read 100 (new to me) books

Ellis Peters #13. I haven’t read many but I enjoy picking one up once in a while. This one was very nice; I especially love the double meaning in the title.

Really not a bad little mystery, I thought the cookie cutter gimmick was nice and I might go looking for additional books by this author.

Amazing, thoughtful book by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I really reserved my opinion until I read the entire book but it made it to the end without a wrong note.

Another Sharon Shinn; lovely, wistful, fully satisfying. Square. Could perhaps have reached a little higher.

A wistful art-across-time book, more magical realism than fantasy.

Gini Koch #6, didn’t disappoint, a lovely romp.

Another teen book, nice but bland. The only really interesting part was where one character wanted cosmetic surgery to please her boyfriend, and her friends talked her out of it in a plausible way “What will he want you to change next? What if you break up and the next boy wants it back the way it was?” etc.

Pegasus is a really good ANne McCaffrey sci-fi, with interesting exploration of the role of people with extra skills and how they make a place for themselves. It’s the second in the series; I haven’t read the first. 37 Things is a teen book – very simple writing and nice exploration of themes. I read it in one day.

Totally silly crochet-themed mystery with a nice older-couple love plot running through it. It’s more telling than showing but the story is good and I kept picking it up again though I wasn’t sure at first I would finish it.

The second of Elizabeth Peters’s books starring Jaqueline Kirby, and it shows, a bit, the character is a little underdeveloped and the plot is more than usually hard to follow. Too many characters without sufficient differentiation, coupled with each character dressing up as a not-corresponding historical figure from the life of RIchard III. Would have benefitted from a neat list in the front of Dramatis Personae with a brief description, and maybe a little chart drawing lines from the historic figures to the story characters.
It would also (unusually) have benefitted from being longer. At 230 pages it is very short compared to modern lengths (it’s from 1974) and the plot feels overly compressed, with no time for character development.
I appear to be reading the (sadly only 4) books in reverse order, though the quality has decreased so I’m not sure I’ll bother tracking down The Seventh Sinner. My time might be better spent getting caught up on the more recent Amelia Peabody clan books. There are a grand total of 19 and there are at least 3 or 4 I have not read at all. She started in 1976 and is still writing them.