Archives - December 2007 archives -- index by author -- index by category -- favorite books -- links

Search Now:

I mostly skipped booklogging in December, save for a few short comments:

• Robin Brande, Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature: really, really good: a sympathetic, nuanced portrayal of a girl trying to come to terms with the conflict between faith and science.
  
  
• Emily Giffin, Baby Proof, Something Blue: I keep looking at these in bookstores, finally decided to get one from the library, and am glad I did. I liked them both, especially Baby Proof, which is about what happens when one of a married couple decides he wants a baby after all; the family relationships here were very well done. Something Blue has a very unsympathetic narrator, and I was impressed at how Giffin made me keep reading (and eventually like the narrator) in spite of that.
  
  
• Sue Grafton, T Is for Trespass: easily the best Grafton in years. Instead of sticking to Kinsey's point of view, half the book is from the criminal's POV, and the back-and-forth is very cleverly done, creating a lot of suspense and an interesting view of Kinsey from the outside.
  
  
• Barbara Hambly, A Free Man of Color, Fever Season, Graveyard Dust: Wow, these are good, with a particularly well-done historical setting (1840s New Orleans) and complex characters. I was maybe a little less interested in the third one, because I was overwhelmed by the multiplicity of characters. I look forward to reading the rest and hope they're just as good.
  
  
• E. Lockhart, The Boyfriend List, Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything: I really liked the first, but wasn't entirely convinced by the narrative device of the second (and how it made the main character too much of an observer and not enough of an actor).
  
  
• Polly Shulman, Enthusiasm: This didn't quite work in a couple of ways (narrative voice wavered between teen and Austen-imitation, not fully explored angst-with-parents), but I liked it quite a bit anyway; emotionally it was convincing, and I usually fall for backstage books.
  
  
• Diana Mosley, A Life of Contrasts: a book of contrasts, really. She'd be going on in an amusing way about her family or friends, and I'd be thinking, "Wow, she's just as entertaining as her sisters!" and then, wham! She'd come out with some awful racial thing or defense of the Germans/Hitler or fawning over Mosley, and I'd want to sling the book across the room. Not that I didn't know that's what it was likely to like, but still; I finished it and immediately culled it.

• Joan Aiken, The Silence of Herondale
• Enid Bagnold, The Loved and Envied (Virago)
• Meg Cabot, Avalon High
• Robertson Davies, Murther & Walking Spirits
• Cory Doctorow, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
• Edna Ferber, Show Boat
• Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions
• Rumer Godden, The Peacock Spring, The Greengage Summer (in spite of similar titles, these aren't related)
• Winifred Holtby, Remember, Remember! The Selected Short Stories
• Laura Kinsale, Uncertain Magic, My Sweet Folly
• Meredith Ann Pierce, The Woman Who Loved Reindeer
• John Scalzi, The Sagan Diary
• James Thurber, The Years with Ross
• Dorothy Whipple, The Closed Door and Other Stories (Persephone): mmm, Whipple -- a wonderful collection.
• Connie Willis, Doomsday Book: oh, the depressing! Really good, but so grim.
• Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

• Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile, I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids
• Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: an excellent dual biography.
• Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations About Race: recommended all over the place, and for good reason.

• Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron: I had forgotten how entertaining this is.
• Rachel Manija Brown, All the Fishes Come Home to Roost
• Georgette Heyer, Venetia: still a favorite.
• Rosamond Lehmann, Dusty Answer
• Nancy Milford, Zelda: A Biography
• James Thurber, The Secret Lives of Walter Mitty and of James Thurber: Thurber's best-known story paired with a short piece about himself, amusingly illustrated by Marc Simont.
• Scott Westerfeld, Peeps, the Midnighters trilogy
• Connie Willis, Lincoln's Dreams

Total books read this month: 43
Total books read this year: 456

Last updated 19 February 2008. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.