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• Jenny Han, Shug: Annemarie Wilcox, nicknamed "Shug" by her family, is just starting junior high, and a lot of things are changing. Her family is showing the strain of the constant fights between her parents, her friends are more interested in boyfriends than in girlfriends, and Shug herself suddenly has a crush on Mark, the boy she's been best friends with forever. But everything is changing too fast for Shug, and she wonders why she can't just stay a kid.
  
  This is slightly lower in age range than the YA I normally read, but it's rewardingly rich, more complex than it seems at first glance. Shug's family in particular is beautifully observed: her beautiful, alcoholic mother; her often absent father; her pretty sister Celia, nearly ready to leave the nest; and Shug herself, whose voice is pitch-perfect, poised on the verge of young adulthood but uncertain of how to get there. As she also does in The Summer I Turned Pretty (which I read in July and really liked), Han does an excellent job of capturing that uncertain time when a girl starts to turn from a child into a young woman.
  
  
• Zetta Elliott, A Wish After Midnight: Fifteen-year-old Genna lives in Brooklyn in a cramped apartment in a crime-filled neighborhood and dreams of a better future and a career as a psychiatrist. Her only consolations are her boyfriend Judah, who's from Jamaica and wants to go back to Africa, and her nearly daily visits to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where she tosses a few coins into the fountain and makes a wish. One night, when she flees into the garden after a fight with her mother, she is transported back in time to Civil-War-era Brooklyn, into a time of racial tension and outright rioting.
  
  Genna is a wonderful character -- tough, smart, resourceful, and thoughtful -- and the rest of the characters, while we don't get to know them as thoroughly as Genna, are vivid as well. Also vivid are the settings: present-day and past Brooklyn, which are both beautifully evoked in their differences and in their similarities. The historical details are telling, but never bog down the narrative. Clearly there are comparisons to be made here with Octavia Butler's excellent Kindred, and Elliott's book stands up very well to the comparison; it made me think of Kindred (and think that they would be very good back-to-back reads) while never making me feel that it was at all imitating it.
  
  I should also note that there is at least one major plot thread left unresolved, and that Elliott is apparently working on a sequel, Judah's Tale, which I eagerly anticipate.
  
  
• Kristin Cashore, Fire: Over the mountains from the kingdoms in Graceling are the Dells, where rebellious nobles plot against the young king, and where some animals are monsters: brightly colored, beautiful, often dangerous versions of normal animals. Fire is a human monster, the last of her kind; she is irresistibly, wildly beautiful and has the ability to control minds, though she resists using it, remembering the terrible example of her brilliant, twisted father. When the king's brother Brigan arrives to ask her for her help against the rebel lords, she is pulled against her will into the turmoil enveloping the kingdom.
  
  It took me a while to get into Fire, perhaps because it's rather different from Graceling (which I'd just reread). Cashore's writing style has become more polished, which is nice to see; the very interior narrative reminded me rather of Robin McKinley, in fact, which is a high compliment. The book as a whole is more inward-focused than Graceling; there's less action, which seems fitting given that Katsa's Grace was an exterior, physical one, but Fire's power is very much more internal and leads to even more internal conflict about how she should use it. By the end of the book, I was still feeling that it was a little overlong, but I had become fond of the characters and impressed by Cashore's characterization and style. I wouldn't say I liked either book more; I liked them differently.
  
  The cover calls Fire "a companion to Graceling", which is a good way to describe it. Although the events in it precede those in Graceling, it's not a direct prequel. The books have only one character in common, and since the jacket copy seems not to want to spoil that, I won't either (although it's revealed very early).
  
  
• Nancy Farmer, The House of the Scorpion: Every time I read a new-to-me Nancy Farmer book, I'm surprised at how different and well-realized her various settings are. This book explores a future North America in which drug lords have taken over the area between the U.S. and Mexico (now called Aztlan) and in which some people are privileged, some people are mindless slaves called "eejits", and Matteo Alacran is a clone of El Patron, the most powerful drug lord.
  
  I was totally absorbed in the first three-quarters of the book (to the point of staying up way too late reading), wherein Matt grows up and figures out the reason for his existence, but I thought the last quarter rather fell apart, with an ending too easily resolved and partly offstage. Still, it's full of suspense, imagination, and good characterization and worldbuilding, as Farmer's books always are.
  
  
• Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan: Europe is on the edge of World War I, and two teens are right in the middle of the oncoming conflict. Prince Alek is the son of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, and his wife Sophie, whose assassination by Serbian nationalists sets off the war and forces Alek to run for his life. Deryn Sharp is a British girl posing as a boy in order to enter the British Air Service. Their world may sound like ours, but it isn't, quite: here, Charles Darwin not only developed the theory of evolution, he also discovered DNA and also how to work with DNA to bioengineer new life forms. As a result of this, some of Europe's nations (the "Darwinist" nations, including Great Britain, France, and Russia) developed all of their technology along bioengineering lines, while the Clanker nations (Austria-Hungary, Germany) developed steam-based machinery, including giant walking war machines.
  
  I should say right here that I do not think I'm the target audience for this book, and so it didn't work for me as well as I'd hoped. I've enjoyed Westerfeld's YA novels in the past; Leviathan strikes me as written for a slightly younger audience. Even though the two protagonists are presented as older teens, they act and speak more like early teens. More importantly, Leviathan is steampunk as alternate history, and I didn't find any of the alternate history convincing: neither the divergence point from our timeline (Darwin discovering DNA and how to modify it), nor the subsequent political developments.
  
  With that said, there's quite a bit to enjoy here. The action is nonstop, with exciting mechanical chases and thrilling airship hijinks. Did I mention that the airship (the Leviathan of the title) is alive? Westerfeld's bioengineered creatures are very cool, from the whale-based airship to the jellyfish-based single-person gliders (they look like parachutes, but are steerable like gliders). I loved the inclusion of Darwin's (historical) granddaughter, Nora Darwin Barlow, as the intelligent, sharp chief bioengineer, along with her pet Tasmanian tiger (now extinct). And Keith Thompson's marvelous illustrations, especially the gorgeous endpaper maps, enhance the book immensely.
  
  Leviathan ends on quite a cliffhanger, with the protagonists ready to travel to a whole new land, and I admit to being very interested to see where they end up in the next book. I wish I could silence that part of myself which insists on alternate history being convincingly worked out, so that I could enjoy this series more, but maybe that won't bother me so much by the time the sequel comes out.
  
  
• Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth; Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol: Sojourner Truth was born Isabella, a slave, in New York just before 1800. She was emancipated when New York abolished slavery in 1827, and a few years later, she took a new name for herself and began a new career as an itinerant preacher. She quickly became famous for her stirring speeches and her championing of the rights of black people and women, and today she's one of the most famous African-American women of the Civil War period (along with Harriet Tubman).
  
  The 1884 edition of her Narrative is made up of several parts. First, there's the "Narrative of Sojourner Truth" itself, dictated by Truth to her white friend Olive Gilbert. Then, there's "The Book of Life", one of Truth's scrapbooks which was added to the Narrative by her friend Frances Titus (also white), containing articles about Truth, correspondence with her, and a set of autographs of famous people she had collected. After Truth's death, Titus added "A Memorial Chapter", containing obituary notices and poems and an account of Truth's funeral.
  
  This accruing of material and editing by Truth's friends results in a multilayered story of her life, often surprisingly obscure, and I was glad to have Painter's biography of Truth to read after the Narrative. (Painter also provides an extremely useful introduction to the Penguin edition of the Narrative, so it's not absolutely necessary to read her biography; I just liked the expanded analysis there.) I was especially impressed by Painter's discussion of the difference between the real Truth and how her friends and editors portrayed her. For instance, lots of articles about her quote her as speaking with a Southern dialect she wouldn't have used, since she was from the North; many white people would have thought this the normal way for all black people to speak, since black people were associated so strongly in their minds with Southern slavery. Yet Truth wasn't simply content to be seen as others wanted to see her; Painter examines also how she chose to portray herself and how she created her own persona.
  
  The strength and intelligence of Truth's personality shine through all of the multiplicity of sources of the Narrative; Painter's incisive analysis helps make clear the outlines of Truth's life and provides an even more vivid portrait of her character. I was pleased to have read the Narrative and gotten to know more about a woman I really knew only by name, and I was even more pleased to follow that up with such an excellent biography.
  
  
• Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day: Stevens is the perfect English butler, dignified and devoted to the house and the master he served for decades. Yet after World War II, his perfect world has faded, and as he looks back over the years, he sees, as the reader does, that perhaps it wasn't so perfect after all: Lord Darlington was not as virtuous as Stevens would like to believe, and Stevens sacrificed much in order to serve properly.
  
  Ishiguro uses the first person, speaking with Stevens' voice, and his style is unfalteringly pitch-perfect as Stevens recounts the years of his career. Stevens is a prisoner of his dignity and his position, and his constrained mind, soul, and heart cannot reach out to others, even to Miss Kenton, whom he could love, or to his father, an old servant himself. On the surface, The Remains of the Day is often very funny, a comedy of manners; deeper down, it's almost unbearably sad, though with a touch of hope at the end. It's a wonderful, perceptive character study, both of Stevens himself and of postwar England.

• children's and young adult:
  • Kristin Cashore, Graceling (reread): I think I might have liked it even more on second reading; the small weaknesses bothered me less, and the characterization felt even richer.
  • Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson, Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits (reread), Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits: Even when I admire Dickinson's stories, I don't love them in the visceral way I love McKinley's, so these collections are a little uneven for me. Of Dickinson's contributions, I liked "Kraken" (Water) the most; of McKinley's...mmm, hard to say, but maybe "A Pool in the Desert" (Water), because it's partly set in Damar. I thought both her Fire stories were a little rambly, though the second one particularly I thought had an interesting universe.
  • Noel Streatfeild, Apple Bough, Party Frock (rereads)
  • Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs, Dear Enemy: I think if I hadn't imprinted on these at a young age, I might not be able to read them now: squicky "Daddy" relationship in first book, horrid approval of eugenics in second. But I did, and so I can reread them as comfort reading, ignoring the things that bother me in favor of the characters I love.
• drama
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (reread)
• fantasy and science fiction:
  • Connie Willis, Uncharted Territory: Willis provides some interesting narrative twists, but I generally found this pretty slight: possibly it would have been better either condensed into a short story (with less of the eventually repetitive digs at bureaucracy) or expanded into a longer novel (with more room for character development).
  • Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog (reread): still love this, kthxbye. (I think I've now read it enough times for it to have become comfort reading.)
• general fiction:
  • George Eliot, Romola (reread): On the plus side, the historical setting is excellently researched and detailed, and the portraits of (historical) Savonarola and (fictional) Tito are subtle, vivid, and convincing. On the minus side, the historical detail really bogs down the narrative, and the main character, Romola, is much less individualized and generically noble. I think this is worth reading for the Eliot completist or fan of Victorian novels, but definitely not where I'd start with either.
  • Susan Scarlett (Noel Streatfeild), Murder While You Work: an odd little blend of wartime work story, romance, and mystery. The wartime work (in a munitions factory) is rather interesting and the romance sweet and restrained, though the mystery is somewhat obvious and overdone.
  • Anthony Trollope, Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite (reread): This is one of the shortest of Trollope's novels, being focused on what Trollope calls a "pathetic incident" rather than on a whole host of plot threads, as in his longer and more famous books. After his son dies, Sir Harry is torn between his desire to marry his daughter to the cousin who will inherit his will, so as to keep the estate and the name together, and his knowledge that the cousin is a gambling scoundrel. It's a beautifully done character study in miniature, only marred for me by the faithful, pining daughter, Emily, who simply annoys me with her blind loyalty to a worthless man. (I'm not saying her character isn't well-done, because it is; it's just a type I don't care for.)
  • Dorothy Whipple, They Were Sisters: As sometimes for Whipple, the plot is a little scattershot, but the characterization is so marvelously vivid that it doesn't make a bit of difference. I love many of the authors I've read in Persephone reprints, and Whipple might be my favorite (and theirs, apparently, given how many of her novels they've done).
• historical fiction:
  • Jude Morgan, Indiscretion: I find it interesting that I can clearly see all the borrowings from Austen, and yet I still really liked this (which was rather like P&P mixed with S&S) and An Accomplished Woman (like Emma with a dash of Persuasion). (I wonder what the next one will be like: Northanger Abbey plus Mansfield Park? Rather a difficult combination, I should think.) The language is generally fairly well-done, though occasionally the characters act in a slightly too modern way. I enjoyed Indiscretion nearly as much as my favorite Heyers, I think.
  • Patrick O'Brian, The Golden Ocean: earlier and lighter than the Aubrey-Maturin books, but a great deal of fun to read. I actually laughed out loud quite a bit and read passages to G. (and also borrowed his iPhone while reading in bed to find out exactly what drowned baby is). Now I need to read The Unknown Shore, which I hadn't realized is related to The Golden Ocean (both dealing with the same naval expedition).
  • Kate O'Brien, As Music and Splendour: a lovely 1958 historical novel about two Irish girls training as singers in late 19th-century France and Italy. It definitely hit my weak spot for novels about musical training and careers, and it was beautifully written and detailed. I especially liked the matter-of-fact acceptance of the heroines' deep friendship and of their sexuality: one has more than one lover, the other is a lesbian, and the narrative simply accepts both things without making a big fuss.
  • Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept: This tale of the 12th-century struggle for the English throne between King Stephen and Empress Matilda suffered a little from unlikable protagonists (and I wonder if this is why Penman, for the first time in her historical novels, introduced a major fictional character as well, to provide a more sympathetic viewpoint). I liked Stephen but never thought that Penman had given enough depth to his decision to take the throne from Matilda, while Matilda is rather eclipsed by her son, Henry (the future Henry II). Still, her historical details are excellent, and there's plenty of action and emotion to carry the story.
  • Sharon Kay Penman, Time and Chance: I thought this the weakest of her books so far, in spite of its fascinating source material: Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Thomas Becket. There are far too more passages in which major events are told only through unconvincing dialogue between characters, which creates too much distance between the reader and the action.
• mystery:
  • John Dunning, The Bookman's Wake, The Bookman's Promise, The Sign of the Book (rereads): the former two are the best two books in the series, easily, while The Sign of the Book is overlong, with the book part of the plot feeling very tacked-on.
  • Marcia Muller, Locked In: This is the latest installment in Marcia Muller's long-running Sharon McCone mystery series, about a San Francisco PI. I have often been impressed at Muller's ability to keep the series fresh, and here she pulls off an especially impressive one: McCone is shot in the head at the very beginning and paralyzed in body, although alert of mind. Some of the book is from McCone's point of view, as she struggles to communicate; the rest is told from the POVs of her husband and her friends and associates, as they try furiously to find out who shot her. I found the jumps in POV a little distracting, but as a whole, I liked it a lot and thought it was very well done.
• romance:
  • Jo Beverley, My Lady Notorious: Tough cross-dressing heroine plus light-hearted (occasionally cross-dressing) hero equals happiness -- I liked this a lot, more than any of the Company of Rogues books I've read so far (except maybe Forbidden). I particularly liked that there were several opportunities for the Big Misunderstanding between the hero and the heroine, and instead of going there, they actually worked things out. I shall be seeking out the rest of the Malloren books.
  • Jo Beverley, Tempting Fortune: This started out strong, but the last half went downhill quickly when the heroine started behaving like a total idiot for no readily apparent reason. Also, I thought the plot rested too strongly on things that happened in My Lady Notorious; I think I'd have been fairly lost if I hadn't just read that. I was rather disappointed after enjoying My Lady Notorious so much; I hope the next Malloren book is stronger.
  • Georgette Heyer, Cousin Kate (reread): I'm not sure why I rather enjoy this one, because I can see clearly that the Gothic elements just do not work. I think I just like the characters and am willing to put up with the wooden Gothicness.
• non-fiction:
  • Maria Bellonci, Lucrezia Borgia
  • Jeannette Lucraft, Katherine Swynford: The History of a Medieval Mistress: Realizing that there are not enough details for a full biography of Katherine Swynford, mistress and then wife of John of Gaunt in the fourteenth century, Lucraft instead investigates Katherine's history: not just the details of her life, but her place in her times. She looks at the depiction of Katherine by sources from her own time to the present, separating fact from conjecture, and discusses how Katherine may have chosen to present herself and her own image, notably through her association with St. Katherine. I found this a readable (though occasionally stilted), balanced, scholarly assessment.

Total books read this month: 37
Total books read this year: 368

Last updated 14 January 2010. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.