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1 November 2004

• Dorothy Dunnett's Queen's Play is the second in her Lymond Chronicles, after the enthralling The Game of Kings. Here, Lymond is in France, masquerading as an Irishman in order to watch over the child queen, Mary of Scotland, sent to France to be betrothed to the Dauphin. The plot hovered on the edge of being too slow and episodic, but the wonderful historical background and the richness of the characters were as enthralling as in The Game of Kings, and I felt as though I was able to get a little deeper into Lymond's psyche than in the first book. I hear the pace picks up again with the third book, so it's just a matter of time until I get to that one.

Books read: 1

2 November 2004

• It always feels like far too long between Susan Isaacs's books, so I've been eagerly looking forward to Any Place I Hang My Hat. Amy Lincoln is a journalist at In Depth magazine; she has a best friend, Tatty, from one of New York's elite families; a great boyfriend, John, a documentary filmmaker; and, oh yes, a criminal father and a mother who abandoned Amy as a baby to her Grandma Lil. Amy is writing a story on Presidential hopeful Thomas Bowles, and when a college student shows up claiming to be Bowles's illegitimate son, Amy's involvement with that story causes her to want to discover the truth about her own family.
  
  Although the political plotline falls by the wayside and loses its interest quickly, Amy's search for her mother is consistently compelling and compassionate, and Amy herself is a typically great Isaacs heroine, full of determination, witty zingers, and a bit of endearing insecurity. I haven't been utterly thrilled with Isaacs's last two books, so I was a little concerned coming into this one, but she's back on her old form with Any Place I Hang My Hat.

Books read: 1

3 November 2004

• Melancholy Baby is the latest in Robert B. Parker's series of mysteries about Sunny Randall, Boston PI. Here Parker returns to a theme he's used several times in the Spenser series (most notably in Early Autumn, one of my favorite Parkers): a young person in trouble who turns to the private eye for help. Sarah Markham suspects that she is adopted; her parents deny it, yet refuse to take DNA tests. When Sunny starts digging in their past, she exposes secrets that someone is willing to kill to keep private.
  
  Yet Sarah's story is of secondary interest compared to Sunny's personal life, which takes center stage. Her ex-husband Richie has remarried, prompting Sunny to wonder why, when she still loves him, she can't live with him. Her investigation into her own psyche, with the assistance of an old friend from the Spenser novels, is far more compelling than the mystery of Sarah's background (which is easily guessed midway through the book), and it makes Melancholy Baby the best of the Sunny Randall series to date.

Books read: 1

4 November 2004

• Tanith Lee's Piratica is a swashbuckling romp, set in what Lee calls a "closely parallel world", in what would be 1802 in our world. Sixteen-year-old Art (short for Artemesia) hits her head one day at her boarding school and suddenly remembers what she's forgotten for six years: her childhood at sea with her mother, the famous buccaneer Piratica. Although Art knows that her mother is dead, she sets off to find her crew and go off to board, where she encounters the nefarious Goldie Girl and her pirate crew as they strive to track down a fabulous treasure. The plot is on the predictable side, but the action is exciting and well-told, with Lee's usual felicity of language, and Art herself is a very likable heroine, daring, clever, and determined.

Books read: 1

5 November 2004

• Humphrey Carpenter seems to have a penchant for group biographies. I recently read his excellent book on Evelyn Waugh and his friends, The Brideshead Generation, and now I've finally managed to track down a copy of The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends. As with The Brideshead Generation, Carpenter does focus more on one member of the group, C.S. Lewis, than on the others, for, as he argues, "the Inklings owed their existence as a group almost entirely to him." He gives some details about the life of Tolkien (of whom he has written a separate biography) and more about Charles Williams, but it's in the depiction of the Inklings as a group that Carpenter really shines.
  
  The pivotal chapters of the book present Carpenter's description of an imaginary meeting of the Inklings and his analysis of what drew the group together. I usually don't approve of too much dialogue in a nonfiction book, as it tends to sound made-up and inauthentic, but Carpenter does an excellent job. It helps knowing that the dialogue is taken from the Inklings' actual writings (in fact, I recognized a lot of what Tolkien had to say from his letters). These chapters are compelling and convincing reading; the heady atmosphere of debate and discussion is brilliantly portrayed, making this essential reading for anyone interested in Lewis, Tolkien, and the Inklings. (I came out of it wanting to read more by and about Williams, myself.)

Books read: 1

6 November 2004

• Having enjoyed Susan Isaacs's latest (Any Place I Hang My Hat) enormously, I decided to reread another of her more recent books, Red, White, and Blue, to try to figure out what I didn't like about it. It begins with FBI agent Charlie Blair and reporter Lauren Miller, who are both on the track of a group of hate crime perpetrators known as Wrath, based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. However, before Isaacs delves into this, she spends two hundred pages describing the family histories of her hero and heroine (who, as it turns out, share a set of great-great-grandparents). This is certainly absorbing, as Isaacs has a gift for creating quirky, likable characters, but when she finally got up to the present day and shifted back to Charlie and Lauren, it was jarring, and I found it hard to get back into their story.
  
  Also, I found Isaacs's message heavy-handed at times. Here's a paragraph from about thirty pages into the book: "Last, but definitely not least, as we leave this century, isn't it time to inquire: What is an American anyway? It's a critical question to think about now, what with all the virulently anti-government rhetoric abroad in the land. We ought to ask: Now that we've gotten here, what holds us together? What do all of us, with our different American experiences, have in common? Is there an American character?" And et cetera, et cetera. I appreciate the message she's trying to get across, and it's central to the plot of the book, but I really think that she could have trusted her readers to pick it up without having to interrupt the narrative like this.
  
  With all that said, Red, White, and Blue is still worth reading, full of wit and interesting characters. But if you're reading Isaacs for the first time, do yourself a favor and try Shining Through or Compromising Positions first.

Books read: 1

7 November 2004

• Frances Hodgson Burnett is largely known today as the author of The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, but during her lifetime, she was known for adult novels and plays as well. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina delves into Burnett's life in Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden and presents an illuminating picture of a hugely successful Victorian writer. I thought Gerzina's examination of Burnett's family was particularly interesting: her two marriages, her adoration yet almost-neglect of her two sons (one of whom died in adolescence), her close relationship with her sisters, and how she supported not only her immediate family, but her siblings, nieces, nephews, and other relatives, as well as giving largely to philanthropic causes. It's a worthwhile book if you're interested in Burnett or in Victorian writers generally.

Books read: 1

8 November 2004

• Anne Merton Abbey's Kathryn in the Court of Six Queens is an enjoyable romp set during the reign of Henry VIII. The heroine, Kathryn Chase, is fictional, but Abbey does a clever job of inserting her and the other fictional characters into a historical period believably, without messing around much with actual events. The picture she paints of Henry's court is shallow, lacking some of the political machinations I find interesting about the period, but the story is fast-paced, often witty, and fun to read regardless, though on the whole I prefer Philippa Gregory's Tudor books (The Other Boleyn Girl and The Queen's Fool).

Books read: 1

9 November 2004

• I remember liking Carolly Erickson's biography of Elizabeth I, The First Elizabeth (though it's been a while since I read it); unfortunately, I can't say the same for her biography of Elizabeth's mother Anne Boleyn, Mistress Anne. Part of the problem, I think, is Erickson's avowed practice of allotting as much space to a subject's earlier years as to the later ones, which she refers to as trying "to preserve the natural arc of the life as my subject lived it"; however, since very little is known about Anne Boleyn's early life, Erickson ends up spending a lot of time saying that Anne "must have" felt this or "might have" done that. Even when she gets to Anne's better-documented later years, her portrait is surprisingly shallow, lacking the detailed look at the politics of Henry VIII's court which I would have expected. And why in the world did the publisher include in the illustrations portraits of Catherine Parr (Henry VIII's sixth wife) and Mary, Queen of Scots, neither of whom come into Anne's story at all? Overall, Mistress Anne was a disappointment; I have yet to read Erickson's biographies of Henry VIII and Mary I (Great Harry and Bloody Mary), but I certainly hope they're better than Mistress Anne.

Books read: 1

10 November 2004

• It's always cause for rejoicing when I get my hands on another of Antonia Forest's wonderful Marlow family books, and I've been particularly looking forward to Peter's Room, which the wonderful Girls Gone By Publishers have just released. Peter's Room takes place during the Marlows' school holidays, at their country house, Trennels; the younger Marlows (Nicola, Lawrie, Ginty, and Peter) gather with their friend Patrick in the old room which Peter has cleaned up and furnished for himself. Intrigued by Ginty's stories of the young Brontës (about whom she is doing a school project with the rest of her form) and their imaginary kingdoms of Gondal and Angria, the Marlows and Patrick decide to create a similar story and act it out. I wasn't entirely convinced by the ending, which was on the contrived side for Forest (her dramatics are usually more believable), but I loved the deeper look at some of her characters who haven't featured as largely in other books, particularly Peter, Ginty, and Patrick (and his developing relationship with Ginty).

Books read: 1

11 November 2004

• Clover and In the High Valley are the fourth and fifth (and final) books in Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did series, following the fortunes of Katy's sister Clover, who after Katy's marriage accompanies their invalid brother Phil to Colorado. Coolidge reminds me of her contemporary Louisa May Alcott in many ways, though her books are more light-hearted and less religious; they're certainly charming and fun to read. I was particularly struck by the setting of these two books; What Katy Did Next was too much like a European travelogue, but Coolidge's evocation of 19th-century frontier Colorado is strikingly picturesque and vigorous.

Books read: 2

12 November 2004

• After All These Years is one of my favorite Susan Isaacs books, a wonderfully witty and entertaining murder mystery. Rosie Meyers is in the middle of a messy divorce, which gets suddenly messier when she goes down to her kitchen for a midnight snack and finds her husband Richie dead on the floor with a knife in his chest. Unfortunately for Rosie, she's the prime suspect. Since she knows she didn't do it, she goes on the lam, investigating Richie's life and tracking down the real murderer. Whodunnit isn't too hard to figure out, but who cares? Rosie is a wonderfully funny, feisty heroine, and Isaacs's narrative and dialogue are particularly witty; her gift for a hilarious turn of phrase is evident on every page (Richie's jaw "wasn't so much chiseled from granite anymore as sculpted from mashed potatoes"). It's great fun from beginning to end.
  
  
• It took me a couple of reads to warm up to Isaacs's Lily White, but now it's also one of my favorites of hers. Lily "Lee" White is a Long Island attorney who is defending a con man named Norman Torkelson, accused of killing his latest mark. As the case unfolds, so does Lee's personal history, in a double narrative, alternating chapters (in different typefaces); Lee narrates the present-day chapters as she investigates Torkelson's case, while the chapters describing her earlier life are told in the third person. The style does take some getting used to, but both narratives are sufficiently compelling that I never found myself skimming through one to get back to the other (which has happened to me before while reading less skillfully written books). The Torkelson plot offers a penetrating portrait of the con man and his partner in crime and a sharp look at the American justice system, while following the thread of Lee's history reveals an engaging, determined, and sassy heroine and her struggles to deal with her family.

Books read: 2

13 November 2004

• In a Dark House is the tenth and latest book in Deborah Crombie's excellent mystery series about Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, and it doesn't disappoint. When Duncan is called to the scene of a deadly fire in Southwark, Gemma becomes entangled in the case; she and Duncan must find out the identity of the woman who died in the fire as well as track down a missing nine-year-old and handle the issues which come up in their personal lives (mainly with Duncan's son Kit). The mystery is nicely complex, with multiple threads which Crombie braids together deftly, and as always, her characterization is perceptively done; even comparatively minor characters are vividly drawn and memorable, and the relationship between Duncan and Gemma, and their friends and family, continues to be lively and engaging (though I wish Crombie would quit ending books on emotional cliffhangers).

Books read: 1

15 November 2004

• One of my favorite things about Anthony Trollope's novels is his talent for penetrating psychological portraits, and He Knew He Was Right is one of Trollope's best in this respect. Here, he examines Louis Trevelyan, a man who unjustly accuses his wife Emily of infidelity, and his descent from jealousy and rage into madness. Trollope himself disliked the novel, feeling that he'd failed in his effort to create sympathy for the troubled Trevelyan, yet I felt that he did succeed; the portrait of Trevelyan's disintegration, particularly in his relationship with his wife and their little son, was deeply moving.
  
  In addition to the Trevelyan family, the novel is filled with sharply drawn characters, including some of Trollope's best women: the spinster Miss Stanbury, her sharp-tongued niece Priscilla, and Emily's sister Nora Rowley, who refuses to give up the man she loves in spite of the threat of poverty. There are a lot of characters and a lot of subplots, but Trollope manages to keep them all going without detracting from the story of the Trevelyans' failing marriage; in fact, for me the novel was more about the predicament of women in Victorian society than about the titular hero. Trollope does poke fun at feminists in the person of Wallachia Petrie, the American poetess, but he clearly understood and sympathized with women's plight in a society in which they were largely subject to the wishes of men.

Books read: 1

16 November 2004

• Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me is an effervescent froth of a novel; I devoured it in a couple of hours and enjoyed it hugely. It's funny, it's romantic, it has great dialogue, a plump heroine, and Krispy Kremes - what more could you ask for in a romantic comedy? I keep trying to find authors who remind me of Susan Isaacs, and I think Crusie might fill the bill.

Books read: 1

17 November 2004

• 'Tis the season to read garden books, to dream of and plan for next year's garden. I started with Ann Lovejoy's Fragrance in Bloom. Lovejoy recommends fragrant plants for all the seasons and for nighttime, and her descriptions are beautifully evocative of the plants, particularly (as you might expect) of their scents. She pays special attention to scent combinations: how a rose's sweet scent can be set off by the sharpness of lavender or artemisia, or how to blend lilacs with scented peonies. A word of caution for those outside the Pacific Northwest: Lovejoy gardens on Bainbridge Island, Washington (right down the road from me), so her recommendations are slanted toward this region; folks outside it should double-check recommended zones for the plants she mentions.

Books read: 1

18 November 2004

• Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy, consisting of Westmark, The Kestrel, and The Beggar Queen, is far less well-known than his Chronicles of Prydain, and they deserve to be better known and more widely read. They're historical adventures set in the fictional kingdom of Westmark, and although they're technically fantasy, neither magic nor magical beings are present (this is a subgenre of fantasy which I'm told is called "Ruritanian", after Anthony Hope's fictional kingdom in The Prisoner of Zenda).
  
  Theo is a printer's apprentice who innocently agrees to print subversive pamphlets; when the city guards smash the press and kill Theo's master, Theo's life changes radically as he gets mixed up with con artists, revolutionaries, and the evil prime minister of Westmark, Cabbarus. Along the way he meets the roguish Count Las Bombas, the revolutionary Florian, and Mickle, the beggar girl. On the surface, the books are adventures, full of action, humor, and excitement; yet Alexander also examines issues of justice, responsibility, and the use of violence. Along the way, he develops characters as complex and memorable as any in the Prydain books and a story which is perhaps darker, but no less compelling.

Books read: 3

19 November 2004

• I've been struggling with writing about The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women, by Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels, because I really liked it in some ways, but in others, it irritated the hell out of me. Clearly, there is a lot of truth in Douglas and Michaels's assessment of what they call "the new momism" -- American culture's highly idealized vision of the perfect mother -- and of how the media and many politicians have contributed to its growth. Their history of motherhood in the media is fascinating reading, and the chapter on childcare is particularly compelling in its analysis of how from Nixon's time on the government has failed to support childcare programs.
  
  However, two things prevent me from being able to recommend The Mommy Myth whole-heartedly. The first is the tone. I've appreciated Douglas's witty style before, in her excellent Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, but this time, the constantly snide tone just detracts from the message of the book. It's tough to pick out a particular passage to quote here, but the tone is so pervasive that although I barely noticed it in the first chapter, by the end of the second chapter I was constantly rolling my eyes and wishing they'd knock it off (maybe it was the section about the fictional "Committee for Retrograde Antifeminist Propaganda (CRAP)" that did it).
  
  The second and more serious issue is that although Douglas and Michaels claim to support the rights of mothers to make their own choices, they seem to have their own ideas about the right way to mother, and they frequently denigrate other choices, giving them lip service while writing about them as though you'd have to be crazy even to think about them. For example, they say of home schooling (which I probably won't be doing but have certainly considered) that "for some parents today, home schooling is the best and sometimes the only option they have, and they do it without an ounce of self-righteousness." Great, but since they've just spent almost a page describing home schooling in a very biased way and making it clear that it's something they would never consider ("we have no idea how any parent spends the whole day attempting to impart knowledge to her kids"), it's hard to believe that they're as open-minded as they act.
  
  The Mommy Myth could and should be a valuable book, particularly for mothers who are feeling the pressure of perfection. It does contain a lot of valuable information and a lot of convincing arguments, and I think it's worthwhile reading for those. However, I would have been a lot happier with a book which was a little more serious in tone and a lot more objective.

Books read: 1

20 November 2004

• Whoever decided to translate Cornelia Funke's books and publish them in the US has my vote of thanks. The latest one, Dragon Rider, isn't quite as good as Inkheart, but it's a charming book all the same. When the retreat of a group of dragons is threatened by encroaching humans, the dragon Firedrake sets off with his brownie companion Sorrel to find the legendary Rim of Heaven in the Himalayas, where the dragons can find sanctuary forever. Along the way, they meet the boy Ben, who joins them, and a host of other creatures, including homunculi, genies, rats, and friendly and unfriendly humans. The happy outcome of the book is never in doubt, and the characterization isn't very deep, but Funke does succeed nicely in creating a sense of wonder, in a world where magical beings live just around the corner from humans, where you just might see a dragon or a brownie if you only look hard enough.
  
  
• Libby Schmais's The Perfect Elizabeth is a "chick lit" novel that just didn't work for me. Liza is an aspiring poet who has a miserable day job as a legal secretary, while her sister Bette is a literature student who teaches at a university while working on her dissertation; their names are both diminutives of Elizabeth, so that Liza, the narrator, feels as though they're "the broken parts of one perfect Elizabeth". Liza and Bette go through various trials and tribulations to do with their jobs and their love lives, described in a style which is meant to be light and witty but which I found merely shallow (and the dialogue was terrible - all of the characters sounded alike). All of the sisters' issues (most of which they created themselves) are easily wrapped up by the end, and I closed the book feeling that I'd made no emotional connection to the characters or their problems. It's gotten some good reviews, so I guess The Perfect Elizabeth is somebody's cup of tea; it's just not mine.

Books read: 2

21 November 2004

• Fannie Flagg specializes in heartwarming tales of the South, and that perfectly describes A Redbird Christmas. After receiving some bad news from his doctor, Oswald T. Campbell decides to spend the winter in Lost River, Alabama, where he meets a host of friendly characters, including a redbird (that is, a cardinal) named Jack and a crippled girl named Patsy. Flagg's writing is warm and witty as usual, but I guess this one just wrapped everything up a little too neatly for me. I'll take Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which is also warm and witty but in which bad things do sometimes happen to people, any day. Still, A Redbird Christmas is a lighthearted, charming little book which makes a nice holiday season read.
  
  
• Neil A. Grauer's Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber is a brief but satisfying biography of a writer I have long loved. Grauer obviously loves Thurber's work, too, and emphasizes the depth and breadth of his literary and artistic talents. Yet he steers away from painting an idealized portrait of the man himself; he discusses Thurber's undoubted misogyny and his bad temper and pessimism, especially in later life, not whitewashing them but often offering possible reasons for Thurber's views and actions. What I appreciated the most in Remember Laughter, I think, were the frequent quotations from those who knew Thurber, particularly the insights offered by Thurber's daughter Rosemary and some of E.B. White's comments on Thurber's work (in Thurber's drawings, said White, "it is always apparent to Thurber that at the very moment one's heart is caught in an embrace, one's foot may be caught in a piano stool").

Books read: 2

22 November 2004

• Reading the Grauer biography made me, of course, need to read some James Thurber, which I haven't done in ages. Let Your Mind Alone! And Other More or Less Inspirational Pieces is half spoof of self-help books (and though almost 70 years old, still funny and very relevant to today's crop of that kind of thing), half collection of Thurber's stories and essays, of which my favorite is "The Admiral on the Wheel", a charming, bittersweet piece about his loss of sight and how the world looks after he loses his glasses. The Beast in Me and Other Animals collects more stories and essays (including the wonderful "The Lady on the Bookcase", a short piece discussing how he created some of his drawings), as well as a study of daytime radio soap operas (surprisingly interesting, actually), a lot of wonderful drawings, and even some of his straight journalism.

Books read: 2

24 November 2004

• Having loved Bet Me, I'm now on a Jennifer Crusie kick. Welcome to Temptation and Crazy for You were both brisk, fun reads with interesting heroines, though I didn't like either book as much as Bet Me (perhaps due to second-half plot twists which didn't have me totally convinced).

Books read: 2

25 November 2004

• Guy Gavriel Kay is one of my favorite authors, but I have to admit that I've never been as fond of A Song for Arbonne as of most of his other books; on this reread, I tried to figure out why. In Kay's alternate version of medieval Europe, Arbonne is a rich and beautiful land, ruled by Signe, countess of Barbentain, whose people love poetry and music and worship the goddess Riannon; to the north lies the patriarchal kingdom of Gorhaut, ruled by the corrupt king Ademar and his advisor, Galbert de Garsenc, the high priest of the militant god Corannos. Into Arbonne comes Blaise, a warrior of Gorhaut in voluntary exile from his homeland, and his arrival sets the stage for a violent clash between the two countries and their cultures.
  
  I think Kay's sense of place in A Song for Arbonne is marvelous, comparable to Tigana (my favorite of his books). Unfortunately, I find much of the characterization to be not as deep, which causes (for me, anyway) the story to lack the emotional immediacy and resonance of Tigana. The villains particularly are less than three-dimensional (especially the power-mad Ademar), and I don't find the main viewpoint character, Blaise, very compelling either (though I love several of the minor viewpoint characters, especially Lisseut, the woman troubadour). However, there is much to like in A Song for Arbonne, and I know that some Kay fans consider it his best, so clearly mileage varies. If you've read his other books, do certainly read Arbonne; if not, try Tigana or The Lions of Al-Rassan first.

Books read: 1

26 November 2004

• The Lost Prince is an interesting, lesser-known novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett of The Secret Garden fame. Marco Loristan and his father are Samavian, exiles from a country torn by war, a country which Marco has never seen; they have lived in cities all over Europe and are living in poor lodgings in London at the start of the book. When Marco meets the Rat, a crippled street urchin, they begin an adventure which will take them from Paris, Munich, and Vienna into Samavia itself. I liked The Lost Prince, but not nearly as much as A Little Princess or The Secret Garden. Like Little Lord Fauntleroy, Marco is almost too perfect, although the more emotional Rat provides a nice counterpoint to Marco's self-possession, and the outcome of the plot is predictable, though some of the individual scenes are nicely suspenseful.

Books read: 1

27 November 2004

• I jumped with joy when I opened up a package from Amazon last week which contained Gayden Wren's A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Art of Gilbert & Sullivan (a birthday present from my cousin Kate). Now, having read it, I'm even happier to have it, because it's a wonderful book. Wren examines all of the Gilbert & Sullivan operas in detail (including Thespis) to investigate the secret to their lasting popularity. He gives due credit to Sullivan's sparkling music and to Gilbert's witty libretti, but he believes - and argues convincingly - that the answer is instead the underlying themes of the operas, "as universal as their parody and satire are dated".
  
  Wren's analyses of the operas are fascinating, and he illuminates words and music with equal ease, quoting liberally from the libretti and even reproducing passages of music to illustrate his points. He writes in a direct and humorous style, with great affection for the operas and their creators, but also with honesty, never hesitating to criticise weak points (though also never stinting with due praise). Finally, there's an excellent bibliography, which very helpfully includes brief reviews of each work listed. Shedding new light on old favorites, A Most Ingenious Paradox is essential reading for any Savoyard.

Books read: 1

29 November 2004

• I've wanted to read Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield ever since encountering it in the pages of Little Women, when Aunt March catches Jo chuckling over it and demands that Jo read it to her (Jo later catches Aunt March reading it by herself). It's the tale of the Primrose family -- "all equally generous, credulous, simple, and inoffensive" -- headed by their father, the eponymous vicar, and their trials and tribulations. It was a little tough to get into, due to a highly digressive and coincidental plot, but once I got used to that, it was rather funny and charming. However, I'd probably only recommend it to those interested in 18th-century English literature, as I don't think the sentimentality of the style has worn terribly well.

Books read: 1

30 November 2004

• Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana is on my favorites page.

Books read: 1

Total books read this month: 35
Total books read this year: 360

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