Tag: books

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand 11-20-11

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

Thanksgiving is this Thursday. We’re driving to my mom’s in Cincinnati on Wednesday. I’ll either get a lot read this weekend, or not much. Also, since it’s an 8-ish hour drive from Atlanta, we need to pick something to listen to while Audible is still having their sale.

But somehow this week I still need to get stuff read for reviews. Next Monday will come all too soon. But this Wednesday will come even sooner!

The first thing on my “to be read” list for this week is for this Wednesday. Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan is due out on Wednesday, November 23, and so is my review. Theft of Swords is the first book in Sullivan’s Riyria Revelations, and is a re-release of the first two books (The Crown Conspiracy, Avempartha) of his series in a single volume. I also have the second volume of the re-release, Rise of Empire, and I’ll be reviewing that in December. I’ve seen a lot of good reviews of the original release of the Riyria Revelations, so I’m looking forward to this. I really hope that the third volume, Heir of Novron, goes up on NetGalley soon, otherwise I’m going to end up buying it just to find out how everything turns out.

If Theft of Swords looks like a traditional epic fantasy, my second book is a different kind of fantasy entirely. Her Christmas Pleasure by Karen Erickson is a romantic fantasy of the historic, hot and steamy variety. This book is short, but probably more spicy than sweet. I have a soft spot in my heart for this author, as one of her other books, Lessons in Indiscretion, was the first title I reviewed for NetGalley.

Two other historic romances are part of my week’s reading; A Midsummer Night’s Sin by Kasey Michaels, and Desired by Nicola Cornick. Both books are part of series, and I have read and reviewed previous titles in each series. Nicola Cornick’s Desired is part of her Scandalous Women of the Ton series. I reviewed Notorious this summer. And I also reviewed The Taming of the Rake, the previous entry to Kasey Michaels Blackthorn Brothers‘ series, on the very same day.

The final book in the Royal House of Shadows series is due out next week. Nalini Singh’s Lord of the Abyss is on my list. I’m looking forward to seeing how this series finishes out. I’ve seen a few ARC reviews for this book, but I’ve tried to avert my eyes. I don’t want to judge the book before I read it.

And last, but not least, one of those things that makes me glad I go through this exercise a week in advance, even when it causes a major “eek” moment. I have Tricks of the Trade by Laura Anne Gilman on my list. I loved her Retrievers series, so I thought I would also like her Paranormal Scene Investigators series too. Tricks is the third book in the series, and I figured that by picking up book 3 from NetGalley, I would finally read books 1 and 2, Hard Magic and Pack of Lies, which I have in print. So now I have to read those first before I start Tricks of the Trade. They’ll be something to read in the car if the iPad runs out of juice (not that we don’t have two Apple device car chargers, but it’s always good to be prepared!) Hard Magic and Pack of Lies are also the only two books for next week that are not from NetGalley. Not only do I own those, they are print copies I moved from Florida to Georgia. It’s high time they got read!


 

 

 

 

Looking back at last week’s post, I didn’t do half bad. A had some help from a couple of sleepless nights, and my husband spent way too much time working, but hey, it all counts, right?

I got everything read for this week, almost. I still have about 2/3rds of Edge of Survival to go, but it’s really good so far. I still need to read Fallen Embers and Burning Embers for Lauri. And that library book, I just bought the thing from Amazon. Since the local library doesn’t even own Charles Todd’s Wings of Fire, I either needed to finish or spend another $2 to borrow it again from some other library. The Kindle version was only $7.99. I did the math, factored in the worry, and gave in.

I have a lot of writing to do to get all these books out of my head. At least the reviews for Frost Moon and Blood Rock are out of my head. Those books were absolutely awesome.

Just a reminder, Ebook Review Central tomorrow will be the Carina Press titles from October.

And tune in next week for another exciting edition of “As the iPad turns”!

 

 

NetGalley Month Recap

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blogging> book reviews> NetGalley

October was NetGalley month., hosted by WilowRaven at Red House Books.

As I look back, I’m not sure which is more astonishing, that I knocked 14 NetGalley books out of my review queue, or that there are 34 more in that queue? And is that more, or again? I can never tell.

Also, and I am probably insane to admit this, but if I say I’m going to review something, I review it. Even if it gets archived and I have to either buy it or get it out of the library.

The other truly amazing thing to me is that I wrote something about all 14 books. And that I read another 14 books from other sources and blogged about most of them, too. Book blogging is a full-time job. And this would be why I read in the middle of the night.

Of all the NetGalley books I read in October, my favorite is still Dearly, Departed, by Lia Habel. While I adored The Iron Knight, as the conclusion of the Iron Fey, Julie Kagawa’s book was expected to be excellent. It would have been a surprise, not to mention an extreme disappointment, if it weren’t.

On the other hand, Dearly, Departed was not only original and delightful, it was also a first novel. I love those kind of surprises!

But here’s the entire rogue’s gallery, my month according to NetGalley:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand 10-30-11

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books> ebooks> Virtual Nightstand

What am I plotting to read this week, and why?

Looking ahead, I have two Carina Press titles from Netgalley with November 7 release dates. Therefore, both Slip Point by Karalynn Lee and The Lady’s Secret by Joanna Chambers will be high on this week’s TBR  list. Slip Point is science fiction romance, and I almost always grab those when I see them. The Lady’s Secret is a historical romance involving a young woman passing as a boy. That just looked like fun.

It’s interesting that in October there weren’t a lot of Carina Press titles that really grabbed my interest. In November, more than half the catalog seriously spoke to me. There’s a comment in there someplace.

Lauri J. Owen, the author of Fallen Embers and Blowing Embers, sent me copies of both her books for review. I promised I’d get them both read before Thanksgiving, which means I need to read Fallen Embers, the first book, this week. They’re set in an alternate feudal Alaska, which is especially fascinating to me, having lived there for three years. I just have a thing for Alaska stories.

It being the day before Halloween, anappropriately scary activity is to sort my Netgalley active review list by publication date. Bell Bridge Books recently put Anthony Francis’ Skin Dancer series up, and I grabbed them because they sounded like an interesting urban fantasy twist (a tattoo artist whose tats come to life) and because they are set in Atlanta, where I currently live. Oh yeah, and the publisher has archived the titles on Netgalley, but they still live on my iPad, at least until 11/26. So Frost Moon and Blood Rock just moved to this week’s rotation.

From last week, I’m in the middle of Cast in Secret by Michelle Sagara and Darker Still by Leanna Renee Hieber. I need to finish Darker Still in time to write the review for a November 1 release. And, I need to finish it tomorrow to have it count as one of my reads for Netgalley month.

The problem is that I want, I desperately want, to read Snuff, Terry Pratchett’s latest Discworld book. My husband has it on his iPad. But then, I have A Study in Sherlock on my iPad. We can work out a trade for a few hours. The much more serious (hah!) problem is that I mostly read late at night, while my husband is sleeping. That’s fine for trading the iPad. Not so good for the sleeping-at least not with Pratchett. It’s really hard to sleep when the person next to you is giggling every other page.

Choices

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books> reading

“What was the first book that made me feel like a grown up?” That was the question posted in the comments to my review of The Iron Knight. The same poster also made a comment that I’ll deal with later. But about that question…

The question is posed in an article in the Washington Pastime, and the article asks about the first time the reader felt an adult connection to a book.

People talk about reading big books, or using the adult section of the library for the first time. That wasn’t what came to my mind. I read the Lord of the Rings for the first time at about age 10, as someone else who posted did. I know I did not feel the same connection to the book that I did later–that’s why I kept re-reading it. What point in the 25+ times my perspective switched, I don’t know. Re-reading LOTR is bound up in my memories of growing up. It’s part of me.

The books where I think my perspective shifted are Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles. When I first picked them up, only the first four or five had been published. I remember waiting forever for the last book. There are six in the series; The Game of Kings, Queens’ Play, The Disorderly Knights, Pawn in Frankincense, The Ringed Castle, and finally Checkmate. The chess metaphor in the titles is deliberate, and yes, I kept a print copy when we weeded.

Lymond, whose full name is Francis Crawford, is the second son of the Lady Sybilla Crawford and her late husband, Baron Culter. He also a polyglot scholar, soldier, musician, master of disguises, nobleman—and accused outlaw. The Chronicles are historical fiction at their finest and most densely complex, roaming the mid-1500s from the Scottish Lowlands to the French court to the Ottoman Empire to Russia under Ivan the Terrible.

Lymond is a trickster, a wanderer, and a mercenary. There are also forces that are trying to maneuver him and that he spends his life and considerable gifts trying to outwit.

Ultimately, I found Lymond’s story to be about choice. There are two things that he wants. He wants his birthright–and he wants to be loved. He believes that because of all the things he has done, all the crimes he has committed, he is beyond redemption. And he believes that his chance at love, when it finally came, has come too late for him. When both his desires are finally within his reach, he has to make a choice. What does he choose? Why?

All of Lymond’s reasons for the choice he made were adult reasons. Nothing was simple. Nothing in the entire series was simple. The man he was at the beginning of the first book would have made a different choice than the man at the end. And then there’s Philippa. I think the other reason I marked this book specifically is because Philippa’s journey in the book is the one from girl to woman, and I followed her.

I thought The Iron King was also about choice. Ash chooses to become human. Ariella chooses to give her life for Ash. Not just to give him his chance at happiness, but also to give herself her one chance at an afterlife. Ariella lives on within Ash. In return, she gives him a piece of her Winter power, and possibly, a piece of her fey immortality.

Stories about choice always fascinate me. There’s an old episode of Doctor Who that kept running through my head as I read The Iron Knight. I think it’s applicable, but I’m not quite sure exactly how. It’s from the Peter Davison era, the episode was titled Enlightenment. Enlightenment is supposedly a jewel that is the prize for a space ship race. It’s not. Enlightenment is the choice about what to do with the jewel.  Enlightenment is always about the choice.

And speaking about choices. The poster’s other comment was “eventually you make the change to adult fiction”. To which my reply is balderdash! Or stronger words to the same effect. A good story is a good story is a good story. And good stories are always worth reading.

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand 10/23/11

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books> ebooks> Virtual Nightstand

I realized that I spend a part of Sunday planning the books I’m going to review during the week. It’s sort of a plot, what goes where, and why centered around the publishing schedule. Everything new is released on either Monday or Tuesday. It’s kind of like the law of gravity, without the splat at the bottom.

I also looked around and discovered that there wasn’t a really good place to stick in some of the “why” about the stuff I read. Or some of the extra added attractions, like my mad scramble to read books 1 and 2 (and occasionally 3, 4 and 5) of a series in order for book 6 to make sense.   More on that later.

I get lot of my books from Netgalley, but not all of them. Authors are starting to ask me to review their books. That’s actually kind of a thrill. It doesn’t change my review, but it’s always nice to be asked. I also still have a lot of books in the house I haven’t read. Not to mention what my husband once described as “a metric buttload” of books that I have read. It’s all grist for the mill.

There is a “What’s on my nightstand” meme at 5 Minutes for Books that is really terrific, and I absolutely confess to having gotten my inspiration from them. But I need to do this once a week, and the original “What’s on my nightstand” only runs once a month. I need way more organizational help than that! Also, the instruction for the original asks that you take a picture of the stack, and I would usually be taking a picture of my iPad. My TBR pile is mostly, but not exclusively, electronic.

So what’s on my list this week? (Drumroll please)

The Iron Queen and The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa. I was able to snag a review copy of Iron Knight from Netgalley, but I had never read any of the series. I heard terrific things about it but never read any of them. Everyone knows what they are, YA urban fantasy or paranormal fantasy, depending on how you slice and dice your definitions. Urban fantasy/paranormal is right up my alley, YA or not, and I wanted to know what the fuss was about. Now I know. Iron King and Iron Daughter were fantastic, but I still have two more books to go, and the release date for Iron Knight is this Tuesday.

Tuesday’s Child by Dale Mayer is a romantic suspense title I received from the author. I promised I’d review it by this Friday, so it’s definitely on my list for this week.

I’ve got Darker Still by Leanna Renee Hieber from Netgalley for a November 1 release date. I requested this one because I liked the Victorian setting, and I enjoyed her story in Midwinter Fantasy. I bought her Strangely Beautiful series on my iPad, but haven’t had a chance to read them yet.

Most of the time, I read ebooks, but I have a paper copy of Cast in Secret by Michele Sagara on my nightstand. For real. Why? Because I have a review copy of Cast in Ruin from Netgalley. I always meant to read the series, to the point where I bought books 1-5 in print. Moved them, too. So when Cast in Ruin came up on Netgalley, I requested it. I figured it gave me a darn good reason to start reading the series. Now I wonder why I never read them before. They’re great! But each book is 400+ pages, and Ruin is book 7. I’ll get there. And I will review it, even if I have to buy my own copy.

Last but not least, A Study in Sherlock, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie Klinger will be released on Tuesday. It’s a short story collection inspired by the Holmes canon. I know I’m going to buy it, and I know I’m going to read it as soon as it downloads to my iPad. I might as well just admit it now!

There will be other stuff, but these are the ones I’m sure about. More next Sunday!

 

Banned Books and the literature of ideas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Banned Books

September 24 – October 1, 2011 is Banned Books Week.

What is Banned Books Week? Or maybe the question should be, why is Banned Books Week?

Banned Books Week is sponsored or endorsed by the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Library Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association of American Publishers, the National Association of College Stores, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council of Teachers of English and the PEN American Center.

These organizations all have something in common. They all want to protect everyone’s freedom to make their own reading choices.

The U.S. Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, protects the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It says nothing about the listener’s right to hear what is said, or the reader’s right to read what that free press publishes. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it fall, does it matter whether the tree fell or not? Writers write so that their words are read, so that their voices are heard. If their works are suppressed, then the tree might as well not have fallen.

Every year books are challenged, and sometimes banned, from libraries across the United States. In a case this summer, the Republic Missouri School District banned two books from their high school library. Twenty Boy Summer, by Sarah Ockler, an extremely well-reviewed book targeted at grades 9-11, is still banned. Slaughterhouse-Five, a classic from Kurt Vonnegut, has been placed on such restricted access it might as well be banned. What do I mean by restricted? In order for a high-school student to check out Slaughterhouse, their parent has to come to the high school library to check it out for them.

Slaughterhouse-Five is Vonnegut’s science fictionalized version of his experiences in World War II. It is not the only work of science fiction on the frequently challenged list. Far from it. This week, SF Signal put together an incredible flow chart of the top 100 science fiction and fantasy books from the recent NPR poll. Looking at the chart, it’s amazing, and frightening, how many of those works overlap the banned and challenged list. Not just Brave New World and Animal Farm and 1984, either. But also Flowers for Algernon and The Handmaid’s Tale. Even The Lord of the Rings has been challenged more than once. And there’s always the never-ending irony that Fahrenheit 451 gets challenged frequently.

But it’s not really surprising if you think about it. Science fiction is the literature of ideas. New ideas are always challenging. And challenged.

As part of the observance of Banned Books Week, there is a Virtual Read-Out on YouTube of participants reading from their favorite Banned Books. Check it out.

Spoiled but not rotten

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | reading

When I think of “spoilers” I hear the word spoken in River Song’s particular sing-song, usually accompanied by the endearment, “Sweetie”, and inevitably followed by the opening of her Tardis-blue diary.

The Doctor and River Song are living their relationship out of sync with time relative to each other. The first time the Doctor meets River, she has known him all of her life but he’s never met her before. Every time they meet after that, each of them remembers different pieces of their relationship, but on the whole, at least so far, what she remember is his future, and what he remembers is her future — and he knows that her future is going to end badly. His is going to contain an unbearable amount of pain. But then, so does his past. However, there’s the inevitable time paradox involved. His future is her past, so what has happened must happen. Even though River knows it will bring him agony, she must let it happen–she can’t spoil it. The actual fate of the universe is at stake. “No spoilers,” are allowed.

But we regular humans seem to like spoilers. Or we do according to an article that appeared earlier this month in Wired that immediately went viral. The research indicates that spoiling the ending of the book or the big surprise finale of a TV show helps most people enjoy the story.

This makes sense, doesn’t it? How many readers thumb to the end to find out what happens? Honestly? I know I do. Not at first, because the ending wouldn’t make sense. But after a third or maybe halfway, then I’m interested in seeing if I’ve figured things out. I’m curious if I’ve guessed “whodunnit”. Or if the evil villain I thought it was really is the actual “big bad”, because sometimes the “man behind the curtain” conceals yet another “man behind another curtain”. Of course, sometimes that “man” is a “woman” or a vampire, or a dragon. To each genre their own.

Even when I find out the ending, I still don’t know how the author gets there. The journey is always entertaining, even when I am certain of the destination. And when I have guessed wrong, then I really, really want to know how the author fooled me.

If we humans didn’t enjoy predictability in our fiction, we wouldn’t re-read the same books over and over, which we do. We also wouldn’t re-make the same story in different settings. West Side Story is still Romeo and Juliet. It was a good story both times, but it was the same story, dressed up in different clothes. Everyone knew how it ended.

The thing about thumbing to the end is something that is different with ebooks and digital media. I wonder what effect it will have?

Listening to an audiobook, it’s just difficult to zip to the end and then zip back to where you were. This is particularly true since people often listen to audio because their hands are otherwise occupied with something important, like driving. The medium just doesn’t lend itself to the idea of the casual flip to the back of the book and then flop back to where you were before.  Mysteries are particularly popular in audiobooks, and this maybe the reason. It’s just plain hard to find out if “the butler did it” until the end, even if you really, really want to.

With ebooks its a lot easier. I can bookmark the page I’m on, go to the end, and then go back to my bookmark. It’s possible. It’s even easy. I’m realizing that I just don’t do it, and I don’t know why. New medium, new method.

One person in eight

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | digital libraries> ebooks

If one person in eight was known to be user of a particular service, would your library offer that service?

Let’s make some assumptions here, just to get the ball rolling. 1) The service is related to libraries’ core missions fairly closely, 2) That the figure of one person in eight applies nationwide, so there is a reason to believe it applies in your community, and 3) one person in eight is a rising tide, usage is measurably growing, and growing fast.

If the census showed that a particular demographic group had come to make up 12% or 13% of the population your library served, would you not immediately provide collections and services that targeted that group, if you  had not already done so?

Now, what if I said that one user in three expected service to be provided to them in a particular way, would you provide service in that way? If you were a business, you would. But libraries are not businesses. Should we still provide services in the ways that people want them, instead of the ways that we are used to providing them? Those are the questions.

When these questions generally come up, the services and the delivery usually get mentioned first. This time, I talked about the numbers first, because the numbers are more important. The numbers represent people, and people are our users. Our users are our supporters, or, we want them to be. In order to keep their “mind-share” we need to provide service to them the ways they want and expect it, not just the ways we’re used to and are comfortable with.

According to a recent (July 11, 2011) Pew International Report, 35% of all Americans have a smartphone. All Americans: not just teenagers and not just high-tech early adopters. According to studies done by Nielsen earlier this year, adoption rates for smartphones are high among all races and ethnic groups. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the Pew Report found, people use their smartphones to surf the web, not just make phone calls. Two-thirds used their phones to search the internet every day. That means they expect to search for the library on their phone, not just on a computer, or maybe not at all on their computer. Are we optimized for that?

And about that one person in eight number, that’s from an “Infographic” created by Masters in Education on “Traditional Books vs. Digital Readers.” Statistics show that 12% of men and 11% of women owned a digital reader of some kind. Those statistics did not include smartphones, which are also capable of and are used as digital readers. One person in eight is searching for digital books for their ereaders, and that number is growing.

We want them to come to think of their library first. But in order for them to do that, we need to be thinking of them first, and we need to do it now.

 

Not just the giants

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books> digital libraries

What parts of the human record will be preserved from the last 50, and the next 50 years? What books did we read? How did we live? What will history say about us?

One of the reasons that we know so much about the Victorian era is that they wrote so damn much. They were all inveterate letter writers. Literature, not just improving literature, but also poetry, novels, essays, proliferated to an incredible degree. And newspapers, oh the newspapers and magazines that survive. Newsprint may be a horrible preservation medium, but it is just good enough.

The same thing is true of the U.S. Civil War. Nothing has the immediacy of Mathew Brady’s photographs, particularly those of young soldiers.

We know a lot about the ancient Romans, too. And for the same reason. They wrote so much that a fair amount of it survived the Dark Ages. (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe is NOT a new idea!) And why do we call them “the Dark Ages” you ask? Because knowledge was destroyed instead of created.

The Internet Archive, in addition to its mission to scan books into its Open Library Project, has also begun collecting physical books as a preservation project.  Brewster Kahle goes into some detail about his reasons in an interview with the Associated Press in an article on August 1.

I confess I really like his idea. Why? Because technology can fail, or can itself become obsolete. Technology is a wonderful access method, but what happens if the technology required to read the storage media becomes unavailable? Human eyeballs still work. Most of us remember a lot of different types of computer disk storage that are no longer viable.

I love ebooks and buy fewer and fewer printed books. But as the publishing industry switches gears from print to electronic, what happens to the human record?  For example, we know a lot about the Victorians from their literature. Sherlock Holmes is as emblematic of the period as Charles Dickens. We may even know more about Holmes!

But what about us? Who will we be remembered by if everything becomes electronic? People don’t write letters, and haven’t for decades. Even business correspondence is all electronic.

In Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home, there is a scrap of dialog between Kirk and Spock on the bus, where Kirk refers to Jacqueline Susann and Harold Robbins as the “giants” of late 20th century literature.

If four or six centuries from now, contemporary literature is only remembered by the few writers that have become so overwhelming that some copies must survive in print, who would they be? And are they the ones that we would want to be remembered by?

98% chimpanzee, 100% crazy wizard writer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

I can still hear Jim Butcher’s sing-song, “I’m not gonna tell you” ringing in my ears from his Q & A session at the Barnes & Noble in Buckhead. He chanted that refrain every time someone in the crowd tried to trip him up with a spoiler about Harry Dresden’s future adventures.

The fans only got him once. There was a minor reveal about a fallen angel hiding the shadows, whispering in Harry’s ear in Ghost Story, Harry’s latest outing. It isn’t totally obvious in the book that we’ve seen this character before, or that we might see her again in one of Harry’s later adventures, and Butcher told us her name. But that was the only time he slipped, in spite of an hour of pretty intense fan interrogation.

I bought a dead-tree book. It’s not as if I wasn’t going to read Ghost Story anyway…but the one thing that physical books have all over ebooks is the ability to get the author to sign them.  I read the first 160 pages while I waited for my turn. And then I read the ending to see if I had guessed right. My bad. And that’s what the inscription on the book reads. “To Marlene, a bad girl who already read the ending.”

I finished the book this morning. I couldn’t quite manage to stay up last night, but after all, I’d gotten kind of a late start.

Ghost Story is awesome. It also marks a departure in the Dresden Files universe. When I first started reading the series, somewhere around Dead Beat, Harry’s Chicago and Harry’s world was pretty recognizably the Chicago I knew. Since I had lived in Chicago for a lot of years, it was pretty cool that Harry’s Chicago was only about a half step away.

After Changes, when Harry dies, his world diverges pretty dramatically from the world we know. In a lot of urban fantasies, the mundanes (or muggles) are able to ignore the magic in the world.   But with Harry out of the picture, that seems less and less possible.  There’s just too much bad stuff going down.

It’s not just that Harry is dead. It’s that his death has sent the world spiraling downhill fast. For all his many faults, Harry was the biggest thing (sometimes literally) standing between the light and the darkness. And being large, he cast a huge shadow. A lot of bad things avoided Chicago because that was Harry’s turf. And a lot of bad things just plain hid in their holes because they didn’t want to attract Harry’s attention. But with Harry out of the picture…stuff happens. And big men leave big shoes to fill. Harry’s friends, and even his enemies, try to fill them, but it just isn’t quite enough.

Ghost Story story is not a happy book. In Changes, Harry decides he’s going to save his daughter, even if it kills him. It does. As a ghost, he has to clean up the mess he left behind. And if there is one thing Harry always, always does, it is make one hell of a mess. But this time, the battle is for his soul, and the lives of his friends. And his city. Because even as a ghost, Chicago is still Harry’s town. Last time out, he had to save his daughter, and he did. This time, he has to save everyone.

And Jim Butcher was wearing Harry’s shirt. “98% Chimpanzee.” Cool.