

Moon Called is the first of the books I’ve been reading to get better acquainted with the contributors to Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, and there were two things that particularly stood out for me, in addition to the clean, compelling writing: Mercy (Mercedes) is a skin-walker outsider who is caught between her allegiances to two werewolf clans. As a protagonist, she’s neither a martyr nor a sap, and while she makes good use of her powers, she’s not a superhero or a preacher. This is incredibly hard to do with a character. The other thing that I thought was a cut above was Briggs' take on werewolf reproduction and its hazards—and why the world isn’t overrun with werewolves. I’ll be reading the next books in this series for sure.

Kirsten Holmstedt, Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq

I grabbed a copy of Band of Sisters on my way to the cash register. I’d heard good things about it and knew that it was about women in the military in Iraq, but I didn’t realize it wasn’t a compilation of first-person narratives. My bad, I could have figured this out by flipping through the book, but Holmstedt’s flat writing style kept getting in the way of these accounts for me. What does work and what is important about the book is the stories of the women themselves, honest and moving accounts of soldiers, sailors, Marines, pilots, nurses, and reservists in Iraq. Like their male counterparts, their reasons for going were varied and personal; unlike the men, it seemed that these service members’ quest for excellence is made harder by gender-based prejudices. Read this alongside Love My Rife More Than You, by Kayla Williams.

A correction: I listed Barbara Schading and Richard Schading, A Civilian’s Guide to the U.S. Military on the TBR pile. I'm using that for reference, not so much a read-through kinda book. What I should have listed was War Reporting for Cowards, by Chris Ayers, which I was reading at the same time. I'll let you know what I think about both.

And a word about the music I list on my landing page. I tend to consume music by individual songs, organized to suit a particular book (or activity). So whatever you’re seeing on that front page is what is keeping my typing or keeping me going at the gym, and that’s why there may be some repetition. I’ll post more about my music consumption and my WIPs later.