C.R. Corwin: "The obituaries are the best part of my day."

Exactly one week ago, I wrote about A Little Trouble With The Facts by Nina Siegal (original post here). Much to my surprise I seem to have found myself reading another book with a similar theme. You see, when I saw "A Morgue Mama Mystery" on the cover (not visible in the cover shown to the right), I assumed that the book would be about someone who works in a morgue. Oh how wrong I was!


Dig: A Morgue Mama Mystery by C.R. Corwin (Amazon) is about a woman named Maddy Sprowls who works at a newspaper. She is in charge of the newspaper's archives, which can also be called the morgue, hence the nickname Morgue Mama. She has a habit of always reading the obituaries first when she reads the newspaper, which serves her well until one day she sees that an old college friend has been murdered. Being a self proclaimed nosy old lady, she decides to try to solve the crime. It should be noted that she has a track record of solving crimes, despite the people around her trying to discourage her snooping. Dig appears to be the second in a series, though it serves perfectly fine as a stand alone novel.


I enjoyed this book. It was a nice, plain mystery. Not too many plot twists, but enough to keep you on your toes. The language used in this books was also plain, which was appealing. The voice of Maddy Sprowls really shown through. Anyone who is a fan of "nosy old lady" detective novels (you know exactly what I'm talking about) should check it out.


C.R. Corwin is a pseudonym. The actual author is Robert Levandoski, and he unfortunately passed away in 2008, so no letter this time.


The giveaway ended and the winner had been notified. There will be another giveaway on my blog beginning on April 9th, so stay tuned for that. This one will be a digital copy so anyone may enter.


Also, just a clarification: if you click my Amazon links and then make any purchase through Amazon (not necessarily the product linked) I will most likely get referral credit (some products are exempt). So, if you're thinking about making any Amazon purchase, and want to help support this site, then please click on one of my links before purchasing. 

I hope you have a great weekend!

Goodnight Dune

Okay, so I have a confession: I've never read Dune (Amazon) by Frank Herbert. I tried to read Children of Dune (Amazon) a very long time ago. It didn't go so well and I've never gone back. However, Goodnight Dune (available in full online) by Julia Yu, is adorable. Honestly, it almost makes me want to pick up Dune again. Seriously, go check it out right now.

I decided to write her a quick note as well:


"I just stumbled across Good Night Dune and wanted to let you know that I think it's absolutely adorable! Thanks so much for making this project and putting it up on the web to share!"

A few announcements:

I am now an Amazon Affiliate. This means that if you click on my Amazon links (only the more recent ones-I was too lazy to go back and change the older ones) and then purchase anything on Amazon I get a small percentage.

My giveaway of Baking Cakes In Kigali ends soon! Check it out here!

"How Many Of Those Nine Lives Do You Have Left? Two?": Catwoman: When In Rome

Everybody knows Catwoman. She's probably one of the most iconic villains from Batman, right after the Joker. However,  very few people know her back story. Catwoman: When In Rome (Amazon) by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Tim Sale explores a bit more of the history of Gotham's most alluring criminal.

I really enjoyed this book. Partially because it was nice to read a book set in the Batman universe without having Batman as the main character. Don't get me wrong, I love Batman as much as anybody else who has over 35 trade paper backs sitting on their bookshelf. However, sometimes I want to explore even more aspects of his world. Books like Catwoman: When In Rome allow me to do so, and with Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale at the helm (they also did Batman: The Long Halloween), you know it's going to be good.

I couldn't find contact information for Jeph Loeb, but Tim Sale has a contact form on his website, so I left him a note.

"I read Catwoman: When In Rome, and I just wanted to let you know that I loved it! I really enjoy books in the Batman universe that don't focus primarily on Batman, and this book was very well done. Your illustrations worked perfectly with the story!"

Also, I just realized that I somehow forgot to write to Christopher Moore yesterday. I'll make another post soon remedying that situation. Also, don't forget to check out my giveaway, ending on Thursday!

Christopher Moore: "There's always a bloody raven."

I must confess, Christopher Moore is not an author I've never heard of, nor did I just read this book. However, I haven't read anything new lately and I wanted to make a post. Then I remembered that today is April Fool's Day and I realized that Fool (Amazon) by Christopher Moore was an excellent choice for today.

Fool is a book about, well, a fool. It's a parody of King Lear. Yes, that King Lear, by Shakespeare. It's a hilarious, raunchy parody, definitely not something that I would give to a child or anyone easily offended. However, anyone who wants an irreverent rewrite of Shakespeare should definitely check it out.

For those who are unfamiliar with the original Shakespeare play, it is about a king who begins to go mad. He decides to divide his estate among his daughters in accordance with who loves him best. One daughter refuses to play a game of flattery and King Lear becomes outraged and makes some hasty decisions. As anyone who knows the play can tell you, there is a lot more to it than my summary can capture, so it might be best to just check out the Wikipedia article if you're interested.

Anyway, that's all for today. Remember to check out my giveaway, it's ending in a few days!

Nina Siegal: "This paper writes the first draft of history."

A Little Trouble With the Facts (Amazon) by Nina Siegal is a surprising story about a former up and coming reporter named Valerie Vane who has been banished to the obituary section. As anyone who's read books about a newspaper knows, the obituary section is exactly where a reporter doesn't want to be. However, after an embarrassing scandal, Valerie is mostly content to cool her heels there, just grateful that she hasn't been fired. That is, until she writes an obituary without completely checking all the facts. It's not long until she finds herself investigating a murder.

I mostly liked this book. There were a few slow moments where I found myself not caring and a couple of scenes where I didn't quite understand what was going on. However, the overall plot, while not the most original (newspaper-person turns PI) definitely had a unique twist on it. Valerie's history (hint: she's not a city girl, as much as she wants her peers to believe she is) definitely gives the story a unique perspective.

I couldn't find any contact information for Nina Siegal, unfortunately. Oh well! I'm not sure what I'm going to read next. I still have School for Brides, but I'm not entirely sure I really want to read it... ever. I'm going to the library tomorrow though, so I'll probably find some new books then. As always, any recommendations are welcome!

Giveaway: Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin

So, in the spirit of many book blogs that I follow, I have decided to do a giveaway of a book I have reviewed, Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin. Check out my original review of it here for a bit more information. Only entrants in the US/Canada please. This giveaway ends April 5, 2012. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments.

Shelfari: "A community powered encyclopedia for book lovers."

Shelfari, by Amazon, is a tool for readers to organize their bookshelves. There are dozens of these tools around the internet, and some are better than others. I've decided to write a quick review about it today, in lieu of a book review (truth: still not done with a book, though A Little Trouble With the Facts looks promising).

I want to start by saying that there is a lot to Shelfari. It provides ways to organize your books as well as detailed, user submitted information about each book. Some of the books do not have complete information, but it's easy to edit any book's page and editors are even ranked, so that you have a sense of accomplishment when you contribute. You can choose what cover displays on your bookself, include when you finished a book, rate the book, and other things.

Shelfari also contains a few other features. One of them is groups-pretty self explanatory, ways to connect with other users. Another feature is recommendations. Recommendations are a great idea in theory, but unfortunately they don't seem to have much of an algorithm going on. They make simple recommendations at best. Still, better than nothing. Shelfari also has the ability to ask and answer questions about a book. This has the potential to be useful, though most of the questions I saw were just of the "Should I read this book" variety. If you've ever tried to answer such a question before, you know it's not an easy task.

The last feature I want to discuss is reading stats. This has to be my favorite thing, simply because I love numbers. If you visit your personal reading stats page you can see all sorts of fun information, such as how you usually rate books, the subjects you read, and the page count of the books you've read.

Shelfari is definitely complex, and it can be a little hard to figure out at first. However, if you're looking for a way to organize all the books you've read, then it is definitely worth checking out.

Do you use an online tool to organize what you've read? What is it? Have you used Shelfari? Let me know!