LeseLust & LeseLiebe

Ever had a blind date? While women are worried the guy is a psycho-killer, most guys are worried the woman will be fat. I’ve always had a… complicated relationship with food. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when heroin addict thin was trending chic. My mother’s favorite actress was Audrey Hepburn, because she was, “So beautiful and thin !” The perfect woman when I was a kid had a 36” chest, a 24” waist, and a 34” hips. A 24” waist is a size 2, in women’s clothing. How many women do you know who wear a size 2? Not me! As a writer, food plays a huge role in every story I weave. Often, as in my novel memoir, Disconnected , it’s a main character. Rachel sought what most women did—to be successful, married and in love, have healthy kids. It was hard enough attracting a man when she wasn’t heroin thin like most Hollywood women. But in the 1990s, finding a man wanting an equal partner instead of an arm piece, a woman beside him instead of behind him, seemed the impossible dream. Then along ca...

The first book in the Camelot Code series, The Once and Future Geek , mixed time travel between the medieval world of King Arthur and our own, and it is a very entertaining book.  The second book in the series, Geeks and Holy Grail (Hyperion, October 2019), is also entertaining (though not quite as funny; King Arthur as a modern day high school student is hard to beat....). When Morgana, sworn enemy of King Arthur, attacks the druids of Avalon, Nimue, the youngest of them, takes the Holy Grail and runs with it.  King Arthur is dying, and only the Grail can save him.  Desperate to keep it from falling into Morgana's hands, she stumbles into Merlin's Crystal Cave.  But instead of Merlin there to help her (he's on vacation in Los Vegas, in our time), there's only his very inexperienced apprentice, Emrys.  His attempt to hide the grail works, in a sense--as a small, flatulent dragon, it sure doesn't look much like a grail.  But it isn't much use to Arthur as a...

The Secret Deep , by Lindsay Galvin (Scholastic, Feb 4 2020), is a sci-fi mystery/adventure that's difficult to review, because it's best read without spoilers, but hard to talk about without them.  So conclusion first--this is a fun adventure with science pushed to fantastical limits, with lots of ocean adventure, and a thought-provoking consideration of the ethics of medical consent.  It's upper middle grade (classic "tween")-- 11-14 year olds. There's some nascent romance, but it's not a plot point.   It wasn't really a book that hit all the right notes for me, but if you look at Goodreads you'll find lots of readers who loved it. It begins with two sisters, Aster and Poppy, flying to New Zealand to live with their aunt after their mother dies from cancer.  Aunt Iona is an oncologist, but she wasn't around to help her sister; instead, she was travelling frenetically around the world, helping various disadvantaged communities, seemingly unawa...

Welcome to this week's round-up of mg fantasy and sci fi!  Please let me know if I missed your post. The Reviews All the Impossible Things, by Lindsay Lackey, at Imaginary Friends Cryptozoology for Beginners, by Euphemia Whitmore and Matt Harry, at Kid Lit Reviews The Dark Lord Clementine, by Sarah Jean Horwitz, at Sonderbooks The Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee, at Sloth Reads Frostheart, by Jaime Littler, at Arkham Reviews The Hadley Academy for the Improbably Gifted, by Conor Greenan, at Say What? Interview with a Robot, by Lee Bacon, at Hidden In Pages (audiobook review) Midnight on Strange Street, by K.E. Ormsbee, at Eli to the nth , J.R.'s Book Reviews , and Ms. Yingling Reads (and many more--full list at Eli to the nth above) A Mixture of Mischief (Love Sugar Magic #3) at alibrarymama and Charlotte's Library (and many more--see either of the links above for the full blog tour) Monster Slayer, by Brian Patten and Chris Riddell, at Book Murmuration The Mulberry Tree,...