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3 July 2004

• I was in the mood for more Wilkie Collins after Hide and Seek, so I picked up his next novel, The Dead Secret. Like Hide and Seek, it's not as good as the string of novels which immediately followed it (including The Woman in White and Armadale), but it's definitely worth reading, with a good measure of suspense and action, as well as complex characters, particularly Sarah Leeson, the woman who hides the "dead secret" of the title, and Rosamond Frankland, the woman who discovers it.

Books read: 1

5 July 2004

• With the plethora of books on the early space program, I've long been puzzled that there wasn't a biography of Alan Shepard out there, so I was pleased to note the publication of Neal Thompson's Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard, America's First Spaceman. Alas, though the book is full of interesting information on Shepard, much of which I hadn't seen before (particularly dealing with his life before and after the space program), it's written in an awkward style which detracted enormously from my enjoyment of it. Surely any competent copy editor ought to be able to catch errors such as using "protagonist" for "antagonist". However, as it's the only biography of Alan Shepard available (one that's meant for adults, at least), it's a useful addition to the literature, even if not fully satisfactory.

Books read: 1

6 July 2004

• Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky is a sequel to The Wee Free Men, the second of his young adult books set in Pratchett's Discworld universe. It picks up the story of young witch Tiffany Aching and her friends, the Nac Mac Feegle (the Wee Free Men), a group of tiny, thieving, drinking, fighting fairies. When Tiffany leaves her home on the Chalk to train as a witch with the two-bodied Miss Level, the Nac Mac Feegle discover that she's being stalked by a monster and set out to protect her. Pratchett's young adult books have felt fresher to me lately than the adult Discworld books (some of whose characters have been around too long), and this one is no exception; it's sharply written and characterized, and hilarious as always.
  
  
• Sean Stewart's Mockingbird is a quirky contemporary fantasy of a woman who inherits her mother's magical powers and voodoo gods: witty, observant, and engrossing. This is the first I've read of Stewart's books, and I'll be on the lookout for more.

Books read: 2

8 July 2004

• Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate, and Don't Tell Alfred are on my favorites page.

Books read: 3

10 July 2004

• Laura Thompson's Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford arrived in the mail recently, and I pounced on it immediately. Written in a charming and chatty style not unlike that of Nancy Mitford herself, Life in a Cold Climate analyzes Mitford's life, works, and relationships in an engaging and perceptive way; the book is clearly based on excellent research (including extensive interviews with the two sisters of Nancy still alive when the book was written, Lady Diana Mosley and Deborah Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire) and a deep knowledge of Nancy's writings. It's been long enough since I read Selina Hastings's biography of Nancy Mitford that I can't compare the two directly, but I certainly recommend Thompson's book very highly to anyone who wants insight into the complex and controversial Nancy Mitford.

Books read: 1

11 July 2004

• Jeanne DuPrau's The City of Ember takes place in a city of darkness, in which the only light is provided by an electrical generator which is slowly breaking down, yet nobody knows how to fix it. The book begins when Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow turn twelve and are assigned jobs in Ember; Lina becomes a Messenger, and Doon works underground in the Pipeworks, where he hopes to be able to fix the generator. When Lina finds fragments of a mysterious ancient parchment with a message on it, she and Doon must decipher it in order to save the city. Apparently there is a recent sequel, which is a good thing; although I found the setting haunting and the story engaging, the ending was abrupt and the characters not well developed - perhaps the sequel will improve in these areas and carry out the promise of the setting and story.

Books read: 1

12 July 2004

• Ruth Rendell's The Keys to the Street is the first Rendell I've read, and now I wonder why it took me so long to discover her. Apparently Rendell writes both a mystery series featuring Inspector Wexford and stand-alone suspense novels, of which The Keys to the Street is one of the latter. The plot is centered around a series of murders of homeless people in London's Regent's Park; around these events, Rendell weaves the lives of the characters: Mary Jago, a young woman who has recently left an abusive relationship; Leo Nash, the mysterious man to whom she has anonymously donated her bone marrow; Roman Ashton, a homeless man who has chosen to live on the streets after a personal tragedy; Bean, the odd elderly man who works as a dog walker; Hob, the drug addict who beats people up for money; and many others. Rendell writes trenchantly yet elegantly; she sees deeply into her characters, with penetrating insight, and brings seemingly separate lives together into a shocking, yet satisfying conclusion.

Books read: 1

13 July 2004

• I worked at Amazon.com for more than three years (from October 1996 to January 2000), during the height of the dot.com craze, so when I saw James Marcus's memoir, Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the dot.com Juggernaut, I was eager to check it out. Marcus worked there from 1996 to 2001 as a senior book editor, and his book is an elegantly written, rueful, and observant look at how Amazon changed from a tiny startup, run out of Jeff Bezos's garage, to the international leviathan it is today. Amazonia was fascinating to me for the nostalgic value and for the look at the inner workings of a department other than my own (I worked in Customer Service as the training manager); it might not be quite as fascinating for a non-Amazonian, but I'd recommend it if you're at all interested in the early years of Amazon.com.

Books read: 1

15 July 2004

• I encountered the Curzon sisters (the three daughters of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India in the early 20th century) through reading about the Mitford sisters; the second sister, Cynthia (or Cimmie) was the first wife of Oswald Mosley, the British fascist leader, who later married Diana Mitford Guinness. Cimmie and her sisters sounded like interesting people themselves, so I picked up The Viceroy's Daughters: The Lives of the Curzon Sisters by Anne de Courcy, which turned out to be just what I like in a biography: a wealth of detail, a lively prose style, and a fascinating subject and characters. Besides the Curzon sisters themselves -- Irene, Cimmie, and Baba -- The Viceroy's Daughters talks about such varied figures as the arrogant, anti-feminist Lord Curzon, his lover Elinor Glyn (the well-known and slightly scandalous writer), Sir Oswald Mosley, Diana Mitford, Winston Churchill, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Books read: 1

16 July 2004

• Susan Isaacs's Shining Through is on my favorites page.

Books read: 1

17 July 2004

• Sarah Waters's Fingersmith is an engrossing tale of deception and duplicity, set in Victorian London and boasting a plot worthy of Wilkie Collins, the master of the Victorian sensation novel. Sue Trinder is an orphan, brought up by Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer", who raises the babies of other women and sells them to those who want them. One day, the con man Gentleman arrives with a proposition for Sue: she will become the maid of Maud Lilly, an heiress, and help Gentleman to marry Maud and then put her away in an insane asylum (shades of Collins's The Woman in White), whereupon Gentleman and Sue can split her fortune.
  
  From there on, the plot becomes Byzantine in its twists and turns, as Waters explores the growing relationship between Sue, Maud, and the rest of the people who populate Fingersmith's pages. With compelling, complex characters and the detailed historical background of the oft-ignored seamier side to the Victorian era, Fingersmith is a truly gripping book; I almost couldn't put it down.

Books read: 1

18 July 2004

• Fire Bringer, by David Clement-Davies, is a young adult animal fantasy about a young deer, Rannoch, who is born to become a hero and save all of the herds from an evil deer who wants to control them all. Unfortunately, the book doesn't live up to the promise of its interesting beginning. Clement-Davies obviously knows his deer facts, but instead of working them into the narrative along the way, he tends to dump them in clumps. Since the book is written from the point of view of the deer (third person), the constant intrusion of an obviously human narrator is jarring. Take this passage, in which Rannoch and his friends have sought shelter in a mysterious cave in the mountains:
  
  "At the pool's bottom lay the fossilized remains of an antler. But it was no antler that Rannoch and the others would have understood. It was the beam of a creature named Megaloceros; a deer that had once stood six feet tall and whose antlers, in turn, rose six feet in height above its mighty head."
  
  Clement-Davies goes on to describe the antler and its owner in even more detail. Do Rannoch and his friends even see the antler? Nope. Then why spend a paragraph on it? If it's important to the story, perhaps the deer could see the antler and speculate about it and their ancestors. Otherwise, it's just a distraction.
  
  While the story has its interesting moments and characters, the narrative lacks good pacing, and the plot is really too similar to Watership Down, making Fire Bringer an ultimately unsatisfying experience.

Books read: 1

19 July 2004

• Meredith Ann Pierce's Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood is as beautifully written as her other books, but lacks a little in plot. Brown Hannah is a mysterious girl who lives with her animal friends in the Tanglewood; in her hair grow leaves and flowers, and she helps the people of a nearby village with herbs and charms. When she meets a knight in search of the fabled treasure of the Tanglewood and challenges the enigmatic wizard who lives at the heart of the wood, she decides to leave the wood in search of her true identity. Unfortunately, although Hannah is an engagingly naive and charming character, the mystery of her identity becomes clear to the reader much sooner than it does to Hannah, and thus the ending is a let-down, lacking suspense and a clear resolution.

Books read: 1

21 July 2004

• The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest is a collection of short stories about the spirit (or spirits) of nature, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. I usually like Datlow and Windling's collections a lot, but this one fell a little short; several of the selections were rather ho-hum. However, it was worth reading for the stories by Emma Bull, Charles de Lint, Tanith Lee, Midori Snyder, and M. Shayne Bell, all of which were excellent.

Books read: 1

22 July 2004

• I decided to see whether the library had any books by Dodie Smith (whose I Capture the Castle is one of my favorite books) and was pleasantly surprised to find that, along with a zillion copies of 101 Dalmatians, they had one I hadn't read, A Tale of Two Families. May and June are sisters who have married brothers, Robert and George; when May and George decide to move to the country, they invite June and Robert to move into the cottage on the estate. Joining them at various times are also their children, Robert and George's father Baggy, May and June's mother Fran, and their appalling aunt Mildred. It's an engaging book with appealing characters and a lovely sense of place.

Books read: 1

25 July 2004

• Pamela Belle's The Lodestar is a prequel of sorts to her English Civil War series about the Heron family; The Lodestar is set during the last years of the Wars of the Roses. Christie Heron is a minor gentleman who goes into the service of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who is later, of course, to become King Richard III. Christie's story intertwines with Richard's until the climactic Battle of Bosworth, when Richard is defeated by Henry Tudor. As always with Belle, the characters are lively and the historical details convincing, but somehow the dual focus (on Christie's personal battles and on Richard's political ones) didn't quite mesh for me.

Books read: 1

26 July 2004

• Andrew Schulman's The Northwest Cottage Garden is an excellent primer on how to create a cottage garden in the Pacific Northwest. Schulman starts by explaining the elements of cottage garden design and then goes on to a detailed guide to choosing plants, those traditionally English as well as less traditional but suitable Northwest plants. I could have wished for a few more photographs showing the plants Schulman describes, but overall, this is an invaluable guide for gardeners in the Pacific Northwest who want to try out this time-honored style of gardening.

Books read: 1

27 July 2004

• Harold Acton's Nancy Mitford: A Memoir is a wonderfully personal remembrance of Mitford by one of her oldest friends. Acton worked from scads of her delightfully chatty letters and quotes liberally from them, so that it's as if Nancy herself wrote the memoir (which may have been partially Acton's aim, as she died before she could complete her autobiography). It's not nearly as complete a biography as those by Selina Hastings or Laura Thompson, but the quotations and personal anecdotes make it essential reading for Mitford fans.
  
  
• Someday I'll have all of Antonia Forest's marvelous children's books, but for now I'm just happy when I get my hands on one every once in a while. The Ready-Made Family is the latest of Forest's books to be reprinted by the marvelous people of Girls Gone By Publishers, and it's one I was particularly looking forward to, as the events of this book reverberate through the later books in the series (two of which I've read).
  
  Nicola and Lawrie Marlow's eldest sister, Karen, returns home from Oxford one day to announce that she's getting married in three weeks, to a widower twice her age with three children; not only that, but they have no place to live yet, so they end up living with the Marlow family. Forest examines the complex relationships between the Marlows and Dodds with a penetrating and truthful eye, accompanied by her usual humor and occasional doses of exciting action. These are much more than just boarding school stories (to which genre they're frequently relegated, because four of the ten books take place at the Marlows' boarding school); they're original, non-formulaic, intelligent, and peopled with real people. Though they're hard to find, they're more than worth the effort - I hope Girls Gone By finishes reprinting them very soon so that I can complete my collection.

Books read: 2

29 July 2004

• I had high hopes for Teri Dunn and Ciscoe Morris's Beautiful Roses Made Easy: Northwestern Edition, as I haven't found an entirely satisfactory PNW rose book as yet. However, it didn't really fit my needs. There are two sections of recommended roses; the first, and by far the larger, is heavily weighted toward modern roses and appears not to be specific to this region. The list of Ciscoe's favorites is region specific and includes more roses of classes other than hybrid teas, grandifloras, and floribundas, but it's short: only 33 roses are listed.
  
  If you're new to growing roses in the Pacific Northwest, this is probably a good book to get; it does have useful information on growing roses, landscaping with roses, and many nice pictures (though some are annoyingly unlabeled). However, given the lack of sufficient region-specific recommendations, I'd stick with Rayford Clayton Reddell's The Rose Bible for general rose recommendations and growing advice and Jeff Cox's Landscape with Roses for landscaping and design suggestions.

Books read: 1

31 July 2004

• Daniel Hinkley's Winter Ornamentals is a useful and opinionated, though short, guide to winter gardening in the Pacific Northwest, by the owner of the wonderful Heronswood Nursery, which is just down the road from us.

Books read: 1

Total books read this month: 24
Total books read this year: 227

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