Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby.  I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book.  Here are my reads for September, 2015…

Malice at the Palace (Her Royal Spyness #9), by Rhys Bowen – I always love a visit to Georgie, and this one was no exception.  Left without a place to stay (again), Georgie is relieved when Queen Mary has another assignment for her – and this one involves living at Kensington Palace!  Georgie will be looking after Princess Marina of Greece, intended bride of Prince George.  It’s a plum assignment, but things get a bit dicey when the body of one of Prince George’s former lovers winds up in the palace courtyard.  With no shortage of possible suspects, solving this mystery will test all of Georgie’s ingenuity.  These mysteries are so much fun.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest, by J. Ryan Stradal – Eva Thorvald is the mysterious chef behind one of the most sought-after dinner invitations in the world, but how did she develop her flawless palate?  In a series of connected, but not quite, sequential stories, Stradal focuses on one personality and one part of Eva’s life at a time.  Sometimes Eva is a starring player in the story; other times she only makes a cameo appearance.  The stories were well-crafted, the characters very real.  I enjoyed this.

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, by Philip and Carol Zaleski – Yawwwwwwwwn.  Sorry, but this was a total slog for me.  It might be because I tried to read it while I was exhausted from sleepless night after sleepless night… but I’ve read other nonfiction since Nugget’s birth, and this was the first that really couldn’t hold my attention.  I liked the Tolkien parts, but the Lewis sections were depressing (kill heroes much?) and I couldn’t care less about the other Inklings.  Skip this and read LOTR instead.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, by Sydney Padua – I heard about this on the All the Books! podcast, and it did not disappoint.  Padua started writing a web comic about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, two Victorian scientists who were famous as genius eccentrics in their day.  Babbage almost invented the first computer, and Lovelace (daughter of Lord Byron!) wrote code for the nonexistent machine.  Babbage was a failure and Lovelace died young, and Padua was bumming hard about that, so she invented a parallel “pocket universe” in which Lovelace and Babbage became an intrepid crime-solving team with the help of their computer.  IT.  WAS.  AWESOME.  (The George Eliot chapter was my favorite, obviously.  “Pray do not corrupt the cats with poetry.)  Love.  Love love love love love.  Please do a sequel, Sydney, pretty please with equations on top?

No Regrets Parenting: Turning Long Days and Short Years Into Cherished Moments With Your Kids, by Harley A. Rotbart – I blew through this one pretty quickly, and it was mostly common sense.  I’m always on the lookout for ways to make more memories with my family – the little ones are growing up so fast, and it’s hard being away from them all day – so I figured I’d pick up some suggestions here.  I probably did, but I’ve forgotten all of them.  Want my advice?  Skip reading this book, and just go make the darn memories already.

Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect, and Communicate with Your Baby, by Tracy Hogg – Ugh.  So, I thought this was great while I was reading this, until I started feeling inadequate.  Really inadequate.  Really, really inadequate.  And then I mentioned some of the Baby Whisperer’s sleep theory to the kids’ pediatrician, and he gave it major side-eye.  A book that gets the stinkeye from the doctor and makes me feel like a lousy mother is… not recommended.

The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton – Read for my #FallingForEdith readalong, I won’t necessarily say I enjoyed the story of acquisitive, brash, social-climbing Undine Spragg.  In fact, she was kind of a… well, it rhymes with “itch.”  But the writing was spectacular (as usual, it’s Edith Wharton after all), the world was glittering and real, and I was glued to the book because, although I hated Undine, I just had to know what was going to happen.  The Custom of the Country might have been a book about unpleasant people, but it didn’t cool me on Edith Wharton at all.  Now I want to read The House of Mirth.

Adventure Time, Volume 1, by Ryan North – I have been hearing great things about this all-ages comic, so I finally checked it out.  It was pretty cute!  I especially liked Marceline the Vampire Queen (she’s over 1,000 years old, be cool, okay?).  But I have a feeling that a lot of the jokes were lost on me.  I guess there’s a TV show, and if you don’t watch it, big chunks of the comic won’t make sense?  I dunno – I guess that’s true, because I found this adorable but kind of confusing.

Fables, Volume 1: Legends in Exile, by Bill Willingham – Fables is a classic comic, and I figured I’d enjoy it because I always like new twists on familiar stories.  This one was great.  It was framed as a murder mystery – who killed Rose Red? – but also introduced a larger world.  All of the characters we remember from fairy tales have been exiled from Fairyland and are now living in Fabletown, a secret enclave in New York City.  King Cole is the Mayor, but he’s pretty much a figurehead – Snow White runs the show, with Bigby (Big B, Big Bad, get it?) Wolf as the Sheriff.  Prince Charming is a despicable rake, Beauty and the Beast are constantly fighting, and Fabletown itself is sort of hanging by a thread.  This comic stretched out over 22 volumes (with several spinoff series) and I hear it get better and better.  I can’t wait to dive deeper into this world – I already have the second and third volumes checked out of the library and waiting in my stack.

Not too shabby for the first month back at work!  I’m enjoying exploring a bit more of the world of comics.  It’s been a great way for me to read and meet new characters, but in manageable chunks of time.  (The next few months should be great ones for comics – the next trade paperback of Lumberjanes comes out on my birthday, and November will see several Star Wars trades released.  I can’t wait!)  The comics were sort of the highlights of the month, but I also enjoyed visiting with Georgie again, and Kitchens of the Great Midwest was a lovely read (it made me want to cook).  One thing’s clear, though – I have to lay off the parenting books.  They’re making me feel rotten and inadequate.  I do have a few more that I’m sort of interested in reading, but I’m taking a break for now.  With everything I have going on, I just want to read what I’m excited about – and at the moment, that’s mostly comics.  Next month, I think I’ll have some good stuff to share – I’ve already read a couple of great books in October.