ejj1955's 2013 Refusal to Give Up Trying to Read 75 Books, Again

Yep, despite failing to meet the goal for three years running, at least, I'm going to try again. So there.

good for you! but make sure you enjoy it rather than turn it into a chore.

Welcome back!

Doctor Jewell! So glad to see you here! *hugs*

Hey, Elizabeth - "never give up, never surrender!"

You can do it!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Thread!

1. Homegoing by Frederick Pohl. Interesting sci fi story by Pohl, concerning a young man, Sandy (Lysander), who has been raised on an alien spaceship by the Hakh'hli, who have tried to give Sandy a normal human childhood. He has Hakh'hli playmates (his cohort) and watches old Earth movies and television shows, preparing for this trip to his home planet. The Hakh'hli not only intend to return Sandy to his people, they have gifts for the people of Earth--cheap energy and a way to remove the massive amounts of debris in Earth's orbit that keep humans from space travel. They seem to have the best of intentions, but the people of Earth are dubious when the Hakh'hli come bearing gifts--and Sandy is caught in the middle.

Your thread title makes me think of my feelings about the challenge too - I'm just gonna keep at it and one year the stars will line up for me! Here's hoping you have a year full of good reading.

2. Hour of the Hunter by J. A. Jance. This is the first book I've read by Jance, whose name I recognized from the Arizona Book Festival I attended last spring. Set in Arizona, it's a tale of a released psychopathic killer coming after the widow and son of his former confederate (who supposedly committed suicide). Diana Ladd and her son Davy share their home with Rita Antone, also known as Dancing Quail, the grandmother of the girl Andrew Carlisle killed. Rita teaches Davy about the ways of the Papago, and the tribe's legends are interwoven into this tale of violence and vengeance. Other characters include Brandon Walker, a police detective who tries to protect Diana and Davy but who is distracted by his father's stroke, and Looks At Nothing, a blind Papago medicine man.

This was an interesting and ultimately satisfying thriller, perhaps inaccurately labeled a mystery, though creepy enough to make me long for a cozy English locked library mystery next. Or sci fi or fantasy, perhaps. Something less menacing!

3. Dune by Frank Herbert. A re-read, for the fifth or sixth or tenth time--one of my favorite books. This time, I felt as though I was rushing through to get to the payoff at the end--the final battle and its aftermath are pretty good! Would sort of like to read the other two in the original trilogy again, but have no idea where they are . . . so have moved on to a mystery. So far, I'm finding the main character pretty irritating.

4. Naked Once More by Elizabeth Peters. What a fun read! Jacqueline Kirby, a romance writer, is one of five candidates being considered to write the sequel to "Naked in the Ice," a best-seller whose author, Kathleen, disappeared (and is presumed dead). Jacqueline is chosen and goes to Kathleen's home town to work on the outline for the book, but spends a good part of her time investigating what happened to Kathleen--while also charming the locals and admiring one of Kathleen's former lovers. At first I was a bit put off by the formidable Jacqueline, but like many who met her, I succumbed to the force of her personality. The final scene, in which all is revealed, is quite satisfying.

Peters also writes suspense under the pen name Barbara Michaels; her Ammie, Come Home is one of the more memorable reads of my youth.

5. Across the Universe by Beth Ravis. Interesting first novel, the story of a girl who is frozen, along with her parents, for a journey to a new planet, expected to take 300 years. She's unexpectedly awoken, though, and finds herself in an unfamiliar society. Most of the people on the ship seem mindless, content to do their various jobs and deferring to Eldest, the leader. Eldest is supposed to be training Elder as his replacement, but the young man believes Eldest is keeping secrets from him. Elder is taken with the girl, Amy, with her red hair and pale skin, who is so different from the genetically engineered sameness the ship's inhabitants have achieved. Several other of the original frozen travelers are unplugged and die; the book contains this murder mystery along with the budding romance between Elder and Amy, the question of when the ship will ever reach the planet it's traveling toward, and the larger question of the secrets that underlie the way the ship is run.

MINOR SPOILERS

6. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. This was the book club selection for this month, a fictionalized account of a true story, the romance between architect Frank Lloyd Wrigtht and Mameh Borthwick Cheney. Wright designed a home for the Cheneys in Oak Park, Illinois. He and Mameh, each married, fell in love and left their respective spouses and children to go to Europe. Mameh, an intelligent, educated woman who spoke several languages, met Swedish feminist philosopher Ellen Key in Europe and later translated some of her works into English. Eventually, Wright and Mameh returned from Europe and settled in Wisconsin at Taliesen.

Horan frames Mameh's story as that of a woman seeking self-expression and fulfillment, and the love affair as a meeting of kindred spirits, but I could not entirely overlook the fact that Wright left six children and Mameh left two; each of them had a spouse who was apparently nice but uninspiring. At one point Mameh thinks or writes that her children are the world to her, and all I can think is, well, apparently not. Grand passion is a wonderful thing, but does it have to leave so many devastated people in its path?

The tragic end to this story seems at odds with the rest of the book, but is simply what happened in reality.

7. A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin. This was a re-read, prompted by my viewing of season 2 of the HBO show "A Game of Thrones." There were bits I didn't remember and some things that were clarified for me that I didn't remember well, and it was as enjoyable to read as the first time. But I really, really wish he'd get the next/last two books written!!

Don't we all!

8. My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira. This stunning debut novel recounts the tale of the fearless Mary Sutter, a midwife who aspires to become a surgeon in 19th-century America. Refused entrance to medical schools and unable to find a physician to act as her mentor, she travels to Washington, D.C., at the start of the Civil War. She works first as a volunteer nurse, little more than a cleaning woman, but as the war goes on and the horrors of thousands of wounded overwhelm inadequate facilities, she finally gets a chance to perform amputations. Intertwined with her relentless pursuit of knowledge is the story of her family relationships with her mother, also a noted midwife; her twin sister Jenny, a pretty woman not interested in the family vocation; her brother Christian, who volunteers for the war with the first wave of martial enthusiasm. There are also men in her life, from her neighbor Thomas to two physicians she comes to know well. The medical details can be hard to take, as it's hard to imagine the horrors of the days before infection was understood. Ultimately, though, this is Mary's story, through and through, and she's a memorable, admirable, thoroughly human character.

My Name Is Mary Sutter has been on my radar for awhile. I'm glad to see that it held up well for you.

9. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. By far the best book I've read in a long time, I picked this up because I've seen the title on so many lists on which people are asked to name their favorite book. Knowing no more than that, I started this tale, set in post-World War II Barcelona, about a boy taken by his father, a widowed bookseller, to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a secret library. Told to choose one book for himself, the boy Daniel finds "The Shadow of the Wind," a book that enchants him (he stays up all night until he's finished it) so much that he embarks on a quest to find other books by the author, Julian Carax, and then to find out about Carax himself, whose past is shrouded in mystery.

Zafon writes with humor and wisdom, sharply defining characters within a paragraph or two, shedding light on the human heart, the capacity for love and hate, loss and longing; the city of Barcelona is virtually a character, too. The book is simply brilliant, and I urge anyone who loves literature to read it.

#18 -- I'm going to have to read that.

I loved The Shadow of the Wind when I read it a couple of years ago. What's not to love about a Cemetery of Forgotten Books?

10. The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer. It's a comfort re-read. I simply love the character of Hugo Darracott. That's all.

11. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Follett is well-known for thrillers about espionage and assassination, but this atypical saga is completely unlike those books. Set in medieval England during the years that Stephen and Maud fought a bitter civil war for the crown, the story concerns the building of a cathedral. There's a love story and a mystery or two, but the building is the central theme and quite fascinating. Follett occasionally offers an unnecessary and clunky recap of what has happened, which may be passed off as a character's reflection on what has happened, but generally the story moves along and there's plenty of action, some of it quite brutal. This is an unusual instance in which I saw the miniseries based on the book first and then wanted to read the book. And now I have . . .

12. Stork Raving Mad by Donna Andrews. Reading this book, I could not remember if I had read it before . . . to some extent, Andrews' delightful Meg Langslow series has become a bit formulaic and sometimes over the top. Meg's pregnant with twins, and anytime she encounters anyone in this book, they overwhelm her with concern: is she all right, shouldn't she be resting, etc.? Yes, we get it: she's very pregnant. Before long, someone is murdered and Meg is in the middle of overheard conversations and bogus confessions. Naturally it all works out in the end, just as she goes into labor. Oh--another overdone cuteness in this book--Meg refers to the twins by a series of references to popular pairs, such as Heckle and Jeckle or Holmes and Watson. Cute at first but after a while . . .

I loved the early books in this series and am still hanging in there; I'm about to read the next one (oops, no, there's one in between) in the series. So we'll see.

ETA: I did read this before, in 2011, and the one after it. So the next one up is new to me.

SPOILERS!

13. The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger. This month's book club book, which I've read quite quickly for me these days. I'm curious to see how the discussion goes tomorrow for it. The story concerns a woman from Bangladesh, Amina, who goes to an online dating site and meets a man named George from Rochester. They marry and she moves to the three-bedroom, two-bath home he's bought. Amina adjusts to life in Rochester, getting a job and taking classes at the community college, but she is disappointed when she doesn't become pregnant, even though she really wants to wait until she becomes a citizen and can sponsor her parents for immigration. Three years after her marriage, she becomes a citizen and goes back to Bangladesh to get her parents, spending weeks waiting for paperwork to go through and encountering old family feuds and a man she once thought of marrying.

I'll be thinking of this book for a while, as the characters are individuals and the situation Amina finds herself in is fraught with all the nuances of real life. Has she made the right decisions? Do she and George love each other? Will their marriage be successful? Does it depend on whether they have children? How will her parents adjust to life in Rochester? The book reaches a natural conclusion but all these questions remain.

Swinging by to delurk and say hello. Not much to say about what you are reading but I'm here!

*Waving* Hi, Morphy!

14. Some Like It Hawk by Donna Andrews. I liked this entry in the series better than some of the other recent ones; the wackiness factor was pretty good. A corporation (the "Evil Lender") to whom the town is in debt has taken over the Caerphilly courthouse, in which the town clerk has been barricaded in the basement for more than a year. He's regularly supplied with food and company through a secret tunnel, which the town keeps secret by holding Caerphilly days, a celebration with as many noisy acts as possible (clog dancer, bagpipers, battle re-enactments) to cover the sound of the tunnel's trapdoor opening. In short order, one of the Evil Lender's minions is messily murdered in an attempt to frame the clerk, and the usual suspects all pull together to solve the murder and keep the town's secret safe. My only real complaint about this book was the entirely expected moment at which the killer pulls a gun on Meg. This has happened in virtually every book and it stretches my credulity far past the breaking point. A gun or other weapon is brandished, Meg and perhaps others are tied up or otherwise restrained, and somehow she escapes or is rescued and the killer is captured. Yawn. I almost suspect Ms. Andrews of doing this in a tongue-in-cheek way rather than using her formidable imagination (this is, after all, the woman who introduced me to extreme croquet as a sport) to come up with a better reveal/climax/denoument.

15. Death Comes for the Fat Man by Reginald Hill. One of the Dalziel and Pascoe series, this book finds the pair injured at the site of an explosion of a shop believed to be a hotbed of Islamic terrorists. While Dalziel lingers in a coma, his fate an open question, Pascoe returns to work and is seconded to an intelligence service. The bombing of the shop appears to have been the work of a group that reveals itself as the Templars--modeled after the medieval warrior monks. The modern Templars are a group of anti-Islamic terrorists, and before long Peter Pascoe is convinced that the security service has been infiltrated by one of the Templars.

Hill does his usual job of tying up all the parts into a satisfying whole, with the solution both surprising in parts and plausible. Even comatose, Dalziel is a force to be reckoned with, his influence on his colleagues powerful, while Pascoe, Wieldy, and Constable Hector are all individual and sometimes quirky characters in their own right. Definitely enjoyable.

16. Forty Thousand in Gehenna by C. J. Cherryh. A re-read, but it had been long enough since the first time that I didn't remember much of this one. Great fun and thought-provoking, as usual with Cherryh. A ship goes out to colonize a planet on which the dominant life form is a large creature similar to a lizard or dragon; the creature is dubbed a caliban by the settlers. They expect subsequent ships to come with more supplies but are abandoned for some generations, with the result that society breaks down and is rebuilt. The settlers' descendants live in what seems a symbiotic relationship with the calibans, whose role is completely misunderstood by the spacefarers who come to the planet years later. A few observers from the self-contained Base venture out to study the two very different societies that have developed on Gehenna, becoming embroiled in politics they barely understand. The coda at the end of the book is rather charming.

17. The Proteus Operation by James P. Hogan. Pretty sure I've read this one before, too, but didn't remember it much, either. Oh, dear, is this a sign of age? I'll never have to read any new books because I can't remember the old ones?

Anyway, it's an interesting sci fi story that starts in an alternate history 1974, in a world in which the Nazis won and the United States, virtually the last unconquered country, prepares to go down fighting. A small group of people are selected for a top-secret project--to go back in time to 1939 and attempt to change history and save democracy. It's revealed that the Nazi efforts are being masterminded by a group using a similar device from 2025; this group has given them the atom bomb in 1942, ensuring their victory and the dismal, hopeless world our band of heroes hail from.

The theories of alternate time lines resulting from infinite branches dictated by every decision made in each timeline is given some interesting play, and the Proteus group recruits a host of famous people to help them out, including Churchill, Roosevelt, Fermi, Szilard, and, of course, Einstein.

Of course, the central paradox of time travel remains: if it were possible, no matter when in the future it was invented or discovered, wouldn't we already know about it? Wouldn't we have known about it pretty much forever? However time is understood theoretically, it's always been a linear experience for humans, hasn't it?

SPOILERS

18. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Also a re-read; I wanted to read it again before the film came out, and I hope to see the film. Fascinating story of an Earth that has twice fought the "buggers," aliens that Earth fears will attack again. To prepare for that, exceptional children are recruited for a battle school. Ender Wiggen, the third child in his family, is sent to battle school and repeatedly excels beyond all others. Taken finally to the commanders' school, Ender is trained rigorously to fight the buggers, finally defeating them conclusively in a battle he assumes is just another in the endless series of war games he's spent his childhood in. Despite a great deal of action, the story is ultimately philosophical in many ways.

I really have to read a new book next!

19. Distant Blood by Jeff Abbott. Well, this was new to me. Jordan Poteet takes his girlfriend, Candace, with him when he goes with the man he has recently discovered is his biological father to meet the rest of his new family at the island estate of his Uncle Mutt. The clan doesn't exactly embrace Jordan, and he soon finds they are a bitter, angry group of people with more than their share of dark secrets. Soon one of the family collapses, and Jordan suspects poisoning. But he just can't help poking into the past to find out what lies behind the possible murder.

After quite a string of scandals and secrets are revealed, a lot happens at the end of the book, with more murders and attempted murders and some surprising developments in Jordan's closest relationships (one of which, at least, quite surprised me: perhaps it would have made more sense to me if I had read the whole series of books with Jordan as the detective-protagonist). It was an okay read, but I don't feel in the least motivated to seek out others in the series. Next up will be something a bit better known and frequently recommended.

20. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. This is one of those books I picked up because I've seen it mentioned by friends on here. I wasn't sure, at first, if I could buy into this alternative world, but Fforde's plucky heroine, Thursday Next, grabbed me. Thursday works for a British government agency charged with protecting literature from very real dangers, and before long, a villain steals first the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and then the original manuscript of Jane Eyre. In the first case, he brings a minor character into the "real" world and kills him off, deleting him from the book, and in the second, he kidnaps Jane herself, causing the first-person narrative to stop mid-book. Thursday, after a disastrous operation in London in which several people are left dead, relocates to her old home town of Swindon, where she's paired with a new partner and runs into her old lover, Landon. She's forced to sneak into Wales, a country at odds with England, in pursuit of the villain Hades. Along the way, Thursday and her partner are swept into a time vortex and take a detour through time. The story moves along at a fast clip, and the internal logic of this world makes the fantastic believable, if not always logical. Great fun.

One of the best conceits of the book is that, until the intervention of Hades and Thursday, Jane Eyre ends with Jane and Rochester separated forever as she goes off to India with her cousin. Although hailed as a great work of literature, most fans agree that the ending is unsatisfactory, and by the end of this book, a more satisfactory ending has been achieved in that one.

21. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris, the first Sookie Stackhouse book. I enjoyed this pretty thoroughly despite having seen the HBO series first. There were subtle differences and one that I think is major: the character of Tara, Sookie's best friend since childhood, is not in the book. Sookie is a loner and seen as weird for her mind reading ability; she has her brother and her beloved grandmother, but spends a lot of her time trying to keep her mental walls up to avoid hearing the thoughts of others. Enter Bill, the vampire, whose thoughts she cannot hear. It doesn't hurt that he's gorgeous and strong, protective of her (saving her life more than once), and that he falls in love with her.

This was a very quick read and I'm definitely interested in reading the rest of the series.

The books are very different from the series from what I've heard. I haven't seen the series just read the books but the plots and character motivations are significantly different.

I tried but ultimately decided to give up on Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini, our August book club book. I read about a third of it but it was heavy going, as there's not much action or dialog--just a narrative. Based on a true story, but just not compelling.

22. The previous month's book club selection, The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman, was much more absorbing. Set in Australia after World War I, the story concerns Tom Sherbourne, who returns from the war physically intact but psychologically bruised. He finds calm and refuge in becoming the lighthouse keeper on Janus, a remote island. On one of his infrequent visits to the mainland, he marries Isabel and the two build a life on Janus, although it's marred by Isabel's two miscarriages. Days after she gives birth to a stillborn son, she hears a baby cry, and Tom discovers a boat that drifted ashore with a dead man and a tiny baby girl. Isabel convinces him not to report the incident; he buries the man and she keeps the baby, whom she names Lucy. Isabel is convinced the child's mother must be dead and the baby is a gift from God. They tell others Lucy is their child; she delights them and Isabel's parents. But when they take Lucy to the mainland to christen her, they hear the story of Hannah Roennfeldt, who married an Austrian against her father's wishes and who has lost her husband and baby girl after a mob threatened to attack the man because of his supposed German connections.

Hannah has been grief stricken and Tom is tortured by the thought that their happiness with Lucy is at her expense. But his attempts to bring Hannah some comfort and the interference of a friend lead to heartbreaking consequences; although some healing occurs eventually, lives are shattered. Stedman beautifully manages to portray characters in conflict who are all sympathetic; one's heart breaks for each of them. I'm really sorry I missed the discussion of this book.

SPOILERS!

23. Dragons in the Stars by Jeffrey A. Carver. I'd read this book before but didn't really remember it well. The story centers on Jael, a star rigger whose job is to pilot a ship through the Flux, a strange dimension in which the rigger uses imagery to create a landscape to transverse vast distances. Jael has a hard time getting hired because of her father's reputation as an unscrupulous man who abused riggers; out of desperation, she takes a job with a Mogurn, a captain who introduces her to the pallisp, an addictive device that acts like a drug. Desperate to free herself from it, she steers into an area of space described as mountainous, where legend says there are dragons. Jael finds that the legends are true and unexpectedly makes friends with Highwing, a dragon. When she finally emerges from the Flux, she defies Mogurn and refuses the pallisp, which he tries to force on her before then attempting to rape her. Jael defends herself, killing Mogurn, and find herself at the next port, unsure of when she'll be paid and whether she'll be held accountable. She's cleared so that she can work again, and teams up with Ar, an alien rigger who has befriended her. They find a good assignment but a disturbance in space brings them back to the land of the dragons, where things have gone horribly wrong and Highwing is a prisoner awaiting death.

This is the point at which the novel really falls apart for me. The problem in the land of the dragons is an ancient evil, somehow awakened by Jael's previous visit, and there's a lot of telepathic communication with Highwing's son. Somehow, Jael's presence does something--it's never clear what--to release Highwing and break the spell of the evil one, whom we never meet and whose motivations we never understand. What Jael does, other than by showing up, is also a mystery. Along the way, her issues with her father and her ability to trust others are somehow resolved, though it's also unclear exactly how that happens.

The idea of the riggers and the way they work is intriguing, but the conflicts within the novel failed to engage me and the resolution failed to satisfy. I have another book by Carver set in this universe and I'm debating whether to read it as I realize how dissatisfied I was with this book.

24. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith, aka, of course, J. K. Rowling. I liked this book a lot, and I wouldn't have been able to tell in a million years that it had been written by Rowling, as there's nothing in the style or subject matter to suggest the Harry Potter series. It's a mystery set in London, featuring Comoran Strike, a one-legged veteran of Afghanistan. At the start of the novel, he's just broken up with his beautiful girlfriend Charlotte and is determined that this will be the final time. He starts living in his office and is desperately broke and dodging collection calls from someone representing his famous rock-star father. Comoran is an illegitimate son with little contact with his father, the result of a brief encounter with his groupie mother, who died of a drug overdose--or, it transpires, was murdered.

Robin, a temporary secretary, arrives moments before what seems a stroke of luck--a new client, one able to pay enough so Comoran can pay her. The client, John Bristow, wants Strike to investigate the death of his famous adoptive sister, a supermodel, Lula, known as Cuckoo. Though the death was ruled a suicide, Bristow is convinced she was murdered. Strike agrees to take the case, thinking that Bristow is deluded, but as he delves into the glamorous world in which Lula lived, he comes to realize that there are plenty of unanswered questions. And before long, as he fears, the murderer claims another victim.

The conclusion was entirely satisfying, both surprising and logical. Should Galbraith (for whom there's an entirely spurious biographical sketch provided!) decide to write another book about Strike and Robin, I'd be only too happy to read it.

25. Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. Really good fantasy. Raoden, a prince, awakens to find himself "taken" by a process that transforms him. Bald and with mottled skin, he's condemned to Elantris, formerly a shining city of beings so powerful they seemed like gods. But for ten years Elantris has been a crumbling, rotting city peopled by beings condemned to unceasing pain and hunger, shunned by the citizens of Arelon, the country surrounding the city. As Raoden adjusts to this new and precarious existence, trying to make it better, his bride arrives in Arelon. Sarene, a princess from Teos, is told she's a widow without ever being really wed. She is dismissed by the king as a foolish woman, but the redoubtable and brilliant princess bides her time and decides to fight to keep Arelon free in the face of the threat posed by the religious fanatic Hrathen, who is determined to conquer Arelon by conversion or force.

The novel is well-balanced between the activities of these three main characters, separate at first but fated to meet. The story never lags, and although I was surprised by the amount of violence at the end, it was an inventive world with memorable characters.

26. The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. Interesting novel about three sisters, Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia, named for Shakespeare heroines by their professor father. They all come home to the little college town where they grew up, drawn by their mother's illness but also their own reasons. Rose, newly engaged, is torn between her love for her fiance, who has just accepted a year's posting to Oxford, and her desire to stay home and fulfill her apparent role in the family as the capable, practical manager. Bianca, or Bean, is fired from her job in NYC after it's found that she has stolen from her employer, and comes home weighed by debts and this secret. Cordy, a free-spirited wanderer, comes home with her own secret: a casual encounter has left her pregnant.

The sisters' natural antagonism and competitiveness kicks in immediately, but gradually over the course of the novel, they also find a closeness and understanding of each other and, for each woman, of herself and her choices.

The author has a flair for language and description, capped by apt quotations from Shakespeare, sprinkled into conversation by the whole family. One oddity of the novel, which I found distracting, was the narration. The narrator talks about the sisters and the family using "we," "our family," and the like, yet it's clearly not one of the sisters narrating, as each one is referred to in the third person, too. It's almost as though some united sisterly consciousness narrates. Mostly it works, but I was aware of it when it would be better not to be noticing that.

27. The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel. Here's the review I wrote on Amazon; there are SPOILERS:

I read recently that Auel doesn't want to keep writing, and based on this book, I think that's a wise choice. This series of six books would have been better as a trilogy, in my opinion. I thoroughly enjoyed the first three books but was put off by the creepy violence in the fourth. The fifth was fairly boring, I thought, but not compared with this mess. As most reviewers have noted, Auel obviously visited every painted cave in western Europe and took extremely detailed notes, which she regurgitates here. Every step, twist, and turn in the various caves is described, as is every painting of every animal, handprint, or dot. It is mind-numbing to read. At one point in the endless cave-visiting journey, some bad men plot to kidnap Ayla and I was praying that they'd succeed: then there would be some challenge, some action, some adversity to overcome, some genuine emotion. But no: the "threat" was ended about five seconds after it began, because Ayla and Jondalar are just that awesome. One of the things I liked about the previous books was Ayla's inventiveness--sure, maybe it was a bit far-fetched for one woman to have discovered the "firestone," figured out how to put an eye in a needle to "invent" sewing, domesticated animals . . . but this book promised another fantastic leap forward by Ayla as a result of her training to be a Zelandoni. My personal bet was on the wheel, although then it occurred to me that maybe she'd "invent" agriculture, instead. But what did we get? Fatherhood! No, really? As others have also pointed out, this concluding book in the series addresses few of the interesting ideas Auel had hinted at before, including contact between the Zelandonii and the Clan or, specifically, contact between Ayla's child/children with Jondalar and Durc. But nope, there was no contact, no conflict, no closure. I wonder if the publisher knew that Auel's previous success would ensure a reception for this book and either didn't care or didn't dare to assign a competent editor to it? If this had been the first book in the series instead of the last, I'm pretty sure it would have been a lot shorter--if it ever got published at all.

SPOILERS!
28. She Goes to War by Edith Pargeter. Pargeter is one of my favorite writers based on her The Heaven Tree trilogy, although I also like the Cadfael books she wrote as Ellis Peters. This book is unlike her medieval novels, though, as it's the story of a woman, Catherine, who joins the service in England in 1940. Told through letters to a friend at home, a pilot seriously injured in World War I, it begins in an almost lighthearted vein but grows steadily more serious, even grim, as she describes bombings, from the noise to the retreat to bomb shelters to the shattered remnants of homes and businesses and reported deaths. Catherine meets a man named Tom and falls in love; she describes him as ordinary to anyone but her. After a four-day trip to Wales together, he is deployed to Greece. Eventually she receives his letters, including several delivered after he is reported missing, presumed dead, and she sends her pilot friend these letters, describing the harrowing and hopeless fight. Even while decrying the leadership that has left the troops with no air support in the face of Germany's adept use of air power, both Tom and Catherine express their conviction that this is a fight worth fighting to the end.

I read to the last sentence, hoping that it would turn out he wasn't dead after all, but no such luck. The blurb on the book said it was based on Pargeter's own experiences and it was written in 1942, while the war was still going strong. It makes for sobering reading and makes me want to read some high fantasy or even a silly romance--but it'll have to be fast, as the book club book is awaiting me. It doesn't sound terribly upbeat, either.

29. My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. Just what I needed to lighten the mood. More a collection of short stories than anything else, with a few in the middle that did not feature Jeeves and Wooster, but these lighthearted tales of hapless young English (or sometimes American) well-born men who rely on the giant brainpower of the ultimate in a gentleman's gentleman, Jeeves, to neatly solve their problems made for quick and pleasant reading.

30. Hearts at Stake by Alyxandra Harvey, a teen vampire book, the first in a series about the Drakes, aristocrats among vampires. The family has seven sons and one daughter, the youngest, about to "turn" fully vampire on her 16th birthday (or thereabouts: it's a little fuzzy, as the change is supposedly linked to hormones). She's also supposed to be a princess or queen or something based on the rarity of born vampires versus made ones, and her presumed ability to make vampire babies.

The book is told in alternate chapters by the girl, Solange, and her best friend, the human Lucy, a spunky character determined to help Solange have a normal life. There's some nice teen romance and some fun stuff, but this book feels like it's riding the trend of vampire books for teens. It's light and fluffy fun, but I can't imagine seeking out the rest of the series. Moving on to the book club book next.

31. The Jupiter Myth by Lindsey Davis. At one point I tried to read this series in order, but I don't know that it matters so much at this point, and I thoroughly enjoyed this particular entry in the Marcus Didius Falco series. Falco and Helena are in London, which Falco feels is a chilly backwater. But he's unable to break away because a body is found drowned in a well behind a seedy bar; unfortunately, the body belongs to an associate of a locally powerful king and Roman ally. Falco is charged with investigating the murder. Meanwhile, his friend Petronius seems to be investigating something on his own, when not wrangling with Falco's sister Maia--but is the animosity a cover for other emotions between the two?

The sense of life in Roman-occupied Britain and the ongoing relationships among Davis's fascinating characters make this another successful book in the series. Good fun.

It is something of a shock to me to realize that I'm not going to make 75 books this year, nor 50, nor 40. Maybe 32 or 33. Next year must do better.

I'm always looking for new mystery series to recommend to my Dad; this looks like another good one. Maybe I'll get him the first book for Christmas and see what he thinks.

In happy hopes of seeing more of you here, Elizabeth:



Celebrate the return of the light with feasts, merriment, and gratitude for all the wonders of this wide green earth.

RMD

Richard, thank you! If I make any New Year's resolutions, certainly "to read more books" will be top of the list (and one of the few I'd have a hope of following through on).

32. Houses of Stone by Barbara Michaels. Michaels has written plenty of these creepy suspense novels; this entry involves an academic, Karen, who comes across a manuscript of an unknown work by an early American woman author known as Ismene. Aided by her friend Peggy, another professor, she deciphers the handwritten manuscript while trying to find out who Ismene was, a search that leads to a decrepit and faintly creepy old Virginia house being restored for sale by Cameron, heir (with his cousin Lisa) to the estate. Bill Meyer, yet another professor, may be a friend or foe--Karen doesn't trust him, but he appears to be trying to help, as well as rescue her from a series of what may be attacks or simply accidents. Karen and Peggy discover the remains of an old stone house in the woods that they believe was the real-life Ismene's (the heroine of the manuscript has the same name) writing retreat, but as they attempt to clear away the overgrowth, strange noises seem to warn them of danger.

The characters are interesting and the mysteries, as well as a couple of romances, all get resolved by the end, but overall this was less successful for me than Michaels' Ammie, Come Home, a novel I read years ago that seemed to incorporate many of the same supernatural elements much better, with a more chilling effect.

33. Dawn by Octavia Butler. This is the first in a trilogy and I have the second book, but not the third. No doubt the library will help me out . . . I've seen Butler recommended so wanted to read something of hers. It's an intriguing concept: humanity has almost destroyed itself by nuclear war. An alien race rescues as many people as they can and keeps them mostly in a state of suspended animation. Lilith awakens to find herself alone in a room, being questioned by her unseen captors. Eventually she sees the aliens and is repelled by their appearance, but gradually she accepts them and lives among them on the giant spaceship. She's told she's being trained to lead a group of humans back to Earth and that the aliens are traders: in this case, gene traders who want to combine their genes with humans to create a new hybrid. Lilith hopes to train the other humans to run once they're on Earth, although it seems the aliens expect that.

I'm definitely interested enough to want to read the rest of the trilogy, although I have a few other books to read first.