Book log archives - November 2007

Archives - November 2007

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Nicholas Basbanes, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books: I feel so much better about my book collecting habits after reading this, because I am much less crazy than some of these people. Really, though, it's a completely absorbing book, packed with marvelous collections, passionate (often too passionate) collectors, and interesting tidbits about books and booklovers, from ancient days to the present. I especially loved the examination of a Gutenberg Bible owned by collector William Scheide, who shows it to Basbanes and goes over it in tiny, fascinating detail. And I had no idea that there's a manuscript museum in Tacoma, but now I really want to go there.
Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, A Companion to Wolves: Njall is a jarl's son who is taken to the wolfheall, where he takes a new name, Isolfr, and is chosen as companion by a young female wolf who will eventually become a pack leader. With her, Isolfr will lead the war against the trolls, who are coming down from the north in ever greater numbers and threatening the existence of the wolfhealls and all who look to them for protection. Monette and Bear take on the animal companion genre and come up with a book that's a touch too grim and violent for my tastes (there's a lot of male/male sexual violence as well as violence in battle), but undeniably well-written and powerful, as they unflinchingly examine the implications of a true bond between human and animal, the gritty politics of a society which revolves around that bond, and the psychological effects of war. For a book that's got far more male characters than female, there's also a lot of interesting stuff about gender; Isolfr fills a rather traditionally feminine role in the wolfheall, and he meets some females of other cultures which make him think more about his role.
Elizabeth Scott, Bloom: Bloom starts out as a good but fairly standard, slightly slow-paced teen romance; Lauren has the perfect boyfriend, gorgeous, smart, and athletic Dave, but when Evan Kirkland enters her life, she starts to wonder why her perfect relationship isn't making her happy. As Lauren is more and more drawn to Evan, she struggles with memories of her mother, who ran away when Lauren was small, and with her absent-minded, detached father, and as Scott delves deeper into Lauren's history, this is where the book becomes more than the usual. The characters are subtly drawn, especially Lauren, and the relationships finely observed, particularly those between Lauren and her father, and Lauren and her best friend, Katie. Scott reminds me very much of Sarah Dessen, and I really look forward to her next book.
Maureen Johnson, The Key to the Golden Firebird: When their father dies of an unexpected heart attack just after arriving home in his beloved gold Firebird, the three Gold sisters each react to it in different ways: sensible May tries to keep things going and has a surprising romance with Pete, whom she's known all her life, jock Brooks starts drinking and running with a rebellious crowd, and introvert Palmer withdraws even more, trying to hide her panic attacks from her family. Johnson's characterization is sharp and observant, as always, and the way she weaves the sisters' lives together with each other and with their friends and family is really good stuff.
Suzy McKee Charnas, The Bronze King, The Silver Glove, The Golden Thread: reread of a good YA fantasy trilogy in which teen Val Marsh becomes entangled in a series of encounters with dark magic, through her grandmother's connection with the magic club or school called Sorcery Hall. I like Charnas's good teenage characterization, particularly in Val's relationship with her mother, and I like how through the course of the trilogy, Val slowly comes to depend on herself rather than on others. I find the Sorcery Hall concept more distracting than anything else, though, since you never really learn anything about it; it's just this presence that's occasionally mentioned and never elaborated on. Everything else in the books pretty much makes up for that small niggle, though/
Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend: I have a love/hate relationship with Dickens. He's always verbose and often sloppily sentimental, and I find most of his female characters trying, but there's something that keeps me reading. Our Mutual Friend is about identity, disguise, and concealment, which I mostly found interesting, but I hated a deception that's revealed at the end, because it simply plays into my dislike of Dickens' childlike-type women (one of whom is deliberately, lengthily deceived "for her own good"). However, that aside, I did mostly enjoy the book, certainly more than the last Dickens I read, The Pickwick Papers; I found one of the two romances quite a bit more appealing than the other, and I generally do like Dickens' settings and social concerns.
Joan Aiken, The Shadow Guests: After his mother and brother mysteriously disappear, Cosmo's father sends him from Australia to live with his mathematician aunt in England, where he must deal with being the new boy at school...and with the ghosts who appear to him around his aunt's house. Aiken entwines the natural and supernatural events cleverly and unfolds the mystery of the ghosts gradually; as always, she has a gift for making an imaginative plot seem convincing and believable. This isn't as good as the Dido books (the early ones, anyway) or Midnight Is a Place, but it's good nonetheless.
Ann Halam, Taylor Five: Okay, Dr. Franklin's Island and Siberia are not what I would call cheerful, but geez, at least they're not as depressing as Taylor Five. Taylor Walker lives with her biologist parents and her brother in Borneo, where her parents study orangutans; she seems like an ordinary teenager, but she's not -- she's a clone, of her parents' best friend Pam Taylor, a brilliant scientist. When a political uprising destroys Taylor's life as she knows it, she must survive in the jungle with the help of Uncle, an extra intelligent orangutan, and learn to come to terms with her existence. As in her other books, Halam provides a lot of food for thought, here focused on cloning, personality, and intelligence, but the events of the book were just too grim for me.
Peter Dickinson, The Ropemaker: Tilja's home is in the Valley, protected by magic from the powerful Empire. When the magic begins to fade, Tilja must set out with three companions on a quest to renew the magic; along the way, she finds her own unusual powers. This is a really good YA fantasy, with excellent worldbuilding, interesting magic, and a heroine I liked very much (and also her crotchety grandmother). I'd only read a couple of Dickinson's other YAs, both science fiction, and didn't like them as much as this, but I'll certainly seek out his other fantasy.
Martha Gellhorn, A Stricken Field: Gellhorn is best known for her war journalism, but she also wrote short stories and several novels. A Stricken Field is set in Prague in 1938, when journalist Mary Douglas arrives from the United States to report, as the Germans take over. There, she encounters her friend Rita, a German refugee helping other refugees who are threatened with being forcibly returned to the areas under German control. Gellhorn's depiction of the desperate refugees is chilling and powerful, and the plot absorbing, as Mary becomes more and more involved, emotionally and actively, with the plight of the refugees. It's probably better as war reporting than as a novel (though the bits with Rita and her lover Peter are nicely characterized, Mary is rather shallow), but it's well written and compelling.
Edith Henrietta Fowler, The Young Pretenders: One of Persephone's latest, but not entirely to my taste, I fear. It's a Victorian children's book, about two children who are taken to live with their uncle and aunt while their parents are in India. Although it does manage not to be too soppily sentimental, I found myself all too often agreeing with something Charlotte Mitchell notes in her introduction: "There was definitely a fashion for baby talk in late Victorian children's books, and not all of it appeals to the modern reader." However, baby talk aside, the children are realistic and believable, and Fowler shows things from their point of view without much moralizing.
Garth Nix, Across the Wall: I quite liked the title story (really more of a novella), which is a sequel of sorts to the Abhorsen series and involves Nicholas Sayre and an Old Kingdom monster running loose in Ancelstierre. I found the other stories a mixed bag: I liked "Hope Chest" (which I've read before in one of the Firebirds anthologies) and the short but poignant "Three Roses", while not getting on at all with the choose-your-own-adventure send-up or "From the Lighthouse", which I just didn't think went anywhere. Still, I mostly read it for "Across the Wall" anyway, and that was certainly worth it if only to get a little more closure on a couple of the characters from the Abhorsen books.
Marion Meade, Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties: This is a group biography of Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna Ferber, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, covering only the 1920s. Though its multiple subjects and limited time scope mean it gives far from in-depth coverage of any of them, it's fast-paced and very engaging, nicely conveying the flavor of the times and the personalities of the women, all of whom I wanted to spend more time with (okay, maybe not the rather annoying Millay); I reread Nancy Milford's Zelda right away and am thinking of rereading Meade's excellent biography of Parker.
Laura Kinsale, The Dream Hunter: I didn't like this one as much as The Shadow and the Star or Flowers from the Storm, but still, there's something about her characters that really gets me. Here, the "opposites attract" hero and heroine kept me reading even when the plot lagged in the second half.
Georgette Heyer, Friday's Child: I liked this a lot; I thought it was a particularly witty Heyer. I especially loved Lord Sheringham's friends (and laughed out loud at many of Ferdy's bits). Also, I liked her examination of how the two participants of a marriage made in haste have to learn to know each other and live together, although I did find the heroine a little passive. Still, it's definitely a keeper.
Annette Meyers, Hedging: There hasn't been a new book in Meyers' Smith and Wetzon mystery series in ages, and I'd almost forgotten about them until someone on LiveJournal mentioned this new one recently. I think I might have enjoyed it more if I'd read any of the others recently, but I did think it was pretty good, with a nicely done amnesia storyline and lots of New York color.


Last updated 15 January 2008. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.