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4 February 2004

• Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton, We Seven: should be called John Glenn and the Other Six. This was published in 1962, after the Mercury missions, and far more attention is paid to Glenn's mission than to any of the others, while he's listed as the author of six of the book's twenty-six chapters. Definitely a valuable addition to our space library and a engaging look at the astronauts and the program, but I could wish that it had been less Glenn-centric.
  
  
• Dave Barry, Tricky Business: I should have known not to pick up a Dave Barry book at 11pm. I ended up staying up until 2am finishing the darn thing - so fast-paced and funny that I just couldn't put it down.
  
  
• Philip Pullman, Lyra's Oxford: beautiful little companion book to the wonderful His Dark Materials trilogy, but were the contents really worth the $10.95 price tag? One short story, a map, some advertisements from Lyra's alternate universe, and a postcard? Yes, it was nice to revisit Lyra and her world, but I'd have been annoyed at the lack of content if I'd bought the book at full price.
  
  
• Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton, Jay Barbree, Howard Benedict, Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon: mainly valuable for good accounts of Apollo 14 (Shepard's moon landing) and Apollo-Soyuz (Slayton's only space flight). Otherwise, not nearly detailed enough, and there are way too many recreated conversations, which I think are out of place in this kind of narrative. If you want a really good account of the Apollo program, go read Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon.
  
  
• Cal Ripken, Jr., and Mike Bryan, The Only Way I Know: an introspective autobiography from the Iron Man, written after he broke Lou Gehrig's streak of 2130 consecutive games played, but before he ended his own streak at 2632 games.
  
  
• Aaron Elkins, Good Blood: another excellent entry in the Gideon Oliver mystery series, with the usual tight plot, witty dialogue, and fascinating forensic anthropology.
  
  
• Lois McMaster Bujold, Cordelia's Honor: okay, color me a Bujold fan. I guess I'll have to pick up the rest of the Vorkosigan series, if this book (actually an omnibus of two books, Shards of Honor and Barrayar) is any indication. It's the story of Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan, military officers from two different planets, which are at war with each other; the two are trapped together on an uncharted planet and must work together to survive, and inevitably, they fall in love and have to figure out how to reconcile their two very different cultures. Cordelia in particular is an outstandingly well-realized and strong character, and the story really is of how she changes to adapt to Vorkosigan's society and how she also changes it.

Books read: 8

6 February 2004

• Franny Billingsley, Well-Wished: Be careful what you wish for, or as Stephen Sondheim says, "Wishes come true, not free." There's a wishing well in Nuria's village, where any person may make just one wish, but there's a catch: the wishes often go awry, and one has caused all of the children in the village to disappear, except Nuria, who lives outside the village with her grandfather. When one child, Catty, does come up, things start to happen, and Nuria has to figure out how to use her one wish. This is another imaginative, well-characterized fantasy by the author of The Folk Keeper, a fine young adult fantasy.
  
  
• Lois McMaster Bujold, The Spirit Ring: a historical fantasy, set in Renaissance Italy. A fun read, but somehow I felt it wasn't quite up to Bujold's standards, either the Vorkosigan saga (which I've started after reading Cordelia's Honor) or The Curse of Chalion. It just seemed a little lacking in humor and in the deep characterization of her other novels. Don't let this stop you from reading it, though, as it was certainly entertaining.
  
  
• Mary Taylor, Miss Miles: a Victorian novel by one of Charlotte Brontë's closest friends; apparently there's some controversy over whether Taylor wrote the book or whether Brontë did. I can't seem to find much about this on the Internet, and I wish I could, as I have a very hard time believing that Brontë wrote it. The style didn't particularly remind me of Brontë (and I've read all of her novels, some multiple times), and the subject matter was far more overtly feminist than Brontë ever allowed herself to be.
  
  The novel traces the lives of four women - Sarah (the "Miss Miles" of the title), Maria, Dora, and Amelia - focusing particularly on their efforts to gain economic independence and thus on women's role in society. I thought that perhaps fewer heroines would have improved the plot, as it was a little confusing to be constantly switching viewpoints and plot threads. However, it was extremely refreshing to read a Victorian novel that actually showed women out earning a living for themselves (or trying - one of them fails and pays the price).

Books read: 3

11 February 2004

• Robin Hobb, Golden Fool, Fool's Fate: the final two books in the Tawny Man trilogy. (I have read the first, Fool's Errand, a couple of times and decided I didn't need to reread it when Fool's Fate came out.)
  
  When I first heard that Hobb was writing another series (after the Farseer trilogy) about FitzChivalry Farseer, I thought, "Geez, what can she possibly have to say about these characters after the first, excellent trilogy?" Well, Hobb came through. I wasn't absolutely entranced with the first book, Fool's Errand, because it felt too much like all setup and no payoff, but there was payoff galore in the other two books. Fool's Fate was particularly riveting, to the extent that I kept shushing George when he wanted to read me bits of the books he was reading while I was reading it. Altogether, a perfect finale not only to the original Fitz trilogy, but also to Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy.
  
  
• Vivian Vande Velde, A Well-Timed Enchantment: fluffy and mildly entertaining young adult fantasy.

Books read: 3

15 February 2004

• Esther Averill, Jenny and the Cat Club: A Collection of Favorite Stories about Jenny Linsky: wonderful stories about Jenny Linsky, a little black cat who lives with her sea-captain owner (who teaches her the hornpipe). I hadn't read these for a really, really long time. I used to get them out of the library all the time when I was seven or eight, but I couldn't even remember the author's name until I ran across this reissue listed in a Common Reader catalog and rejoicingly ordered it. And you know what? The stories are just as lovely as I remembered them, with simple and charming illustrations by the author. How nice to revisit a childhood favorite that stands up to the test of time - I can't wait to read these to Liam when he's a little older.
  
  
• Louise Fitzhugh, Nobody's Family Is Going to Change: I ran across this at Powell's earlier this month and picked it up at once; I'd never heard of it before, but of course I love her other children's books (most notably the classic Harriet the Spy). This one is about Emma, who wants to become a lawyer, and her little brother Willie, who wants to be a dancer, and their struggle to realize their dreams in spite of the opposition from their parents, who feel that boys shouldn't be dancers and girls shouldn't be lawyers. The book felt a little preachy and didn't speak to me as viscerally as Harriet always has, but it's still an interesting look at different kinds of discrimination and how they can affect children as well as adults.
  
  
• Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring: a fascinating take on what might have lain behind the creation of Vermeer's painting Girl with a Pearl Earring. The heroine and narrator of the novel is Griet, who joins Vermeer's household as a servant and becomes the subject of his painting and the unwilling cause of much turmoil in his family. The style is luminously straightforward and sharply observed, mirroring the style of Vermeer's paintings and creating a truly absorbing novel.
  
  
• Bruce Gordon and David Mumford, Disneyland: The Nickel Tour: a beautifully produced history of Disneyland, featuring every postcard ever published there and supplemented with many more photographs (and many dreadful puns). A must-have for the true Disneyland fan! This is tough to get through most online booksellers, but you can get it straight from the publisher, Camphor Tree Publishers.

Books read: 4

18 February 2004

• Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines: Bourdain, who dissed TV chefs in his previous book, Kitchen Confidential (included in my January 28th log), becomes a TV chef himself for the Food Network series "A Cook's Tour" and along the way, produces another very funny book.

Books read: 1

20 February 2004

• Lesley and Roy Adkins, The Keys of Egypt: The Race to Crack the Hieroglyphic Code: essentially a biography of Jean-Francois Champollion, the 19th-century scholar who first deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics. I could have done with a little more about the decoding process and the hieroglyphics themselves, but overall this was a reasonably well-written and readable biography.
  
  
• Diana Gabaldon, Outlander: I have very mixed feelings about this book. I was a little wary of trying it in the first place, because it's really a romance novel, not a genre I'm usually interested in, but it's gotten such stellar reviews over the years that I decided to get it from the library and try it. While on vacation in Scotland with her husband Frank after WWII, Claire Randall touches a mysterious stone that sends her back in time two hundred years, to the Scotland of Jacobite uprisings and Bonnie Prince Charlie, where she meets and falls in love with Jamie Fraser, a young Scots warrior.
  
  The characters are very well-drawn, the writing is good, and the historical background is detailed and convincing. The obligatory sex scenes are not too terribly cliched or frequent, but particularly near the end of the book, the increasing amount of sexual violence began to bother me. I'll probably check out the next book in the series, Dragonfly in Amber, as I'd like to know what's going to happen next, but I'll likely stop reading the series if it doesn't get a little less graphic.

Books read: 2

21 February 2004

• Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle: on my favorites page.

Books read: 1

23 February 2004

• Lois McMaster Bujold, the Vorkosigan Saga (Falling Free, The Warrior's Apprentice, The Vor Game, Cetaganda, Ethan of Athos, Brothers in Arms, Borders of Infinity (a collection of novellas), Mirror Dance, Memory, Komarr, A Civil Campaign, Diplomatic Immunity): note that I didn't actually read all of these over the two days since my last entry; I've been reading them for the past couple of weeks interspersed with other books and decided that it would be easier to log them all together. The Vorkosigan books also include Shards of Honor and Barrayar (included in the omnibus edition Cordelia's Honor), which I read several weeks ago in order to decide whether to read the whole series. Many of the other novels are also available in omnibus editions: The Warrior's Apprentice, The Vor Game, and "The Mountains of Mourning" from Borders of Infinity in Young Miles; Cetaganda, Ethan of Athos and "Labyrinth" from Borders of Infinity in Miles, Mystery, and Mayhem; and Brothers in Arms, Mirror Dance, and "Borders of Infinity" from Borders of Infinity in Miles Errant.
  
  This is an outstanding series. I tried to ration myself, but once I'd read Cordelia's Honor, I read the rest like eating candy. The main character is Miles Vorkosigan, the son of Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan (see Cordelia's Honor), who is born stunted and with brittle bones after a poison gas assassination attempt on Aral affects Cordelia during her pregnancy. Miles is a remarkable character; hyperactive as well as wildly intelligent, he careens from adventure to adventure at a breathless pace in Bujold's well-thought-out universe, supported by a cast of memorable characters such as his parents, his cousin Ivan, his clone-brother Mark, and various lady loves. Bujold has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards for books in this series, and it's no surprise. Mirror Dance, while it may be the most grim, was also my favorite; in it, Miles meets his clone-brother Mark again (whom he first encountered in Brothers in Arms, with near-disastrous results for both of them.
  
  Note that Falling Free and Ethan of Athos, while set in the same universe, aren't technically part of the Vorkosigan saga, as they don't involve Miles (or his parents) directly. Falling Free is set about 200 years before Cordelia's Honor and deals with the genetic engineering of the Quaddie race (a humanoid species with a second set of arms where their legs would be). Ethan of Athos features Elli Quinn, a major character from the Miles books, who's on an intelligence mission and falls in with Dr. Ethan Urquhart of Athos, a planet populated entirely by men. Both books are definitely worth reading in addition to the Miles-centered books.

Books read: 12

25 February 2004

• E.F. Benson, Queen Lucia, Lucia in London, Miss Mapp, Mapp and Lucia, Lucia's Progress, Trouble for Lucia: a wickedly funny skewering of English village society, through the characters of Mrs. Emmeline Lucas (known as Lucia) and Miss Elizabeth Mapp, who strive to queen it over their villages. Queen Lucia and Lucia in London feature Lucia, Miss Mapp features Mapp, and the last three books star both ladies. All of the books are fast and funny reads, good on a rainy afternoon with a cup of tea.

Books read: 6

26 February 2004

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret: absorbing Victorian sensation novel - murder, arson, blackmail, bigamy, you name it. Braddon's writing style is nothing special, but the plot is fast-paced and never dull, and the main character is a nicely manipulative villainess. I'll have to read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins soon, as this book is often compared to it.
  
  
• Kevin Yee and Jason Schultz, Magic Quizdom: a great little Disneyland trivia book. Each chapter covers one land, with three sections of questions: Easy, Medium, and Difficult (I generally got all of the Easy questions right, most of the Medium, and about half of the Difficult - it would have been less, I think, if I hadn't just read the excellent Disneyland: The Nickel Tour). Answers are provided at the end of each chapter, and happily, the answers provide additional interesting details. You can purchase a copy online at the LaughingPlace Store.
  
  
• William Goldman (masquerading as S. Morgenstern), The Silent Gondoliers: technically a reread, but I read it so long ago that I barely remembered it at all. Not at all similar to The Princess Bride, though nominally also written by S. Morgenstern, this is a simply written and whimsical fable telling the story of Luigi, a gondolier of Venice, and how the famous singing gondoliers became silent. Short and sweet.

Books read: 3

29 February 2004

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon, John Marchmont's Legacy: sadly not as absorbing as Lady Audley's Secret. The plot is a fairly standard inheritance type, with the heroine threatened by relatives who want her inheritance, but it just took a long time to get going. On the plus side (and balancing out the exceptionally insipid heroine), there's an excellent portrait of a strong, intelligent woman, in Olivia Arundel, who is stifled by the limited role of women in Victorian society and turns to evildoing as a result of her frustration and jealousy of the heroine.
  
  
• Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls: Bujold returns to the world of The Curse of Chalion with the story of Ista dy Chalion and a further delving into the world of Chalion and particularly its religion. Ista is an ex-saint, a woman who was touched by the gods and then left by them; after the accession of her daughter to the throne of Chalion (in The Curse of Chalion) and the death of her mother, she is free to make a pilgrimage in order to discover some purpose to her life. Drawn into a conflict between one of Chalion's border strongholds and the neighboring enemy land, Ista discovers that she has been called by the gods again. Religion is much more of a factor in Bujold's fantasy world than in many others, and the gods are just around the corner, though as the god called the Bastard reminds Ista, they cannot touch the world but through a willing vessel. Typically rich world-building and powerful characterizations make this a worthy sequel to the superb The Curse of Chalion; apparently Bujold is working on a new Chalion novel, which I eagerly anticipate.

Books read: 2

Total books read this month: 45
Total books read this year: 90

Last updated 29 November 2005. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.