Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil – Nancy Atherton
I found this pretty bland and unexciting. The series is about a woman who inherits a house from her aunt. Said aunt is a ghost who communicates with her heir by writing in a magical diary. If I’m fuzzy on the details, it’s because this book left no lasting impression. The heroine was not very engaging, and the only interesting thing she did—lust after a man who was not her husband—was passed off as part of the magical influence surrounding the area where the story takes place. Allowing her to really be attracted to him would have given the character a nice dilemma and a little depth, but instead the whole thing feels like a cheat.
I might like this series better if I’d started with the first book, but I never got interested enough to find out which one that is.
The Guardian of the Horizon – Elizabeth Peters
This was awful. Rather than continuing forward with the Amelia Peabody series, she jumped backward and filled in one of the digging seasons she’d previously skipped. (The series is marginally about archeology, in case you didn’t know.) Unfortunately it’s a season we didn’t care about before, and we don’t get much reason to here. This book is the very definition of filler. I had to go re-read Falcon at the Portal and He Shall Thunder in the Sky to remember why I liked this series.
Have I borrowed any of Elizabeth Peters’ stuff from you? I baguely remember something about Rome maybe? No brain. Can’t remember.
You borrowed the Vicky Bliss series. This one is set… hmm, between 1890 and 1918 so far, I think, and the heroine is a rich woman who picks up and goes to Egypt to explore pyramids—this being about the time all the nifty stuff in the pyramids was being discovered. Along the way she gets married and has a kid, which leads to one of the major problems of the series: it’s told in first person from her point of view, but her kid is more interesting than she is, so by the …oh, eighth or ninth book, we start getting scenes from his point of view too, and they’re soooo much better. He’s involved with the war and stuff, while his mom is still digging up tombs and tripping over bodies like she has been for 15 books now. I keep reading on the off chance that they return to the greatness of 9-12. So far I’m greatly disappointed.
Vicky is more modern, more off-the-wall in some ways, and thankfully a shorter series. I also like her hero a lot better. Talk about flawed. Amelia’s husband can do no wrong… even when he’s patently wrong.
I should probably note that no Stephs were harmed in the making of this post. Even the shampoo bottles are intact.
Actually, I’ve wondered that exact same thing for about 20 years. See, my paren’ts master bath has only a shower stall similar to what you describe. I’ve had to use it in the past during family gatherings or when friends were visiting, and I wondered why it was so darned tiny.
I hope you realize that everyone is likely picturing you in the shower going through the contortions you just described.
My freshman year at Trinity, we had a shower slightly larger than that, which was almost bearable. Until the light in the bathroom went out and it took them a WEEK to replace it. Now do everything you mentioned above in the dark. (And when they replaced it, they dropped the bulb, which shattered into a million glass shards, and DIDN’T CLEAN IT UP. I had to go yell at the maintenance department after two days of us wearing shoes all the time.)
And speaking of nothing at all, have you seen this particular entry for the CSS Zen Garden?
http://zengarden.20megsfree.com/
My own personal shower is just like that. Only yours is all glass surrounding it, unlike mine which is enclosed in walls with some frosted glass for the door. I get practically no light at all in there. It’s beautiful. I’ve scared Nick about 20 times in the last year when I’ve knocked shampoo off the shelf during various contortions. Loveliness.
Been there, done that. My version of that shower belonged to the bathroom so small I had to back into it to use the toilet. I only lived there a few months.
Much sympathy.
Stephanie – OH MY GOD, MY EYES.