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2 January 2007

• Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon: Gopnik spent five years living in Paris with his wife and his small son, writing articles for the New Yorker on life in Paris; this book collects many of those articles along with some of Gopnik's personal journals from that period. I found Paris to the Moon finely written and frequently witty, and I quite liked the mix of personal reminiscence and social and cultural commentary. Though I can see how those expecting a book about Paris might find that there's too much of the former, I thought it was nicely balanced.

Books read: 1

3 January 2007

• Ellen Klages, The Green Glass Sea: It's November 1943, and budding inventor Dewey Kerrigan is on her way to New Mexico to live with her father. When she arrives, she finds that she'll be living in Los Alamos, where her father is involved with a secret project which has something to do with the war. I liked this a lot: the writing is lucid, and the depiction of the time and place is absorbing and convincing.

Books read: 1

4 January 2007

• Alexandre Dumas, La Reine Margot: Here Dumas takes on the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, focusing on Marguerite de Valois, Henry of Navarre (later Henry IV), and the villainous (in Dumas' version) Catherine de' Medici. This is as full of action and intrigue as The Three Musketeers, but I found the characters a little less well-rounded. Though Catherine is wonderfully villainous and Henry of Navarre makes a good solitary hero, the two noblemen who are the romantic leads lack the nobility of Athos or the cleverness of d'Artagnan. I guess I'll just have to pick up the next Musketeers book soon.

Books read: 1

6 January 2007

• Adele Geras, the Egerton Hall trilogy (The Tower Room, Watching the Roses, Pictures of the Night): Set in an English boarding school in the 1960s, these three books follow the adventures of three friends, each of whom becomes the main character in a retold fairy tale. (I imagine you can guess which three fairy tales fairly easily from the book titles.) One would think that the combination of retold fairy tale and boarding school would be just up my alley, but unfortunately, the plots and characters were on the weak side. The fairy tale elements were sometimes clever, but often forced so as to hit every possible recognizable element of the tale in question; I found myself rolling my eyes as often as smiling when I caught a reference. I'd recommend Geras' Troy or Ithaka over these.

Books read: 3

9 January 2007

• Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak: Melinda is starting a new year at school, but not in a good way: at an end-of-summer party, she called the cops and got everyone busted. It's not just that, though; something happened at that party that Melinda doesn't even want to think, let alone speak, about. I really liked this. The style is trenchant and darkly funny, and the sarcastic Melinda is a memorable heroine. I can't say that I was terribly surprised by her secret, but the gradual reveal was handled well.

Books read: 1

11 January 2007

• Avram Davidson, Vergil in Averno: I got this from Powell's, having looked for it since reading The Phoenix and the Mirror last summer; I'm actually surprised that it didn't take me all that long to find a copy (though it was $35, but that's for a good-condition hardcover). Anyway, I still loved Davidson's rich prose, but I felt more detached from the story and characters (even Vergil) in this book than in the previous one, so I didn't like it quite as much.

Books read:

17 January 2007

• Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon: This is rather dry, but well-organized and lucid. The first two-thirds are stronger than the last, which deals with the Revolution; here Jones becomes less detailed than I wanted, assuming a level of knowledge on the reader's part with such recaps as this: "The tale of 14 July 1789 has been painted into every storybook history of France, and the raw elements...need little recounting." Okay, yes, I do essentially know the story of the attack on the Bastille, but a recounting of longer than a paragraph would have been appreciated. Still, I found the first two-thirds excellent and the last certainly serviceable.

Books read: 1

23 January 2007

• Mary Gentle, the Ash books (A Secret History, Carthage Ascendant, The Wild Machines, Lost Burgundy): I have nothing coherent to say about these (particularly writing them up a month later) except that they ate my brain. In a good way, y'know -- totally fascinating alternate history. Okay, I did think the pacing was a little slow sometimes, but they were utterly absorbing anyway.

Books read: 1

31 January 2007

• Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare & Company: This is Beach's memoir of her long time in Paris as bookseller, publisher, and literary den mother; she was friends with writers from Andre Gide to Ernest Hemingway and published James Joyce's Ulysses when no other publisher would touch it. I liked it a lot, but I can see the flaws in it. Beach's focus is always on others, especially Joyce, and I wanted more of her personal history and of her more candid opinions. Fortunately, I had to hand Noel Riley Fitch's excellent Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation (highly recommended) to fill in the gaps.

Books read: 1

• Susan Carroll, The Dark Queen, The Courtesan, The Silver Rose: mildly entertaining historical fantasy/romance (they seem marketed as straight historical fiction, but are clearly fantasy -- I mean, Catherine de' Medici casts actual spells and everything).
• Elizabeth Hand, Waking the Moon: I think I need to read this again before I can say anything intelligent about it. Gorgeous style, enthralling, but I'm not sure the plot quite hung together.
• Jeremy Mercer, Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare and Co.: glad I got it from the library; it was a reasonably interesting look at the current incarnation of Shakespeare and Company, but I can't say as I was enthralled by the style or the writer himself.
• Martha Wells, City of Bones: enjoyable, as Wells always is; I particularly liked the post-apocalyptic setting and the main characters.

• Pamela Dean, Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary: reread -- I love it up until the last fifty pages, which I find rushed and unsatisfying.
• Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast: reread, though it's been years and years since I read it. In fact, it's been so long since I read any Hemingway that I'd forgotten how much I like his laconic style.
• Georgette Heyer, The Unknown Ajax: reread -- still a favorite Heyer.
• Robin McKinley, Sunshine: favorite.
• Barbara Michaels, Witch: reread.
• Elizabeth Peters, Borrower of the Night, Street of the Five Moons, Silhouette in Scarlet, Trojan Gold, Night Train to Memphis: rereads -- I'm sure I've whined this before, but I do wish she'd write more of these and leave off with the Amelia Peabody Emerson books for a while.

Total books read this month: 30
Total books read this year: 30

Last updated 21 May 2007. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.