Archives - May 2006 archives -- index by author -- index by category -- favorite books -- links

Search Now:

1 May 2006

• Jill Paton Walsh, Debts of Dishonor: the recently published third entry in her Imogen Quy mystery series, and a disappointment. I liked the first book, The Wyndham Case, and really liked the second, A Piece of Justice, but this one didn't come up to snuff. The world-of-high-finance plot was unlikely, particularly the resolution, and I didn't think any of the characters, other than the continuing ones like Imogen herself, interesting.

Books read: 1

2 May 2006

• Georgette Heyer, Venetia: This was delightful -- I think it's now one of my favorite Heyers, along with Cotillion, The Grand Sophy, and Frederica. The romance grew beautifully out of the friendship between the heroine and the hero, and the characterization was just excellent.

Books read: 1

3 May 2006

• Eloisa James, The Taming of the Duke: the third in the Essex sisters series. I liked it a little more than I was worried I would; I was surprised that James managed to make Imogen (heretofore the most annoying sister) more sympathetic, and I liked the hero a lot. There was also a nice secondary romance. However, the plot was not compelling and wrapped both romances up way too fast. I'll read the fourth in the series, but then I think I may be off James.

Books read: 1

4 May 2006

• A.S. Byatt, The Game: Possession is one of my favorite books, so I thought I ought to try some other Byatt. Maybe this wasn't the one to start with, because I didn't really like it. It's about two sisters, hostile to each other in adulthood, but still connected by the childhood fantasy game they used to play (based on Arthurian romance, and I wanted to hear a lot more about the world and the game than I did) and by the man they were both in love with. When that man comes back into their lives, the sisters are drawn into proximity again. I had moments of being interested by the character's relationships, but the moments were few and far between, as mostly I disliked the characters. Also, the sisters struck me as being based on Byatt herself and her sister, Margaret Drabble, and Byatt's treatment of Julia, the sister based on Drabble, struck me as awfully mean-spirited; I probably should have been able to ignore this, but I couldn't. Altogether, though I admire Byatt's writing, I just didn't like this book.

Books read: 1

5 May 2006

• Park Honan, Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy: a very good biography. This is the first book on Marlowe I've read, so I can't really comment on how it compares to other bios, but I thought Honan did a good job relating the facts that are known about Marlowe's life and using them to speculate about what isn't known. I also really liked how he related Marlowe to other literary figures of the time, from Shakespeare to Thomas Kyd, and presented him in the context of his profession and his society.

Books read: 1

6 May 2006

• Margaret Drabble, The Waterfall: I'd read The Millstone years ago and enjoyed it, so I thought I'd try this. I admired it very much, but I'm not sure I enjoyed it exactly. The protagonist, Jane, is a withdrawn, lonely woman whose husband has just left her, whereupon she embarks (though this is really too active a verb) on an affair. The narrative technique is very well-done; it alternates third and first, both from Jane's point of view, as she tries to recount events in a distanced way, as though they are happening to some other person, but is constantly drawn back to telling the story more closely, in first person. The book is often quite wrenching in its descriptions of Jane's experiences and eventual awakening from passivity.

Books read: 1

8 May 2006

• Noel Streatfeild, A Vicarage Family, Away from the Vicarage, Beyond the Vicarage: These are her three volumes of fictionalized autobiography; in the forewords, Streatfeild claims to have changed only names (calling herself Victoria Strangeway), but she apparently changed other things as well, events and dates, to make them fit in better with her narrative. The first book covers Vicky's childhood as one of "the vicarage girls", along with her sisters and brother. Streatfeild captures the point of view of a child nicely, as well as a more mature view into the thoughts of the adults around her, and there are resemblances to her children's books; Vicky/Streatfeild reminds me rather of Ginnie Bell of the Bell family books. The second book covers her acting career, and the third her writing career; the narrative becomes a little disjointed in the third book, but I liked the glimpses into her research for books (e.g., tennis for Tennis Shoes and the circus for The Circus Is Coming) and her experiences doing war work in London during WWII.

Books read: 3

9 May 2006

• Margaret Forster, Diary of an Ordinary Woman: I picked up a used copy of this in the UK (in Blackwell's in Oxford, I think), solely on the basis of having liked Lady's Maid and Forster's biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I'm glad I picked it up, because it's very good and happened to hit exactly the mood I was in. The novel is in the form of a diary kept by a woman born in 1901, whose life spans almost the entire twentieth century; Forster writes a long introduction in which she meets Millicent King and agrees to edit her diary for publication. (This is so convincing that apparently some readers haven't realized that the book is fiction rather than non-fiction until they reach the author's note at the very end.) Millicent begins her diary as a teenager, just before WWI, and stays with it through her whole life, until 1995, when she can't physically write any more. The characterization is excellent, of Millicent and also of her friends and family, as seen through her eyes; Forster shows us just how unordinary an "ordinary woman" can be.

Books read: 1

10 May 2006

• Ann Lovejoy, The Border in Bloom: I do like her garden writing. She writes well, has good plant sense, and best of all, lives very near me, so I know that her plant suggestions are good for my area and climate. This book is organized by season, which Lovejoy divides into six seasons of two months each, starting in January. There's also an interesting foldout with a design for a border with all-seasonal interest, with illustrations of the border in each season.

Books read: 1

11 May 2006

• Anya Seton, Avalon: a historical novel, set mainly in 10th century Britain, which tells the story of a young Cornish girl and a Breton knight, who become caught up in English politics and Viking raids. As usual, it's well researched and convincing, and I liked the first half or so all right, when Merewyn and Rumon are caught up in English politics and the machinations of beautiful Queen Alfrida. Later, though, it became too episodic, skipping years at a time and interrupting character arcs; often, the characters' changes of emotion seemed more dictated by the needs of the plot than by consistent characterization. This isn't a Seton I'm likely to reread.

Books read: 1

12 May 2006

• Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and Her German Garden: This was von Arnim's first novel, based on her own life, and probably her best known, so it's what I naturally went on to after reading The Enchanted April last month. This was equally charming, and often very funny, particularly in the narrator's wry descriptions of her husband, whom she calls only "the Man of Wrath" (I was less charmed by her calling her three daughters "the April baby", "the May baby", and "the June baby" -- a little too cutesy.) Even more than in The Enchanted April, I could hear a fellow gardener speaking to me: "How I long for the day when the teas [i.e., tea roses] open their buds! Never did I look forward so intensely to anything; and every day I go the rounds, admiring what the dear little things have achieved in the twenty-four hours in the way of new leaf or increase of lovely red shoot."

Books read: 1

13 May 2006

• Monica Dickens, One Pair of Hands: I read this years ago and had forgotten how funny it is. Dickens was bored by her life as a debutante in the 1930s, and after being kicked out of drama school, she decided to try a career of domestic labor. Her descriptions of her various employers and of the mishaps she gets into are very funny, and there's a wealth of interesting domestic and social details.

Books read: 1

14 May 2006

• Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat, Three Men on the Bummel: I wanted to read Three Men on a Boat after reading Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog last month; the Penguin edition I got from the library also had Three Men on the Bummel. The former is the story of a boating trip on the Thames, while in the latter, the three men (without the dog this time) take a bicycling trip through Germany. Three Men in a Boat is utterly hilarious; I don't often laugh out loud even when I'm reading a funny book, but it seemed as though I laughed on every other page of this one. Three Men on the Bummel isn't quite as funny, but is a worthy sequel, containing a lot of interesting observations on Germany and the Germans. I recommend them both highly, particularly to Wodehouse fans, as a lot of Jerome's turns of phrase reminded me of Wodehouse.

Books read: 2

15 May 2006

• George and Weedon Grossmith, Diary of a Nobody: I've had this for a while and thought it would make good paired reading with Three Men on a Boat, as they're both considered classics of British humor of about the same era. George Grossmith is perhaps best known as a long-time star of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, performing the comic baritone roles (Ko-Ko, Major-General Stanley, Sir Joseph Porter) in Gilbert and Sullivan's operas; his brother Weedon was largely an artist. Their hero, Charles Pooter, is an ordinary middle-class clerk in London, who decides to keep and publish a diary, on the grounds that "I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see -- because I do not happen to be a 'Somebody' -- why my diary should not be interesting." It is interesting, as a very funny, sometimes almost painful depiction of his small, suburban lifestyle, and although it's impossible not to laugh at Pooter, it's also impossible not to like him.

Books read: 1

16 May 2006

• Pamela F. Service, Winter of Magic's Return, Tomorrow's Magic: an interesting and quite successful mix of post-apocalyptic SF and high Arthurian fantasy. Welly and Heather are misfits at Llandoylan School, attended by the children of the petty kingdoms that survived after most of the world was wiped out in a nuclear holocaust hundreds of years ago. There they become friends with the mysterious Earl Bedwas, a teen who was found at the age of seven wandering in the ruins of a Welsh town, with no memory of his family or past. When two strangers show up at the school claiming to be Earl's family, Earl, Welly, and Heather run away from the school, and as Earl's memory returns, they are drawn into a battle for the future of their slowly recovering world. I didn't like the second book quite as much as the first, but I really liked Service's concept of magic returning to the world and her very good characterization, particularly of the three heroes.

Books read: 2

17 May 2006

• Anthony Trollope, The Kellys and the O'Kellys: This was Trollope's second novel, and although the plot, which deals with two courtships, isn't as balanced as it could be (and would be later), it does show much of what characterizes Trollope's work. There's a nicely realized setting (Ireland, where Trollope worked for the Post Office for some years), good characters (though his character analysis isn't yet as sharp and perceptive as it would later become), and wry humor.

Books read: 1

18 May 2006

• Georgette Heyer, The Foundling: This is really more a coming of age novel than a romance; there is a romance, of course, but it takes a distant second place to Heyer's account of how her hero, Gilly, Duke of Sale, goes adventuring, in a smartly paced plot, and frees himself from the confinement of his family and his title. The romance wasn't much (and I actually found Gilly's romantic interest rather dull), but the friendship between Gilly and his dashing cousin, Gideon, was a highlight of the book. I don't think I've read a Heyer before in which a friendship between two men was such a focus, and I liked it quite a bit.

Books read: 1

19 May 2006

• Charles Stross, The Family Trade: I think I will label this Not For Me and leave it pretty much at that. Interesting premise, but the execution didn't pull me in. A lot of the reviews I've read say that really The Family Trade should be read together with its sequel, The Hidden Family (and I guess there are more on the way), but I'm just not interested enough.

Books read: 1

21 May 2006

• Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: Nafisi is a professor of English literature who resigned from her position in a Tehran university as a protest against increasingly repressive policies. Then she gathered together seven of her female students into a reading group, meeting regularly to read and discuss classics of Western literature, including Austen, James, Fitzgerald, and Nabokov, intending to "consider...how these great works of imagination could help us in our present trapped situation as women." The result is a skillful mixture of social commentary, memoir, and literary criticism. Nafisi weaves back and forth among the strands of her university life, the events of Iran's cultural revolution, and the lives and thoughts of the students in the book group. A particularly compelling section presents a mock trial at the university in which Nafisi defends The Great Gatsby against accusations of Western decadence and irrelevance. I've read a number of reviews on Amazon accusing Nafisi of not presenting the whole picture, but really, it's a memoir, not a history, and for me at least, it succeeded excellently as that.

Books read: 1

22 May 2006

• Sharyn November, ed., Firebirds Rising: an excellent collection, just as good as the first one. I liked that several of the stories were SF -- I don't remember much, if any, SF in Firebirds (though I'm thinking I need to reread it), and one of the SF stories here, Alison Goodman's "The Real Thing", was one of my favorites of the collection. Other standouts for me were Diana Wynne Jones's "I'll Give You My Word", Ellen Klages's "In the House of the Seven Librarians" (okay, yes, I'm a sucker for librarian stories), and Pamela Dean's "Cousins" (I really must hunt down and read some of the Liavek books).

Books read: 1

23 May 2006

• Simon Schama, A History of Britain, Volume 3: The Fate of Empire: I wouldn't want to approach this series as all-inclusive, textbook-style histories of Britain, but they're pretty damn readable and interesting. I borrowed them from my grandmother, but I can see myself buying them for myself at some point.

Books read: 1

27 May 2006

• C.J. Cherryh, Downbelow Station, Rimrunners: These made good paired reading, not only because they share a setting (both being part of Cherryh's Alliance-Union series), but because they take an interesting look at power, politics, and alliances, though each on a different scale. Downbelow Station is all about interstellar conflict, between Earth and its colonies, and its effect on one important space station which lies between, while Rimrunners focuses on one ship and on one woman new to the ship, who must figure out who are her friends and who her enemies. And I really wish I'd written about both of these when I finished reading them, because I had a lot more to say about them then than I can come up with now. I really liked them, though -- fantastic worldbuilding and characters, particularly the main character of Rimrunners.

Books read: 2

29 May 2006

• C.J. Cherryh, Forty Thousand in Gehenna: more Cherryh, same universe, different focus. Here, a colony on an alien world is abandoned for political reasons and must figure out how to survive on the world, which they do by entering into a partnership with the world's lizard-like intelligent species. I have been told that Forty Thousand in Gehenna was written as a reaction to Cherryh's annoyance over the Pern books; I can well believe it. Cherryh's version of psychic communication and partnership with other species is a lot more convincing than Pern ever was, and considerably more gritty.

Books read: 1

30 May 2006

• Ruth Rendell, A Sight for Sore Eyes: Though I always admire Rendell's writing, some of her books really work for me, and some don't, quite. This one didn't, quite, I think because I didn't really like or feel sympathetic to any of the characters, though I admired the nice circularity of the plot structure.

Books read: 1

31 May 2006

• Alison Goodman, Singing the Dogstar Blues: I got this from the library after reading Goodman's "The Real Thing" in Firebirds Rising; they're set in the same universe and feature the same characters, Joss and Mav, who are studying to be time travelers. I was very taken by the humor and vivid characters of "The Real Thing" and was hoping for more exploration of the implications of time travel in this setting, as well as of the genetic engineering which is also a feature; Joss herself is slightly genetically engineered, and Mav is a telepathic alien. I was a little disappointed, though; I still liked the characters a lot, but there wasn't much more worldbuilding than in the story, and the plot was a little thin. Still, I'll likely keep an eye out for future books by Goodman.

Books read: 1

Total books read this month: 30
Total books read this year: 188

Last updated 5 July 2006. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.