Archives - August 2008

archives -- index by author -- index by category -- favorite books -- links

I skipped booklogging in August. Here’s the list, though, with some scattered comments:

Fiction:

John Barnes, One for the Morning Glory
Elizabeth Bear, Ink and Steel, Hell and Earth: I think I liked these even more than Blood and Iron and Whiskey and Water, undoubtedly because of the Elizabethan setting and characters. Also, I felt as though I more often understood what was going on. It definitely helped to know some of the historical characters going in, though, or I think I would have been more lost.
Stevie Davies, Four Dreamers and Emily
Alexandre Dumas, The Vicomte de Bragelonne
Frances Hardinge, Well Witched, Fly by Night
Lauren Henderson, Dead White Female, Too Many Blondes, Freeze My Margarita: the first, second, and fourth books in the Sam Jones mystery series (I read the third book a couple of months ago), with an unorthodox bad-girl sculptor as the sleuth. I really like these and am looking forward to reading the rest, which I saved for September.
Erich Kastner, Lisa and Lottie
E. Lockhart, Sarah Mlynowski, and Lauren Myracle, How to Be Bad: a perfectly fine teenage girl bonding road trip story (with bonus Walt Disney World!), but not nearly as thought-provoking as Lockhart's solo stuff.
Margaret Mahy, The Catalogue of the Universe
Naomi Novik, Victory of Eagles: I was expecting a more intense beginning from this book after the cliffhanger at the end of the last book, but I really liked having a lot of Temeraire's POV. Still, I kept finding myself wondering why it seems that no other dragons have ever been interested in improving their situations and receiving equal rights -- I find it hard to believe that of an intelligent species, only Temeraire has ever thought of this. Maybe I need to reread the whole series at some point to see if Novik's addressed this and I've forgotten about it.
Diana Peterfreund, Rites of Spring (Break): an enjoyable entry (with most excellent romantic developments) in an enjoyable series.
Vita Sackville-West, No Signposts in the Sea: some beautiful imagery, but very, very slight of plot and characterization.
Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter: I liked this starting out, but I thought it lost focus about halfway through (at the beginning of the college part, I think). Also, I started to dislike the main character a lot. The use of faerie elements was cool, though.
Violet Trefusis, Hunt the Slipper
Anthony Trollope, The Macdermots of Ballycloran: his first novel, and, um, not his greatest. Oh, Trollope, whyfor phonetically rendered Irish dialect?
P.G.Wodehouse, Big Money: There were some choice passages, but for me, this wasn't an outstanding Wodehouse. The plot doesn't really come together until the end, and the characters are more type-like and less individual than in his best work.

Non-fiction:

Nicholas A. Basbanes, Every Book Its Reader
Mick LaSalle, Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood: a quite enjoyable book about (bet you can't guess) women in Hollywood films before the Hays Code. I now wish to see Norma Shearer movies other than The Women (though I love that).

Rereads:

E.M. Delafield, Thank Heaven Fasting, The Way Things Are, Diary of a Provincial Lady
George Eliot, The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob
Georgette Heyer, The Nonesuch: still such a midrank Heyer that I just had to go look it up to remember what it was about. Oh, right, that one. Well, midrank Heyer is still usually entertaining, and I like this one's sensible governess heroine.
Nina Kiriki Hoffman, A Stir of Bones, A Red Heart of Memories, Past the Size of Dreaming: I love the way Hoffman injects magic into everyday life. I went around for a while afterward wishing I could see gold magic all around my house.
Maureen Johnson, The Bermudez Triangle
Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs
Nancy Mitford, The Sun King: Oh, Nancy, how I love your gossipy wit. I'm currently reading a biography of Mme de Montespan and seeing lots of echoes of Mitford in it.
Tamora Pierce, the Protector of the Small series
Sherwood Smith, Crown Duel: I particularly liked rereading this after A Stranger to Command, since I'm fond of Vidanric anyway.
Winifred Watson, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: I reread this after watching the movie, and do you know, I think I prefer the movie. For one thing, it doesn't have the offensive racial remarks; for another, I like how the movie's including the World War II bits deepened the relationship between Miss Pettigrew and her beau.

Total books read this month: 39
Total books read this year: 314


Last updated 3 November 2008. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.