Will diana.n maintain this log for more than 3 months in 2017?

I closed out 2016's reading with a couple of timely reads, including A Gentleman in Moscow, which went on my Favorite Novels Ever list.

I'm on a beach vacation right now and am planning on leaving for a long-term trip soon, before a move back to New York City, so 2017 is shaping up to be a busy year.

The Coincidence of Coconut Cake was cute, and a cut above normal "chick lit" fare, but the author's insistence that you have to change your clothes to lighten up your personality annoyed me. Really, you'd think someone inauthentic if they wore khakis to a baseball game?

Mirabile was a hoot and also went on my FNE list. I especially liked the way Kagan scattered references to the planet's native species throughout the linked stories but didn't go into detail on all of them. It was nice to use my own imagination.

Necessity closed out Jo Walton's Thessaly trilogy. By the end, I'd become fed up with her fondness for Republic. The series is well worth a read, but I don't agree with Walton's final defense of the premise.

Rules of Civility, by the author of FNE member A Gentleman in Moscow, was excellent. "Doesn't New York just turn you inside out?" Yes. Yes, it does. This was Towles' debut novel, but it reads as if written by an author with several under their belt.

Arabella of Mars was fun. I might read the next title in the series because the ecologies of Venus and Mars are interesting. However, I didn't like the main character very much and found her romance dissatisfying.

You're really on the go! I hope all your travels go well.

Welcome! Good luck keeping up your thread. The nice thing about it is that won't go anywhere if you need to neglect it for long periods of time. :o)

Glad you've had some good reads so far this year. Rules of civility is on my Tbr pile, I must get to it soon.

Good luck with your travels and the move to NYC. I hope this is a great year for you.

Thanks, everyone!

>4 Sakerfalcon: Rules of Civility really is excellent, and I would have rated it five stars had I not read his other novel first.

I've been on a bit of a young adult kick of late.

Journey to the River Sea is a wonderful novel full of adventure, kindness, and romance (not the romantic kind, I mean). It made me want to bump Brazil up on my travel spreadsheet.

The Perilous Gard: umpteenth reread. More layers of this novel unfold each time I read it. It really is a brilliantly written story. 'Tis a pity Pope wrote only two novels.

I enjoyed Ursula Williams Moray's Gobbolino stories, about a kind kitten searching for his home. But I liked his mean-spirited sister, Sootica, better.

Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice was fun. I might read some more Who novels. I've not seen the show.

Ooh, another fan of The Perilous Gard! :)

I just picked up Rules of Civility on sale for my Nook--glad to get a recommendation. And I've been debating whether to finish the Thessaly trilogy, because the last few pages of the second book just seemed to jump a shark too far.

I've just started Rules of civility as my "commuting" book.

Journey to the river sea is gorgeous, perhaps Ibbotson's best book.

I remember reading the Gobbolino books as a child, they were favourites of both me and my sister.

>6 Marissa_Doyle: High five! I discovered The Perilous Gard on LT. It was a Name That Book query's answer. Re: Necessity, this volume felt even talkier than the previous two. Walton seemed to run out of steam, and the new location and advertised plot felt ancillary.

>7 Sakerfalcon: Oh, I look forward to your thoughts on Rules of Civility. I think I'm going to reread Journey to the River Sea before I return it to the library. It was magical.

My library only has the first two Heavenly Nostrils collections, Phoebe and Her Unicorn and Unicorn on a Roll, but I've fallen hard for the comic strip. Unicorn humor: "She was literally a pointy-headed intellectual"

"Oh, slumber parties! I know all about those. I shall prepare the sleeping potion. Then, we will need a map of the town's water supply."

Katherine Sturtevant's Meg Moore duology is wonderfully accurate yet explicitly feminist historical fiction for YAs. Meg loves books and wants to be an author, but she lives in London in the 1600s. She admires Aphra Behn but her semi-indulgent father draws the line at his daughter becoming a writer. Meg must navigate society's restraints and prejudices—and her own—in order to carve out her truest path. Both At the Sign of the Star and A True and Faithful Narrative are excellent novels, but I think A True and Faithful Narrative will make my top ten for 2017.

>9 LibraryPerilous: The unicorn books look awesome! I shall have to look out for them.

>10 Sakerfalcon: They're fabulous! I hope you run across them soon.

I'm still on my beach vacation and also have fried my brain on politics, so I've been working on reducing my YA TBR titles. I've read several jfic novels and picture books. Unfortunately, I've added readalikes to my TBR list, so ...

We Found a Hat: surprisingly sweet conclusion to Klassen's trilogy.

The Nightingale Gallery: excellent historical details and two complex but likeable main characters are marred by a somewhat pedestrian mystery. But I liked this well enough to read more in the series.

The Secret of the Dark Tower: I love older juvenile mysteries. This was great fun.

The Friends: Coming of age jfic that is spare in its prose and subtle in its messaging.

The Friends looks nice. My library doesn't have it, but it has The Letters by the same author, which also seems interesting.

>13 SylviaC: It sounds like it has a similar theme: coming of age through grief.

Red Slayer: second in the Brother Athelstan mysteries, set in London in the late 14th century. This is a better-crafted mystery than The Nightingale Gallery, but it still has a bit of "and then Athelstan knew everything!" as its denouement, instead of letting the puzzle unfold a bit more clearly. I like the attention to accurate historical details and the way that Athelstan and Sir John each are ahead of their time in one way and learn from each other, but still very much are rooted in their time in other matters.

Bloodstone, another serviceable Athelstan mystery. The mystery itself has an unrealistically high body count and another "aha!" ending, but I like that the historical details are accurate and focus on the mud and muck.

Christmas Kitten, Home at Last: I'm a sentimental fool.

The Remains of the Day: a luminous novel that feels immediate and is relevant to today's political climate. Ishiguro uses the story of one person's stiff upper lip personality to unpack: the dangers of nostalgia, the unreliability of memory, the regressiveness of purity, the fecklessness of appeasement, the immorality of homogeneity, and the way prejudice is informed by and transferred through class or other sociocultural delimiters.

One simultaneously finds Stevens charming, exasperating, and worthy of compassion, even as Stevens' inability to parse his emotions prevents him from granting the people around him their own agency. He trusts nothing but his own rigid worldview.

Wow, what a marvellous summation! I read it quite a while ago (after seeing the film) but wouldn't have thought of it as so relevant to today. Maybe it's time I read it again!

>12 LibraryPerilous: I have always enjoyed the Brother Athelstan mysteries. The Nightingale Gallery offers a great introduction to a particular series. However, I find other titles in the series to be hard to purchase in the States as a rule.

>16 LibraryPerilous: I'm still reading that, and enjoying it very much on so many levels. It is a terrific picture of the way our minds work within ourselves and what we perceive vs. what others see and what is happening. I keep wondering if Stevens has a minor form of Asperger's or some similar syndrome. He reminds me very much of Doc Martin (a television series).

>17 europhile: Thank you! Haha, I see relevancies in quite a few works of art these days. I plan to reread the novel in a few years and compare my reactions. Do you recommend the film?

>19 MrsLee: I had that thought, too, because Stevens seems to be beyond what even Americans would view as a stereotypical Englishman. I'm fascinated by the way Ishiguro writes Stevens' inability to address his feelings as a form of personal appeasement politics. It truly is a layered novel. I'm glad you're enjoying it!

>18 jillmwo: It definitely is a series I'll enjoy returning to frequently. Have you read any of the author's mysteries set in Ancient Egypt?

The King's Shadow: interesting juvenile historical fiction set around the Battle of Hastings.

>20 LibraryPerilous: I'm not @europhile but I definitely recommend the film. Anthony Hopkins delivers the (exasperating) character of Stevens perfectly. As is usual with movie adaptations, several plot points were changed but the spirit of the book is kept remarkably intact.

>21 ScoLgo: Thanks! It sounds like it's worth watching.

Stowaway: detailed juvenile historical fiction, written as a diary, about Captain Cook's Endeavour voyage, seen through the eyes of a boy who stows on the ship. Nicholas Young really did stow away on the ship, but very little is known of his life. The diary entries of varying length help the reader to imagine the inner workings of the voyage.

>20 LibraryPerilous: Yes I would also recommend the film version of The Remains of The Day. However, I should declare my bias as it stars two of my favourite actors.

>23 europhile: Thanks! I'll see if I can get it through the library or Netflix.

The Straw Men: another Athelstan mystery. This one is set in January 1381, and Wat Tyler's upcoming rebellion becomes integral to the central mystery. In previous volumes, it percolated as part of the historical background.

A Draught for a Dead Man: charming mystery set in medieval Spain and featuring a Jewish physician as the detective. Very interesting look at life in the call and the Jewish community's interactions with the Christian neighbors and politicians who made up the majority population. The mystery turns on court proceedings and complicated connections between characters.

The Spare Room: short novel about the different ways we face death and the bluntness, selfishness, and forgiveness of true friendships.

Death at Rottingdean: a delightful historical mystery I found for 0.50 at a used bookstore. Added bonus: the plot centers around smuggling! Also, I learned from the novel that Angela Thirkell was Rudyard Kipling's cousin.

>27 LibraryPerilous: I hadn't heard of that series. I'll keep it in mind in case I have a hankering for historical mysteries. I didn't know about the Kipling/Thirkell relationship either.

>28 SylviaC: I particularly liked that, though billed as a cozy, it didn't feel that formulaic. Each chapter also had an epigraph, including some selections from histories of smuggling in Rottingdean. And now I feel like I should maybe read Kipling. My poor TBR list.

Kipling is fun. Start with Kim because it will surprise you with some of his descriptions of India's beauty. I however have a particular fondness for his short stories. In particular, look for the very funny "The Village That Voted The Earth Was Flat". Some of the short stories like "The Phantom Rickshaw" stick with one as well. (His poetry is pretty good, too!)

And for the record, @diana.n and @SylviaC, my husband enjoyed the mysteries by Robin Paige as well.

I am quite fond of Kipling's poetry—my Complete Verse book is bristling with bookmarks. Just So Stories was always a favourite and I seem to recall enjoying Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies as well.

I've been fond of "A Smuggler's Song" since reading it a few years ago, but I've not read anything else in Puck of Pook's Hill. Thanks for the recommendations, Jill and Sylvia. Kim sounds very interesting. (Death at Rottingdean features a character who quotes from "The Phantom Rickshaw.")

The Bookshop on the Corner: DNF. This type of romance is very hit or miss for me. This one was a miss, in large part because the author's white, upper middle class fake progressivism grated on my nerves. Also, the main character falls for a jerk.

>32 LibraryPerilous: Oh, darn. I just bought The Bookshop on the Corner, as a new trade paperback, this evening. And our tastes in romance seem to be fairly similar.

>33 SylviaC: Ah! I'll be interested in your review of it. Perhaps I just overanalyzed it or was in a particularly 'old man yells at clouds' mood yesterday.

Every Anxious Wave: Sad sack jerk who's a generation too early to join the Gamergate movement calls a woman he likes a bitch and waxes nostalgically about his previous girlfriend because she was "an undeserved privilege ... \who\ filled me with fervor," among other gems. Seriously, we're supposed to root for him? DNF. I gave up around page 100 because he hadn't exhibited any growth, even though the author clearly was being satirical. Ugh.

Edited: spelling error

Also, I really only like sci-fi that is hard and set in the far future—and not with an Earth-based setting. Greg Egan is one of my favorite authors. LT has some interesting Egan readalikes that I'm going to explore. Are there any hard sci-fi novels Green Dragoners (Dragoneers?) would recommend?

The Glamour of Strangeness: fascinating, erudite look at six artists who intersected with imperialism in a unique way. James is somewhat dismissive of postcolonial theory, especially postcolonial feminism. His notion that Gauguin and Rimbaud were not colonialists because they were not members of the colonial establishment is risible.

I know I'm late to the party, but did you manage to see the film version of The Remains of the Day yet? It is almost as good as the book.

>38 clamairy: I didn't enjoy the movie. Perhaps it was to soon after I read the book? It seemed impossible to get the nuances I loved in the book into a film.

>39 MrsLee: According to my book log I read it in January of '94. So I must have seen the film first, as that was released in November of '93. So there were no nuances for it to live up to!

>38 clamairy: Oh, I haven't. Thanks for the reminder! I've placed a hold on it at the library and will watch it next week.

I'm working my way through Ishiguro's oeuvre: When We Were Orphans is next.

Ugh. What a terrible day, both in the morning and in the afternoon.

My brain hasn't been able to focus on books for the last few days, but I did manage to make it through Helen Humphreys' The Lost Garden, an illuminating novel about love, loss, and the way memories both sustain and hurt us.

Also recently read: The Watch That Ends the Night, a striking young adult novel in verse that tells the story of the Titanic's sinking from a variety of viewpoints.

I liked this, from John Spurling's The Ten Thousand Things:

"Books pretend to love one another, but they're really seething with jealousy. Every book would like to be the only one that was saved from a library that went up in flames."

>43 LibraryPerilous: That's hilarious. I guess I never thought of books as consciously striving for affection or attention before. :o)

>36 LibraryPerilous: well you've the rest of Alistair Reynoldsto read... his latest series is somewhat earth based.

There's CJ Cherryh (of course I'd mention her) Alliance/Union is not as hard SF as some, but has that gritty feel. (how hard SF do you mean? is FTL allowed?)

There's Greg Bear, and David Brin ...

>44 clamairy: The book I finished recently The Sugar Queen, had a nice little side plot about that.

>1 LibraryPerilous:

Congratulations! It's been over three months.

>47 suitable1: Exciting! I only swooped in to leave that quote. Otherwise, I might not have made it.

>44 clamairy: One of my favorite poems is Jayne Cooper's "Rent." It's not the same meaning as the quote in >43 LibraryPerilous:, but I like the lines: "If you want my apartment, sleep in it / but let's have a clear understanding: / the books are still free agents." I like to picture the books lining up to take sides in a breakup, based on which partner read them more closely or with more affection.

>45 reading_fox: Thank you for the suggestions! Do you have a particular novel of Greg Bear's that you would recommend as a good starting point? It doesn't have to be gritty, just science-y.

I am adding The Ten Thousand Things to my wish list. I am seriously intrigued.

>49 jillmwo: It was very lovely and exceeded the relatively high expectations I'd had for it. I'll be interested in your thoughts if you decide to read it.

>48 LibraryPerilous: - he's written a lot, and I find it quite variable. Eon and Legacy are some his early works and if you can remember back to the 80s, and believe the cold war will continue in future space relations they remain quite fun.

slant is way more future SF, there's a lot of sex, but an enjoyable look at future society. (technically it's 2nd in a series, but I didn't like the 1st one, and you don't need it to understand the world).

darwin's radio is more biological and set on earth, but perhaps one of the best he's written.

There's a lot of his work I haven't read. In general he is more biological sciences than technological.

Just stopping by to say Hi, and to spy on the SF recommendations!

>52 Sakerfalcon: Hai! I hope you are enjoying the recs.

>51 reading_fox: Thanks for the recs! My library has quite a few of his novels. I think I'll start with Darwin's Radio.

Uprooted: An interesting fantasy, strongly rooted in Polish and Russian folklores, especially the story of Baba Yaga, and with a dash of Beauty and the Beast. I can see why the relationship between the main character, Agnieszka, and the wizard makes some readers angry, although I ended up being okay with it. I appreciated the strong, realistic female friendship between Agnieszka and Kasia. I liked Uprooted, but I didn't like Agnieszka's character, so that made the story fall a bit flat for me.

Edited: touchstone correction

Maybe I'll do better at maintaining this if I write a weekly post listing the previous week's reading.

Killers of the Flower Moon: rage-inducing and shamefully contemporary in its look at the connections between crony capitalism, racism, and a corrupt, colonialist criminal justice system.

4:50 from Paddington: I love mysteries set on or around trains, although I'm not a fan of Miss Marple. She's too mean-spirited for me. I enjoy this book's use of timetables and route maps.

Ice Ghosts: informative look at latest findings on the failed Franklin Expedition. Its dissection of bureaucratic pettifoggery and government imperialism is relevant, as Watson makes clear in his review of the Harper government's actions.

Just a quick follow-up. What causes you to characterize Miss Marple as mean-spirited? I'm curious.

Hi, everyone. Sorry I let this thread drop. Happy holidays!

I've migrated to the 75ers group for 2018. You can find me here.

You have also apparently changed your identity! Happy reading to you. :)

Thanks!

Well, you did make it for more than three months.