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Somehow I never got around to posting my books for November 2010, so here's the round-up of the whole year, with Nov. and Dec. at the end:
BOOKS READ 2010
JANUARY:
1. Rob Holdstock, Mythago Wood (started at end of 2009): An amazing book, weaving strands of myth and psychology, and very well-written
2. Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna: This is her best book since Poisonwood Bible, I think--Mexican and American politics 1900-1950's, with appearances by Trotsky, Kahlo, and minions of J. Edgar Hoover, set in Mexico and Asheville (!?)
3. Stephen King, Under the Dome: Typical King, 1000 pages, worth. Baddies, gore, suspense, and a few aliens.
4. Ruth Downie, Persona Non Grata and Terra Incognita: Sequels to Medicus, her novel about a Roman physician who solves murders in Britain around the time of Hadrian. Love her characters, plots, and history. One is set in south of France, near Arles
5. Rebecca Tingle, The Edge on the Sword: Æthelflæd, daughter of King Alfred learns to defend her country. More good history and character, and nicely written
6. Shannon Brownlee Overtreated: If everyone read this, we'd have a health-care bill. Confirmed my decision to switch doctors
7. HH Dalai Lama Path to Enlightenment Commentary on the 3rd Dalai Lama's writings on the Lam Rim, the summary of Buddhist teachings in the Gelugpa lineage. Very clear and concise.
8. Bhante Henepola Gunaratana: Mindfulness in Plain English: Introduction to vipassana meditation in the Theravada tradition. Realistic, detailed, practical, and clear.
9. Michael Pollan, Food Rules: short, easy-to-remember rules based on information in Pollan's longer books (eg, Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't have recognized)
10. GRR Martin, Game of Thrones, Clash of Kings, Storm of Swords (just started the last one--and all are re-reads) A Song of Ice And Fire--knights, dragons, ice monsters, human monsters, great stories, but, sigh, unfinished...
11. David Freidel and Linda Schele , A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya Maya history and culture from Yucatan mostly but also other parts of CA
FEBRUARY:
12. Dinty Moore, The Accidental Buddhist: Nice narrative of meeting different kinds of Buddhism. Good overview, but very simple. Readable.
13. GRR Martin, A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows: Not as good as the others--where ASOIAF really gets lost. Mostly new characters, and not very appealing ones
14. Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves: She does a beautiful job of showing what it's like to be in a relationship with a person who is unable to be in a relationship, but I'm not sure why we needed both a wife and a girlfriend to have the same kind of experience. But that would have been OK. What bothered me was how she led us on with the hints of something beyond the natural (and of course her previous book had fulfilled that promise, in excellent fashion). So when what lay behind the mysterious obsession that dominated one life and twisted many others turned out just to be blackmail, it was a serious let-down. There were so many intriguing things she could have done--time travel, having art come to life, etc. I'm not sure why she chose the plot she did.
15. Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn: A sweet-enough YA fantasy, with a contrived romantic switch. Still, the idea of the aliora was nice.
16. Jody Picoult, Handle With Care: Mother of child born with fragile bones sues doctor who is also her best friend. Character and plot work for me as always.
17. Kimberly Pauley, Sucks to Be Me: YA by Doug's cousin. Teenager has to choose whether to become a vampire like her parents and also which guy to go to the prom with. Fun but very YA.
18. Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor: how health care, drugs, etc. exploit people in Haiti and other countries.
19. Sarah Paretsky, Hardball: One of her better books, linking a present-day corruption with killings in the Civil Rights era. She does a good job of showing angry blacks without wallowing in white guilt, and as always, pacing and characters are good. Glad to see a new love interest.
20. Susan Palwick, The Necessary Beggar: It was a very moving picture of what it's like to be a refugee, not damaged by the fact that the central characters are exiled from another dimension. Great combination of the real and the fantastic, and very romantic but believable love story. And like Mary Doria Russell, she has a religious perspective that's not off-putting (even to people like me from religions different from hers). Flying in Place: Not quite as good, but very appealing picture of abused child. But the abuser--unbelievably one-dimensional. The Fate of Mice: Excellent short stories. Title story is riff on "Flowers for Algernon."
21. Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness: Excellent as always. Title story was in New Yorker (19th century Russian woman mathematician), but others very fine also.
22. Alston Purvis, The Vendetta: Melvin Purvis's son's story of how his father (killer of Pretty Boy Floyd and Dillinger) was hounded to suicide by J. Edgar Hoover. Well-written, but I may not make it through the whole thing.
MARCH
23. Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall: The best-written book I've read in a long time. First part of the story of Thomas Cromwell, engineer of Henry VIII's break with Rome. You know the main story from all the other Tudor tales, but elsewhere Cromwell's a dull figure in the background. Mantel's perfect prose gives us a tough orphan, loving family man, brilliant investor, and master of dear dogs and cats and gardens. She's so good at giving us the personal: a paragraph on the kitchen work of perfecting wafers, a paragraph on negotiations with Spain, and then back to the wafers. The death of Thomas More comes first in the lead up and then filtered through Cromwell's memory--perfect. Sir Thomas More and Mary Boleyn--not what you thought they were. And I hear there will be a sequel. Sadly, we know how that will end.
24. Elizabeth Bunce, A Curse Dark as Gold: Nice twist on a retold fairy tale: Rumpelstiltskin set in the mills of the Industrial Revolution, with Anglo-American folklore. Well-done, lots of good period detail and excellent suspense.
25. Anne Tyler, Noah's Compass: Maybe Anne Tyler always writes the same book. The out-of-step, emotionally repressed man, surrounded by oppressive wives, sisters, mothers, meets the free spirited woman who could give him life and tries to make a relationship work, but then realizes it's not the right thing for him. Entertaining as always but I don't think I need to read another one.
26. Katherine McMahon, The Crimson Rooms: Historical-mystery-romance, set in the early 1920's. One of the first woman lawyers in Britain tries to exonerate a client while dealing with disapproving family, the tragic loss of a brother, and a hot male lawyer who wants to help her. Nice details, good suspense, but a less than appealing protagonist, and a somewhat unresolved ending.
27. Carrie Ryan, The Dead-Tossed Waves: A YA zombie story, very exciting, moving from crisis to crisis, by my new niece-in-law. Sequel to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, with a narrator who's the daughter of the one in the earlier book.
28. Hilary Mantel, Eight Months on Gazzah Street: A very creepy book. As well written as Wolf Hall, but the ex-pat narrator and the other ex-pats and native Arabs she observes are scarier than the plot. Mantel has definitely gotten better. I started her first novel (Every Day is Mother's Day) and found it so unhappy I couldn't read it, whereas I couldn't put Wolf Hall down. Hope she stays in the latter vein.
29. Katherine McMahon, The Alchemist's Daughter: Very fine. Great characterization of a woman out of place in time and class and knowledge. Excellent historical setting and good voice. And one of the most obnoxious villains I've encountered in a long time, along with some of the sexiest scenes.
30. Started The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larson, but couldn't get into it--the plot didn't seem to take fire. Need to go back and try The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which hopefully is more cohesive.
31. Henning Mankel, The Man from Beijing: A Scandinavian mystery that is engaging, though badly translated (also a problem with the Larson books). Also like the historical flashbacks and the scenes from a marriage that are part of it.
APRIL
32. Bernard Cornwell, The Burning Land: #5 in the Saxon Tales series, this follows Uhtred of Bebbanburg as he fights for King Alfred against Danes, then for the Danes, then for Alfred again. I liked the first two books in this series, and also the Gawaine series (Excalibur, etc) better, but this does feature some good scenes with Æthelflæd, Alfred's daughter, who in history and other books (see Tingle, Edge of the Sword--#5 on this list, from January) is a fighter, but in this one is reduced to romantic interest. Still, the history seems accurate, and it's one of my favorite periods.
33. Kim Stanley Robinison, Galileo's Dream: A great portrait of Galileo and his unfortunate daughters (now I'll have to read Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel), and a typical well-imagined idea of future life on the moons of Jupiter, which turn out to have some great sentient life-form in the oceans and possibly on the planet--linked by time-travel, which is not quite so clearly explained. But both past and future are used to point up a current problem: the antagonism between science and religion. Like all the Robinson books I've read, fascinating, with a great central character, and the development of a great plot that....just sort of dissolves in the end. Not sure why he doesn't carry through to nice ending.
34. Laura Gould, Cats Are Not Peas: A Calico History of Genetics--Gould adopts a male calico cat and sets out to understand the genetics that produced him, leading us through a mini-history of the science of genetics, interspersed with charming cat stories. She explains difficult science clearly, and makes me appreciate my tortie all the more.
35. Marcia Muller, Locked In--Muller's Sharon McCone is my second favorite female PI (next to VI Warshawshi), partly because she lives and works in the SF Bay Area, one of my part-time homes, and partly because she's not a lone wolf, but continues to accumulate a rich and loving family through blood, adoption, marriage, friendship, and work. In this book, McCone lies speechless and paralyzed while the family cooperate to find her killer and heal her.
36. Tony Hays, The Killing Way-- A mystery set in an Arthurian Britain, much like the historically believable one created by Bernard Cornwell. Very agreeable, but not as gripping as Cornwell himself (though thankfully not as gory, either).
37. Jody Picoult, The Tenth Circle--even though it includes parts of a well-drawn graphic novel about Dante's Inferno and is partly set among the Inuit, I still couldn't remember that I'd read this until I was a quarter of the way into it, and then didn't really want to read more.
38. A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book--One of the best books I've read in a long time, but I am a great Byatt fan. This covers my favorite time in history, the early 20th century, with Fabian Socialism, Art Nouveau and Jugendstil, anarchism, feminism, etc., etc. alive and vibrant. Many, many characters from several interlocked families--no real central figure, unless it's the mother and writer Olive, but insights into many varied lives and much of the art, politics, and cultural change, and the War that destroyed so many of them.
39. HH Dalai Lama, An Open Heart--In process. A discussion of some of the basic beliefs of Buddhism, and of the practice of meditation.
40. Bessie Swann Britton, Remembering Kingstree--Photographs and memories of my grandmother's hometown, including many of my family, especially my grandfather's livery stable and his exploits as a horseman.
MAY:
41. Scott Warnock, Teaching Writing Online--Just started, but looks promising. Good points about how to teach, as well as technology.
42. Ian McEwan, Solar: A deadly satire of a self-indulgent Nobel Prize winner who cheats on wives and colleagues remorselessly.
43. Elizabeth Peters, A River in the Sky: Amanda Peabody in fine form, taking on German spies and British fools and knaves in 1910 Palestine. Ramses is kidnapped! Emerson is heroic! Amanda wields the umbrella of doom!
44. Michael Jecks, The Last Templar: Not the one the TV show was based on, this is a fairly boring mystery set in Devon, England in the 13th century. It's a place and time I really like but Jecks doesn't bring place or people or even plot to life. I should go back and study to see how and where it fails, but it doesn't interest me enough to do that.
45. Elizabeth George, This Body of Death: George just keeps getting better. Killing off the lovely Helen was definitely a good move, because Lynley has become a little less insufferable, and Havers a lot stronger. Another woman, this time a potential boss for Lynley, is introduced in this book. I've always thought George did better with the one-off characters involved in the grim events of each book than with the regulars, and this one definitely does well with a thatcher in New Forest, boys long ago convicted of murdering another child, a woman who loves too much and another who loves too little, and a plot that doesn't give itself away too soon, though by the end makes excellent sense.
46. David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: I don't usually go for self-help books, but this one looks at relationships from a Buddhist angle, and I'm finding that interesting. How mindfulness works to make you aware of your own issues and your partner's, without a three-easy-steps solution.
47. Kate Mosse, The Labyrinth: A modern day woman is linked to a 13th century mystic search for the Grail...still, it's better written and better researched than DaVinci Code. The Grail part is the weakest and least interesting, but the historical part, the crusade against the Cathars in medieval Langue D'Oc, is fascinating. The main character is only a little bit of a Mary Sue. Not as good as The Historian, though much better than Dan Brown's books.
48. William Kreml, Relativity and the Natural Left: How different cognitive styles approach law, politics and philosophy.
49. Josephine Tey, Daughter of Time (reread): The first time I read this, I was mostly interested in the argument against Richard III as the murderer of the little princes in the tower (set as inverstigation by a 1940's Scotland Yard investigator). This time, I was struck by her ignoring the lack of evidence on some key points (why Richard didn't produce the princes or investigate their non-appearance--brought up in the mock trial of RIII by Supremes Ginsberg, Rehnquist, and Breyer) and most of all by her tone, which at this point has become irritatingly self-congratulatory.
JUNE
50. Seth Graham-Smith, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter: By the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which pretty much says what this book is like. Graham-Smith follows the vague outline of Lincoln's life, and throws in lots of grisly events, but never manages to create the narrative magic that makes the reader actually care about what's going to happen. So I didn't bother finishing it. I did look at all the pictures, though.
51. Cecelia Holland, The Soul Thief: This book has the narrative pull and the engaging characters--set in a fairly believable Viking England, it follows a self-doubting Irishman who wins against the evil invaders and their supernatural consorts not just with his fighting skills and charming self but also by his inherent sense of morality. It's the kind of book that you look at when you finish and are amazed that it had so few pages, because so much happened.
52. Cecelia Holland, The Witches' Kitchen: Sequel to The Soul Thief. An Irish/Danish family runs from the Vikings and meets native Americans in 10th century New England…but go back to finish the fight, with rousing sea battles and just the right touch of magic.
53. Robert Stone, Fun with Problems: Stone writes really well--there are many sentences that I stopped and read several times, and he's able to catch you in the characters and the details of their lives. But they're all mostly engaged in drugs, alcohol, and themselves, with disregard for the pain they're causing everyone. Best story was "High Wire," about a decades-long affair between a script writer and actress, and not a happy one. Hard to really be involved with characters who are just unpleasant people, without some comprehension of what made them what they are. My reaction was simultaneously wanting to go back and finish reading Damascus Gate, Stone's Jerusalem novel, and understanding why I quit reading it in the first place.
54. Paolo Bacigalupi, The Wind-up Girl: A very fine book, well-deserving of the Nebula. Bacigalupi's prose occasionally reminds me of Pynchon, in its rhythms at least, but his world's more like a mashup of Bladerunner, Brave New World, Red Mars, and Soylent Green--and Camus's The Plague. A not-too-far-in-the-future Thailand where the hackers turn out not computer viruses but genetic disasters, where the oil has run out and the sea has risen (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/business/26salmon.html?th&emc=th ). Characters are complex, not often good, but totally believable and understandable. The plot worked, convincing and not predictable. The science seemed credible, to me at least, and the moral dilemmas are far from simplistic.
55. Lisa Scottoline, Think Twice: Sometimes you just want a novel that hits you like those drugs that don't kill the pain but make you forget it--you know her heroine is going to survive and wind up with the guy, and you know that she's going to create a lot of grief for herself in the process, and that she's going to say some funny things, and you know you'll just keep flipping the pages to the end. This one features law firm owner Bennie Rosato and her evil twin, last seen in Mistaken Identity--as usual, Scottoline will get you through the night.
56. Mercedes Lackey, Gwyhwyfach: The White Spirit: The Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot story from Guinevere’s POV, but based on the idea of the multiple Guineveres found in some Welsh stories, and focusing on the last one, a Celtic warrior woman. Very modern in the woman’s conflict between the life of achievement and the longing for love, but with some nice touches of magic and the realm of Fae.
JULY
57. Cecelia Hollander, Pillar of the Sky: A Stonehenge story, but very believable—little woo-woo, lots of basis in similar early bronze cultures and even more in psychology. Interesting theories of roles of men and women and how they might have changed in various circumstances. Good picture of how the stones might have been raised (both physically and sociologically). An outcast becomes a leader and changes the way the People live, forever.
58. Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies: My first venture into Discworld, and there will be more. I suspect any summary could be a spoiler. But loved the variety of the witches, the view of the Elves (not good), and the romance and humor (occasionally a little too cute for me, but the contrarian witches mostly saved it). What happens when you play with magic….and another way seeing a Midsummer Night’s Dream.
59. China Mieville, The City and the City: Hard to read and hard to stop reading. Two cities, separated and yet bound together. Hints of Berln, Jerusalem, and for me, the segregated cities of the American south. And also a Chandler noir murder mystery, a LeCarre spy, a hero isolated and connected in spite of himself. A very adult Un Lun Dun.
60. HP Lovecraft, “The Shadow out of Time” and “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.” (reread) Playing Arkham Horror and hearing podcasts made rereading necessary. So far, not nearly as creepy as the first time around, but maybe I need to read more. In dreams we find reality… “Dream Quest” especially doesn’t quite have the weirdness of real dreams, to me.
61. Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock: (reread by accident) I remembered the story, not the title, duh. Nice Tam Lin retelling, but the best part is not the fantasy but the insights into the child caught between divorcing parents. This Tam Lin’s connected to a rich family living nearby, and for parts of the story, the friendship between the adult Tom and the child could seem either unbelievable or squicky, but Jones makes it work.
62. Alexander Berzin, Wise Teacher, Wise Student: Tibetan approaches to a Healthy Relationship: (not finished) An attempt to bridge the cultural gap between Tibetan Buddhist teachers and their American students, and a very clear explanation of some of the central aspects of the teacher-student relationship in Tibetan Buddhism.
63. Mercedes Lackey, Arrows of the Queen: Lackey’s first book about the Heralds and their super—horse Companions, this is the story of how Talia, about to be forced into a loveless and polygamous marriage at 13, is found by her Companion and brought to train as the most special of Heralds. I loved the very detailed accounts of life in the Herald’s training program, but there’s not a clear and gripping plot for the whole story. Still, I’ll probably read more of these.
AUGUST:
64. Maureen McHugh, China Mountain Zhang: A very believable alternate history—a world where China is the intellectual, financial, technical center of the world, and the US is a backwater with a socialist revolution in its past and Mars is a rough frontier for goat farmers. The central character, a gay engineer with Chinese and Hispanic parents, tries to find a niche. I suspect it was originally some short stories that fit together—there’s a couple from other POV’s that don’t really reappear—but the central character is convincing and appealing, and the world is all too believable. A very fine writer for character and setting, even if the plot isn’t compelling. Wonder why she hasn’t published recently.
65. Robert Stone, Damascus Gate: A journalist in Jerusalem, involved with Millienial Christians and Sufis and Messianic Jews and various plots. I liked this quite a bit—good suspense, lots of great pictures of life in Jerusalem, Gaza, Tel Aviv, in the 1990’s. The protagonist and various others were sympathetic, even if occasionally clueless, and Stone manages to show the potential insanity of all sides in that part of the world, keeping our sympathy for the Palestinian refugees and for the concentration camp victims.
66. Jody Picoult, The Pact: Okay, back to the easily available drug (saw me through one white night, at least)—and this one’s a little better, with more unique characters (still recognizable types from her other books though). Two couples are life-long friends, their children grow up to fall in love—and then one kills the other. Suicide pact or murder? The trial’s not quite credible, nor the cause of the death, but the characters are still fascinating, and the plot trots right along.
67. Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping: Can’t believe I’m just now reading this amazing book. I saw the movie, read Gilead and gave it as presents, but somehow didn’t get around to actually reading this until now. I already knew how much I loved the narrator, Ruthie (child of a suicide) and the transient but anchored in love aunt Sylvie, and knew how much I identified with the household that just can’t do things right, but never realized what astonishing poetry was in here. Just one tiny sample: “If one pried up earth with a stick on those days, one found massed shafts of ice, slender as needles and pure as spring water. That delicate infrastructure bore us up so long as we avoided roads and puddles, until the decay of winter became general. Such delicate improvisations fail. Soon enough we foundered as often as we stepped. “ And even that is metaphor, because Robinson’s real domain is the inner life, the life of the heart.
70. Scott Turow, Innocent: A return to Rusty Sabich, of Presumed Innocent, and his lawyer Sandy Stern, also seen in Burden of Proof and other novels. This time it’s Rusty’s wife who is dead—maybe murdered, maybe from natural causes—but the evidence points to Rusty. Good detective work by Sandy and others. Good courtroom scenes. But as usual, best is the psychology of Rusty, his son, and , yes, another woman who has an affair with Rusty that casts suspicion on him.
Mary Kawal Robinette, Shades of Milk and Honey: Started and put down. Nothing especially interested me. Starts off like a Jane Austen novel—set in Regency times, a father with daughters who need to be married—but includes descriptions of practicing “glamour” that really didn’t work for me. Very distracting to have bad grammar in a style meant to mimic the delicate and precise language of Austen et al. And many typos, also—all in the first few pages.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods: Picked up and put down. I think I will like this if I read it later—just not a good follow-up to Turow.
Jody Picoult, House Rules. Not in the mood for Picoult, either. This one’s about a kid with Aspergers, and maybe I’ll like it some other time.
71. Robin Oiviera, My Name is Mary Sutter: A Novel: A midwife is determined to become a surgeon during the Civil War, and travels on her own to Washington where she works in the hospitals. Gritty realism, grinding misery. And three men are in love with her! The relationship things work out fairly realistically, but more interesting is the relationship with her mother, also a midwife (oddly, they're upper middle class, in Albany NY--wonder how realistic that is). Readable, if not pleasant.
72. Jennifer Cruisie, Maybe This Time: In the mood for Turn of the Screw as madcap romantic comedy, with lovers from Midsummer Night's Dream and children by Gorey? This book's for you. Some of the characters and situations are wildly improbably, and it gets a little slow in the middle--how else could you create a governess situation in 1992? But Crusie does what she does very well, including an excellent mix of fear, romance, and comedy, and some characters who really touch your heart.
73. Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A traditional major living in a little English town falls in love with the also-widowed Pakistani woman who keeps a shop. Not knowing much about people of any kind who live in small English villages or Pakistanis who live in England, I can't judge the realism of this in social terms. There were obnoxious racists and greedy climbers on both sides, so I suppose that's fair enough. I was a little irritated by the psychological stereotypes, though--the good guys so very reasonable and sympathetic, the bad ones seen without regard to inner motivations.
74. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Advice on Dying: Discussion of how to prepare for inevitable death, with traditional Buddhist arguments for the necessity of meditation practice and study of the dharma during life. Commentary on a poem by the first Panchen Lama.
75. David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas: A series of intricately related stories, like Ghostwritten, which I loved. In this book, each story interrupts the previous one until the central one, and then the interrupted stories are each concluded. Neat structure. The inner stories were much more interesting to me—a journalist tries to expose a deceptive corporation, a clone breaks free of her corporate owners (yes, recalling Blade Runner and Windup Girl, but also very different from both), and a post-apocalyptic story set in Hawaii. But the story of the gifted musician who is exploited by the people he set out to exploit, the publisher escaping from imprisonment in an old people’s home, and the story of the 19tth century accountant sailing to California from New Zealand—they all work, and all eventually bear out the theme that we really create or destroy our worlds with the stories we tell ourselves. Very well-written. Now for more Mitchell!
76. Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear: How the wisdom that understands emptiness helps us overcome the fear of death. Very readable, very personal and touching.
OCTOBER
77. Sherwood Smith, Inda (re-read): On second reading, still a wonderful world with many fascinating characters. Inda, a second son of a prince, first goes to train in a military academy where he forms close friends, discovers powerful enemies, and develops a natural talent for leadership, and then the machinations of one enemy lead to his being sent off to sea. I'm amazed at how well a woman writer can imagine the inner life of young boys. Women have plenty of opportunity to fight, but also to develop their own interests (including magic). Language, history, family traditions, geography--it's a complex and intriguing world. Now on to The Fox.
78. Jonathan Franzen, Freedom: The world as we know it. The lives of a family from the late seventies to the present, from various points of view. How Walter, the honorable environmentalist, gets involved with coal interests in DC; how Patty, the good-hearted athlete, becomes a family-destroying alcoholic; what happens to their children and friends. It could as well have been named competition, for Franzen's skillful eye that sees how rivalries, conscious and unconscious, undermine our rational selves.
79. Elizabeth Marie Pope, Perilous Gard: A very satisfying Tam Lin story, set in England just at the start of Elizabeth I's reign. One of the soon-to-be queen's maids of honor is exiled to a strange country manor, where the younger son tries to atone for what he thinks is his negligence, and the heroine saves him by intelligence as much as bravery. And a nice way of looking at the Queen of the Wood and her court, from a nice historical/anthropological background.
80. Brenda Rickman Vantrease, The Heretic's Wife: Put down after two chapters. Seemed to be covering much the same time from the same point of view as Wolf Hall, without Mantel's skill. And The Illuminator wasn't good enough to make me keep trying with this one.
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest: I've tried before and quit after one chapter. So far, I'm into chapter two, but still overwhelmed by how much of it there is. I love long books, but this gives so much detail on each tiny moment. Beautifully done, yes, but the moments so far are miserable, and I'd like to get beyond them.
81. David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: Not quite finished, but will be soon. Another fine book by Mitchell. Unlike Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, this is not linked stories, but a fairly unified plot (well, plots, but only a couple, and they all run throughout the novel). A Dutch accountant meets a Japanese midwife in Nagasaki in 1799--and evil abounds, but heroism as well. Great suspense, fascinating characters.
82. Michael Stone, Freeing the Body, Freeing the Mind: Just started. Essays on Buddhism and Yoga, and their commonalities and differences. So far, one excellent piece on Patanjali .
NOVEMBER
83. Robin McKinley, Chalice: McKinley is unfailing, and this is charming, and more. A woman with power who isn't a warrior, a hero who's sympathetic and mysterious. The Chalice is part of the King's circle, and this King is almost lost to magic. I'd have had a slightly different ending, but it was very satisfying.
84. Globish, Robert McCrum: How English got to be English, and how it's spreading. Fascinating.
85. Patricia T O'Conner, Origins of the Specious: Mythbusters for language myths. All those stories about words you thought were true, but aren't (Mr. Crapper did not invent the flush toilet, etc).
David Mitchell, Black Swan Green: Started and put down. Love Mitchell, but not in the mood for realism. Maybe it changes--and I'm sure I'll like it later.
86. Phillipa Gregory, The White Queen: More of the women of the War of the Roses. Gregory clearly prefers the enchanting Lancaster, Elizabeth Woodville (The Red Queen, from earlier in the Cousin's War series), but here she gives us the mother of Henry VII, Margaret Beaufort--not a beauty, not a witch, just a woman who never got to have anyone she loved close to her, and had to live on her faith and her ambition.
87. John LeCarré, Our Kind of Traitor: Working against their own agency and the Russian mafia, some British spies and a hapless academic try to save a Russian who wants to bring his family in from the cold. Bitter and gripping, like always.
DECEMBER
88. Kim Stanley Robinson, Fifty Degrees Below: Second in his Science in the Captial series, on the science and politics of global warming. I liked Forty Signs of Rain, but this one's too much science and politics for me. DC is recovering from a Katrina-level flood, islands in the Sundabarans are being drowned, a scientist plays Paleolithic man in his off hours and tracks animals who escaped during the flood in DC. Not sure I'll make it to Sixty Days and Counting. With his other books, I liked the first ones (Red Mars) but was ready to quit before finishing the last one. And never really got into the California ones.
89. Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question: What's the opposite of an anti-Semite? One of the main characters in this book longs to be Jewish, although gradually we see how his admiration blinds him to reality. Another's a Jew who doesn't like Jews much. Very funny, sad, moving.
90. R A MacAvoy, The Book of Kells: Inadvertent time-traveling Celtic scholars find themselves running from Vikings in late 10th century Ireland. Excellent details from good research, but sometimes a little slow.
91. D L Peterson, Mouse Guard, Fall and Mouse Guard, Winter, along with a few individual issues: Love these! Almost as great as Digger! Medieval mice, not so much cutesy as valiant, wise, cunning, untrustworthy, etc., etc. The good mice defend themselves against weasels, owls, and crows, but also against traitors of their own kind. And an ancient hero returns. The drawing is wonderful, too.
92. Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra, The Last Man, various issues but not all: Only one man survives a plague that kills all males and leaves all women. Not every woman wants him to survive, and some parts of the world aren't working so well as he searches for his lover and tries to understand what has happened, and why.
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BOOKS READ 2010
JANUARY:
1. Rob Holdstock, Mythago Wood (started at end of 2009): An amazing book, weaving strands of myth and psychology, and very well-written
2. Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna: This is her best book since Poisonwood Bible, I think--Mexican and American politics 1900-1950's, with appearances by Trotsky, Kahlo, and minions of J. Edgar Hoover, set in Mexico and Asheville (!?)
3. Stephen King, Under the Dome: Typical King, 1000 pages, worth. Baddies, gore, suspense, and a few aliens.
4. Ruth Downie, Persona Non Grata and Terra Incognita: Sequels to Medicus, her novel about a Roman physician who solves murders in Britain around the time of Hadrian. Love her characters, plots, and history. One is set in south of France, near Arles
5. Rebecca Tingle, The Edge on the Sword: Æthelflæd, daughter of King Alfred learns to defend her country. More good history and character, and nicely written
6. Shannon Brownlee Overtreated: If everyone read this, we'd have a health-care bill. Confirmed my decision to switch doctors
7. HH Dalai Lama Path to Enlightenment Commentary on the 3rd Dalai Lama's writings on the Lam Rim, the summary of Buddhist teachings in the Gelugpa lineage. Very clear and concise.
8. Bhante Henepola Gunaratana: Mindfulness in Plain English: Introduction to vipassana meditation in the Theravada tradition. Realistic, detailed, practical, and clear.
9. Michael Pollan, Food Rules: short, easy-to-remember rules based on information in Pollan's longer books (eg, Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't have recognized)
10. GRR Martin, Game of Thrones, Clash of Kings, Storm of Swords (just started the last one--and all are re-reads) A Song of Ice And Fire--knights, dragons, ice monsters, human monsters, great stories, but, sigh, unfinished...
11. David Freidel and Linda Schele , A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya Maya history and culture from Yucatan mostly but also other parts of CA
FEBRUARY:
12. Dinty Moore, The Accidental Buddhist: Nice narrative of meeting different kinds of Buddhism. Good overview, but very simple. Readable.
13. GRR Martin, A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows: Not as good as the others--where ASOIAF really gets lost. Mostly new characters, and not very appealing ones
14. Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves: She does a beautiful job of showing what it's like to be in a relationship with a person who is unable to be in a relationship, but I'm not sure why we needed both a wife and a girlfriend to have the same kind of experience. But that would have been OK. What bothered me was how she led us on with the hints of something beyond the natural (and of course her previous book had fulfilled that promise, in excellent fashion). So when what lay behind the mysterious obsession that dominated one life and twisted many others turned out just to be blackmail, it was a serious let-down. There were so many intriguing things she could have done--time travel, having art come to life, etc. I'm not sure why she chose the plot she did.
15. Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn: A sweet-enough YA fantasy, with a contrived romantic switch. Still, the idea of the aliora was nice.
16. Jody Picoult, Handle With Care: Mother of child born with fragile bones sues doctor who is also her best friend. Character and plot work for me as always.
17. Kimberly Pauley, Sucks to Be Me: YA by Doug's cousin. Teenager has to choose whether to become a vampire like her parents and also which guy to go to the prom with. Fun but very YA.
18. Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor: how health care, drugs, etc. exploit people in Haiti and other countries.
19. Sarah Paretsky, Hardball: One of her better books, linking a present-day corruption with killings in the Civil Rights era. She does a good job of showing angry blacks without wallowing in white guilt, and as always, pacing and characters are good. Glad to see a new love interest.
20. Susan Palwick, The Necessary Beggar: It was a very moving picture of what it's like to be a refugee, not damaged by the fact that the central characters are exiled from another dimension. Great combination of the real and the fantastic, and very romantic but believable love story. And like Mary Doria Russell, she has a religious perspective that's not off-putting (even to people like me from religions different from hers). Flying in Place: Not quite as good, but very appealing picture of abused child. But the abuser--unbelievably one-dimensional. The Fate of Mice: Excellent short stories. Title story is riff on "Flowers for Algernon."
21. Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness: Excellent as always. Title story was in New Yorker (19th century Russian woman mathematician), but others very fine also.
22. Alston Purvis, The Vendetta: Melvin Purvis's son's story of how his father (killer of Pretty Boy Floyd and Dillinger) was hounded to suicide by J. Edgar Hoover. Well-written, but I may not make it through the whole thing.
MARCH
23. Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall: The best-written book I've read in a long time. First part of the story of Thomas Cromwell, engineer of Henry VIII's break with Rome. You know the main story from all the other Tudor tales, but elsewhere Cromwell's a dull figure in the background. Mantel's perfect prose gives us a tough orphan, loving family man, brilliant investor, and master of dear dogs and cats and gardens. She's so good at giving us the personal: a paragraph on the kitchen work of perfecting wafers, a paragraph on negotiations with Spain, and then back to the wafers. The death of Thomas More comes first in the lead up and then filtered through Cromwell's memory--perfect. Sir Thomas More and Mary Boleyn--not what you thought they were. And I hear there will be a sequel. Sadly, we know how that will end.
24. Elizabeth Bunce, A Curse Dark as Gold: Nice twist on a retold fairy tale: Rumpelstiltskin set in the mills of the Industrial Revolution, with Anglo-American folklore. Well-done, lots of good period detail and excellent suspense.
25. Anne Tyler, Noah's Compass: Maybe Anne Tyler always writes the same book. The out-of-step, emotionally repressed man, surrounded by oppressive wives, sisters, mothers, meets the free spirited woman who could give him life and tries to make a relationship work, but then realizes it's not the right thing for him. Entertaining as always but I don't think I need to read another one.
26. Katherine McMahon, The Crimson Rooms: Historical-mystery-romance, set in the early 1920's. One of the first woman lawyers in Britain tries to exonerate a client while dealing with disapproving family, the tragic loss of a brother, and a hot male lawyer who wants to help her. Nice details, good suspense, but a less than appealing protagonist, and a somewhat unresolved ending.
27. Carrie Ryan, The Dead-Tossed Waves: A YA zombie story, very exciting, moving from crisis to crisis, by my new niece-in-law. Sequel to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, with a narrator who's the daughter of the one in the earlier book.
28. Hilary Mantel, Eight Months on Gazzah Street: A very creepy book. As well written as Wolf Hall, but the ex-pat narrator and the other ex-pats and native Arabs she observes are scarier than the plot. Mantel has definitely gotten better. I started her first novel (Every Day is Mother's Day) and found it so unhappy I couldn't read it, whereas I couldn't put Wolf Hall down. Hope she stays in the latter vein.
29. Katherine McMahon, The Alchemist's Daughter: Very fine. Great characterization of a woman out of place in time and class and knowledge. Excellent historical setting and good voice. And one of the most obnoxious villains I've encountered in a long time, along with some of the sexiest scenes.
30. Started The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larson, but couldn't get into it--the plot didn't seem to take fire. Need to go back and try The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which hopefully is more cohesive.
31. Henning Mankel, The Man from Beijing: A Scandinavian mystery that is engaging, though badly translated (also a problem with the Larson books). Also like the historical flashbacks and the scenes from a marriage that are part of it.
APRIL
32. Bernard Cornwell, The Burning Land: #5 in the Saxon Tales series, this follows Uhtred of Bebbanburg as he fights for King Alfred against Danes, then for the Danes, then for Alfred again. I liked the first two books in this series, and also the Gawaine series (Excalibur, etc) better, but this does feature some good scenes with Æthelflæd, Alfred's daughter, who in history and other books (see Tingle, Edge of the Sword--#5 on this list, from January) is a fighter, but in this one is reduced to romantic interest. Still, the history seems accurate, and it's one of my favorite periods.
33. Kim Stanley Robinison, Galileo's Dream: A great portrait of Galileo and his unfortunate daughters (now I'll have to read Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel), and a typical well-imagined idea of future life on the moons of Jupiter, which turn out to have some great sentient life-form in the oceans and possibly on the planet--linked by time-travel, which is not quite so clearly explained. But both past and future are used to point up a current problem: the antagonism between science and religion. Like all the Robinson books I've read, fascinating, with a great central character, and the development of a great plot that....just sort of dissolves in the end. Not sure why he doesn't carry through to nice ending.
34. Laura Gould, Cats Are Not Peas: A Calico History of Genetics--Gould adopts a male calico cat and sets out to understand the genetics that produced him, leading us through a mini-history of the science of genetics, interspersed with charming cat stories. She explains difficult science clearly, and makes me appreciate my tortie all the more.
35. Marcia Muller, Locked In--Muller's Sharon McCone is my second favorite female PI (next to VI Warshawshi), partly because she lives and works in the SF Bay Area, one of my part-time homes, and partly because she's not a lone wolf, but continues to accumulate a rich and loving family through blood, adoption, marriage, friendship, and work. In this book, McCone lies speechless and paralyzed while the family cooperate to find her killer and heal her.
36. Tony Hays, The Killing Way-- A mystery set in an Arthurian Britain, much like the historically believable one created by Bernard Cornwell. Very agreeable, but not as gripping as Cornwell himself (though thankfully not as gory, either).
37. Jody Picoult, The Tenth Circle--even though it includes parts of a well-drawn graphic novel about Dante's Inferno and is partly set among the Inuit, I still couldn't remember that I'd read this until I was a quarter of the way into it, and then didn't really want to read more.
38. A.S. Byatt, The Children's Book--One of the best books I've read in a long time, but I am a great Byatt fan. This covers my favorite time in history, the early 20th century, with Fabian Socialism, Art Nouveau and Jugendstil, anarchism, feminism, etc., etc. alive and vibrant. Many, many characters from several interlocked families--no real central figure, unless it's the mother and writer Olive, but insights into many varied lives and much of the art, politics, and cultural change, and the War that destroyed so many of them.
39. HH Dalai Lama, An Open Heart--In process. A discussion of some of the basic beliefs of Buddhism, and of the practice of meditation.
40. Bessie Swann Britton, Remembering Kingstree--Photographs and memories of my grandmother's hometown, including many of my family, especially my grandfather's livery stable and his exploits as a horseman.
MAY:
41. Scott Warnock, Teaching Writing Online--Just started, but looks promising. Good points about how to teach, as well as technology.
42. Ian McEwan, Solar: A deadly satire of a self-indulgent Nobel Prize winner who cheats on wives and colleagues remorselessly.
43. Elizabeth Peters, A River in the Sky: Amanda Peabody in fine form, taking on German spies and British fools and knaves in 1910 Palestine. Ramses is kidnapped! Emerson is heroic! Amanda wields the umbrella of doom!
44. Michael Jecks, The Last Templar: Not the one the TV show was based on, this is a fairly boring mystery set in Devon, England in the 13th century. It's a place and time I really like but Jecks doesn't bring place or people or even plot to life. I should go back and study to see how and where it fails, but it doesn't interest me enough to do that.
45. Elizabeth George, This Body of Death: George just keeps getting better. Killing off the lovely Helen was definitely a good move, because Lynley has become a little less insufferable, and Havers a lot stronger. Another woman, this time a potential boss for Lynley, is introduced in this book. I've always thought George did better with the one-off characters involved in the grim events of each book than with the regulars, and this one definitely does well with a thatcher in New Forest, boys long ago convicted of murdering another child, a woman who loves too much and another who loves too little, and a plot that doesn't give itself away too soon, though by the end makes excellent sense.
46. David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: I don't usually go for self-help books, but this one looks at relationships from a Buddhist angle, and I'm finding that interesting. How mindfulness works to make you aware of your own issues and your partner's, without a three-easy-steps solution.
47. Kate Mosse, The Labyrinth: A modern day woman is linked to a 13th century mystic search for the Grail...still, it's better written and better researched than DaVinci Code. The Grail part is the weakest and least interesting, but the historical part, the crusade against the Cathars in medieval Langue D'Oc, is fascinating. The main character is only a little bit of a Mary Sue. Not as good as The Historian, though much better than Dan Brown's books.
48. William Kreml, Relativity and the Natural Left: How different cognitive styles approach law, politics and philosophy.
49. Josephine Tey, Daughter of Time (reread): The first time I read this, I was mostly interested in the argument against Richard III as the murderer of the little princes in the tower (set as inverstigation by a 1940's Scotland Yard investigator). This time, I was struck by her ignoring the lack of evidence on some key points (why Richard didn't produce the princes or investigate their non-appearance--brought up in the mock trial of RIII by Supremes Ginsberg, Rehnquist, and Breyer) and most of all by her tone, which at this point has become irritatingly self-congratulatory.
JUNE
50. Seth Graham-Smith, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter: By the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which pretty much says what this book is like. Graham-Smith follows the vague outline of Lincoln's life, and throws in lots of grisly events, but never manages to create the narrative magic that makes the reader actually care about what's going to happen. So I didn't bother finishing it. I did look at all the pictures, though.
51. Cecelia Holland, The Soul Thief: This book has the narrative pull and the engaging characters--set in a fairly believable Viking England, it follows a self-doubting Irishman who wins against the evil invaders and their supernatural consorts not just with his fighting skills and charming self but also by his inherent sense of morality. It's the kind of book that you look at when you finish and are amazed that it had so few pages, because so much happened.
52. Cecelia Holland, The Witches' Kitchen: Sequel to The Soul Thief. An Irish/Danish family runs from the Vikings and meets native Americans in 10th century New England…but go back to finish the fight, with rousing sea battles and just the right touch of magic.
53. Robert Stone, Fun with Problems: Stone writes really well--there are many sentences that I stopped and read several times, and he's able to catch you in the characters and the details of their lives. But they're all mostly engaged in drugs, alcohol, and themselves, with disregard for the pain they're causing everyone. Best story was "High Wire," about a decades-long affair between a script writer and actress, and not a happy one. Hard to really be involved with characters who are just unpleasant people, without some comprehension of what made them what they are. My reaction was simultaneously wanting to go back and finish reading Damascus Gate, Stone's Jerusalem novel, and understanding why I quit reading it in the first place.
54. Paolo Bacigalupi, The Wind-up Girl: A very fine book, well-deserving of the Nebula. Bacigalupi's prose occasionally reminds me of Pynchon, in its rhythms at least, but his world's more like a mashup of Bladerunner, Brave New World, Red Mars, and Soylent Green--and Camus's The Plague. A not-too-far-in-the-future Thailand where the hackers turn out not computer viruses but genetic disasters, where the oil has run out and the sea has risen (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/business/26salmon.html?th&emc=th ). Characters are complex, not often good, but totally believable and understandable. The plot worked, convincing and not predictable. The science seemed credible, to me at least, and the moral dilemmas are far from simplistic.
55. Lisa Scottoline, Think Twice: Sometimes you just want a novel that hits you like those drugs that don't kill the pain but make you forget it--you know her heroine is going to survive and wind up with the guy, and you know that she's going to create a lot of grief for herself in the process, and that she's going to say some funny things, and you know you'll just keep flipping the pages to the end. This one features law firm owner Bennie Rosato and her evil twin, last seen in Mistaken Identity--as usual, Scottoline will get you through the night.
56. Mercedes Lackey, Gwyhwyfach: The White Spirit: The Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot story from Guinevere’s POV, but based on the idea of the multiple Guineveres found in some Welsh stories, and focusing on the last one, a Celtic warrior woman. Very modern in the woman’s conflict between the life of achievement and the longing for love, but with some nice touches of magic and the realm of Fae.
JULY
57. Cecelia Hollander, Pillar of the Sky: A Stonehenge story, but very believable—little woo-woo, lots of basis in similar early bronze cultures and even more in psychology. Interesting theories of roles of men and women and how they might have changed in various circumstances. Good picture of how the stones might have been raised (both physically and sociologically). An outcast becomes a leader and changes the way the People live, forever.
58. Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies: My first venture into Discworld, and there will be more. I suspect any summary could be a spoiler. But loved the variety of the witches, the view of the Elves (not good), and the romance and humor (occasionally a little too cute for me, but the contrarian witches mostly saved it). What happens when you play with magic….and another way seeing a Midsummer Night’s Dream.
59. China Mieville, The City and the City: Hard to read and hard to stop reading. Two cities, separated and yet bound together. Hints of Berln, Jerusalem, and for me, the segregated cities of the American south. And also a Chandler noir murder mystery, a LeCarre spy, a hero isolated and connected in spite of himself. A very adult Un Lun Dun.
60. HP Lovecraft, “The Shadow out of Time” and “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.” (reread) Playing Arkham Horror and hearing podcasts made rereading necessary. So far, not nearly as creepy as the first time around, but maybe I need to read more. In dreams we find reality… “Dream Quest” especially doesn’t quite have the weirdness of real dreams, to me.
61. Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock: (reread by accident) I remembered the story, not the title, duh. Nice Tam Lin retelling, but the best part is not the fantasy but the insights into the child caught between divorcing parents. This Tam Lin’s connected to a rich family living nearby, and for parts of the story, the friendship between the adult Tom and the child could seem either unbelievable or squicky, but Jones makes it work.
62. Alexander Berzin, Wise Teacher, Wise Student: Tibetan approaches to a Healthy Relationship: (not finished) An attempt to bridge the cultural gap between Tibetan Buddhist teachers and their American students, and a very clear explanation of some of the central aspects of the teacher-student relationship in Tibetan Buddhism.
63. Mercedes Lackey, Arrows of the Queen: Lackey’s first book about the Heralds and their super—horse Companions, this is the story of how Talia, about to be forced into a loveless and polygamous marriage at 13, is found by her Companion and brought to train as the most special of Heralds. I loved the very detailed accounts of life in the Herald’s training program, but there’s not a clear and gripping plot for the whole story. Still, I’ll probably read more of these.
AUGUST:
64. Maureen McHugh, China Mountain Zhang: A very believable alternate history—a world where China is the intellectual, financial, technical center of the world, and the US is a backwater with a socialist revolution in its past and Mars is a rough frontier for goat farmers. The central character, a gay engineer with Chinese and Hispanic parents, tries to find a niche. I suspect it was originally some short stories that fit together—there’s a couple from other POV’s that don’t really reappear—but the central character is convincing and appealing, and the world is all too believable. A very fine writer for character and setting, even if the plot isn’t compelling. Wonder why she hasn’t published recently.
65. Robert Stone, Damascus Gate: A journalist in Jerusalem, involved with Millienial Christians and Sufis and Messianic Jews and various plots. I liked this quite a bit—good suspense, lots of great pictures of life in Jerusalem, Gaza, Tel Aviv, in the 1990’s. The protagonist and various others were sympathetic, even if occasionally clueless, and Stone manages to show the potential insanity of all sides in that part of the world, keeping our sympathy for the Palestinian refugees and for the concentration camp victims.
66. Jody Picoult, The Pact: Okay, back to the easily available drug (saw me through one white night, at least)—and this one’s a little better, with more unique characters (still recognizable types from her other books though). Two couples are life-long friends, their children grow up to fall in love—and then one kills the other. Suicide pact or murder? The trial’s not quite credible, nor the cause of the death, but the characters are still fascinating, and the plot trots right along.
67. Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping: Can’t believe I’m just now reading this amazing book. I saw the movie, read Gilead and gave it as presents, but somehow didn’t get around to actually reading this until now. I already knew how much I loved the narrator, Ruthie (child of a suicide) and the transient but anchored in love aunt Sylvie, and knew how much I identified with the household that just can’t do things right, but never realized what astonishing poetry was in here. Just one tiny sample: “If one pried up earth with a stick on those days, one found massed shafts of ice, slender as needles and pure as spring water. That delicate infrastructure bore us up so long as we avoided roads and puddles, until the decay of winter became general. Such delicate improvisations fail. Soon enough we foundered as often as we stepped. “ And even that is metaphor, because Robinson’s real domain is the inner life, the life of the heart.
68. Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven: Kay’s vision of the Tang dynasty in China, with beautiful and well-handled echoes of poetry, opera, novels, and history of that time. The son of a general is rewarded for his service in burying the dead from past wars, and becomes embroiled with poets, courtesans, Shaolin warriors, mandarins, and finally a rebellion that throws the empire in chaos. Of course the touches of fantasy are enthralling and of course the history is true to the spirit while playing skillfully with the facts of the time.
SEPTEMBER :
69. Brenda Rickman Vantrease, The Illuminator: An illuminator of manuscripts who meets a widow who runs a manor house runs afoul of rich churchmen in the 14th century. He befriends Julian of Norwich, a dwarf, and various Lollards. On the order of Pillars of Heave, but sadder.
70. Scott Turow, Innocent: A return to Rusty Sabich, of Presumed Innocent, and his lawyer Sandy Stern, also seen in Burden of Proof and other novels. This time it’s Rusty’s wife who is dead—maybe murdered, maybe from natural causes—but the evidence points to Rusty. Good detective work by Sandy and others. Good courtroom scenes. But as usual, best is the psychology of Rusty, his son, and , yes, another woman who has an affair with Rusty that casts suspicion on him.
Mary Kawal Robinette, Shades of Milk and Honey: Started and put down. Nothing especially interested me. Starts off like a Jane Austen novel—set in Regency times, a father with daughters who need to be married—but includes descriptions of practicing “glamour” that really didn’t work for me. Very distracting to have bad grammar in a style meant to mimic the delicate and precise language of Austen et al. And many typos, also—all in the first few pages.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods: Picked up and put down. I think I will like this if I read it later—just not a good follow-up to Turow.
Jody Picoult, House Rules. Not in the mood for Picoult, either. This one’s about a kid with Aspergers, and maybe I’ll like it some other time.
71. Robin Oiviera, My Name is Mary Sutter: A Novel: A midwife is determined to become a surgeon during the Civil War, and travels on her own to Washington where she works in the hospitals. Gritty realism, grinding misery. And three men are in love with her! The relationship things work out fairly realistically, but more interesting is the relationship with her mother, also a midwife (oddly, they're upper middle class, in Albany NY--wonder how realistic that is). Readable, if not pleasant.
72. Jennifer Cruisie, Maybe This Time: In the mood for Turn of the Screw as madcap romantic comedy, with lovers from Midsummer Night's Dream and children by Gorey? This book's for you. Some of the characters and situations are wildly improbably, and it gets a little slow in the middle--how else could you create a governess situation in 1992? But Crusie does what she does very well, including an excellent mix of fear, romance, and comedy, and some characters who really touch your heart.
73. Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A traditional major living in a little English town falls in love with the also-widowed Pakistani woman who keeps a shop. Not knowing much about people of any kind who live in small English villages or Pakistanis who live in England, I can't judge the realism of this in social terms. There were obnoxious racists and greedy climbers on both sides, so I suppose that's fair enough. I was a little irritated by the psychological stereotypes, though--the good guys so very reasonable and sympathetic, the bad ones seen without regard to inner motivations.
74. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Advice on Dying: Discussion of how to prepare for inevitable death, with traditional Buddhist arguments for the necessity of meditation practice and study of the dharma during life. Commentary on a poem by the first Panchen Lama.
75. David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas: A series of intricately related stories, like Ghostwritten, which I loved. In this book, each story interrupts the previous one until the central one, and then the interrupted stories are each concluded. Neat structure. The inner stories were much more interesting to me—a journalist tries to expose a deceptive corporation, a clone breaks free of her corporate owners (yes, recalling Blade Runner and Windup Girl, but also very different from both), and a post-apocalyptic story set in Hawaii. But the story of the gifted musician who is exploited by the people he set out to exploit, the publisher escaping from imprisonment in an old people’s home, and the story of the 19tth century accountant sailing to California from New Zealand—they all work, and all eventually bear out the theme that we really create or destroy our worlds with the stories we tell ourselves. Very well-written. Now for more Mitchell!
76. Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear: How the wisdom that understands emptiness helps us overcome the fear of death. Very readable, very personal and touching.
OCTOBER
77. Sherwood Smith, Inda (re-read): On second reading, still a wonderful world with many fascinating characters. Inda, a second son of a prince, first goes to train in a military academy where he forms close friends, discovers powerful enemies, and develops a natural talent for leadership, and then the machinations of one enemy lead to his being sent off to sea. I'm amazed at how well a woman writer can imagine the inner life of young boys. Women have plenty of opportunity to fight, but also to develop their own interests (including magic). Language, history, family traditions, geography--it's a complex and intriguing world. Now on to The Fox.
78. Jonathan Franzen, Freedom: The world as we know it. The lives of a family from the late seventies to the present, from various points of view. How Walter, the honorable environmentalist, gets involved with coal interests in DC; how Patty, the good-hearted athlete, becomes a family-destroying alcoholic; what happens to their children and friends. It could as well have been named competition, for Franzen's skillful eye that sees how rivalries, conscious and unconscious, undermine our rational selves.
79. Elizabeth Marie Pope, Perilous Gard: A very satisfying Tam Lin story, set in England just at the start of Elizabeth I's reign. One of the soon-to-be queen's maids of honor is exiled to a strange country manor, where the younger son tries to atone for what he thinks is his negligence, and the heroine saves him by intelligence as much as bravery. And a nice way of looking at the Queen of the Wood and her court, from a nice historical/anthropological background.
80. Brenda Rickman Vantrease, The Heretic's Wife: Put down after two chapters. Seemed to be covering much the same time from the same point of view as Wolf Hall, without Mantel's skill. And The Illuminator wasn't good enough to make me keep trying with this one.
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest: I've tried before and quit after one chapter. So far, I'm into chapter two, but still overwhelmed by how much of it there is. I love long books, but this gives so much detail on each tiny moment. Beautifully done, yes, but the moments so far are miserable, and I'd like to get beyond them.
81. David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: Not quite finished, but will be soon. Another fine book by Mitchell. Unlike Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, this is not linked stories, but a fairly unified plot (well, plots, but only a couple, and they all run throughout the novel). A Dutch accountant meets a Japanese midwife in Nagasaki in 1799--and evil abounds, but heroism as well. Great suspense, fascinating characters.
82. Michael Stone, Freeing the Body, Freeing the Mind: Just started. Essays on Buddhism and Yoga, and their commonalities and differences. So far, one excellent piece on Patanjali .
NOVEMBER
83. Robin McKinley, Chalice: McKinley is unfailing, and this is charming, and more. A woman with power who isn't a warrior, a hero who's sympathetic and mysterious. The Chalice is part of the King's circle, and this King is almost lost to magic. I'd have had a slightly different ending, but it was very satisfying.
84. Globish, Robert McCrum: How English got to be English, and how it's spreading. Fascinating.
85. Patricia T O'Conner, Origins of the Specious: Mythbusters for language myths. All those stories about words you thought were true, but aren't (Mr. Crapper did not invent the flush toilet, etc).
David Mitchell, Black Swan Green: Started and put down. Love Mitchell, but not in the mood for realism. Maybe it changes--and I'm sure I'll like it later.
86. Phillipa Gregory, The White Queen: More of the women of the War of the Roses. Gregory clearly prefers the enchanting Lancaster, Elizabeth Woodville (The Red Queen, from earlier in the Cousin's War series), but here she gives us the mother of Henry VII, Margaret Beaufort--not a beauty, not a witch, just a woman who never got to have anyone she loved close to her, and had to live on her faith and her ambition.
87. John LeCarré, Our Kind of Traitor: Working against their own agency and the Russian mafia, some British spies and a hapless academic try to save a Russian who wants to bring his family in from the cold. Bitter and gripping, like always.
DECEMBER
88. Kim Stanley Robinson, Fifty Degrees Below: Second in his Science in the Captial series, on the science and politics of global warming. I liked Forty Signs of Rain, but this one's too much science and politics for me. DC is recovering from a Katrina-level flood, islands in the Sundabarans are being drowned, a scientist plays Paleolithic man in his off hours and tracks animals who escaped during the flood in DC. Not sure I'll make it to Sixty Days and Counting. With his other books, I liked the first ones (Red Mars) but was ready to quit before finishing the last one. And never really got into the California ones.
89. Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question: What's the opposite of an anti-Semite? One of the main characters in this book longs to be Jewish, although gradually we see how his admiration blinds him to reality. Another's a Jew who doesn't like Jews much. Very funny, sad, moving.
90. R A MacAvoy, The Book of Kells: Inadvertent time-traveling Celtic scholars find themselves running from Vikings in late 10th century Ireland. Excellent details from good research, but sometimes a little slow.
91. D L Peterson, Mouse Guard, Fall and Mouse Guard, Winter, along with a few individual issues: Love these! Almost as great as Digger! Medieval mice, not so much cutesy as valiant, wise, cunning, untrustworthy, etc., etc. The good mice defend themselves against weasels, owls, and crows, but also against traitors of their own kind. And an ancient hero returns. The drawing is wonderful, too.
92. Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra, The Last Man, various issues but not all: Only one man survives a plague that kills all males and leaves all women. Not every woman wants him to survive, and some parts of the world aren't working so well as he searches for his lover and tries to understand what has happened, and why.
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