legxleg's new years resolution for 2008

The plan is to read 50 books. I think I did 50 in the past year, but since I didn't start keeping track til August, and filled in the past 8 months with what I think I read, a number of them could've been from before January 1. Anyway, this is the first time I'm keeping track, so I'm pretty excited.

Right now I'm reading Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, which is actually left-over from my to-read list of last year.

Oops, I've been forgetting to update this as I read my books. Anyway, I've finished Red Seas Under Red Skies, so that was my first book of the year, and moved on to book # 2, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, which was absolutely fantastic. I think I was up half the night finishing it.

Then I thought I'd grab one of the other 1001 books, and read The Plot Against America as my book #3, which I actually found rather disappointing. I was able to quickly read book #4, A War of Gifts by Orson Scott Card, as that book is quite short. I also read Spring Moon by Bette Bao Lord as book #5 on the advice of my mother, and I liked it a lot. I just finished The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly yesterday yesterday for book #6, and it was pretty entertaining. I'm wondering if I should I get the sequel from the library.

I've gone to the library and picked up a bunch of books in the hopes of getting through them before school starts up again on Monday, and I'll have to slow down my reading considerably. Of course, I'm neglecting my note pretty awfully, so that's another thing that's probably going to slow me down. Still, with the writer's strike there won't be as much TV, so maybe I'll be able to keep going at a respectable pace.

I've now read Cry, The Beloved Country and The Silenced, bringing me up to 8. I think I've made good progress before the start of school.

I went on a trip and read Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier on the plane. Also, I've been listening to audiobooks on my way to and from work, and have finished Sense and Sensibility. I'm not sure if it counts, however, as it's technically a re-read, although the first read was in middle school and I had forgotten quite a lot. If you count the audiobook, my total's up to 10.

Just finished The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. I really enjoyed it! And that brings me to eleven, I think - not bad for month one.

"not bad" ?!?!? -- that's a great start! And no lightweights mixed in there either...

I definitely think that you are going to exceed your 50 book goal... by May! =) Good Luck, and happy reading!

thank you, TeacherDad and tripz1yn for your kind messages :-) I'm trying to start off strong since once the semester really gets moving, I probably won't have much time to read at all.

All right, I've finished My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier, bringing me to twelve (just under the wire for January!). It was a very exciting book, and a quick read...or maybe that's just because I was rushing through to find out the end. Between this and Jamaica Inn, I'm beginning to suspect that Daphne Du Maurier had some serious gender issue angst going on (in her writing at least). I don't really remember Rebecca well enough to consider if there were any gender issues there. But in Jamaica Inn, the heroine is always going on about how she wishes she were a man, and if she were a man she would do this or that. My Cousin Rachel is told through a man's point of view, and it almost felt like Rachel was, at times, a placeholder for all the insecurities that Phillip (and Ambrose) had about women - she is in turns a femme fatal (well, she is from Italy :-P), a spendthrift, cunning and manipulative, victimized...it leads the reader (or this reader at least) to wonder if Phillip ever really knows much about her at all. Even if you don't think Du Maurier is talking gender issues (or aren't interested in those issues), it's still an engrossing mystery with all sorts of plot twists and turns. Definitely a good book.

So my read #13 (and first of February) is The Seduction of the Crimson Rose by Lauren Willig. I really enjoyed it; I actually think it was better than The Deception of the Emerald Ring, which was its immediate predecessor in the series.

I just read Small Steps by Louis Sachar, which is the sequel to Holes. It was so great I read it in one sitting. That makes 14. You know, I think I'm reading a lot more now that I'm counting. The television strike helps too; I was almost sad to hear that it might be ending soon (almost).

#15 is Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, which was fantastic. I definitely recommend it.

I don't have cable now, and I don't really get any local channels (poor reception), but I am going to get the tv package from AT&T as soon as it is available to me, and I worry a bit about my reading time then. I am not a huge tv watcher, though, so it probably won't make a huge difference.

I read Reading Lolita last year, and I loved it, too!

I'm a big TV watcher - earlier this fall I think I watched a show almost every weeknight - so the strike has resulted in a sizeable chunk of free time that I've spent reading. However, I must admit, when the TV show isn't as good as the book I'm reading (which is often the case), I miss it in favor of the book. I've got several hours of TV sitting on the TiVo, which I just haven't gotten around to. But as this thread indicates, I've 'gotten around to' quite a few books. So it's entirely possible that once the regular TV schedule starts up again, I'll still prefer to read.

I have been known to sit in front of the tv with a book in my hand. There is always commercial time available for reading...

that's true - and actually a possible downside to TiVoing everything. If I fast-forward through the commercials, when will I read?

#16 is Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. I've got to admit, I never really got into it. I think it's because, from the beginning on, I just felt so bad for Rosaura I could never properly root for Tita and Pedro to get together.

#17 is Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, which has been on my tbr pile for approximately ten years, so I'm pretty pleased with myself for finally reading it.

#18 is the short story collection Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat. It was absolutely fantastic - I got it yesteday, and meant to make it last all month, but as you can see, that plan failed utterly. I'll have to read more of her work.

#19 - The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag. In truth, I feel like I utterly missed the point of this novel, but I suspect that is more my fault than that of the novel. The style was rather sparse, and actually reminded me of Snow Country a bit.

#20 - Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, was utterly engrossing. I was a little unsatisfied with the last chapter, but overall it was fantastic.

#21 - Summer by Edith Wharton, was another good read. I've really enjoyed all the books I've read by her.

#22 - A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. I've been meaning to read this for awhile, and it's absolutely heart-breaking.

I finished #23, Orlando by Virginia Woolf this morning. That has got to be the most cracked out book I have read in a long time.

So book #24 is Atonement by Ian McEwan. I really enjoyed it, and it means I'm halfway to my mini-goal of reading 16 of the 1001 books this year.

I liked Krik? Krak! so much that I decided to read another Edwidge Danticat book for #25, The Farming of Bones. I didn't like it quite as well as Krik? Krak!, but it was still excellent.

I just read Girls of Riyadh for number 26, and I found it very interesting. I usually like my chicklit a bit funnier, but the cultural differences were interesting enough to keep me involved anyway.

ETA:
And number 27 is a quick one, Anacaona: Golden Flower by Edwidge Danticat. It's a young adult book, and part of the Royal Diaries series that I remember reading when I was younger. I was rather excited when I found out that Edwidge Danticat had written a book for the series, and found her installment pretty interesting. In particular, I thought she did a good job weaving in the oral tradition.

#28 is Brave Enemies by Robert Morgan. It's historical fiction set during the Revolutionary War, with a love story as well. Honestly, I didn't like it. I felt such a disconnect with the characters the whole time, and it always frustrates me when the female protagonist can't go anywhere without someone trying to rape her. I mean, come on. Surely not all men (minus the hero) are rapists! And if you're going to put rape in there, I feel like you've got a responsibility to treat it with a bit more gravity than this book did. But that's just my opinion.

#29 is a reread, Guinevere by Sharan Newman. I think the Guinevere trilogy might be my favorite Arthurian retelling, although on this (the third) reread I couldn't help noticing some problems I missed on the first reads, when I was younger.

#30 is The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende, and it's absolutely fantastic, I really enjoyed it. However, I'll admit, I did have to draw a family tree to keep everything straight.

#31 is Agamemnon's Daughter by Ismail Kadare. I thought it was a very good (if unsettling) exploration of the ways that people live under tyranny.

Since Agamemnon's Daughter was pretty depressing, I thought I'd go for something a bit lighter next, and read The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly as #32. I was pleasantly surprised; I had felt lukewarm towards The Tea Rose (the first in the series), and only picked up The Winter Rose on a whim. However, I found myself honestly enjoying the story and rushing through it. It's got some of the same problems as The Tea Rose - contrivance, extremely modern characters in a Victorian setting - but it didn't keep me from enjoying the story.

#33 is Of Love And Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I finally finished #34, The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. It's taken me awhile, for all that it's actually quite quick and accessible. I kept putting it on the back-burner to read something else.

I finally posted a response to the message you left me, see my thread to read it.

I've read through your list for the year and I don't see anything that I've read on it! Of course, that means that there are just that many more books out there for me to check out.

I also know that what you read in a short two month period, in no way encapsulates everything that you like to read. People, I think, often make the mistake of thinking their book interests don't coincide just because they don't see anything similar in that short period of time.

In the last year or so, I've been reading a lot of YA books - for a couple of reasons. They've been putting me in the children's section of the bookstore I work part-time in a lot lately. The books all look so good, sometimes I think they're getting better books than we are nowadays. And I realized that I was kind of behind on most of the new stuff (not that I didn't read them before). Also because I've really been entertaining the idea lately that I would like to be a high school reading/English teacher, and I want to know and be able to recommend some really great books to kids that are on the fence of becoming readers.

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough on your thread. I hope you'll check mine out again and keep the good suggestions coming!

To tell you the truth, this year has been a bit of a shift for me, as far as what I'm reading. Usually I read much more fantasy or YA stuff, but I got it into my head to make these mini-goals for myself that will cause me branch out. I'm worried that now that I'm out of undergrad, I'm missing out on a lot since I don't have classes assigning me reading anymore.

But I do agree that YA books are better than the adult books sometimes. I'm often skulking around the YA sections of bookstores - I say skulking because after being asked if I'm looking for a gift for a younger sibling a number of times, I get a bit embarrassed and try to keep a low profile. Of course, with my luck, my 'low profile' just makes me look odder!

Becoming a high school English teacher sounds great. I remember mine fondly. I have a friend who's in grad school for English, and thus teaching freshmen writing classes. She's told me enough teaching horror stories to make me wary of the field. But really, I imagine teaching actual English lit would be different; my friend has got them reading a number of essays that even she's not all that excited about. I think it would be a lot of fun if you were teaching books that you really enjoyed. Good luck with that!

#35 is The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. I've always found Edith Wharton to be the least objectionable of my summer reading in high school, flat out enjoyed her in college, and now find that I've read three Edith Wharton books for fun in this year alone! Anyway, I quite enjoyed it. Undine was such an utter brat, but I couldn't help but be amused at her 'ascent'.

#36 is Let It Be Morning by Sayed Kashua, a really interesting book about an Israeli-Arab journalist whose hometown is blockaded by Israeli tanks. It's both your general 'when normally civilized people run MAD!' book, and an exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the point of view of Israeli-Arabs, which I had never considered before.

I recently read the Riddle-master trilogy omnibus, and I wasn't sure whether to count it as one big book or three small ones. Ultimately, I think I've decided to count it as three small ones because I've had this big Ghormenghast omnibus sitting around forever, and I intend to read one of the Ghormenghast novels sometime this year, but probably not all of them. Since I'm going to be dividing up omnibuses anyway, I might as well start now, right?

So, in light of that, #37 is The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia McKillip. I actually found it pretty boring; I didn't much care for Morgon or Deth, and I didn't really get why every person Morgon met was jumping at the chance to teach him a new power. Still, it ended well, and I decided to keep going because I promised a friend I'd read the whole thing.

I'm glad I did, because #38, Heir of Sea and Fire, was actually really good. I found Raederle and Lyra both to be great characters - one of the things that bugged me about the first book was that Morgon was apparently so in love with Raederle, but we never even got to see her. Once she and Lyra (and Tristan, for a bit) were doing their own thing, I very much enjoyed it.

#39, Harpist in the Wind, was all right, but not as good as Heir of Sea and Fire, in my opinion. Still, it ended nicely, and I'm glad I read it.

ETA: #40 is Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt. It's a YA fantasy book about a girl who meets Death in the woods, and convinces him to let her live another day so she can find her true love; if she doesn't find him in that time, she'll go with Death. I thought this was a pretty good YA book, but not a fantastic one. The chapter titles amused me ('In which I am welcomed home with reservations and theories, and in which I consider bachelors').

#41 is Sky Burial: An Epic Story of Tibet by Xinran. It's the story of a Chinese woman who searches for her husband in Tibet for thirty years. It's a very interesting window into Tibet. Although, I must say, I'm not sure if it's fiction or not! The library classification says fiction, but the book is written as if the author is relating a true story the protagonist, Shu Wen, told her, complete with a letter at the end asking Shu Wen to get in touch with the author through her publisher if she should see this book.

Interesting-- I loved the Riddle Master trilogy the first time I read it and the second, and the third, all long ago, but when I picked it up again recently (as a trilogy) I only got about 1/2 way before I gave up and set it aside. I like her other books better.

I guess there are some books that are great at certain points in your life. For instance, I loved the Guinevere books by Sharan Newman, but when I reread the first one recently, it really didn't hold me like it did the first two times I read it. I'm a bit afraid to reread the rest of the series because of that; I'd rather remember them as great than reread them and be disappointed.

#42 is The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany. It was all right, but to tell you the truth, I don't know as I think it deserves all the glowing praise I've heard about it. Still, I'm glad I read it.

#43 is Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. It had a very slow, meandering pace, but was still quite good. Once I was properly into it, I was intrigued.

#44 is The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor, which is maybe as opposite from Cat's Eye as you can get. It was a very action-oriented re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland, and left me with the distinct feeling that the author wanted to be writing an anime. It didn't blow me away or anything, but was an entertaining read with some interesting twists (I liked this version of the Mad Hatter, for instance), and I'll probably get the sequel from the library, but not buy it.

...or the author wants the book made into a top-grossing movie! I get the sense with some books they are written with a screenplay in mind...

I know what you mean, TeacherDad. The Looking Glass Wars came complete with a color insert of pictures of the characters - including card soldiers that unfold like transformers!

It's been miserable weather over here, so I've done a fair bit of reading.
#45 is The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble. I thought the way the book was narrated by the ghost of the Korean princess haunting an academic was interesting.

#46 is Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, a book I started in middle school but never finished (I wasn't old enough, I don't think), and have had laying around the house since then. It made me extremely nostalgic for college. All the literary allusions and quotes were a bit overwhelming at times, but fun in others. I'm glad I finished it!

#47 is The Moon Opera by Bi Feiyu (touchstone not working). It was an interesting read about a Peking opera actress who is past her prime, and self-destructively attempts to cling to her glory days.

#48 is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I heard a lot of buzz about it around LibraryThing. As I was reading it I thought 'interesting, but it doesn't blow me away'. However, by the end I was bawling a really embarrassing amount - I'm glad I wasn't in public! I think it's one of those books that needs to be finished before it really sinks in.

#49 is Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. My experience with scifi is a bit limited (for all I read tons of fantasy), but I thought it was interesting. I'll have to see the movie some time.

It looks like I'm going to be hitting my goal in the third month of the year, but I think I'm going to up it to 75 books in 2008.

So, I've managed to get through 50, which is more shocking to me than anyone. #50 is A Curse Dark As Gold by Elizabeth C Bunce, which the touchstones seem to hate. It was a retelling of Rumplestiltskin with the heroine a strong-willed woman trying to keep her family's mill from shutting down after her father's death. I liked the heroine, the haunted old mill, and the Rumplestiltskin character. I thought the romance moved a bit quickly, but I suppose it's not the real focus of the story.

Ok, there's your 50, now you can rest and relax the rest of the year...

Wow, 50 books in just over 2 months! That's quite a lot of reading! Are you going to have a new goal for the rest of the year?

I'm pretty pleased with the 50 books, but I don't intend to stop (or slow down) reading, so my new goal is to reach 75. If I don't reach it, I won't worry too much (I already have my 50, after all - that's where the relaxing comes in), and if I reach it, I'll see if I can get to 100.

#51, by the way, is And Only To Deceive by Tasha Alexander, which was a fun Victorian mystery involving widows and Greek antiquities. I think I'll probably read the sequels too, eventually.

#52 is Winterdance by Gary Paulsen, a very interesting book about the author's experiences racing in the Iditarod.

Yep, definitely time to stop reading for the year!!

What did you think of Ethan Frome? I've just finished it and found it quite average, but you liked it, yes?

Keep up the good reading!

notmyrealname: Well, I've enjoyed the other Edith Wharton books I've read more than Ethan Frome, but I still liked it. I thought that Wharton did a really good job building up the tension between Ethan and Mattie. I found myself getting really anxious over their interactions, even when they were mundane. I generally hate books or TV shows where adultery is portrayed as somehow romantic, and I was surprised to find myself sympathising with Ethan.

I've been pretty lazy about updating this thread.
#53 is Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell. It was all right, and dealt with an interesting subject - the Cairo peace conferences, with Lawrence of Arabia, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell, and loads other people divvying up the Middle East. However, I felt like it was a bit heavy-handed and preachy. I mean, it's not enough that the reader see how the events in Cairo have affected the world today, the narrator actually says something to the effect of 'well, reader, the events here in Cairo have affected your world dramatically!' I thought it was a bit funny that the book went on and on about the importance of letting people choose what they want, not thrusting what you think is best onto them, but it seemed like the author wasn't letting me, the reader, make up my mind about anything since she was always telling me what to think. Even though I suspect I might be in line with the author politically, I was still annoyed that she was pushing the politics so hard; it overshadowed the story for me.

#54 is Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips, which was a lot of fun. The Greek gods are living in modern London, and since no one believes in them any more, they've lost a lot of power. Artemis is reduced to dog walking, and Aphrodite is a phone sex operator. But of course, they're still Greek gods and get into all sorts of trouble. I really enjoyed reading it.

#55 is The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. It's a retelling of the Odyssey by Penelope and 12 hanged maids. I hadn't really intended to read it; I picked it up out of idle curiosity, but it sucked me in. I much preferred it to Cat's Eye

#56 is I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith. I don't think I enjoyed it as much as some other people do, but I still liked it all right. It just didn't blow me away.

#57 is Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor. Honestly, it didn't do much for me. It's the sequel to The Looking Glass Wars, which I found to be interesting mainly because of the imaginative world, and the way it played off of Alice In Wonderland. However, now that the world has already been established, the sequel has to stand on in its plot, and it just didn't work for me. Redd is back, through the inevitable villain-loophole, and Alyss must defend Wonderland from her attack. I was interested in Hatter Maddigan's bit, but aside from that I was pretty bored.

I sort of agree with you. I did like Seeing Redd, but I think perhaps more for the supporting characters than for Alyss herself. I love Hatter Madigan and Dodge Anders especially - and General Doppelganger is cool (the whole splitting thing). Also I thought this particular villian loophole was pretty good. I never really mind people coming back from the dead, as long as the author comes up with a really good way to go about it - at least in fantasy books. And I really liked the language at the end....Anyway, I know what you're trying to say. But I still look forward to the next book.

You know, I think I might have issues with characters coming back from the dead. I remember when, as a kid, my dad was trying to get me to read The Lord of the Rings, and I said 'if Gandalf comes back from the dead it will be the lamest thing ever'. My dad got this guilty look on his face, and I stormed off in little-girl disgust. I never got any further than that in the series. And that's one of the Great fantasy books, even! Oddly enough, I had no problem with Roger coming back in the Alanna books. I guess I'm just really fickle. But I agree that Hatter and Dodge were great. I was also interested in the last sentence, as the whole 'black imagination' 'white imagination' distinction had been kind of bugging me throughout. I'm glad to see that it was intentional.

#58 is Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, and it was absolutely fantastic. I'm pretty much in awe of all the things he's done and is still trying to do. Although it was just a small digression in the book, I was also intrigued by his portrait of the press in a war zone; NBC taking him out to dinner, asking him to lead them to the countryside, and whispering, 'but don't tell CBS!'

#59 is Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst. I wanted to read something light and fluff, and this fit the bill. I first saw the title in someone else's reading list, although I don't remember who's list it was - sorry, but thank you! The book follows the contestants on an imaginary reality TV show where teams of two race around the world collecting various objects. I just started watching The Amazing Race this season, which might be part of the reason I enjoyed this book so much. The contestant characters were interesting, including estranged mother-daughter pair Cassie and Laura, the 'reformed' homosexual married couple of Justin and Abby, and former child stars Juliet and Dallas. I also enjoyed the chapters told from the point of view of the host.

And to finish out my March reads, I've read Persepolis by Marjane Satarip and The Hollow Kingdom by Clare B Dunkle.

Persepolis is a graphic novel, so I was unsure of whether to count it, but I think I just will because it's not as if it really matters, and I'd like to remember that I read it. It was very interesting and a little bit chilling. It's the story of the author's experiences in Iran as a little girl. I thought it was fantastically done, and found the horrors of life in that sort of situation intersecting with normal childhood capers was well done and stuck with me. I'll definitely have to get the second volume.

The Hollow Kingdom was also fantastic. The premise - a young girl is kidnapped to be the goblin king's bride - was extremely disturbing, but the story and characters were so great I found myself loving the book anyway. I'm still creeped out by the basic idea of love growing out of a rape allegory, but the thing is, I like Kate, and I like Marek, and by the end of it I liked them together. It's a rather odd position to be in. I've already ordered the rest of the series from the library, so I hope to read the rest of it soon!

So that brings my total to 61. I'm glad that March could end on a high note, with good books!

#62 is The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. This was a great book, and makes me very glad that I've discovered LibraryThing, and by extension people who might make good recommendations like this one! I don't think I ever would have heard of this otherwise. It was a very fun fantasy-adventure YA book, with enough Greek mythology jokes to make me stretch my memory and amuse me at the same time. I can't wait to read the rest of the series.

**Warning, Blatant Praise for Librarything** HA! ;-p

I definitely agree with you, I can't get through a day at my really boring desk job without LT. I remember last summer when it was down for three days, I almost went nuts! "LT withdraw"

Anyway, yes, even working in a bookstore I wouldn't have found all of the wonderful books I've found on LT. Oftentimes, we only keep in store the new books or the older books that still sell well. But through LT I've found dozens or more recs and then pursued those books either from the library or ordered them into my store. I love it too, because then when I really enjoy something I can recommend it to other on LT or to my customers. It's really a fabulous feeling to hand a book to a younger reader and see "Here, I love this book. You will too." That's one of my favorite things about being a bookseller and will be one of my favorite things when I finally become a teacher.

"...and will be one of my favorite things when I finally become a teacher."

have you been reading my diary again, Ilithyia? I'm trying to read tons of children's books now so I can share good books with my future students... ok, this sounds dorky, but I can't wait to start one of those lunch-time book clubs with the kids that really love reading (future LTers!)...

Oh my goodness, lunch-time book clubs...that's a great idea! I'm definitely going to write that one down. It's scary that I lay awake at night making lesson plans and I'm not even teaching yet.

Sorry for highjacking your thread!

Please, feel free to hijack my thread as much as you like; your conversation is very interesting. I'm sure you'll both be great teachers since you're so excited about it. Good luck with everything!

As for my book-count, #63 is The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennet, which was a short little novella about the Queen of England becoming sucked into reading, and dropping her other obligations for curling up with a good book. It was all right, and pretty clever at points. I've heard so much praise for it, though, I couldn't help feeling that it didn't quite live up to it all. I suspect this might be a case of nothing living up to the hype rather than the book itself being bad, though.

#64 is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and it was great. It's the story of these people in England who had gone to the same special boarding school. I don't really want to give away much more in a thread like this, without spoiler warnings, because one of the big things I enjoyed about the book was the way all the aspects of what makes these people different were revealed. Anyway, it was character-driven and a little creepy, with a touch of scifi. I say a touch because while the underlying premise has some scientific aspects to it, it's not about space battles or time machines or anything; it's more about the human and societal response to one scientific advancement. And now I'm making little to no sense, so I'll shut up and just say that I recommend it.

#65 is Close Kin and #66 is In The Coils of the Snake. Both are by Clare B Dunkle, and they finish up the Hollow Kindgdom trilogy. I feel pretty much the same way about these as I did about the first in the series; I enjoyed the story and liked the characters, but was a bit disturbed by some of the themes. I mean, the book is comparing marriage to slavery, and then it's a *good* thing. I feel a bit confounded that I can love the books, and so dislike certain aspects of them.

#67 is I'm Not Scared by Niccolo Ammanti, which pretty much creeped out an extraordinary amount, but with very little payoff otherwise (in my opinion). I didn't particularly like the characters. I felt like I was watching a horror movie, I suppose.

#68 is Zorro by Isabel Allende, which I really and unreservedly enjoyed. I thought it was a lot of good, swashbuckling-type fun, and Isabel Allende is a great author so she pulled it off very well. It actually makes me want to go rent the movies now!

#69 is The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan. It is the second in series that began with The Lightning Thief, and it is as entertaining as the first one. Although I'm almost a little afraid that the series will run out of myths, they go through them so quickly!

#70 is The Translator by Daoud Hari. I read a lot about this book on LT when it was in the Early Reviewers program, which is why I bought it. In spite of the hype, I wasnt disappointed. It was truly horrific, but also well-written and engaging.

#71 is North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. I really loved the BBC miniseries of this, and enjoyed the book as well. I read it online at Project Gutenberg, which has started the bad habit of reading online during boring lectures. I know, it's rude, and probably really bad for my grades. But at least the book was good!

#72 is my early reviewer book, The Venetian Mask. I've posted the review as per instructions, so I probably shouldn't go on too much here. I'll just say that it was all right, entertaining enough, but nothing to get excited over.

#73 is The Count of Monte Cristo. I have been trying to read it for awhile now, and so I'm very pleased to finally find out what happens in the end!

#74 is Gang Leader For A Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. It was interesting, atlhough the whole 'gang leader for a day' part was something like eight pages long, and the real gang leader was there the whole time not letting him really go off-book, so the title seems a little misleading.

#75 is The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan. It's the third in that Percy Jackson series. I actually didn't like it as well as I did the first two. I can't quite put my finger on why. It's not as if the book was bad, by any means. I think it's because I felt out of the loop about a lot of what was going on. At the beginning, I wondered if I'd skipped a book. Throughout this book, I had no idea where Annabeth's head was. I mean, it felt like her attitude towards Luke had changed a lot, and I wanted to know what prompted that. And of course Clarisse was off somewhere else for the whole book. Here's hoping that when the next book comes out the author explains some of this.

#76 is Beauty by Sheri S Tepper. I think it might be one of the best books I've read this year. It's a strange blend of fantasy fairy tale retellings, and a sci-fi dystopia. I thought it was very well-written. It was told in the first-person, as the diary of the protagonist, Beauty, with asides written in by her fairy aunt. But, fair warning, it's an adult book, and some of the things that happen to Beauty are really violent and horrific. It's only because I was hooked that I kept reading at that point, and really, I don't regret it. Also, Tepper has a very clear opinion of things (abortion, overpopulation), and sometimes it's a bit overtly preachy. I could see it bothering people with opinions different from hers.

#77 is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which was very interesting, and makes me want to re-read Jane Eyre. Plus I got the critical edition from the library, so I could indulge my inner lit-dork!

#78 is Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell, a mystery set in Sweden. Honestly, it didn't do much for me. Maybe I just don't read enough mystery to understand how the genre works, but it seemed like the policeman was making a lot of really silly assumptions (old people don't lie! If I don't recognize this knot, it must have been tied by a *foreigner*!). I doubt I'll read the rest of the series.

#79 is The Gilded Chamber by Rebecca Kohn. It was entertaining enough, but I was a bit annoyed that there was a villainous character who wants to eradicate the Jews and we never know why! This kept on bothering me as I read, and bothered me even more once I finished without a satisfactory asnwer. I mean, a person doesn't just wake up and say 'you know what? I think I'm going to commit genocide today. Also, I'm going to try decaf coffee.'

#80 is Lavinia by Ursula K Le Guin. I thought it was interesting, but I feel like I would have enjoyed it more if I'd ever read the Aeniad. Which sort of begs the question of why I read it at all. >The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby. It was thought-provoking, but she really needs more cites. I mean, she's giving statistics, parahprasing speeches by Supreme Court justices, without a cite! Maybe I'm being too hard on her, but it really bothered me, and I found it difficult to give the book any credibility as a result. And while she does talk about some interesting ideas (ex: the creation of Women's Studies or African American Studies hasn't actually changed the traditional canon at all, just pushed minority or women writers into a seprate box), she also seems to wilfully ignore the weaknesses in other ideas, which all contributes to the lack of credibility (ex: she talks about how the internet has made kids today impatient and obsessed with instantaneous gratification, as evidenced by the fact that when she was young people read books that were very long, even when they weren't great quality, while today's children only watch read things on the internet, or short things like magazines. Yet she completely ignores the fact that the biggest publishing success in recent memory is the Harry Potter franchise, which had these supposedly concentration-deficient kids lining up to read books so big you could crack someone's skull with them). Anyway, I suppose the point of a book like this is to provoke a reaction, so in that respect she did a good job. Still, would it have killed her to cite her sources? Especially considering the book is all about reason and facts as opposed to growing irrationality and blind faith. It was very frustrating for me, and looking at the reviews posted on LT, I'm not the only one who feels that way.

whoops, I skipped Persepolis 2 when recording my reading earlier; it comes between Lavinia and The Age of American Unreason.

So that means that #83 is Middlemarch. It is absolutely fantastic. I decided to give it a try because of the group literature read, and I am so glad I did. Even though it's very dense and hard to get into, once you're there it is well worth the effort. All the characters are layered and interesting, and I found myself in the position of wanting to race through the last hundred pages to find out what happens, but not wanting to miss anything either. If you have a good, long stretch of time so you can concentrate on the book and avoid being lost in all the many characters, then I absolutely recommend it to everyone.

I decided to follow up Middlemarch with some fun YA - #84 is Airhead by Meg Cabot, which was fun, but I was a little annoyed that it was almost entirely setup for the rest of the series, without its own individual story.

#85 is The Battle of the Labyrinth, the latest in the Percy Jackson series, and it was great. Percy et al have to go into the labyrinth and fight its monsters to try and keep the Titans from using it to get into the camp. I've gotten much more used to the various blind spots - the books are limited to Percy's POV, so some other characters have been doing some big stuff off screen we only get hints at. Anyway, the book definitely lives up to the rest of the series.

For #86 I read Love Marriage by V. V. Ganeshananthan, my early reviewer book. I enjoyed it *much* more than my previous early reviewer book, The Venetian Mask, so I'm very grateful about that. I also learned about Sri Lanka, which was neat.

Then I set about doing rereads - #87 was Squire by Tamora Pierce, further cementing Kel as my favorite Pierce heroine. And I'd forgotten how much I like Raoul and Buri. And of course Neal, who is my Tortall-fictional-boyfriend.

For #88 I reread Prince Caspian, after seeing the movie. I had forgotten most of this book, but it was fun to reread. Comforting. However, I must admit, I wish that the Pevansies got more character development. I still love Reepicheep.

For #89 I reread The Handmaid's Tale, which is just as creepy as the first time around.

#90 was The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff, which I think might be my favorite Early Reviewer book to date (of course, I've had exactly three, so take that with as much salt as you see fit). I thought the parallel stories of Brigham Young's apostate and anti-polygamist 19th wife and a modern-day 'lost boy' who is trying to prove that his mother, herself a 19th wife, didn't kill her husband, complimented each other nicely. I have to admit I was more intrigued by the modern story, but I admire the talent that the author had for mimicking different voices, especially since he wrote like a compilation of various documents (including a paper written by a student who felt the need to drop a footnote explaining that she thinks Brigham Young looks kind of like Russel Crow ~_~).

#91 is Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander by Ann Herendeen, a somewhat silly regency romance about a woman who enters into a marriage of convenience with a gay man. It was enjoyable enough to read if you don't take it too seriously and want a good laugh, but as a warning, there are lots of sex scenes.

#92 is Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Whan among others, the memoirs of a man who spent many of his formative years in a North Korean gulag. I decided to read it after seeing it on one of the reading threads I stalk here on LT, although I can't remember who's it was. At any rate, it was very interesting, and horrifying at the same time - I mean, they sent *seven-year-olds* to work camps for something their *grandfather* did. There were some repetition problems that probably could have been edited out. But this is the first book I've read from North Korea, and it was enlightening.

#93 is Blue Bamboo, a collection of short stories by Osamu Dazai. I especially enjoyed the pass-along stories in the first and last story. The last one involved a retelling of Rapunzel, and I always enjoy a good fairy-tale retelling.

#94 is The Truth-Teller's Tale by Sharon Shinn. I read it because I really enjoyed Jenna Starborn by the same author, but I found this book less enjoyable. The main problem was that I felt like she didn't set up rules for her fantasy rule - sometimes the truth-teller knows what is true, and sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes the truth-teller has to tell the truth, and sometimes she doesn't. It was really annoying for me. I think I'll try another of her adult books (this one was YA) and see if she has this problem in adult settings too.

And those are my books for May!

#95 is A Poisoned Season by Tasha Alexander. It's the sequel to And Only To Deceive, and follows Lady Emily Ashton as she continues to shock society and solve mysteries - this time involving a cat burglar stealing things that belonged to Marie Antoinette. I enjoyed the human interaction more than the mystery - I was particularly interested in the evolving friendship between Emily and Ivy. As a vague spoiler, the villain at the end (don't worry, I won't say who; I'm not *that* bad about spoilers) did the whole 'and now I will explain my entire evil plot!' monologue at the end, which kind of made me roll my eyes, but aside from that it was really enjoyable.

#96 was a reread - Austenland by Shannon Hale. I still found it very cute and fun, and enjoyed it. I kind of wish the Austenland resort really existed, even though I could never in a million years afford it. I definitely recommend it for Austen/P&P fans.

#97 is A Fatal Waltz, also by Tasha Alexander, the latest Lady Emily Ashton mystery. This one had the bonus of involving Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and her mysteriously dead son Rudolph, which interested me because - nerd alert here - I saw a musical about them once that was pretty fun. Actually, it wasn't even a traditional musical, it was this thing called Takarazuka, which a friend of mine got really obsessed with while we were studying in Japan, and dragged me along. It was fun, and really cracked out - there were sequins and feathers and can-can lines. Oh, and Death was in love with Elizabeth. And now I am really far away from the topic of A Fatal Waltz! Anyway, the book did not involve Empress Elisabeth being seduced by Death, but it did involve anarchists and murder. It was certainly enjoyable, although I kind of wanted to smack Robert (Ivy's husband) about the head. Another plus was that they used Lady Audley's Secret again, a Victorian novel that I like.

#98 is another reread, this time A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I became nostalgic after reading a review of it on another website, and then there was a really great thunderstorm last night. Considering the first line of the book is 'it was a dark and stormy night', I really couldn't resist. So many books that I loved when I was younger just don't hold up as well on reread as they do in my memory. I was so pleased to find that wasn't the case at all for this book. I enjoyed it just as much this time as I did when I was a kid, and even got a bit choked up at the end. Madeleine L'Engle really is fantastic, and I'm so sad that she's dead, but glad that she wrote so many books during her life; I looked at her website, and it turns out I haven't even read half of them!

I have finally reached #100! I'm actually pretty surprised. I wonder how much I'll read this year; I imagine it will slow down considerably come Sept, when I'll have work and school at once.

#99 is Jia by Hyejin Kim. It's the story of a little girl in North Korea. Honestly, it didn't do much for me. Everything was very vague and distant, to the extent that I didn't care about Jia or if she ever got out of North Korea. I also found the ending sort of eyeroll-worthy. (SPOILERS FOR THE END- maybe I would have felt differently if I felt Jia was more of a 'real' character, but as it was I thought the whole ending smacked of cliche - the Western-raised Prince Charming basically saves the day for no reason other than the fact he is just that good. I wished it had been a bit more imaginative. END OF SPOILERS)

#100 was Saturnalia byJohn Maddox Roberts. It's part of the SPQR series, a bunch of mysteries set in Ancient Rome. This is the only one I've ever read since it's the first one in the series my library had. It was entertaining enough, and certainly flew by quickly, but I didn't much care about the characters; maybe that's because I picked up in the middle of the series. Also, when the author started talking about the political climate or other period-specific things, it seemed like he flipped into 'lecture mode'. It was rather dry and jarring. I might get some others of the series from the library though; I don't know.

Congratulations on making 100!

thank you!

I'm afraid I've gotten a bit lazy, so I'll have to cram a bunch of books into one post.

#101 is Xenogenesis by Octavia Butler. I read this book for, quite possibly, the stupidest reason ever; I realized that this year I have read books starting with every letter of the alphabet except 'Q' and 'X'. So off I went in search of 'X', and this is what I came up with. It is technically a trilogy, but I got it in omnibus from the library and am counting it as one book for the sake of being able to add an 'X' book; yes, it's sad of me. Luckily, the book was actually really interesting! It's a scifi book where aliens have saved the remnants of humanity from a post-apocalyptic world, but (inevitably) there's a catch. The protagonist, Lilith, was intriguing and believable. But, as a warning, there's rape in the book, and even a really weird alien-rape overtone that I hadn't been expecting (nothing explicit or violent, or even sex-as-we-know-it, more like an exploration of the concept, but I would hate to recommend a book and then have someone taken unawares and freaked out). Anyway, very interesting! If only all my stupid decisions could end this well.

#102 is a reread, The Age of Innocence for the Group Read. I enjoyed it this time too, and found it really funny at parts, but I think I like other Edith Wharton books better (Summer!). Still, very worthwhile, and it's interesting to see how I reacted differently this time than I did before (way back in 9th grade). Back then I was totally an Ellen fan, but now I have a lot more empathy for May; go figure.

#103 is The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu. I got this from the library in part because I enjoyed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which is, in part, about the Congressional Hearings criticizing comic books. When I read Kavalier & Clay I was very shocked, so I was interested to learn more about it. I thought it was really interesting that the same old criticisms never go away; back then people were blaming comic books for juvenile delinquency, and now it's violent video games. I wonder if any of the people who are sure violent video games caused Columbine were comic book readers as kids; that would be pretty amusing (to me at least). Anyway, it was a very interesting book. But, weirdly enough, although there were tons of citations at the back corresponding to each chapter, there were no footnotes in the text! I found that really annoying.

#104-106 are all Georgette Heyer regency romances. They're like potato chips or something; I can't stop at one!
The first I read was Cotillion. I was pleasantly surprised by how funny it was! Even the opening scene, before the hero and heroine show up, had me in stitches. I do recommend it, although I've got to admit, the romance was a bit passionless. It's not really a problem for me; I'm as interested in a romance based on mutual respect and affection as I am in sweeping passion, albeit for different reasons. Plus, the humor more than makes up for it.

105 was Lady of Quality, which was just as funny. It fell into the 'irritable people snap at each other until they fall in love' genre of romance, and I really enjoyed it. Although I was a bit put out by the ending (SPOILER!!); I didn't think it was necessary to make the heroine weak so that she could get together with the guy. (END SPOILER)

106 was False Colours, which was also funny with the added bonus of twins switching places. I don't know why it amuses me so much, but it really does. Although the guys' names was a bit much; Evelyn, really? At any rate, Georgette Heyer deserves the hype I heard!

In fact, I think I've read a bit too much Georgette Heyer. At work today I heard about a bad situation where everyone involved was acting really suspicious, and the first phrase that popped into my head was 'that's deuced havey-cavey!' It was all I could do not to laugh really inappropriately.

OK, now to round out my June.

107 was Melusine by Sarah Monette. It was quite interesting. I liked the voices of the characters, and I thought she did a really good job with world-building and drawing the reader in without being too confusing or too exposition-y.

108 was Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang. This one was a double-recommend, from the 1001 list and my mother. The author tells the story of her grandmother, her mother, and herself in China. It was interesting, if a little hard to get into at first. Something about the writing style just wasn't doing it for me; I actually read a good portion of the book aloud to myself to make sure I was comprehending it (this is a weird thing I do - does anyone else ever do it? I try to make sure I only do it when I'm alone, but once and a while people walking by become confused. I swear, I'm not crazy!). But I'm glad I read it, and I learned a lot about the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

110 is Sayonara by James Michener. I think I bought this at a library book sale ages ago, and the only explanation I can have is the 'omg everything Japanese is cool!' phase I went through (although I'm not sure if 'phase' is the right word since I eventually did become a Japanese major in college). Anyway, it was a really quick read about an American GI in the Korean War falling in love with a Japanese girl while on leave in Kobe. More specifically, a Takarazuka actress. And, OK, I went to a Takarazuka show in Japan once. A good friend of mine wrote her whole thesis on Takarazuka. And when this book started treating it like it was this great, ancient, exotic Japanese art, I kind of wanted to laugh. I mean, this is Takarazuka:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SpgAIYcbiA&NR=1

It's fun and all, and even a pretty interesting organization (in my opinion), but ancient Japanese art it is not. About all it has in common with Noh is the length. Oh, and the woman playing the man (like the Caeser-looking characters) is the type of actress that the GI fell in love with. I was pretty surprised because I had heard that Michener was notorious for research. Maybe Takarazuka of the 50s was significantly different from the way it is now. Of course I haven't bothered to find that out before shooting my mouth off on the internet. Aside from that, it was a fun enough book, but I think a bit dated (it was published in the 50s).

And my last June book is Passing by Nella Larsen, about some African-American women who pass as white to different extents, and how they interact with each other and race in general. I really enjoyed this. It walks that fine line between my feeling like there is a lot there that I am probably missing and would love to learn about, and still being enjoyable as a for-fun read.

#112 is We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.

This was an exceedingly creepy book, written as a series of letters from a woman whose son commits a school shooting to her husband. I'd read in reviews that a lot of people dislike the mother, and I have to agree with them. It's not because she was ambiguous about having a child and disliked Kevin in particular (I would hate Kevin too, if he were mine), but the author chose a style for the mother that was really inaccessible to me. I've had this book lying around for awhile, and stopped and started a number of times because the first couple of pages were just really obnoxiously self-important in tone (to me; other people might love it, which is cool). I haven't read anything else by the author, so I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she chose this tone for the protagonist on purpose. After all, I think she's meant to be kind of stuck up and unreachable. After awhile, I was more able to get into the book, but even later on I found myself skimming through sections that I found really unappealing. Maybe I'm just too picky a reader.

Aside from that, it was creepy and engaging. I kind of felt like I was watching a horror movie, especially when we learned about all the bad seed things Kevin did as he grew up. The mother's concerns were time and again brushed aside by the father, who thought Kevin was just being playful and that the mother was simply a bad mom. In that, I was very sympathetic towards the mother. Anyway, it wasn't a pleasant read, but I imagine it will stick with me anyway.

Yeah, I pretty much spent that whole book wanting to smack the father. What a jerk!

I would guess part of her tone is supposed to be the fact that she is still in shock a bit. And also, anyone doing a project like that would probably feel a bit self-conscious and overly self-obsessed at first. It's such a un-normal thing to do, it's hard to forget yourself and settle in at first. After a while, though, she thought less of herself and more about the emotions she was trying to work her way through. That's my take, at least.

I thought it was a brilliant, thought-provoking book. It definitely shows that the whole topic is a lot more complicated than most people assume.

Maybe that does explain the beginning of the book. I hadn't thought about it, but I imagine you're right; it would be awkward to start something like those letters. Thank you for your insight!

The father bugged so much. Throughout the whole thing there was so much discussion about 'was it the mom's fault?' and I kept thinking, 'well the dad's the one who refused to ever punish him for anything he did!' Hell, he's even learned that when he hurts others, like squirting grape juice on his mom's favorite outfit or being 'tough' and hurting others at school, he wins his dad's approval. I don't think it's any one thing that screwed Kevin up (the book was pretty good in showing that), but I think the dad is one thing that the media didn't seem to bring up, and struck me when reading the book.

I've fallen all behind again, which is a pain. But here we go.

113 is Property by Valerie Martin. I'm a bit embarrassed, but I didn't really enjoy it. I could see that the author was doing interesting and probably profound things, but I just couldn't connect with the story or characters on any level beyond 'well, that's interesting'. It's probably more my problem than the book's.

114 is A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaoulou Guo. I continue my streak of being disappointed. It just never came together for me; I felt like it was really clinical for a love story. And then I thought, well, it's less a love story than it is a coming of age for the narrator and culture shock thing. But it didn't really work for me on that level either. I wonder if I was just in a really bad funk when I read these books.

115 is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Finally! A book I really liked! I felt like I learned a lot about the Biafran-Nigerian conflict of the 60s (I'm pretty embarrassingly ignorant about Africa), and I thought the tension between 'Africaness' and Western-ness (I'm sure there's some fancy word for this, but I don't know what it is) in the characters was interesting. And most importantly, it was all wrapped up in an engaging story with vivid characters. At last!

So 116, Impossible Saints by Michele Roberts, was a real disappointment for me. It's meant to be the retelling of some saints stories to explore the conflict of women and religion, or something like that. The summary was interesting. I thought the book was terrible. I'm prepared to take some blame here; I'm not over-fond of modern novels, so I probably should've just stayed away. And I'm sure she was trying to do something really clever that went clear over my head. But from where I was standing, almost every single plot came off as 'saint + sex = intriguing twist!' When really, if you do it every time, it ceases to be interesting or even a twist. SPOILERS It's a sad day when halfway through a book, incest-rape loses horror/shock value to the point that I'm rolling my eyes. END SPOILERS

Anyway, I decided I should probably take a break from Important Fiction, and read Queen of Babble in the Big City by Meg Cabot. It was light and fun, but I didn't enjoy it as much as her other books. Really, the whole Queen of Babble series is a bit of a let-down for me. But it's still fun enough. I enjoyed the part about Lizzie trying to make it as a wedding dress refurbisher in the big city, even if her love story left me unimpressed.

I'm going to try harder to enjoy my next books. I gave up on a bunch of short stories of Katherine Mansfield since, although I really liked The Garden Party, the others weren't doing much for me. So now I'm reading a rather long collection of letters between the Mitford sisters.

118 is Queen of Babble Gets Hitched, because once and awhile chicklit just calls to me. It was pretty fun, and I enjoyed it, so it served its purpose. Not my favorite Meg Cabot series, but it does all right.

119 is The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley. I wasn't sure how I'd like it since I don't really know all that much about the Mitfords. I only learned who they are because the protagonist's family in Ha'Penny by Jo Walton (a wonderful book/series, by the way) was based on them. I still found the letters absolutely fascinating! I'll admit I got a bit fatigued, especially once the sisters got older (the endless march of funerals of people I am not cultured enough to know is somehow less interesting than tea with Hitler). That's probably in part from reading it straight through with only one break for the Meg Cabot book. Anyway, it was fascinating, and I absolutely recommend it. The footnotes were useful, and the little bits of biography at the beginning of each section was really helpful. I also thought that the symbols assigned to each sister and the cheat-sheet of sisters and nicknames was really useful.

#83 Yes, legxleg, I can see you are very much falling behind...

#85 - haha, sorry, I meant falling behind in posting on this thread. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I've managed to read this year, actually. I keep meaning to post every time I finish a book so I don't wind up trying to summarize several at once.

In that vein, I just finished 120, Small Island by Andrea Levy. Count this as another Orange book I actually enjoyed, thank goodness! I've read elsewhere that the way Levy manages to create a different voice for each of the characters whose perspective she tells the story from is fantastic, and I've got to agree. I'm in absolutely no position to say whether she's got an authentic Jamaican voice, or British voice, but either way she managed to create several different and yet compelling voices. So congratulations to her, and to the lucky rest of us who get to read it!

Yeah, I kind of figured that but thought I'd have a laugh anyway. Great books as always!

Forgot to post again, how shocking.

121. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. This was really fabulous. The story is a professional butler looking back on his life in the service a peer who might not have been as great a man as Stevens (the butler) always hoped. Even though the action was slow, which usually bugs me, the first-rate narrative voice made up for it. From the first page I felt like this was really a musty old butler sitting down and talking to me - it was really terrific. The other strong point was the sort of restrained pathos, for lack of a better phrase (is that even a phrase?), as Stevens looked back on his life, and missed opportunities, and hoped it had all been worthwhile. There was also this sense that Stevens was of a different age and he just couldn't quite fit with the current times. I felt a lot of sympathy for him; he was a fantastic character, and I think this book will stick with me for a long time.

122 was The Swan Kingdom by Zoe Mariott. It's a YA retelling of the Six Swans fairy tale (the one where the girl's brothers turn into swans and she has to sew them shirts made out of nettles to bring them back). Although I really love fairy tale retellings, this one failed to grab me. I didn't get a real handle on the narrator, or her brothers (even though the author reduced their number from six to two). There was also a lot of magic = nature = woman power stuff, which has never been my particular cup of tea.

123 is A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore. This was another Orange Prize book. The writing was good, although it didn't blow me away. I don't want to give away too much, but the main plot was hitting on something that pretty much grosses me out, and it was hard for me to see it as anything other than this poor girl being taken advantage of (I have no idea if that's the point or not). Also, I didn't know what to make of the ending.

124 is The Armless Maiden, a short story collection edited by Terri Windling. The stories were meant to be retellings of fairy tales with an eye towards surviving childhood abuse. It took me awhile to read this because, well, there's only so many short stories along those lines that one can read without getting really depressed. There were some really great stories in it though. The Session, which is meant to be a therapy session with Snow White, had some good twists. I also enjoyed The Wolf's Heart, a made-up fairy tale about a boy and girl who escape from an abusive situation, he with more luck than her, and his resulting guilt and anger. It was a good short story collection, albeit necessarily extremely disturbing.

I loved The Remains of the Day. I wouldn't be surprised if it stuck with you--I read it months ago, and still think about it quite often.

#78 - your 'deuced havey-cavey' reaction was hilarious. I've quite often had to stop myself from blurting Heyer phrases to people who would only think I was all about in the head if I did :p

I also loved Remains of the Day. Really loved it.

I've been really bad about updating this thread again, but at least this time I've got an excuse. My internet's been going haywire lately. But it's fixed now *knock wood*, so I can catch up. First off, thanks for commenting Medellia12 and ChocolateMuse. I'm glad to hear that other people liked The Remains of the Day as much as I did; I'm a bit shocked I went this long without hearing about it! And ChocolateMuse, I'm happy to hear my 'deuced havey-cavey' reaction made you laugh. Even when I explained the story to non-LT-type friends I got funny looks, so I'm pleased that *someone* out there sees the humor!

And now for the latest books. There are quite a few of them this time. To explain, I usually read the most when I can least afford to do so. I've been getting a lot to do at work, have to prepare applications for my post-law-school attempts at a job, *and* I have the first part of the bar coming up on Friday (just the ethics part, but still, anything bar-adjacent has a certain intimidation factor), so that fits the bill. Plus I had jury duty, and it's really hard to study when there's a loudspeaker calling out names every five minutes, so pleasure-reading it was (it was such a hardship, too).

125 is Dairy Queen by Catherine Murdock. This is a young adult book I'd been meaning to try for awhile, and I'm glad I did. The basic story is a farmgirl from a very athletic and football-oriented family in a small Wisconsin town. She spends the summer training the rival school's quarterback, the inevitable good-looking love interest, as a favor for a family friend, and decides that she loves football so much she wants to go out for the team at her own school, in spite of being a girl. This was a really fun and quick read. I liked the character of DJ, I appreciated that she very clearly had a football-build as opposed to a traditionally pretty, skinny girl who happens to be good at football, and I was pretty much engrossed the whole time. There was a good balance of romance, football-plot and family drama. And before anyone wonders, I know next to nothing about football, but the book is still a fun read.

126 is Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres by Ruth Brandon. I'll admit that it's the Jane Eyre allusion that convinced me to get it from the library. Plus I've always had a bit of an interest in Victorian governesses. This book was basically the stories of a few unusual governesses (including the woman The King and I was based on, and Lord Byron's ex-lover), so I don't know how much light it actually sheds on the average governess, although I certainly understand that the diaries of Jane Doe might be hard to come across. I'm still glad I read it, however.

127 was Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. I spent the first third to half of this book wondering why on earth it was so critically acclaimed - it seemed so trashy! I mean, I think I first saw the scenario where the romantic leads get together in Cruel Intentions. But once you get past that part, it all makes a bit more sense (although is still a bit cracked out), and the second half, where the twists and turns come fast, really is a good read.

128 was Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. I've been meaning to read this for awhile (every since I saw the miniseries with Jonathan Rhys-Myers as Steerpike), and am glad I finally did. The prose is really flowery and descriptive, which I usually have trouble with, but once I was stuck in a jury deliberation room for a few hours waiting to be called to do something, I got into the correct mindset and really enjoyed it. I think I might wait a little bit before attempting the sequel Gormenghast, however.

129 is When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro. I didn't enjoy this as much as I did The Remains of the Day, but I suppose that's to be expected, considering how much I liked Remains. The voice didn't quite fit for me at the beginning, but once I got to the action part, I was taken up by the story enough to stop caring. I mean, Christopher Banks, who was orphaned when his parents disappeared during his childhood in the international settlement in Shanghai, grows up to become a famous detective and returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery. It's pretty exciting.

130 is The Off Season by Catherine Murdock, the sequel to Dairy Queen. I really enjoyed this one as well. I'm a pretty big fan of Meg Cabot's books, but lately they've been growing kind of stale for me. These books had the things that I found endearing about Meg Cabot (an outsider teenage girl as narrator with a fun voice, a good mix of personal growth and romance), but came across as more fresh to me. A lot of fun.

131 is Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, a mystery in Soviet Russia that absolutely deserves its recent Man Booker nod, in my opinion. Leo Demidov is a policeman in Soviet Russia, but since the Soviets say crime is a result of the inequities of capitalism, there can be no crime in the USSR, so his job is to chase down thought criminals while simultaneously convincing people that real crime is just a weird accident. Until, of course, he notices that a bunch of "accidents" have a very specific MO. Honestly, I was grabbed from the first page. A very enjoyable book, with interesting protagonists - I found the relationship between Leo and his wife Raisa really fascinating.

132 is Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. I didn't like this one as well as The Handmaid's Tale. I didn't get a feel for anyone but Snowman/Jimmy, and even he seemed just too foreign for me to truly identify with. Still, the descriptions of the dystopia were chilling and it was probably worth reading.

133 is Kira Kira by Cynthia Kadohata, a Newbury award winner about two Japanese-American sisters in the South, and how they deal as one of them becomes sick. I enjoyed reading about their relationship, and got really choked up at some parts.

134 is Bound by Donna Jo Napoli, a retelling of Cinderella set in ancient China. I think my favorite part of this retelling was that the Cinderella character (Xing Xing) was stuck doing all the work because her sister couldn't do anything on account of her feet being bound. Between this book and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, I can't even hear the phrase 'foot binding' without feeling a little bit sick to my stomach. Still, it was a good retelling, I thought, and did a good job weaving in Confucian values, which was neat.

135 was The Lion Hunter by Elizabeth E Weir. Even though this is the first in a series, it comes after another series, so I had pretty much no clue what was going on. Apparently in this book-verse, Mordred decided not to kill Arthur, but rather moved to the Middle East/North Africa and got married and had kids who star in this book. And Arthur may or may not have legitimate children? I kind of hate it when Arthurian books give Arthur and Guinevere kids since I think it just waves away one of the big conflicts of the story, but honestly I didn't understand that part well enough to pass any sort of judgment. That's pretty much how I felt about the whole book; it was intriguing, but you really can't just start off with it.

And lastly (finally!) is The Eight by Katherine Neville, which I read in preparation for my ER book, The Fire. It was a really exciting book, with lots of puzzles and thrills. I couldn't get into The Da Vinci Code at all, so I was a bit nevous when I saw this being compared to it, but I had no problem being swept away by The Eight. There's chess, which is something I think is intriguing but don't have the patience for, so I enjoyed reading about it. There were also exciting nuns, chess grand masters, and a fun historical sections spanning the French Revolution. The scene of The Terror were really horrifying. Actually, the historical scenes stretched credulity a little bit (I will never, ever believe that Napoleon was attractive, no matter how much this book tries to convince me otherwise, among other things), and the number of times the characters stumbled across people who happened to know about the mysterious chess set was a bit much, but if you just put yourself in the correct mindset it is a really thrilling book.

137 is The Fire by Katherine Neville, the sequel to The Eight. While I didn't like it quite as much as The Eight, I still really enjoyed it, and feel happy recommending it for when it comes out. (btw, the touchstones are all wrong for that paragraph; sorry to anyone who tries to click)

138 is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I heard about it on NPR almost a year ago, and had been meaning to check it out, but...and this is pretty embarrassing...it went to the bottom of my list because the author's voice was really annoying on the radio. It wasn't a conscious decision, like 'I *would* read it, but the annoying voice!'. More like whenever I thought of it I thought 'that guy with the annoying voice's book', and it never really got to the top of my list. Thank goodness I got around to it! It was a really first-rate YA book. It's from the POV of Arnold, a Native American boy living on the Spokane Indian Reservation, who decides to go to the white high school off the reservation so he can get a better education. Arnold's voice is fantastic; he's funny and poignant and quirky at the same time. There's also a fair amount of sketches scattered throughout that are really funny (Arnold is an aspiring cartoonist). Anyway, fantastic book, I absolutely recommend it.

I wish I could say such nice things about Ever by Gail Carson Levine. I absolutely *loved* Ella Enchanted. I can't even tell you how many times I've read that book. I thought Fairest was so-so, and decided to wait and get Ever from the library; thank god I did. I *really* didn't like it. I almost gave up half way through. The plot sounds really interesting; the potential romance between a girl slated for human sacrifice and a god masquerading as mortal. But it fell absolutely flat for me. For one thing, it seemed to fall back on generic stilted Fantasy Language, which to me at least is always just *boring*. The story is told in alternating POV, between the girl and the guy (or god, I should say). However, the voices were so indistinguishable from each other I was *constantly* forgetting whose part I was on. I know that Gail Carson Levine can write excellent character voices; Ella was amazing. So I don't know what went wrong here, but it completely failed to interest me, especially after The Absolute Diary, which had such a memorable voice.

140 is Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre. This was a pretty fun nonfiction book about a double-agent during WWII. I think my favorite part wasn't actually the many exploits of Agent Zigzag himself, but the relatively small part about the Magic Squad, a single army group (platoon? I should have paid more attention to the vocab) run by a stage magician, consisting mainly of professional illusionists, who were awesome. Part of what they did was use illusions to convince Nazis that Agent Zigzag had blown up a munitions plant. They also used illusions to make it seem as though attacks were coming from the wrong direction, etc. It was very interesting!

141 is another nonfiction, A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz. It's part history book, part travelogue, as the author researches the various settlers, explorers, and conquistadors that were running around America long before the Pilgrims ever set foot on American soil, and then travels to various sites of historical repute. I now know never to go to Santo Domingo. Particular high points for me were the conquistador re-enactments, complete with plate armor, and the chapter about Roanoak.

142 is His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik, and it was really fun. The Napoleonic Wars with *dragons*. I really enjoyed it, and have ordered the next in the series from the library; it can't get here soon enough.

143 is Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson. It was really funny and a pleasure to read and then - bam! - lots of racism and some 'domestic violence is good for some women'. And then more humor. I've got to admit, I was pretty jarred by the racism and domestic violence, even though I tried to remind myself that these sorts of things just come with the territory of older books. I haven't seen the movie, but if it edited out those parts (which I assume they have) it must be a lot of fun.

144 is Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon Hale and two other Hales. This is a graphic novel for children, and I was a bit embarrassed buying it, but honestly, it was *really* enjoyable. Rapunzel uses her ridiculously long braids as whips, escapes from the tower, and meets up with Jack, a boy who's a bit of kleptomaniac with a goose he keeps insisting will lay an egg any time now, to get revenge on the witch. I was curious as to how the whole graphic novel medium would work for Shannon Hale, and she and her husband have done a great job, at least as far as my un-comic-trained eyes can see. It was very funny with awesome characters . I feel like I must find a child to give it to right away.

145 is Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, which I really enjoyed. It was much funnier than I expected! Oddly enough I liked just about everyone but Sebastian, who struck me as just too selfish; I couldn't dredge up much sympathy for him, I'm afraid. I must see the miniseries or the movie; I can't decide which first.

146 is An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro, another really good one. It reminded me a bit of The Remains of the Day - melancholy and regret in the wake of WWII. This time the protagonist is Ono, a Japanese artist who supported the Japanese government during the war, and has found himself very much changed and somewhat disgraced/guilty after Japan's loss. It's a bit more complicated than that, with added themes about changing Japan, and his own ability to perceive the outside world, but I still thought the two books had a lot to do with each other. I didn't like it quite as much as The Remains of the Day, but I very much recommend it.

147 is Sweet Sixteen Princess by Meg Cabot because I can't read three Serious books in a row or I might risk acting like an adult, god forbid. This was one of those little "novellas" (and that's putting it generously) that go between the Princess Diaries books. I got it from the library without realizing that's what it was. Honestly, I hope there aren't a lot of people who are shelling out good money for this thing in hardback; it was a pretty funny and enjoyable book, but the whole time I was a bit annoyed at the marketing ploy of it all. Clearly I just need to chill out a bit.

148 is Throne of Jade, the next Temeraire novel by Naomi Novik. The series continues to be engrossing and fun as Laurence and Temeraire head over to China, where the emperor is demanding Temeraire's return since, of course, a dragon as special as Temeraire cannot have a companion as common as Laurence. The characters continue to engage, and the book really does fly by. Plus there are mentions of Wilburforce, the guy who championed the abolition of slavery in the British Parliament (and who was played by the same actor as Horatio Hornblower in a recent movie! Clearly this series wants to take me to my Horatio Hornblower happy place. Also, I should clearly actually read the Hornblower books if I'm going to carry on like this; it's quite embarrassing ~_~), and foreshadowing of dragon revolution, which sounds like it will be a lot of fun to read. Unfortunately, the next volume is all checked out at the library, meaning I'll have to be patient, which is not my strong suit. Maybe I can make a visit to Borders and see if they have them stocked...

Evelyn Waugh is really funny - and I think that Brideshead Revisited is the least funny of his novels. I liked the movie a lot - it is not funny at all (I guess the director decided it must be Very Serious) but I really enjoyed it anyway. I have the miniseries in my netflix queue, but netflix tells me it will be a Very Long Wait.

Horray for Temeraire! I didn't enjoy Throne of Jade or Empire of Ivory quite as much, but I had a fantastic time with both His Majesty's Dragon and Black Powder War. I'm eagerly waiting or Victory of Eagles to come in for me at the library.

jfetting, I was expecting Waugh to be all serious since I had mainly heard about him writing war novels, which always seem to me to be Depressing. I am happy to be wrong! I've grabbed Scoop from the bookstore to add to mt TBR, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

xicanti, I wound up getting Black Powder War and Empire of Ivory from the bookstore because I am way too impatient to wait for the library. I'm midway through Black Powder War and I am enjoying it a lot. I was never all that much of a dragon-book person (never read those dragonriders of Pern books, or whatever they are called), but I really adore Temeraire. I can't even put my finger on why, but the books are a lot of fun.

149 is Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie. I liked The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian so much that I decided to read some more by the same author. I recently found out that he (Sherman Alexie) also wrote the screenplay to Smoke Signals, a good movie. It's interesting; all of his main characters seem to be the nerdy guy with the coke-bottle government-issue glasses. I wonder what it is about that particular detail that resonates with him so much. That and driving cars backwards. As for Reservation Blues by itself, it was a really interesting blend with fantasy and reality. Robert Johnson, the blues player who, according to stories, sold his sole to the devil to be able to play better than anyone else, winds up at the Spokane Indian Reservation. The protagonists get his guitar, start a band, and head off the reservation to try and make it as musicians. There was so much going on I kind of don't know where to begin; like in the Absolutely True Diary, there was the strange ambivalence people on the reservation had to people who tried to leave, and there was also a lot of discussion about interracial relationships, and the perception of Indians by white people. Overall very interesting and worth reading.

150 is Black Powder War the next Temeraire book by Naomi Novik. In this one Temeraire and Laurence are heading over to Istanbul to pick up some dragon eggs that the British have bought, and, of course, complications ensue. It was another good Temeraire book.

151 is Empire of Ivory, another Temeraire book, that I also really enjoyed. This time Temeraire and Laurence head off to Africa to try and find a cure to this dragon plague. I don't want to give away spoilers, but I'll just say that I think the most interesting about Laurence is his internal conflict when he feels that his country, which he has dedicated his life to serving, is wrong. I've enjoyed that aspect of him ever since the abolition theme was introduced in book 2, and it continued in this book; I can't wait to get the next one, and I'm sad it will be the last for awhile.

152 is Princess on the Brink by Meg Cabot. OK, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would; Mia is still an utter head case, but I laughed, so I suppose it's all cool. Also, I about died when she talked about writing Battlestar Galactica fanfic where Starbuck and Apollo finally Do It. Oh, Mia.

153 is a reread of The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig. It's still very funny, and I like the characters of Henrietta and Miles. I'm looking forward for when the new one in this series comes out. January, I think.

154 is A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro. You know, this one didn't do as much for me as his other books did, although I suppose that's to be expected up to a point since it's his first book. Also, I feel like it might be my fault; I was confused at the end. Are we supposed to think that Etsuko is really Sachiko, and Keiko is really Mariko? I wasn't sure if that was intended or just a crazy idea that leaped into my head. Also, there were some strange self-referential things he did that I wasn't sure what to make of (having a peripheral character named Kazuo, a story about a person who was born in Nagasaki and moved to England, just like him). I feel like I'll need to look for lit crit or something to make sense of this one.

155 is Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik, the latest Temeraire book. I really loved it. I enjoyed the portion of the book that had Temeraire alone, and I liked his interaction with the other dragons. I'm a big fan of this series.

156 is A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif. You know, I think I might just not like satire; I like funny books, but a lot of the time satire just falls flat for me (see Oryx and Crake, Catch 22). I'm a little disappointed to learn this about myself, but whatever; not every genre works for every person. For this book in particular I would read it and think 'yes, this is funny, so why am I not laughing?' Again, I feel like I've just got to put the blame on my own doorstep. Anyway, for people who do like satire, it's a pretty good one surrounded the death of a Pakistani general.

This week I read three books. 157 is Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba . . . And Then Lost It To The Revolution by T.J. English. It was an interesting non-fiction book about Cuba in the '50s, especially the Mob involvement in the casinos. I found it interesting, and it was a very entertaining book. It does that whole no-footnotes thing that I guess is the norm, which is a little annoying, but I suppose I'll just have to get used to it; luckily I'm only reading it for fun.

158 is A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. It was hilarious (especially Jenny of the horrid scars), but had perhaps the *weirdest* ending I have ever read. I won't give it away, but I felt a strong urge to write 'wtf?' in the margins.

159 is City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare. You know, this series has sort of lost its charm for me. I'm glad that it's finding success, and I think it's neat that fanfic authors can break into publishing, but as I was reading I couldn't help thinking 'Draco, I mean Jace...' and the like, even more so than in the first book. Also, the scene at the fairy court...I don't want to put in spoilers, but it was a little bit silly. I like Magnus Bane all right, although I couldn't help thinking 'come on, man, you're several hundred years old and the most powerful warlock guy in New York, surely you can do better than a guy who won't even admit to his friends and family that he's dating you when, from the vibe of everyone, no one would really care.' But oh well, no accounting for taste. There were still some good lines, but I don't think I'll be in much of a hurry to read the next in the series.

160 is Princess Mia by Meg Cabot. I had stopped reading the Princess Diaries series awhile ago because it stopped interesting me, but I decided to catch up, and you know, it's still amusing! Mia is kind of a huge spoiled brat, but I feel like the author is going to deal with that. And it's seriously funny!

161 is Telex From Cuba by Rachel Kushner. It started off with promise, but I got bored after awhile; I felt like the most interesting characters were kept in the periphery, and we heard way more than I cared to about the boring characters. Anyway, it's an interesting look at Cuba on the eve of the revolution, but as a story it failed to engage me.

162 is Audrey, Wait!, a young adult book by Robin Benway. At first the constant name dropping of bands and songs was annoying, but once I got used to it it was a fun little book about a high school girl who's boyfriend writes a song about her after their breakup which rockets him to fame, and puts the spotlight on her as a muse.

163 is Eva Luna by Isabel Allende. This was all right, but it didn't really stand out for me like the other Allende books I have read.

164 is The Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton, a short story on the 1001 list. It was really interesting and sad, and I mean to look for some critical essays about it (you know, in all my non-reading free time) because I feel like there's a lot there I was missing.

165 is Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. You know, I'm sort of ambivalent on this one. On the one hand, it's pretty impressive that Murdock was able to switch voice and tone so dramatically (as compared to the Dairy Queen books). I also enjoyed the little fairy tale allusions. However, the ending kind of didn't make sense to me. I don't want to give anything away, but I felt like it didn't work with the characters' motivations earlier on in the book.

166 is Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. I really enjoyed it, although the length was a bit fatiguing. The characters were extremely well done. I felt as thought none of them were 'good guys' or 'bad guys'; they were all human beings with flaws and virtues. I was also impressed by how little the plot dragged in this very long story. I'm very glad I read this! Also, as a fun aside, one day while I was reading a random guy came up and asked, very excited, "is that Kristin Lavransdatter?" I was very surprised; I've never had that happen to me before, and certainly not with a somewhat-obscure book like Kristin Lavransdatter! (I say somewhat-obscure because I had never even heard of it before it became the Group Read here on LT).

167 is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I read this because I'd heard it talked up all over the place on LT, and I enjoyed it a lot. It was a fun and touching epistolary novel about a woman novelist that starts up a correspondence with the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and through it learns about life under the German occupation in Guernsey, the only British territory to be occupied during WWII. I absolutely recommend it.

168 is The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. I thought that it was rather interesting and well done (although I kept thinking 'the gap in Condaleeza Rice's teeth isn't *that* big, guys!'). I had heard most of the information before, on the news and whatnot, but it was still very interesting to read it in one place. I also thought the layout they did when explaining the plane hijacking was clever; they divided the pages up into four rows, with one row for each plane, and went through the timeline, so you could see that the hijackers were taking over Plane 1 while Plane 4 was still on the runway. I thought it was an interesting way to do it.

169 is How Does It Feel To Be A Problem? Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi. The author compiled the portraits of several Arab-American or Muslim-Americans living in Brooklyn, New York to explore their treatment in the wake of 9/11. His basic thesis seems to be 'Arab is the new black', as per the title and epigraph on the book. It was an interesting book, and the author managed to get a variety of points of views and experiences. The writing wasn't dry, but sometimes it seemed a little over the top, with kind of ridiculous similes/metaphors/etc.

170 is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. I had been avoiding reading this because the premise seemed a little too clever for my tastes - the whole 'getting into the mind of a kid with autism' aspect always struck me as a gimmick. But I finally picked it up and read through it quite quickly; although the first few chapters seemed a little tedious, it was actually an intriguing book. Christopher was a real character, not a gimmick, and his mystery kept my interest.

171 is Sorry by Gail Jones, another good (but depressing) book. The best aspect of it was the language, in my opinion; it was very lyrical, and the Shakespeare quotes woven throughout didn't seem out of place, and I enjoyed the Shakespearian allusions. The basic plot is a young girl, Perdita, born to unhappy parents in Australia, where her (awful) father is studying the Aboriginal people. She finds herself creating a family of her own with Mary, an aboriginal girl sent to live with her family, and Billy, a deaf neighbor boy. I won't say any more since I don't want to spoil anything; unfortunately, I wound up reading a review that seems to have been taken down that basically gave away the whole plot. However, if that happens to anyone else, you should read the book anyway because the language is worth it, even being spoiled for the plot.

172 is The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory. Well, I had to run into a bad book some time this month. I was a big fan of The Other Boleyn Girl, and even though I don't think her other Tudor/Elizabethan novels have been quite as good, I still enjoyed them. But this one really didn't do much for me. Everything struck me as really repetitive (if Mary, Queen of Scots said that she needed to be free one more time, I was going to throw the book across the room). Also, I really don't know why Philippa Gregory seems to hate Queen Elizabeth so much; we never see her point of view in any of the books, and she's always really weak, indecisive, and petty. It's so strange.

173 is Sweetsmoke by David Euller. I almost gave up on this book in the first chapter; the author was doing this trick where he'd put the dialogue of free people in quotation marks, but would not give quotation marks to the dialogue of slaves. I found it really irritating, and the cleverness was outweighed by the confusion and difficulty it caused in reading. However, I'm glad I stuck with it; Cassius, the slave who sets out to find who murdered a freed black woman he was fond of, is a good character, and the description of plantation life was intriguing. Sometimes I felt that the next clue in the mystery would come upon Cassius without him even having to look for it, which was a little silly, but the book was still a good one overall.

174 is Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris, a murder mystery set in Saudi Arabia. I'm not a huge mystery person, but I liked the atmosphere in this one, as well as the relationship between Nayir, the detective character, and Katya, a woman pathologist he needs to help him.

175 is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I haven't read any of his YA stuff before, and I found this interesting enough, but I'm glad I got it from the library; it doesn't have a lot of reread potential for me personally. But it's still a good little book, if a bit too meandering for my tastes at the start.

176 is The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper, a memoir about a woman growing up as part of the privileged elite in Liberia. The only thing I knew about Liberia was that it had been founded by freed slaves, and was a big mess now, but this book included a good introduction to the history of Liberia. The beginning of the book centered around the lifestyle of Helene (a 'Congo person', or descendent of the freed American black colonists) and Eunice, the Country girl (descended from the pre-colonization Liberians) Helen's family adopts because Helene is afraid to sleep alone in her room. I found the descriptions of peacetime just as interesting as the horrific stuff that happened once war erupted.

177 is American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
178 is The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz
179 is The President's Daughter by Ellen Emerson White

They are actually kind of connected, although I didn't have any particular reading plan. American Wife is a fictional story loosely based on Laura Bush, and The Commoner is a fictional story based on the life of Empress Michiko, the first "commoner" to marry into the royal family of Japan. They were both 'normal girl meets extraordinarily powerful guy who changes her life, and she needs to learn to reconcile her feelings/views with the image she has to promote for the sake of said powerful guy' sorts of stories. The settings are quite different (as were the styles of each novel; I thought American Wife was really pretty trashy, and I could've done without the multi-paragraph ode to fictional-George W Bush's penis, but I digress and apologize to anyone I've grossed out), but the hearts of both stories were quite similar, I thought. I was particular interested in The Commoner since I'm somewhat interested in Princess Masako, who married Michiko's son. Masako was an extraordinary diplomat who originally didn't want to give up her career to marry the Crown Prince of Japan, but eventually accepted him, and went through a really miserable time of it for awhile, much like Empress Michiko did. A fictional-Masako played a pretty big role towards the end of The Commoner, which I thought was neat.

As for The President's Daughter, it is a YA book about Meg, the daughter of the first female president of the US. It was originally published in the 80s, but was recently re-released, updated for the internet age. They did not, however, decide to update the fashion, which they spend a fair amount of time describing, and so it was a little jarring (I found myself wanting to shout 'no, Meg! Popped collars are not cool! Don't listen to them!'). However, at core the book was really enjoyable. I like Meg, and I thought her mother was also a really interesting character; she's a little vain, irritable when stressed, extremely aware that she's not with her family as much as they'd like her to be, and also funny and charming. She was a very well-drawn character, and I most definitely intend to read the rest of the series to see how Meg and her mother's relationship evolves.

180 is Nation by Terry Pratchett, which was a lot of fun.

181 is Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan, a collection of short stories about children in various African countries.

182 is Blindness by José Saramago, a disturbing allegorical story where an entire nation goes blind. Saramago seems to have something against paragraph breaks; 6-page paragraphs were not unusual.

183 is The Explosionist by Jenny Davidson, a first-rate YA fantasy/scifi/alternate history book. I really can't say enough nice things about it. It reminded me a bit of Libba Bray's A Great And Terrible Beauty series; a young girl at a boarding school, feminism in a historical setting, some magic, parents (or in Gemma's case, parent) dead under mysterious circumstances. Unlike Libba Bray's books, which take place in Victorian England, The Explosionist is set in an alternate-Scotland, where England lost the battle of Waterloo, and independent Scotland is a part of The Hanseatic League, a bunch of Northern states (Sweden, Denmark, etc) who are hold-outs from Europe. Some fun things in The Explosionist are the little alternate history tidbits; in this world, for instance, Oscar Wilde is an obstetrician who invented the incubator.

Sophie, the protagonist of The Explosionist, is raised by her great-aunt Tabitha, a person rather high-up in the government, and one of the founders of IRLYNS, or the Institute for the Recruitment of Young Ladies for National Security. IRLYNS trains intelligent young women to serve Scotland as elite assistants to important men, and it's considered an admirable calling. However, great-aunt Tabitha doesn't seem too fond of the idea of Sophie joining up. Add that to terrorist plots, a number of explosions (as you'd expect from the title), and Sophie's budding talent as a medium, and you've got a fantastic YA read. I'm sorry, I'm gushing; but I really did enjoy the book!

184 is Cybele's Secret by Juliet Marillier, a companion novel to Wildwood Dancing, which I loved last year. It wasn't quite as good as Wildwood, but entertaining all the same. And I still absolutely love the covers of these books! They are so busy, and every little figure corresponds to something in the book. I love book covers where you can tell the illustrator actually read the book.

185 is In the Land of Invisible Women by Qanta A. Ahmed, the early reviewer ebook. I thought it was really fascinating, and am trying to put together the words for a proper review in my head :-)

186 is Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, a book about a young girl is colonial Rhodesia/Zimbabwe who wants to get an education. It was quite good, with a very feminist slant. However, one thing that continues to bug me is that the library had it labeled as 'Teen' and 'African American'. I suppose I can understand the 'Teen' label as the protagonist is a girl who grows from girlhood to teenagerhood, although I don't particularly think of it as a book for teens, but African American? Both the author and the protagonist are from Zimbabwe, which is certainly not in America! I'm sure that the people who put these labels on have to do a ton of them each day so they can't really take the time to look very deeply into the books, but it was nagging at the back of my head the whole time I read the book.

187 is The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles. It was a very exciting book about two girls in Brazil around the 1920s/30s; they are orphans raised by their aunt who teaches them how to be seamstresses. One of the girls, Luzia, is abducted by bandits and becomes one of them, while the other, Emilia, marries a wealthy man from the city and becomes a socialite. They both become involved with various political machinations, and keep track of each other; the way I describe it sounds very boring, but I actually enjoyed it a lot.

188 is Pretty Monsters, a short story collection by Kelly Link. I honestly didn't much like it; I heard so many good things about Kelly Link, but the short stories never gelled with me.

189 is Lost in the Labyrinth by Patrice Kindl, a YA book retelling the story of Theseus and the Minotaur from the perspective of Xenodice, Ariadne's younger sister. It was a quick, enjoyable read, and it was interesting to hear the story from the perspective of a Cretan, and someone who loves the Minotaur as a sibling.

190 is The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. I've heard a lot of buzz about this one, but was disappointed when I read it; I thought it was too slow and I didn't care about the characters. It's not that I hated the book; I just didn't enjoy it. By the end I felt like it was a bit of a chore.

191 is Katherine by Anya Seton. I think I might have been in a bad mood, because this one didn't do it for me either, even though it seems like a favorite for a lot of people. I didn't really understand how Katherine and John started to feel romantically towards each other, or when; it was just all of a sudden 'I can't live without you!' But the historical aspect was interesting.

192 is The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell, and it shook me out of my funk. I am surprised I never read anything of Sarah Vowell's before since I think she's very funny. I read this around Thanksgiving, which was an added bonus. If only history class was this funny!

I also read The Pit and the Pendulum and The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe because I had a little goal for myself of reading two things from the 1001 list each month. I read them before I realized Nervous Conditions was on the List. Anyway, I counted them as 194 and 195 on my paper list because I wanted to make a record that I'd read them, and what I thought, but I'll admit I'm feeling a little cheap including them now! But I've included short stories before, and it's not like I'm using them to get over the top of my 50 books, so I'll just let it be. Anyway, I was impressed by how Poe managed to evoke such creepiness in so few pages. I'm also a little embarrassed I never read them before!

195 is Sunshine by Jacquelyn Cook. (NB: I don't think the title keystone goes to the correct work) I read it because I got The Gates of Trevalyan for an ARC, which is the second in a series, and Sunshine is apparently the first. It's about a family during the and before the Civil War. Honestly, it didn't do much for me. However, I think The Gates of Trevalyan is a bit better, so that's a relief. But I don't know why Gates is considered a sequel to Sunshine; as far as I can see, they have nothing in common but setting. There are no cross-over characters at all so far. So if anyone else, like me, felt like they ought to wait to read Sunshine before properly reading/reviewing Gates, don't; it's completely unnecessary.

196 is The Gates of Treevalyan by Jacquelyn Cook. It was my October ERC book, and I've posted my reviews. As a basic summary, I thought that it was interesting exploration of the events leading up to the Civil War, and the rationale that lead the upper class Southerners to come to that decision. However, some of the basic big picture issues, notably slavery, are dealt with a little bit ridiculously (for instance, Trevalyan is a cotton plantation with no field hands), although that might be because the author is telling it from the point of view of the Southern upper class.

197 is The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton. I finished it a bit out of season, but I've been working on this one for awhile; I really enjoy Wharton's writing, and I thought that the stories hit the right note of unnerving and eerie without scaring me enough to stop being fun. I especially liked the stories Kerfol and Mr. Jones.

198 is March by Geraldine Brooks. I had been avoiding Geraldine Brooks because for some reason I was under the impression that she was stuffy. However, I read a scathing and hilarious review she wrote of Jewel of Medina, and I laughed so much I decided I had to give her a try. March was by no means funny, but it was extremely good. It's basically fanfic - the story of Mr. March off at the Civil War during the beginning of Little Women, as well as his reminisces of the courtship of and early marriage with Marmee. Mr. March came across as very human and interesting. I've got to admit, I became teary-eyed at one point. It was really a fantastic book that I recommend.

199 is a YA book, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom of the Waves by M.T. Anderson, which was also extremely good. I had forgotten a lot of the first Octavian Nothing, but they had a little chapter at the beginning that jogged my memory so I could become fully engrossed in Octavian's decision to fight with the British Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment against the American colonists in order to gain his freedom. This was an absorbing book that was by turns poignant and funny. I felt so affectionate towards Octavian by the end. At any rate, I recommend it, but I must admit that I might not have enjoyed it when I was of the recommended reading age. Octavian is highly educated, and a good portion of the book is written as his diary; I enjoyed it, but Young Adult Me probably would have put it down, I'm sorry to say. Thank goodness I read YA books now!

And, drum roll please, number 200 is Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. This is a bit more what I expected of Brooks, meaning I didn't enjoy it as much as March (although really that's no great criticism!). It's the story of a village that is wracked with the Plague in 1665/1666, primarily from the point of view of a widow named Anna Frith. It's heavy stuff; as you can imagine, Plague brings out the worst in people, although really, going by some of the reveals in the aftermath of the plague and of Anna's pre-plague memory, most of the people in this village were pretty bad to begin with! At any rate, by the time I got to the end of March I felt like I'd seen a number of horrific things, but that it still ended on a note of survival and hope. The Year of Wonders tried to do the same thing, life goes in spite of unspeakable horrors, etc., but it really didn't hit the correct note for me. I'm not sure whether I'll read People of the Book or not.

201 is Kindred by Octavia Butler. I thought it was interesting, and the story did grip me, although I had expected the writing to be a bit better based on Xenogenesis.

202 is The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. YA. This one was a lot of fun. I liked the protagonist (an over-the-summer ugly duckling turned swan who realizes that she is sick of being underestimated and 'adorable'), and the pranks she pulls off are pretty hilarious. I also enjoyed the voice.

203 is The Dream-Maker's Magic by Sharon Shinn. I liked this one much better than The Truth-Teller's Tale; I think maybe in Tale she was trying to invert the rules of the magical world she created in Tale, and I hadn't read the first in the series (still haven't, actually), so I didn't have a good sense of what those rules were in the first place, so I was just confused. The Dream-Maker's Magic didn't do the same reversals; I also found the narrator, Kellen, a girl whose (crazy, imo) mother insists she's a boy, to be interesting and sympathetic.

well, I've survived finals (for the time being - we'll see how I feel when the grades come in ~_~), and have a bunch of books to record.

204 is White House Autumn by Ellen Emerson White, the second in the Meg Powers series (which began in The President's Daughter). In this one Meg has to cope with an attempt on her mother's life. Although the portrayal of grieving Meg was actually pretty good, I thought the book seemed to drag overall. It's pretty much the weakest in the series for my money.

205 is Long Live The Queen by Ellen Emerson White, the third Meg Powers book. This one was a lot more intense than the first two; Meg gets kidnapped by terrorists, and it's pretty disturbing. I don't want to ruin too much, so I'll just say it was very gripping.

206 is Long May She Reign by Ellen Emerson White, the last Meg Powers book and, imo, the best. Meg's path to recovery from the events of Long Live The Queen is long and difficult. She's doing rehab, dealing with nightmares, and hounded by the press. In the middle of all this she goes off to college, where she has to deal with all the normal freshman-year stuff as well as the president's-daughter and kidnapping trauma. We also learn a little bit about what was happening back in DC while she was kidnapped - although they never do tell us what the terrorists wanted.

207 is Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle, a graphic novel memoir by a French-Canadian graphic artist who worked in North Korea for awhile. It was very interesting. I felt like Delisle's experiences didn't really scratch the surface - the only North Koreans he talks to are his state-provided translators, who of course don't tell him much more than the party line. However, his experiences in North Korea were still very interesting, from the museum of American atrocities to the post-curfew landscape, which was entirely dark (due to an electricity shortage) except for the spotlights on Kim Jong Il's portrait. That said, some of the things Delisle did struck me as unkind. I mean, he gave an Orwell book to his translator, which I'm sure he intended as an eye-opener, but I kept thinking that if his translator got caught with anti-state literature like that he'd be in a lot of trouble while Delisle, under the protection of a company whose business North Korea wants to keep, would probably get off scot free. Still, it was an interesting graphic novel.

208 is The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen. This was a very sweet book about a shy girl who is all but a shut-in until a woman from the neighborhood starts hiding out in her closet and pushes her to get out there, make new friends, and do something about her years-long crush on the mailman. There are some quirky semi-magical aspects - one of the characters, Chloe, is followed by books that appear whenever she needs them, for instance. Now that's a situation I'd like to have; stuck in a long line and, poof, an interesting book appears in your purse!

209 is The Ghosts of Kerfol by Deborah Noyes, a YA book based on Kerfol, one of Edith Wharton's ghost stories that I read last month. Ghosts of Kerfol is not so much a novel as it is several intersecting ghost stories. The first is a retelling of the original Kerfol from the point of view of one of the servants, and the others are stories about people who come in contact with the house through time, including a young aristocratic would-be artist who is dealing with the aftermath of the French Revolution, a rich, flapper-esque party-girl attended a party at the estate, and a girlfriend and boyfriend who go on a tour of the estate. There is a lot of overlap between the stories, including the sense that some of the characters in later stories are stand-ins for characters in earlier ones (same ghosts, after all). I thought Ghosts of Kerfol was creepy and well-written, although I must warn you that there's no real conclusion at the end.

210 is Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller by Steve Weinberg. I didn't know much about Ida Tarbell, aside from the fact that she was a famous muckraker with a pretty neat name, so I enjoyed the opportunity to learn a bit more about her. Although the book presents itself as the dual story of Tarbell and Rockefeller, the author's note admitted that it was initially imagined as a Tarbell biography, and it shows - although it started off giving equal time to each, by the middle of the book long stretches were spent on Tarbell doing things that in no way related to Standard Oil or Rockefeller. Still, I was more interested in Tarbell anyway, so this wasn't such a drawback for me. I was particularly interested to learn that Tarbell's own father was one of the independent oilmen that Rockefeller plagued and all but drove out of business entirely, which added an additional layer to Tarbell's work exposing Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

The only real problem I had with the book was that it didn't really stay on topic. For instance, it went on about Tarbell's sex life a bit more than I thought was necessary. Was she a lesbian or heterosexual? Did she ever have a fling with McClure, the owner of the magazine she wrote for? What about a torrid affair in Paris? College boys? This sort of thing was of only passing interest to me, and certainly none of it had anything to do with her 'epic battle with John Rockefeller'. It would be more appropriate in a traditional biography, I think. To be fair, Ida's Sex Life didn't take whole chapters or anything, but I would have rather spent that time reading about her actual muckraking - despite the title of the book, the actual writing of The History of the Standard Oil Company took about two chapters.

211 is The Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling. This was a very quick and cute read. I particularly enjoyed the liner notes by 'Dumbledore', telling the wizarding world's reaction the various stories, including Lucius Malfoy's attempt to ban one of them from the Hogwarts library for promoting Muggle-witch-intermarriage.

whew! I'll try not to fall that far behind again; it takes awhile to get back up to speed.

hi legxleg,

I might be a bit late, but cngratulations on reaching 200! (and beyond)

I am enjoying reading your comments and have added lots of titles to my tbr's.

Happy reading.

thanks for your congratulations, judylou! I'm glad that you enjoy reading the comments; I certainly enjoy writing them since it helps me sort out what I thought of each book.

212 is Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks, a (rather long) novel about John Brown's son Owen, and his experiences with John, Bleeding Kansas, and Harpers Ferry (among other things)

213 is Mine Eyes Have Seen by Ann Rinaldi, a YA novel about John Brown's daughter Annie, who stood lookout for the conspirators as they planned out Harpers Ferry.

As you can see, I'm in a bit of a John Brown boom. After reading Gates of Trevalyan and March, where the protagonists had absolutely opposite opinions about John Brown, I became a bit interested. So I checked out Cloudsplitter and Mine Eyes Have Seen from the library. They were actually very interesting books to read together because it's fun to see how the two authors imagine John Brown. For instance, in Mine Eyes Have Seen, Annie is just desperate to gain the approval of John Brown, which he is always withholding. In Cloudsplitter, Owen also wants John Brown's approval, but he actually gets moments of extreme validation from the man, and at other times it seems like Owen actually has a certain power over John, and can either spur him on to violence or check him. Both Mine Eyes Have Seen and Cloudsplitter make much of John Brown's obsession with honesty and morality, but while in Mine Eyes Annie is shocked that John is having her lie for the sake of the conspiracy, making him a bit of a hypocrite, in Cloudsplitter he is always (imo) portrayed as exacting and true to his own sense of morality, and as willing, if not more so, to blame himself for his children's failings as to blame his children for them.

Right now I'm reading a nonfiction John Brown book to sort of round out my John Brown reading. It's a bit harder going, which is probably why I usually prefer my history from historical fiction (which of course has its own pitfalls). However, I hope to be able to have it finished soon, if I'm not too distracted by the books I got from friends for Christmas recently.

214 is His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid edited by Paul Finkelman. This was pretty clearly meant to be an academic book, with sometimes-inscrutable prose. I might have been a little bit overambitious in reading it for fun. I was skeptical about some of the essays, including one that kept saying things along the lines of 'blacks thought X and whites thought Y'. I'm not a fan of big generalizations like that. But there were also interesting tidbits, including an entire essay about a bunch of Southern medical students who 'seceded' from the Northern medical schools in the wake of Harpers Ferry.

215 is Embers by Sandor Marai. This was a very interesting and well-written book (my hat's off to the translator) about two old men meeting again for the first time after forty years. But one flaw is that I have to admit I started laughing when I'm don't think the author intended me to. It's just that the conversation is so one-sided! Henrik is doing all these monologues, and even when he says something like 'answer me! I have waited 40 years for your answer!' and his old friend opens his mouth to answer...Henrik plows into another ten-page diatribe. I would feel much easier if I was sure the author meant me to be cracking up at that point.

216 is The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller. I got this from a friend for Christmas, and started reading it right away. I absolutely adored Narnia when I was a kid (still do, if I'm honest). The reviews and book blurbs promised a non-religious reading of the Narnia books, as well as recognition of some of the themes that I've found troubling as I got older, which sounded interesting and fun and new, so I was very excited to read it. Unfortunately, the author can come across as kind of snooty and petty - I consider myself a liberal, but someone who can't seem to find *anything* good or even neutral to say about conservatives or religious types, and who dismisses a critic because he is a 'Catholic who, unfortunately, never lapsed', strikes me as about as stupid and short-sighted as anyone on the Right. But luckily, Miller's book is more than her grinding her own ax; she does give some possible analysis of the Narnia books that go beyond the generally accepted religious allegory, and she also interviews other Narnia fans and presents their ideas (including Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, and Susanna Clarke), even when she doesn't agree with them, so I give her credit for that. I really enjoyed the book on the whole, even though at times I found myself rolling my eyes at Miller. I'd still recommend it.

217 is John Brown: The Legend Revisited by Merril D. Peterson, which will be my last John Brown book for awhile. I think I might have made myself thoroughly sick of him! But if I did want to continue reading about him, I would have got plenty of ideas from this book, which is less about John Brown himself and more about his treatment in art and literature over time. There were a number of interesting pictures included in the book, and a discussion of poems, plays, and novels about John Brown (including one that I'd read!).

218 is I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone by Stephanie Kuehnert. I read this because I've really enjoyed the other YA music-themed books I've read, Audrey, Wait! and Born To Rock (which I especially recommend - a Young Republican discovers that his biological father is a punk rock god, and tags along on the revival tour to reconnect in the hopes of guilt-tripping college money out of him. It's by Gordon Korman, the hilarious author of the Bruno and Boots series that I loved when I was a kid. Run, don't walk, to your local library!). Anyway, I was hopeful about I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, but ultimately disappointed. The premise sounded interesting - young girl is abandoned by her mother as a baby, allegedly because her mother was a free spirit following punk music, and forms her own punk band, hoping that she can create the song that will bring her mother back to her. Unfortunately, I don't think the author had the skill to pull it off. I can't quite put my finger on any one thing that meant the story didn't work for me. It was a combination of not-quite-right prose, characters who I didn't like enough to feel anything but irritation towards when they made the requisite 'young rock star' mistakes, and an inability to lose myself in the story overall. Not a fan.

219 is Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. Like Octavian Nothing, Chains is a YA book about a slave during the Revolutionary War. Isabel and her sister Ruth are sold to an unkind Loyalist couple in New York after the death of their previous owner, and the convenient disappearance of the will that would have set Isabel and Ruth free. Isabel promises to spy on her no masters for the Patriots in exchange for her freedom. We can probably all imagine how well that turns out for her. I thought Chains was not quite as good as Octavian Nothing, but certainly much easier to read. The book didn't blow me away, but I liked Isabel, and I think I will read the sequel when it comes out. I'd still recommend it to a young adult, especially one that was interested in but had difficulty with Octavian Nothing.

Hi legxleg,
I'm curious, you've read so many books this year, I'm wondering if you're going to stay in the 50-Book challenge. I've enjoyed all your comments and have gotten some good book ideas, so would like to keep reading! :)

Hey bonniebooks,

Actually, I intend to move to the 75 book challenge next year. But you can still read my list at

http://www.librarything.com/topic/51396

and I think you can comment without joining the group. I hope you (and anyone else who might be reading now) will still read my list next year, even if I'm not in the 50 Book Challenge. :-)

220 is Damosel: In Which the Lady of the Lake Renders a Frank and Often Startling Account of Her Wondrous Life and Times by Stephanie Spinner. I picked this up off the library shelf because, judging from the title, I thought there would be a distinctive and funny voice for the Lady of the Lake to tell her version of Arthurian legend. Unfortunately, the voice was fairly generic, and not all that funny, so I was a bit disappointed there. The story was engaging enough, though, even if the romance seemed to sprout up at first glance (a perennial peeve of mine). It was all right, maybe check it out from the library, but I wouldn't run out and buy it or anything.

221 is the Manga Shakespeare version of Macbeth (sorry for the funny touchstone; for some reason it's the only way I can get it to link to the right book). I've read the Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet manga Shakespeares, and I think they're pretty entertaining, even if the abridging (abridgement?) of the Shakesperian language sometimes leaves me shaking my head and wondering 'why on earth did they cut *that*?'. There's always a crazy twist in the manga Shakespeare (Romeo is, inexplicably, a rock idol. Everyone in Hamlet is a human-looking cyborg). In Macbeth, Scotland is replaced by what appears to be a post-nuclear war version of Tokyo (there's even a dramatic confrontation on the top of Tokyo Tower), and for some reason Macduff has four arms, and Malcolm wears what appears to be a jumpsuit and a ski cap with samurai-esque horns sewn on the front. And Lady Macbeth looks like a dominatrix. Anyway, the manga Shakespeare series really amuses me, and Macbeth is no exception. But if I were to give it to a high school kid, which is who the intended audience seems to be, I'd want to make very clear that it is absolutely *abridged*.

222 is Farthing by Jo Walton, a reread of one of my favorite books from last year. It's an alternate history where England ousts Winston Churchill and instead makes an alliance with Hitler, basically agreeing to let Hitler have Continental Europe if he leaves England alone. The architects of this alliance, called the Farthing Peace (Winston Churchill amusingly says in this universe that it isn't worth a farthing), are unsurprisingly known as the Farthing Set, a bunch of nobility and political bigwigs. One of the daughters of the Farthing set, Lucy, marries a Jewish man, causing all sorts of uproar (in this version of anti-Semitic England, Jewish people have restricted rights). However, she and her husband have been invited to a gathering at the family estate, in what they hope will be the first step towards reconciliation. Unfortunately, a prominent member of the Farthing Set is murdered with a yellow Jewish star pinned to his chest, heavily implicating Lucy's husband. That's a rather long summary, and I apologize, but I promise I really haven't given anything important away; just the set-up. The story is told in alternate chapters between Lucy and Inspector Carmichael, the man brought in to solve the murder. I really enjoyed the voice of Lucy; it was very distinctive and the first paragraph sucked me right in. The book as a whole is fantastic; an engaging mystery, a fantastic atmosphere with a ton of little details worked in about how their world is different from ours. It also does a great job exploring how everyday people make little compromises, then bigger ones, and lose the country they thought they had. It holds up just as well on reread, and I'm very glad I went out and bought it after borrowing it from the library.

223 is Ha'Penny by Jo Walton, the sequel to Farthing, in which Inspector Carmichael investigates the death of an actress whose house was destroyed by a bomb. Again the story alternates from the POV of Carmichael and a woman, in this one Viola Larkin, an actress daughter of a noble family with a number of well-connected daughters (they are based on the real-life Mitford family), who has been asked to play Hamlet in a partially gender-swapped version of Hamlet. By the end of the book I actually really wanted to see Viola's Hamlet! At any rate, I don't want to spoil anything so I'll not mention how Carmichael's case and Viola's Hamlet intersect; I'll just say that it was another fantastic book.

And I was rereading Farthing and Ha'penny because for Christmas I received Half a Crown by Jo Walton, the last in the trilogy. In this one Carmichael has adopted the daughter of a person who died in the second book (I won't say who, of course, I'm trying to be very good about spoilers), and she is all set to make her debut in front of the Queen when she gets caught up in a riot and, by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, is arrested. When Carmichael goes in guns blazing to get her, the paranoid government becomes suspicious of his loyalty. I think my favorite part of this book was the Carmichael's ward's realization of what fascism is really about; at the beginning of the book she thinks that fascism is fun, of all things. I don't want to spoil too much, again, so I'll just say that I could see the ending being iffy for a lot of people, but it worked for me. When I got to the last fifty pages or so I was just rooted to the spot and wouldn't look up. I also think I really gained a lot reading the series straight through because there were a lot of minor characters in the first two books that show up again, as well as callbacks to even small events from the earlier books. I absolutely adore this series, and recommend it to anyone. Unless you're a fascist. :-P

I wrote this yesterday, but when I clicked 'submit' I ran into the website's down time. Still, a day late isn't too bad.

225 is Looking for Alaska by John Green, YA coming-of-age story about a boy who goes to boarding school and meets a girl named Alaska, who he almost immediately falls for. She's beautiful and crazy and changes his life. Is that trite enough? >After 9/11: America's War on Terror by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. This was a graphic novel about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; the prose was unexceptional and not particularly readable, but the illustrations were very interesting. Once and awhile they would include a single illustration/panel about some non-Iraq-or-Afghanistan-related event, and then not mention it again, which seemed distracting and gave the whole thing a less stream-lined story. It would come across as 'hey, remember the shooting at Virginia Tech? Us too. Back to Iraq'. I think these asides should have either been better integrated with the overall story, which was the wars in the Middle East, or else cut.

227 was Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, a funny look at the assassination of some US presidents, and Sarah Vowell's visits to sites associated with them. I listened to the book on tape which was very funny. I recommend it.

228 is General Winston's Daughter by Sharon Shinn, which I enjoyed. It's a YA fantasy book about a girl, Averie, who goes to join her father and fiance, who are officers in the army occupying a foreign country. Over the course of the book she has second thoughts about whether her country has a right to colonize and occupy other countries as she she becomes fond of Chiarrin (the country they are occupying) and meets another officer in the army who had his own home colonized by Averie's country a few generations ago. I thought the book did a good job of not making anyone a monster, especially considering there is a love triangle and it's often really easy to make one person awful to push the other two together. I predicted the ending early on, but was then convinced that I had been mistaken so the ending was still a bit of a surprise. I think this if a fun YA fantasy/romance.

and finally, 229 is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis, a reread and still my favorite of the Narnia books. I adore it.

And that's it for 2008; 229 books for 73,041 pages overall. Of course, of those books 59 were YA and 7 were graphic novels, so really I haven't read as much as it sounds. Either way I enjoyed the books I read this year. I couldn't possibly pick favorites from the whole year, so I won't try. Also, next year I'm moving to the 75 book challenge, and anyone who likes can find my thread here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/51396

I hope no one feels like they can't read my thread or comment any more once I've changed groups; I don't think you even have to join the 75 book challenge group to comment on the threads. I've really enjoyed reading in the group, and I hope everyone has happy reading next year as well :-)