Archives - December 2008 archives -- index by author -- index by category -- favorite books -- links

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I mostly skipped booklogging in December, save for a few short comments:

• Louisa May Alcott, Moods: Moods was Alcott's first published novel, originally published in 1864, then heavily revised and reissued in 1882. The edition I read is the 1864 edition, with appendices including the 1882 revisions, which is fascinating as far as seeing what Alcott changed. Her story of a woman subject to moods (someone we might call manic-depressive or bipolar today) is uneven, but ambitious in its attempt to portray an unusual heroine's psyche and the restrictions of her life.
  
  
• Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains: very good American Revolutionary slavery tale, nothing like Octavian Nothing (inevitable comparison), but good in itself. I do wish publishers would be more revealing about whether a book is the first in a series, instead of waiting until the very last page to tell you; this one had a reasonably tight resolution, though.
  
  
• Marion Zimmer Bradley, Darkover Landfall, Two to Conquer, The Heirs of Hammerfell, The Heritage of Hastur, Sharra's Exile, The Planet Savers, The World Wreckers, Sword of Chaos: The Heritage of Hastur and Sharra's Exile were clearly the standouts of this bunch; the rest were fine, except for the cracktastic ending of The Heirs of Hammerfell (turning forest animals into the semblance of humans in order to frighten away the invading army WTF?). I think I will probably try the Deborah J. Ross Darkover novels, but not the Adrienne Martine-Barnes ones, which seem to have gotten generally bad reviews.
  
  
• Nancy Farmer, A Girl Named Disaster: I didn't like this quite as much as The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, as it was maybe a little slow in the middle, but still, I loved her heroine and beautifully detailed setting (early 1980s Mozambique and Zimbabwe).
  
  
• Sherwood Smith, The Trouble with Kings: yummy fantasy romance, with lots of intrigue, adventures, and great characters.
  
  
• Sherry Thomas, Delicious: mmm, food porn. I think she still, as in Private Arrangements, hasn't quite got the hang of resolving things without making it too easy, but I liked this a lot anyway and will continue to read her.
  
  
• Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf: easily the best biography I read all year, and possibly the best I've ever read: certainly in the top ten. Lee shows Woolf from many angles and with many layers, allowing her full complexity to shine through, never reducing her to just one self.
  
  
• John Matteson, Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father: more sympathetic to Bronson than I think I could be, but impressively balanced and detailed.
  
  
• Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller: I really liked this starting out, but I was less impressed when I finished. At her best, Mayes has a lovely gift for the sensual evocation of places, but at her worst, she's snobbish, insincere, and pretentious. By the end of the book, I was tired of her disdain for tourists (what does she think she is, anyway?) and her overly precious dialogues with her husband.
  
  

• Louisa May Alcott, The Inheritance
• Lewis Shiner, Glimpses
• Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
• Anthony Trollope, Castle Richmond
• Edith Wharton, Madame de Treymes

• Louisa May Alcott, The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott, edited by Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy
• David Andress, The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France
• Lewis Buzbee, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop
• Michael Dirda, Book by Book
• The Disney Imagineers, The Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland
• Don Hahn, The Alchemy of Animation
• John Hench, Designing Disney
• Diane Johnson, Into a Paris Quartier
• Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf's Nose: Essays on Biography
• Merilyn Simonds, ed., Gardens: A Literary Companion
• Susan Allen Toth, England for All Seasons

• Louisa May Alcott, Jack and Jill, An Old-Fashioned Girl, A Garland for Girls
• L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle, Kilmeny of the Orchard (had forgotten how bad this is), The Road to Yesterday, The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories, The Story Girl, The Golden Road, Akin to Anne, Christmas with Anne
• Anna Quindlen, Imagined London
• William Shakespeare, Richard III
• Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Total books read this month: 48
Total books read this year: 460

Last updated 2 March 2009. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.