Number 21 is The Red Queen by Phillipa Gregory. This is a sequal to the her White Queen that I read earlier this year. The Red Queen in question is the heiress to the House of Lancaster, one of the two ruling houses (the other being the House of York) embroiled in the War of the Roses. Lady Margaret Beaufort (later Tudor, Stafford and then Stanley) is the mother of the future Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs. She is (in Gregory's tale) an increadibly pious and ambitious woman. She feels it is her destiny to be important (else she would not have been born to such a high station in life) and if she cannot be Queen of England herself, then she will at least be mother to the King. Married at an extremely early age in order to bring forth the heir to the House of Lancaster, Margaret decides that this is her God given destiny (she has 'visions' of Joan of Arc and whatnot that prove the righteousness of her cause to her) to raise her son to the throne in place of the upstart Yorks. Basically, the be all and end all of Margaret's existence is seeing this through.

It's not a bad book. It's an increadibly quick read. The problem is the main character of Margaret is increadibly unsympathetic. I know that this is undoubtedly a stylistic choice on Gregory's part, but it made it rather difficult to be truly engaged in the book. Margaret is a vain, hateful, zealot who desperately wants power. When someone wants power that much, they probably shouldn't have it. She is also frighteningly un-self aware, ascribing vanity and hubris to everyone else but herself. She's obvioulsy smart (and historically she was said to be extraordinarliy leaned for a woman of the time), but you almost want her to fail (despite knowing very well that her son does triumph to defeat Richard III and start the House of Tudor) becuase she is so freaking insufferable.

It is an interesting look at the uses of the power of the women during the War of the Roses, but because Margaret was so unlikeable, I almost needed more focus on some of the male characters (or just other characters in general) to make the book more palatable.

Number 20! Whoohoo! The twentieth book of the year is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Cause yes, if I have an opportunity to read a blockbuster novel for free, I will generally take it. (I borrowed it from my Dad).

It's a huge, rambling, thriller and it's... ok. It's also pretty uncomfortable in parts, and I gather that it's because Larsson himself was very much against violence against women. But if he is, then I must admit I find it strange there's so much of that in here. And like, there's A LOT. But perhaps that's his way of proving his point... I dunno... but I didn't really feel like he was taking a stand against violence against women, it really did feel like he was rather... sensationalizing it.

Anyway, I don't want to get too much into this novel, it's kinda too big to do so. The main characters are ok, although I do think I find Lisbeth a little annoying after awhile. Her 'schtick' gets a little boring and all the repeat of her being a 'victim' just makes me wonder about some of her sudden feelings later... Blokvist is also fine, a strangely innocent version of a hardened reporter, but I did find his sexual prowness a little off-putting.

Not sure if I'll bother moving forward in this trilogy or not... jury's still out.

Number 19 is The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. I'm actually not familiar with the author's work as a radio personality, and in fact, I ended up reading this book because my father had asked for it as a birthday present, and I just found myself flipping through it and being engaged in the first few pages. Early American history is a time period I'm woefully uninformed of (of course, I'm equally uninformed about early Canadian history, having forgotten most of it at this point), so I thought what the heck, I'll read about the founding of the American colonies. Vowell makes it easy to be interseted though. Her writing style is definitely quirky as she flips back and forth between the history of the 1630s era settlers of the Boston and Rhode Island areas, and present day parallels. The book is often humourous in following the Puritan leaders and their often unbendable views of religion and law, but they are definitely not the boring, uptight individuals we've been pretty much made to think they were. Of course, the book also goes into not humourous times, with the Pequot War being particularly brutal and upsetting. Vowell's thesis for this book is that the Puritans are not exactly who we think they were. They were religious and hardy, but they were also highly literate and were big into education, which is something Vowell feels the modern US of A has lost sight of.

Number 18 took me a looong time to finish. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, it's that it is a dense, 800-page book written in 1848, so they tend to take a little longer. Book 18 is Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.

This book is subtitled "A Novel Without a Hero", which is pretty much true. Most of the main characters are not 'hero' material. Definitely not the main character, Becky Sharpe. Becky is a scheming, manipulative social climber, desperate to elevate her station in life from orphaned child of (ugh) artists, to become a respectable (and of course wealthy) Lady. She moves through the eschelons of society with such purpose and cunning that Machiavelli himself would admire. Of course, her house of cards all does finally come crashing down on her and she is ruined for awhile, but she ends up pulling herself up at the expense of another character.

The other characters aren't really much better than Becky. There's George Osborne, self-obessesed but rather dashing, he's the one that Becky's school-mate, Amelia Sedley falls for. Amelia is a sweet girl, kind and good natured, but you also get the idea she's none too bright. And her obsession over George nearly kills her a couple of times. Not too bright and not too strong either. Amelia's brother Jospeh is plump, vain and increadibly gullable. It is he that Becky pretty much ruins at the end of the book. And then there's the man who becomes Becky's husband, Captain Rawdon Crawley, a card shark and a wasteral who counted on inheriting from his rich aunt, but when he marries Becky, he is disinherited because he married so far below his station. And then there is the one, and pretty much only fairly noble character in the book, William Dobbin. George's best friend, but he harbours an unrequited crush on Amelia, and seems immune to Becky's charms. He always tries to do his best for those around him, and is without a doubt, the most sympathetic character of them all (although, as Rawdon becomes more and more aware of his wife's shortcomings and is increasingly fond of his little boy, there is some redemption for him as well).

The Napoleanic Wars interrupt the novel for a bit, with repercussions for all. Becky rises through the ranks of society, but she leaves a trail of financial ruin in her wake. The Crawleys have no money, and never pay anyone anything they owe. Becky is cold towards her own son, and basically flirts and holds court of her own with many male admirers, whilst pretty much ignoring her husband. It's during this time that Rawdon begins to realize she's not the loving wife she pretends to be.

It's an interesting novel in that it's actually quite dark, and gets moreso as the novel progresses. The characters are pretty much all despicable. Money and the pursuit of it is pretty much the be all and end all of some of their existences. And those who do end up in poverty do so because of someone's foolishness with money. No one's really evil though (well, maybe Becky), but they are all fairly unlikable. Of course, this novel is hailed as a satire of society, and it certaintly does its job. Overall, I quite liked it, it's certaintly an interesting look at society warts and all, and in Becky Sharpe, he created one hell of an anti-hero.

Number 17 this year is a book (literally) tossed at my by one of my aunts. We don't really share the same tastes in reading material, but what the hell, I (used to) read fast enough that I'll try just about anything once. So, here we have an honest to goodness whodunnit in A Cure for All Diseases by Reginald Hill.

I don't read a lot of honest to goodness mysteries. I went through my Agatha Christie kick when I was 12 or 13. But I never progressed past that. A few years ago I tried some actual noir detective stories by reading some Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man) and I really enjoyed those, but that was it. And it's strange I don't read more of it, considering how much I love old 80s detective shows and police procedurals such as L&O. But anyway...

This book is obviously one of a series surrounding the adventures of Superintendent Andy Dalziel (aka The Fat Man) and DCI Peter Pascoe. Of course, having never read any of their books before, I had no idea they'd been around for so long. Seems in the previous book Dalziel had been shot and left for dead (or something), so this one starts with him convalesing at a private clinic in the picturesque town of Sandytown. Of course, not everything is so picturesque, and as we meet the town's residents, eventually there is a murder (of course) as the oft-married town matriarch, Lady Daphne Denham, turns up dead at her own hog roast.

Of course there's a plethora of suspects; Lady D's young relatives; her nephew and niece and a young distant cousin she has taken in. All three are vying for a place of honour in her will, and Lady D took great delight in making them dance for her favour. There are other relatives from her other marriages, including a very disgruntled former brother-in-law, plus business partners/rivals such as Tom Parker, who is working towards making Sandytown a well-known spa town, and then there are others whom Lady D has taken a uh... romantic interest in. Basically, everyone in the town has had some sort of relationship (familial, business, romantic) with Lady D, and many have some sort of motive to kill her.

The tale though is told for the most part from the perspective of two outsiders to the town, Dalziel himself and young Charlotte (Charley) Heywood, a psychologist in training who accidentally gets mixed up with Tom Parker's family and so comes to Sandytown to work on her thesis. We get Charley's impressions of the events through a series of one-sided emails to her sister. And we get Dalziel's impressions of events through a one-sided dictation into a dictaphone (or tape recorder or something).

All in all, I found those two methods of narration to be extremely annoying after awhile. It felt a little too gimicky. In fact, I was ready to give up the ghost when finally, after the murder, the book resorts to a normal narrative once Pascoe shows up with his team of investigators to ... well investigate.

The characters were fine. Dalziel is quite a character, a big, rolicking, VERY British fellow. But of course, his borgeouise bluster masks a very keen mind, which is kinda always the way, isn't it? Pascoe is of course the counterbalance, a by the books, smooth gentleman. I'm sure they make a good team, but they weren't really together for much of this book.

I think I found it the book a little too predictable. I figured out who did it pretty early on, even with all the red-herrings, there just didn't seem like any other likely suspects. There is a little bit of a twist at the end, but it didn't really change my feeling of the outcome. There's also an 'inappropriate' relationship I saw coming a mile away.

I felt it was a bit overlong, too much setting up of the setting and the characters and the cutesy narrative went on for WAAYYY too long. It picked up a bit after the murder (so the narrative gets back to normal), but it was an entertaining enough read. For once I mean, I doubt I'll be picking up any more in this series.

Number 16 this year is Elfland by Freda Warrington. I'd never heard of this author before, but as this book seems to be her first released in N.A (she's had a few others released over in Britian), guess that shouldn't be too surprising. I picked it up because well, I like elves :)

The book revolves around the relationships between the members of two families, the Wilder and the Fox families. They are neighbours in some pastoral-like part of England and are both rather well to do. The Wilder family, headed by Lawerence Wilder is the more mysterious of the two, living in a big, scary, gothic sounding mansion, isolated from the village and with the two boys Sam and Jon attending schools. The Fox family, headed by the genial Auberon, are open, warm, family orientated members of the community and their three children Rosie, Matthew and Lucas go to the local public schools.

But of course, there is more to both families than it seems, for they are the "elves" elves of the title, or rather Vaethyr, Earth dwelling Aetherials. Turns out there are several other Vaethyr families living nearby and there is a also a nearby Gate to Elfland of which Lawrence Wilders is the gate keeper.

When the novel starts several dramatic events happen: Lawrence refuses to continue opening the Gate due to unnamed dangerous things on the other side waiting to break onto Earth, while his wife Ginny seems to have a breakdown and later leaves him. Some years later, Lawrence returns with a new wife, Sapphire, a human this time and it seems that things will return to normal but Lawrence still refuses to open the gate and the Vaethyr villagers grow more and more impatient and angry with him, so only Auberon' trust and support keeps them from trying to "depose" him.

The book is mainly through Rosie Fox's POV, and as she starts out young but matures into a young woman, we learn much about Aetherial customs and their Otherworld as she does. She goes through the usual unrequited crush, but eventually falls in love with Sam Wilder, which you kinda saw coming considering how much she hated him for most of the novel.

I liked Elfland, it's well written and her characters are well done. She's done a good job of world building her fantasy world, but weirdly, it's the real world that seems to have suffered at the expense of her 'other' world. Warrington's Britain seems almost too pretty, too perfect, too... unreal. Perhaps that is the point though, that the Aetherials do unconsciously influence their world around them, and bring part of Elfland to the mundane (there is much talk of shifting into the layers of Elfland that inhabit the surface very near the mundane plane). I mean, the Aetherials definitely have an effect on the humans nearby them, often to the detriment of that human. So, a small quibble really, but had Britain felt more real, perhaps I would've understood why a whack of Aetherials chose to live there, unless it really was just because they enjoy the trappings of living extremely comfortably on good ol' materialistic Earth.

I'd be curious in checking out more of Warrington's stuff.

Number 15 this year is Atonement by Ian McEwan. Not really sure why I picked this novel up; the premise did sound kinda interesting, but I never wanted to see the movie as I felt it looked overblown and overwraught. But anyway, saw it in the library and figured what the heck.

The plot is simple enough; 13-year-old Briony is witness to a burgeoning affair between her elder sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, their housekeeper's son. Briony first reads a letter meant for Cecilia only (a rather descriptive letter of what Robbie envisions doing to Cecilia, and one that was mistakingly sent), and then finds the two in the midst of an embrace in the library. But because of the words she has already read, Briony decides Robbie is a brute and his attentions towards Cecilia are unwelcome, so later, when Briony and Cecilia's cousin Lola is attacked, Briony is mistakenly, and yet totally convinced, that Robbie is the culprit. He is arrested, tried and sent to prison, later to join the army and be sent to serve in WWII in exchange for a lighter sentence. Cecilia, furious and completely convinced of Robbie's innocence, leaves her family to become a nurse and does not speak to them again for many years. Briony, as she gets older, realizes that she was wrong and wants to make atonement for her actions.

I started off liking the book. Even though Briony is an insufferable character (she's obviously supposed to be) and you know darn well who the actual culprit behind Lola's attack is right away, the characters are fine, the descriptions nice and there is a good flow to the novel. The narrative switches to Robbie's POV in France, fighting the war, and the horrors of the front line (and specifically the retreat and evacuation of Dunkirk). The narrative shifts again, and then we are with Briony, training to be a nurse, and witnessing the horrors of the front line in a different way. It is in this section that we find out Briony knows she was wrong, knows she destroyed Robbie's life and that she must make amends for this.

Which is all well and fine, but then... then we come to the part I hated.

People who know me know that I hate the movie Saving Private Ryan. I hate it for one particular reason; the story has been told (as the viewer watches it), from the POV of the men in the unit sent to retrieve Private Ryan. This was fine and dandy. What I hated was the end of that movie, where we find out that no, this is Private Ryan himself relating the tale. What??? He WASN'T THERE FOR MOST OF THE MOVIE!! This destroyed the narrative for me and stripped any reliability from the narration for me (an aside; I have nothing against unreliable narrators. I rather like them. But I don't want to be surprised by one. An unreliable narrator should still be present for the events, just putting their own, unreliable spin on them. Not someone who is now telling shit they heard about second or third hand.) Anyway, the end of Atonement for me, is another Saving Private Ryan. The narrative as we have become accustomed to is pulled out from under us and basically, (although we're told it is true), fictionalized. I'm not even entirely sure why I disliked it so much, but I did. I felt cheated I think.

Which is too bad, it wasn't a bad book overall.

Ugh. This one took me awhile. Re-watching all of Lost is not conduscive to getting anything done other than re-watching all of Lost...

Book number 14 (only 14! ouch) is Contested Will by James Shapiro. As you may have gathered from this blog by now, I'm a bit of a Shakespeare groupie. Not only do I love reading and watching his plays, but I also really enjoy reading scholarly works about him and his plays. Yes, this is a hold over from my university degree of choice. I'm usually open to all sorts of theories about Shakespeare, or different interpretations of his plays, but if there is one thing I refuse to believe, or give much credit to, it is the (various) theories that someone (or someones) other than Shakespeare wrote his plays. And that is what this book is about.

Normally, I wouldn't have given a book like this a second look, my dislike of the authorship question is so great, but I knew Shapiro was coming at it from a place I could comfortably get behind: Shapiro himself believes that Shakespeare wrote his plays (and yes, some of them were collaberative, but he still had his hand in them), but he gives the history and some of the reasoning why people believe that there is no way a 'simple man from Stratford' could have written all those magnificent works.

Shapiro goes through the main candidates; Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe, etc., and also talks about some of the famous people who have bought into the authorship controversy (such as Freud, Helen Keller, Mark Twain and Henry James) and lays out their evidence (or rather the lack thereof as far as I'm concerned) and the history of each of these movements. I did find it interesting on how the arguments really do lack any hard proof (which is usually also a main resoning of why they believe William of Stratford didn't write the plays; there's no 'proof'), and that they refute Shakespeare because 'he just couldn't have'. Even though I thought Shapiro was being as fair as he could be towards these theories, they still sound like crackpot theories often devised by crackpots. Despite all the evidence Shapiro lays out, I came nowhere near believing that Shakespeare didn't write his plays.

Shapiro also gives, of course, a defending chapter on Shakespeare. It actually seems remarkably slim, and that's because there isn't a lot of hard evidence that the detractors seem to want. But there are poems from contemporaries such as Ben Jonson who basically tell us that William Shakespeare of Stratford was the playwrite. Shakespeare's place in the world of Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre was well assured. He had powerful patrons (including James I) and obviously made a good living from the theatre. His plays were collected after his death and published in a manner that few things were published in at the time (an expensive folio edition), because the publishers knew the plays had to be preserved and that there was a market for them. Also, these were men who knew Shakespeare personally.

Overall, for me, this book just reiterated what I always believed, that no one else but Shakespeare could've written his plays. So I will continue to be endlessly annoyed when anyone brings up the whole 'what about the theory that such and such wrote Shakespeare's plays?' Pure bunk as far as I'm concerned.

Lucky number 13 has been reached. (Note to self, never start three, very large books nearly simulataneously. You don't get any of them done quickly, and one you had to return to the library before you finished it because you couldn't renew it...) Book 13 is The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt. This book didn't grab me at first, but it became so... brutal that it basically bludgeoned me into liking it. It is a very Dickensian by way of steam-punk kinda novel. Hunt's world feels very much like Victorian England, mixed with magic and ancient Aztek-like gods trying to make a comeback under the guise of a communist (or rather communityist) type uprising. It's all terribly intricate and quite intreguiging.

The main characters are two young orphans, Oliver Brooks and Molly Templar. Both seem, at first glance to be unremarkable, but both are being hunted for unknown reasons. The reasons are later revealed, and both are extremely important to, not only the survival of their country (the Land of Jackals), but basically the entire world. A revolution has begun in Jackals, one of increadible brutality and bloodshed, and it is up to the two youngsters to help end it, along with the motley crue of allies they've picked up along the way. There is, like with any Victorian-type novel, a huge cast of characters. Some were quite interesting and I wished they'd stuck around more.

Sometimes I find steam-punk buckles under it's own technobabble, but I didn't find it too bad here. There is still quite a bit of technobabble, especially when it comes to the sentient steammen machines who alive in their own right, but it fits the world and doesn't seem too bad.

There is a lot of political upheavel in this book, and one would think Hunt is definitely not a fan of communism, or else he just took it one hugely off-kilter step further.

The bad guys in this book are all terribly bad, there are no shades of grey here, and when they are defeated, it is a big relief.

The book wrapped up a little too quickly in my mind; I would've liked to have understood some of the more immediate aftermath of the revolution, but Hunt didn't really explain it. Ah well, maybe he's thinking sequels.

Number 12 this year is The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. I really, really liked this novel, even though it ends quite horribly (and I use 'horribly' because it does end with the horrors of WWI), it starts out so beautifully as we meet a group of familys living in the countryside of England (Kent specifically) towards the end of the Victorian era. The beginning is nearly pastoral; a group of artistically minded, liberal families, their gaggle of precocious children, they put on plays, have revles, tramp around the countryside, and create. Yes, it is perfect. On the surface. For these families all have secrets. Infidelity abounds, artistic genius devolves into maddness, and the beginnings of an anti-Victorian sexual revolution ensnares too many of the younger generation in not positive ways.

The Woodvilles are the book's main family, with Olive Woodville, a writer of children's stories, being the centre. She is a brilliant writer, but in order to tell her stories, she has, almost ironically, had to ignore the rearing of her children. It falls to her sister to bring the Woodville brood up. The closest Olive brings herself to them is that for each child she writes a private tale, tailored to that child, and read only by that child. However, towards the end of the novel she breaks this, and takes the her favourite tale to turn into a stage play. She does not tell her son Tom (whose tale it is), and this invasion of Tom's privacy has distasterous events.

I found this book to be a lovely pastiche of a Victorian novel. It is hugely detailed, rambling and deals with the darkness of society under the bright, civilized trappings of Victorian society. As the world changes, the various generations try to insert themsevles (or not) into the world, learn from it, change it, etc., with variying degrees of success. But the ending overall is quite sad, as WWI comes crashing onto the younger generation, and they pay a heavy price for the changing world.

I borrowed this book from the library, but I'm seriously thinking of buying myself a copy.

Number 11 is The White Queen by Phillipa Gregory. I've never read any of Gregory's other books, such as the best selling The Other Boelyn Girl. For some reason, I don't find the Tudors all that interesting. Or rather, I don't find the Tudor males all that interesting as I do find Elizabeth I quite fascinating. ANYWAY, so the reason I did pick this book up is because it deals with the Wars of the Roses, which is a point of English history I've long been interested in, probably since I first read the line uttered by Susan in Prince Caspian "Oh dear, this is more confusing than the Wars of the Roses".

So anyway, yes, I picked this up and dived in. The White Queen herself is the wife of the Yorkist king, Edward IV. Edward spies the lovely, widowed Elizabeth Woodville while riding through her family's lands, and they both instantly fall for one another. They marry in secret, and this marriage is not popular amongst Edward's advisors and family. The Woodville's previously supported the Lancastrian claim to the throne, but of course switch allegiances once they are connected to the Yorks.

It's a good look at the use of much of the feminie power struggle in the Wars of the Roses. Elizabeth positions her family and children into places of power to secure the York hold on the throne. The problem is that there is almost as much infighting in the York family as there is against the Lancastrians. And the main figure behind the Lancastrian claim to put the ailing Henry VI back on his throne is through his indomitable wife, Margaret d'Anjou. Another of the central characters is Elizabeth's French, wise-woman mother, who has a bit of magic to her.

It's a fun book, a nice love story and a different look at the Wars of the Roses. It seems to be fairly historically accurate while infusing the characters with enough personality to keep it interesting.

I may go on to pick up the next book in the series, which, I know doesn't really end well for the Yorks...

Book number 10. 10!! I've finally reached double digits this year!... sigh. Took me long enough.

ANYWAY... Book number 10 is A Gentleman's Game by Greg Rucka. Now, I'm more familiar with Rucka as a comic book writer. Mainly from his run on Batman, and then his relaunch of Checkmate. His Batman stuff I though was... ok, but I really enjoyed Checkmate. But the reason I read this book is that I have read his entire run of his self-created series, Queen and Country. I read Queen and Country because it is basically a comic-book form of the old British series, the Sandbaggers, which was something I'm very glad my husband made me watch.

So anyway, A Gentleman's Game revolves around the same cast and crew as Queen and Country, main character Tara Chase is Minder One, head of the elite covert ops team sent in to do the dirtiest of dirty work Britian can come up with. And after an attack on the London Underground by Muslim extremists, Tara is dispatched to Yemen to kill a Saudi Arabian religious leader, who presumably is ultimately behind the attacks. Tara fufills her task, but the collateral damage she is also forced to assassinate is somewhat politically sensitive, and because of this, Tara finds herself persona non grata and persued by her own government.


I have to give it to Rucka, his pacing is extremely good and his action scenes are well done. I had wondered if the lack of pictures would hinder his words, but he gets his words across to create lovely pictures themselves. The characters are a wee bit cliche (or maybe I just think so because I have seen the Sandbaggers), with your tough-as-nails, more dangerous than any bloke, Tara Chase and the gruff but extremely professional D-Ops, Crocker and the rest of the usual suspects. One of the main characters is an ex-British national who has converted to Islam and we see the terrorist POV from him, which I did find very interesting, but I also felt his story line was tied up too quickly.

Overall, I did enjoy this book. However, I think that I would prefer him to tell more Queen and Country stories in their original, comic book format. That way I can picture the characters as they're drawn, and not as those from the Sandbaggers, which is what, for some reason, I was doing.

Book 9 is The Torontonians by Phyllis Brett Young.

Ok, the first thing I must mention here is that I am a born and bred Torontonian. I am (on my mother's side) a 5th generation Torontonian. I love this city. I know it has it's problems (as do most large cities), but overall, I am happy and proud to call Toronto my home and my hometown. So you can see why I would pick up a book called The Torontonians.

Published in 1960, this is actually quite the feminist book of suburban housewife ennui and desperation. This is interesting because it really came before a lot of the big feminist manifestos of the 60s. And yet, here it is, a sort of Revolutionary Road set in Toronto and the surrounding (make believe) suburb of Rowanwood. (which I *think* is a Richmond Hill stand in?)

I liked this book a lot mainly because of the setting. It's interesting to read of a Toronto that's similar, but not exactly like the one I'm familiar with. Neihbourhoods such as the Annex and Forest Hill make appearances, and it speaks of the interesting divide of above the hill and below the hill (Toronto has a part of the Niagara Escarpement crawling through it, making a fairly significant climb uphill between St.Clair and Eglington avenues), with the well off spreading above the hill. I found that interesting because the philisophical division of Toronto is not so much north and south, but rather it is East and West, with Yonge St as the dividing line. Native Torontonians are usually from the East End or the West End and cross over with only great difficulty (I am a West Ender).

Anyway, the book itself deals with one Karen Whitney, Toronto born and raised, well-educated, upper middle-class background, house-wife, empty-nester, who is, as we met her contemplating suicide. She is so tired of her empty existence in Rowanwood, which boils down to finishing and decorating her home, throwing parties she has no desire to throw (and attending such things as well), and having to deal with the secrets and numbing lives of her neighbours. She is sick of it all, and unable to articulate why she is not happy with her life, but she's not.

We see Karen's life in flashbacks, juxtaposed with her life now. She still has many of the same friends, and sometimes they are part of the problem with her life. The one thing I did really like about this book was that her husband, Rick, is not part of the problem. He is supportive and loving and not sleeping with his secretary, and that almost seems like a nice change, especially compared with the boorish, stupid, neglectful, cheating men that make up many of the neighbours. Rick isn't sure what to do about Karen's problems, but he's also wise enough to know that she has them and that she has to find a solution herself.

Basically, the solution seems to be to move the hell out of the suburbs and back to Toronto. I could've told you that ;)

Number 8 for 2010 is Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock. This book is basically a book about the power of creation, both on an individual and cultural level. Set in post WWII England, the main character, Steven Huxley returns to England on news of his father's death. Upon return to his family home, he learns of his father's obsession with the neighbouring Ryhope Wood has now become his brother's obsession as well.

What Huxley the elder discovered, was that every folkhero and legend who had ever been known in English history has an archetype, or mythago as Huxley called them, residing in the woods, whose very existence was tied, not to belief in the legend, but simply to the imagination of the surrounding minds. While some of the mythagos are of popular characters, like Robin Hood or King Arthur, many more of the mythagos encountered by the elder Huxley and then later Steven and his brother Christian, were forgotten except within the confines of Ryhope Wood.

Of course, the obsession gets out of hand when Christian disappears into the woods, looking for his lost, mythago love, Guiwenneth. She being the same mythago their father fell in love with, and who would later also claim Steven's heart. But the thing with Guiwenneth is, is she the same mythago each time, or a little bit different each time depending on whose mythago she is?

Christian's return for Guiwenneth (who has fallen in love with Steven and is basically living with him), is sudden and violent. It also forces Steven to journey deep into the wood in search of her and for revenge on Christian. But once in the wood and dealing with the wood's mythago inhabitants, Steven realizes that he, his brother and his father have become part of the woods' mythos themselves. Does this mean mythagos can create mythagos themselves? Or are Christian and Steven simply made part of the mythos due to their involvement with it? Considering that the wood itself was continuing to grow up to the house and even in the house, it would almost seem like the wood was consuming them or forcing them to join the myth.

It is an interesting book for sure, and I'm definitely interested in reading the sequels to it.

Number 7 this year is, Dead in Dallas another of the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. I guess I'm liking these because they are a nice, quick, popcorn read, and I haven't had too many of those this year.

This book builds on Sookie's world. She and vampire Bill Compton are still dating (although they hit a few snags in their relationship here and there) and must journey to Dallas to do a favour for a nest of vampires when she is 'loaned' out by powerful vampire Eric.

An enjoyable read overall. Harris builds on her world nicely, as we see the impact the outing of vampires has made, from anti-vampire religious fanatics to new businesses set up to cater to the vampires. It all makes sense and doesn't seem outlandish.

Harris also introduces more supernatural beings to her world. She seems to be saying that when one supernatural bunch comes out of the closet, more are soon to follow.

The only thing I didn't like about this book, was if the murder that happens at the beginning crosses over into the tv show True Blood, I'm going to be really upset.

Number 6 is Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner. This is a sequel of sorts to her much earlier novel, Swordspoint, which I read and enjoyed. The only thing about it is that I can't remember a darned thing about it. So when I noticed that PotS wasn't a total sequel but just shared a few characters, well that made it easier to decide to pick up. And true to what it said, I didn't need to remember any of the back story from Swordspoint, and any back story I needed was supplied to me.

The story is about Katherine Talbert, the niece of the Mad Duke Tremontaine (Alec Campion from Swordspoint). The Duke takes her from her home (there had been a family feud going) and decides that she will be trained to be a swordsman, which is something women didn't do. So Katherine is plunged into the strange, decadent world of her uncle, a world she doesn't come to embrace, but she certainly comes to appreciate some of the eccentricities.

The novel moved briskly enough to keep my interest, and is pretty much a character study, especially in the person of the Mad Duke. Alec's madness is of the clear-eyed sort that calls into question all of our basic assumptions. In our terms, he is as neurotic as it's possible to be and still function, but he is also cagey, brilliant, and ruthless, and we're never quite sure where the one leaves off and the other starts. He is also an idealist and a humanitarian, and his clear-eyed vision on the follies of privilege is the starting point for much of the satire in the novel.

Katherine herself is a pretty good against-the-type heroine. She is brave (right from the beginning actually, in leaving her family to do her duty for them) and she becomes a good swordsman enough so to win fights against men and to champion her friend Artemisia who was wronged by her fiancee Lord Ferris. Katherine's naievty amidst all the shenanigans of the Mad Duke's world could be trite, but ends up actually working as it is a nice counterpoint, but it also doesn't make her prudish. She is disturbed by some things, but intreigued by others and I liked that, it seems a more natural reaction. And once the Mad Duke actually does start taking an interest in her and they talk, the book becomes even more enjoyable.

I liked this enough to go dig out my copy of Swordspoint and re-read it.

There are a lot of authors out there that I love, but I can safely say that of them all, Guy Gavriel Kay is my absolute favourite. So, whenever he has a new book out, I am absurdly happy. I must rush out and get the new book as soon as I can, and then I want my life to basically cease it's usual pace so that all I have to do is sit down and read the new book and get lost in whatever world Kay has created for me this time. So, new book was acquired last Friday, and I finished it today. Number 5 of the year is Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay.

To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect when I heard this was a book set in a thinly disguised Tang Dynasty-8th Century -type China. I'm not overly fascinated by the Far East, so I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy this one or not. I should've known better and trusted in Kay unquestioningly like I usually do.

Under Heaven is gripping and epic and just an utter pleasure to read. He painstakingly builds the lands of Kitai (China) and it's neighbours, and he weaves court and political intreigue just as well as George R. R. Martin does. The main character, Tai, goes off to honour the memory of his recently deceased father by journeying to a remote battlefield and laying to rest the remains of hundreds of soldiers who died there. He does this for two years, and towards the end of it, he is given a great, and extravegant gift by the princess of Tagur (as Tai was also burying their dead, as it was Kitai and Tagur who fought at this place) that changes his life forever. Tai is a good character, resourceful, witty, a little lost about his place in the world, and just... competent , as many of Kay's characters tend to be. His life becomes a grand adventure, and it definitely puts one in the mind of the old proverb; "may you live in interesting times", as that is exactly what Tai is living in and has become intricately intwined in.

I cannot go into all the details about this book, as it has so many plot threads and characters and what have you, which is pretty standard for a Kay novel. His prose is elegant and descriptive, also as usual. It's a big book, but well thought out. It never comes crashing down under it's own weight, and I didn't even really see the ramifications of some characters actions until it was too late. And that's a good thing, for there are surprises, but they make sense.

The ending is, for the most part, a happy one for Tai, which is a good thing, considering Kay doesn't always allow his characters for a most happy ending. But this time there is one, and it is deserved, for which I'm glad.

I mean heck, I still haven't totally forgiven him for Diarmuid ;)

They're coming a bit quicker now since I put down the huge book and picked up some fun stuff. Number 4 this year is Fool by one of my very favourite authors, Christopher Moore. When I spied this book at a bookstore in Buffalo (there for a lovely day trip to the Albright Knox Art Gallery), I knew I had to have. Christopher Moore doing a retelling of King Lear? I am there. And he did not disappoint.

Moore's books are often hilariously bawdy, and in this one, he gets completely carried away. There's lots of shagging and snogging (this is England afterall), but of course, most of it is in the darker context of the tragedy that is King Lear. It's a very well done juxatposition, managing to make a comedy out of one of Shakespeare's biggest tragedies.

The tale is told (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead style), by King Lear's fool, Pocket. The Fool in Shakespeare's play doesn't even get a name, but here, he gets a name, a background and one hell of a personality. Pocket is completely immersed in the polictical machinations of Lear's horrid daughters (Cordelia excepted of course) and in fact, it is him that causes much of the action to start and finish. Well, he's partly goaded on and aided by Macbeth's Three Witches (seems those girls get around... like most of the other women in this book. heh)

I started trying to remember where and how Moore deviates from the play, but as the man himself said "that way lies madness" (oh, and Moore quoted that too), so I stopped, because it is indeed pretty impossible. So I just let go and enjoyed the ride for what it was, a journey into the bawdy, hilarious, tragedy laced world of Shakespeare but filtered through the wonderfully wicked mind of Christopher Moore.

Nearly the end of March and I'm only on book three. I've had to put aside the other book I'm currently reading because it's very large and very involved and takes awhile to get through. I've really been reading 'scholarly' books so far this year, and while being very interesting and enriching, is also slowing my book consumption down to a crawl. So I went to the library and decided I needed something... quick. And upon spying the first of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels, I knew I had a winner.

What really spurred my wanting to read Dead Until Dark was a recent viewing of the first episode of True Blood, the tv series based on the books. I enjoyed the show for the most part and so decided that checking out the book was worthwhile.

I enjoyed the book, I like Harris' world. The supernatural lies very uneasily with the 'real' world as vampires have only recently admitted their existence and 'come out of the coffin'. A Japanese company has created a bottled, synthetic blood substitute that allows the vampires proper sustinance without having to feed on humans. For of course, killing of humans is unlawful, but likewise, quickly enacted laws have also rendered it illegal to kill (or do other bodily harm) to vampires.

Sookie Stackhouse, our heroine, is a waitress, a charming, well mannered, slightly naive (even though one wonders how she could be under the circumstance) southern belle. She also happens to be telepathic. It's a nice addition of Harris', where, if there are vampires, well then why shouldn't there be telepathic waitresses?

One day, an honest to goodness vampire walks into the bar Sookie works at, and she is immediately smitten. But entering the vampiric world is dangerous and exciting, and Sookie isn't entirely sure she's ready to do so, despite her attraction to the 150 year old Bill.

A string of murders in Sookie's town seem to point to those nearest and dearest to Sookie, either her vampire boyfriend, or her man-whore of a brother. And then Sookie herself becomes a target, further turning her already strange world even stranger.

The characters are all quite likeable (Harris' use of Bubba especially was quite funny) and it is a rich world for sure, enough so that I'd definitely consider picking up some more of the books and continuing with Sookie's adventures.*

*Also, Anna Paquin has done such a fine job as Sookie in True Blood that it was quite easy for me to hear her voice and see her mannerisms as I was reading the book.

Ugh. I'm only finished two books now. Book number 2 for the year is Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer. Yes, that Germaine Greer. Anyway, this book is exactly what it sounds like, it is a 'biography' of Shakespeare's wife, the much vilified Ann Hathaway. But the thing is, and this is the crux of Greer's entire book, it WHY is it popular in scholarly works about Shakespeare, to vilify his wife so? This ill-treatment of a woman who perhaps didn't deserve to be branded so is based pretty much on only three things; that Shakespeare didn't move his family to London when he was there, that we don't know how often he journeyed home to Stratford during his years in London and, finally (and supposedly the most damning evidence), he left Ann his second-best bed in his will.

There is little actual documented evidence left over about Shakespeare, and really even less about Ann. But over the years, it has been fairly widely 'accepted' that Shakespeare and Ann did not have a happy marriage, that she basically trapped him (she was older than he and she was pregnant when they married) and he resented her for this in all their years together, so basically abandoned his wife and children for his career in London.

But Greer does her best to offer plausible arguments to refute this. She painstakingly sifts through records of common lives of contemporaries of Shakespeares’, and she contends that back then there was nothing unusual in a baby’s being born six months after a marriage. She also demonstrates that an unmarried woman in her mid-20s would not have been considered exceptional or desperate. Ann Hathaway, Greer argues, was likely to be literate, and given the relative standing of their families in Warwickshire, she may very well have been considered a more desirable match than her husband. So there all you Ann haters. Greer also puts forth the idea that Shakespeare may not have supported his family financially, and so makes Ann very capable of many domestic tasks that would allow her to be financially independent, which was also not a stretch for the time, according to documents left from the era.

Of course, all this is pure speculation on Greer's part. She does her best to back it up by using all available documents she can find and read from the times, and sometimes this proof does get hard to slog through. The vast cast of characters Greer introduces from Stratford (and other places) gets to be difficult to keep track of, and sometimes, the detail is so overwhelming that I found myself forgetting what it was Greer was trying to use these anecdotes in defense of.

But overall, Greer paints a picture of a woman who is extremely capable, loyal and intelligent. Greer's Ann is much more interesting than anyone has ever given her credit for being in the past, and I found myself hoping that Ann was closer to Greer's thesis, because otherwise, it makes all of Shakespeare's beautiful writings on love seem a little more empty.*

*I've never bought into the idea that some of Shakespeare's sonnets were written to a man, given the way homosexuality was condemned in Elizabethan England. For Shakespeare to have written such blatant offerings to a man would have been incredibly ill-advised. Greer does touch on this in her book as well, and I found myself thinking her explanations made much more sense. Oh, and I also hated the movie Shakespeare in Love. Pure bunk.

And the first book of 2010 is The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. This is the book that won Canada Reads in 2009. It tells the tale of
Aminata Diallo, an 11-year-old child, is taken from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea and cross the Atlantic where she is sold as a slave in South Carolina. Her life is torn asunder and becomes a matter of survival, but she is bright and a trained mid-wife, and these skills serve her well. Years later, she finds freedom, serving the British in the American Revolutionary War and having her name entered in the historic "Book of Negroes." This book, an actual historical document, is an archive of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States in order to resettle in Nova Scotia.

It's a tough book to read. Deservedly so though. The sheer amount of suffering and horror the slaves who were stolen from Africa went through is tough to imagine. Actually, I admit, I don't want to imagine it, but Hill spells it out in stark terms, you can't look away from what he's describing. it's hard to read about the filth and the sickness and the degredation and the rape and the children that Aminata had taken away from her. But that would've been par for the course, and even though this is a fictionalized account of a slave's life, you know it's not really fiction at all.

But there is a strange amount of hope in this book. As I said, Aminata is clever, she learns to read and this helps her raise her station in life, even though society makes it very difficult for her to do so.

The ending could be considered a little trite, but upon considering all the hardships and horror Aminata had to face during her life, it was nice there was a happy ending.

This book goes well with Bury the Chains, the account of the abolishionist movement in England that Aminata eventually gets herself mixed up in. They are both books that need to be read.

Here we are, January 1, 2010, so time to sum up another year's worth of reading. Despite thinking that I wasn't going to be able to read much once the baby arrived in July, it seems the opposite happened and I was able to read more books than I did last year. I'm still nowhere near the elusive 50 books in a year mark, but I did manage 33 all told, and I'm pretty happy with that number. Living very near a library has helped as I've been able to just grab things I've thought looked interesting in the past, but not enough that I'd spend the money on them. I've forgotten how much I like libraries.

So what did I read? The list is as follows:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maughm
Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Sound of No Hands Clapping by Toby Young
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel by Susannah Clarke
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Mad Kestrel by Misty Massey
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
The Book of Mordred by Vivian Vende Velde
Firethorn by Sarah Micklen
The Nanny Diaries by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin
Twilight by Stephanie Meyers
The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen
Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
Thank You for Smoking by Christopher Buckley
In the Wake of the Plague by Norman F. Cantor
The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret Macmillian
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
Peter and Max by Bill Willingham
Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine by Harold Bloom

Looking back on this, I didn't read anywhere near as much new fantasy as I usually do, with really only a few counting towards that (Thief of Time, Mad Kestrel, Peter and Max, The Book of Mordred and Firethorn). However, one of them, Firethorn, was undoubtedly the worst book I read this year, with a boring plot and thoroughly unlikeable main characters.

I read a lot more 'popular' works than I usually do, such bestsellers as The Time Traveller's Wife, The Lovely Bones and yes, Twilight. Twilight was the worst written book of the year, it is such drivel that I can scarce understand why it is so popular.

Another trend of mine this year seemed to be industry tell all books, reading the likes of Toby Young's two 'memoirs', Anthony Bourdain's chef-tell-all and The Nanny Diaries.

My favourite book this year? I have to go back to the beginning and go with The Thirteenth Tale. An astounding piece of work that feels like a throwback to old Gothic-style ghost stories, as well as being a love letter to reading. I've been resoundingly recommending it.

So there we have it, my 2009 in books. I've already started my first book for 2010 and maybe this will be the year that I finally break 50 books. But as I'm going to be working hard on finally finishing writing a book of my own, well... maybe not.

And I was doing so well... then I ran into my last book of the year... Number 33 of this year is Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine by my favourite literary critic, Harold Bloom. As with all Bloom books, I had to think hard while reading this one, which is basically where he looks at Jesus and Yahweh as characters in the bible, and at their inconsistent portrayals throughout. It was very interesting, but since I don't have a very biblical background (in that I've never read the darn thing all the way through or anything), much of it was over my head and difficult to get through. The parts where Bloom compared Jesus to Hamlet though, those I understood.

I did take a bible course in university, as I thought it would be helpful for my English degree. And it was, it certaintly made some of the more well-used allegories easier to recognize, but we only looked at some of the bible, mainly the Old Testament, not much of the New, so the parts of the book dealing with Jesus were pretty much a mystery to me. Which I actually think was part of Bloom's point; because Jesus' personality (such as it is) is so different in the various gospels, we definitely don't get much of a sense of who he was. And Bloom finds this very fascinating especially given the predominance Jesus plays in American religion, where much of it is centered on 'knowing' Jesus and how he 'knows' them. Bloom thinks that is rather preposterous.

He also points out that Yahweh somehow morphed into the Christian's "Father" of the Holy Trinity, but do not seem to be the same God. Yahweh, Bloom posits, is not love, yet the Father is supposed to be love. Also, the Father seems to have been stripped of any personality or humanity, but when you read the older stuff, Yahweh is full of both.

It's a very interesting, but difficult read, but I do find purely literary approaches to the bible rather interesting.

Number 32 this year is Peter and Max by Bill Willingham. Willingham writes one of my very, very favourite comic books, Fables. It is a comic about fairy tale characters and their like living among the 'mundies' in the real world, after they'd been driven out of their worlds by the Adversary, a conqeror who took over all their worlds and enslaved them. Anyway, Peter and Max is a Fables novel and it concerns the lives of two brothers, Peter Piper and his older brother Max, the infamous Pied Piper of Hamlin.

I thought it a logical idea of Willingham's to max the two characters brothers (one of those logical thoughts that I never would have thought of myself :) ) and he wastes no time in making the relationship between the two brothers go very, very wrong when Peter inherits the magical flute Frost from their father. Max is convinced it should've gone to him, and his envy over this basically drives the boy mad. Things go from bad to worse for the Piper family when the Adversary attacks and they're all separated.

Willingham writes evil very well, and Max is definitely a character who goes down that route and he becomes increasingly power hungry and more and more dangerous. The narrative goes back and forth between modern times and when Peter and Max were children. It's a good narrative overall, and it's nice to see how the Pipers fit in with the rest of the Fable community.

I think my only critcism with this book is how it resolved. It made complete and utter sense (Willingham is very good at making clever resolves, but they almost seem too easy in a way) but yes, just seemed a tad too easy.

But still, overall this was a very worthy entry in the Fables universe.

I keep meaning to go back and flesh out my last post, but I'm trying to write some other stuff and get reading done, plus you know, baby, so yeah, I've not been able to do that, and I think this post is going to be just as brief for awhile.

Number 31 is Too Much Happiness by the Canadian queen of the short story, Alice Munro. I think the title is a bit of a misnomer, because there is never, ever too much happiness in Alice Munro stories. They are overwhelmingly kinda... not really depressing, but definitely uncomfortable. There is something always off kilter about her stories, which is probably why I like them so much.

Knocked off a few more; number 28 is Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley and number 29 is In the Wake of the Plague by Norman F.Cantor and number 30 is The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret Macmillian.

Number 27 is Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett. Time was I used to read everything Pratchett put out, but the sheer number of books he manages to write actually made that a daunting task, so I slowed down in my Pratchett consumption. Also, I discovered I liked some of his groups of characters more than others. My favourites are the Watch, and my second favourite is Death and his family. Thief of Time concerns Death and his granddaughter Susan.

Honestly, I didn't like this one as much, I didn't find it as... funny as I usually find his books. Discworld's version of Death is usually amusing, but he didn't have an awful lot to do in this book, other than to send his granddaughter Susan to look into the matter of time being stopped and the world ending, and then try and convince the other three, er, rather four, retired Horsemen of the Apocalypse to ride out with him.

I think I didn't like this one as much because there was too much chronobabble, as an impossible clock is built, time is collected and delved out by a group of enigmatic monks, and Time has a son, twice, who is both destroyer and savior. Something about it all just didn't work for me as much as it usually does in Pratchett's books.

Number 26 is Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen. I've previously only read Striptease by Hiaasen (and it is a much better book than movie, even with Burt Reynolds hilarious turn), which I enjoyed, so I decided to give another of his books a shot.

Sick Puppy tells the story of Twilly Spree, an independently wealthy eco-terrorist who one day spots political lobbyist Palmer Stoat chucking litter out of his Range Rover, and so decides to teach him a lesson. Stoat, however, isn't the type to get a lesson, he lives in his own world of wealth and political fixes and fixed big-game hunts. After Twilly abducts Stoat's dog and wife, the fun really begins.

It is a darkly funny novel, and even though what Twilly does is highly illegal for the most part, you definitely cheer for him over the slimy politicos who want to turn a pristine Florida island into yet another condo development with a golf course. Twilly is an angry young man, but with the means and smarts to make things happen. He 'abducts' Stoat's dog, Boodle (renamed McGuinn by Twilly), an affable black Labrador retriever, in order to get Stoat to stop the development on the island. Hiaasen's use of the dog is hilarious, he's obviously owned a Lab before and therefore understands that breed's mindset.

The climax of the story occurs at one of the faux-big game hunts that Stoat embarks on, where he basically 'hunts' poor old animals procured specifically by the owners of the game preserve. Stoat and his toady friends are there to hunt a rhinocerous, but the tables are wonderfully turned and it is a stangely happy ending.

Number 25 this year is The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. It seems to me that, after having read two of her novels, that Sebold excels at writing what should be gawd-awful depressing stuff, and yet somehow makes it not depressing.

The Almost Moon starts off with a rather shocking act; the main character, Helen Knightley, kills her elderly, dementia ridden mother. You quickly find out that Helen not only views this as a mercy killing for her mother, but also one for herself, as her relationship with her mother has been, shall we say, contentious.

The novel then slowly unfolds, almost like a murder mystery, Helen's family past as she works through what to do in the present. She has killed her mother, she knows the police will figure it out, and she has to decide what to do. Helen's family history is not easy, her contentious relationship with her mother stems from her mother's mental illness and leads to a very deep love/hate relationship.

The book is a fascinating look at a very damaged family. Sebold doesn't make you feel sorry for Helen though; she's much too unloveable for that (and not because she killed her infirm mother), but you do end up understanding why the way Helen is and why she relates (or doesn't relate) to the world around her.

A good, quick read overall.

Yup, I went and did it; number 24 of this year is Twilight by Stephanie Meyers. A good friend of mine had warned me not to read it, that it really wasn't very good, but as with most publishing 'phenomenons', my curiosity got the better of me and so, when finally seeing it at the library, I borrowed it.

No, it's not very good. It starts off fine, a nice teenaged, fish out of water type tale, but it kinda... devolved from there. The character of Edward is so very insufferable and condesending towards the main character it made me wonder why the hell she likes him so much, other than he's really good looking. Oh and a vampire. A nearly 100 year old vampire, masquerading as a high school student, and so I realized this is probably the most creepy May/December romance ever. Dude, a 17 year old girl is the best you can do? Ick...

And this 17 year old girl, Bella, wow is she passive. She's so awkward and not good at anything except being motherly to her parents, and so once again it's like, why does he like her? Because she's pretty and she smells good. Ok yeah... Most of the novel is about how Edward has to rescue her over and over again. He's more like her bodyguard than anything else. It would've been nice had she been able to rescue herself at some point, but no. Although, she does recognize this and so of course, wants to be turned into a vampire. I'm sure that'll happen in some other book.

I guess that's it, this all felt terribly shallow to me. And juvenille. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised really. As far as angsty vampires go, Edward's got nothing on Lestat.

Have actually managed to knock off a few more books, mainly due to reading during sleepless nights and when Laurel's feeding. So number 22 of the year is Firethorn by Sarah Micklen. Rather than sum this book up myself, I shall just reiterate what it says on the Chapters website: Before she was Firethorn, she was Luck, named for her red hair and favored by the goddess of Chance. A lowborn orphan, Luck is destined to a life of servitude. But when her mistress dies, Luck flees to the forest, where she discovers the sacred firethorn tree, whose berries bring her fevered dreams, a new name…and strange gifts. When she emerges from the woods, Firethorn is a new woman, with mysterious powers.

And soon, in the chaos of the UpsideDown Days, when the highborn and the low trade places, Firethorn couples with the warrior Sire Galan, whom she follows to camp with the king's army. There she learns that in her new role as a sheath, a warrior's bedservant, she is but one step above a whore. By day she uses her gifts as a healer to earn a place among the camp's women, and by night she shares Sire Galan's bed, her desire equal to his. But the passion they feel for each other has no place in a world ruled by caste and violence. When her lover makes an ill-considered wager that chances her heart, the consequences are disastrous-and Firethorn will learn how hard it can be to tell honor from dishonor, justice from vengeance.

Honestly, I'm not even sure why I finished this book. I did not like it at all. Rather than some grand romance, most of what she and Sir Galan do is fight and argue, and DAMN it is annoying. Nor does anything really HAPPEN in this book. The whole thing takes place at a camp while they're waiting to go to war, and it just gives them opportunity to do stupid things, talk about their (overly convoluted) pantheon and argue some more. I just wanted to smack both characters all too frequently. So yeah, did not enjoy this book much at all.

Number 23, following in the vein of Toby Young and Anthony Bourdain "industry tell-all books" is The Nanny Diaries by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin. Both authors were nannies for well-healed families in New York City. While this book isn't about a specific family, but rather a pastiche of the various families they worked for over the years. It's a funny book, but also rather heartbreaking story though as she tells of looking after 4 year old Grayer, a smart, loving kid who is basically ignored by his self obsessed parents. His mother does nothing but shop and attend events, whilst complaining that child-rearing is exhausting her. The husband is having an affair, and eventually, the mistress starts asking the Nanny to run errands for her when she's going to be in town for a tryst. The Nanny really wants nothing to do with all that, understandably. Eventually, everything comes to a head when she's on a two week vacation to Nantucket with the family. The husband does not want to be there, the wife desperately wants him to stay (she even goes so far as to invite her mother-in-law to stay with them for a week, without informing her husband first), and the mistress is calling them every hour or so because the husband was supposed to come home a week early and spend it with her. Nanny also finds out they've installed a 'nanny cam' back at the apartment in New York and feels absolutley betrayed (but she should hardly be surprised). But when Grayer falls down and hurts himself and would rather his Nanny's comfort than his mother's, the Nanny's time is up and she's unceremoniously fired and not even given an opportunity to say good bye to Grayer. It's a harsh, but probably rather realistic look at people who probably shouldn't have ever had children, even though they have more than enough money to be able to spend oodles of time with their kids.

Number 21 of the year may prove to be the last for a little bit as on July 6, our little girl was born, so I find I have time for not much other than staying awake most of the night, feeding a hungry new born. Which is just fine :) Anyway, number 21 is The Book of Mordred by Vivian Vende Velde. This book is aimed at teen readers, so I wasn't expecting too much from it, and it did prove a little frustrating to me. Basically, it centers around Mordred, and three women in his life, the young, magically adept Kiera, her mother, Alayna, and the sorceress Nimue. Now, the story is told from their point of views (kinda a Mists of Avalon-lite) and starts after Kiera is kidnapped, basically because she is magically gifted. Alayna journeys to Camelot for help, and it is Mordred who helps her, and goes with her to a known-wizard's castle.

The plot is ok, but the thing I had the hardest time with was basically the overall point of the book I guess. The author quotes, at the beginning, an excerpt from a letter written by Sir Thomas Mallory, where he basically says that Mordred is the bad guy in the Arthurian Legends, and beyond that, he doesn't need much depth or explanation. So I gathered that we were going to get a better look at Mordred and his motivations through his relationship with these three women. Except I didn't really get any of that. If anything, the three women found him to be just as much an enigma as everyone else does in every other tale. I was a little disappointed nothing was really different. Even at the end, when Mordred was attempting to usurp Arthur's throne (or rather in this case Arthur had agreed to divvy up his kingdom between the two of them in order to keep the peace), there didn't seem to be much motivation for it other than that's what Mordred does, he is a divisive force. Also, why did he take part in the plot to trap Lancelot and Guinevere? I never felt there was much reason given other than he wanted Arthur to be shamed, which is a pretty run of the mill reason as far as the tales go.

So yes, while the characters were all fine and dandy, but I just felt this book kinda missed it's own raison d'etre.

Number 20 is Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. My husband is on a bit of a biography/industry tell-all kick right now, having read Toby Young's two offerings. After seeing Bourdain's show, No Reservations and enjoying it the couple of times we've caught it, I questioned who Bourdain was, so after a googling, we found out he was indeed a chef, and had penned a tell all book about the restaraunt business. So, off to the library to get it.

It's an interesting book, but not really a 'warts and all, look how ugly this business is' book. Or maybe it's just because I expected the book to go like it is. Or there are too many chef shows on tv these days with the chefs yelling and humilating all the underlings, so I kinda knew already what Bourdain's main idea is, that you have to actually love food and be willing to sacrifice pretty much everything else in your life if you become a lifer in a restaraunt, especially a high-end chef.

The book is entertaining, and Bourdain himself, while he admits to being a very big asshat at times in his life, and having numerous substance abuse problems, does sort of gloss over this (which is fine actually) to tell about influential people and moments during his long career. It is obvious that there are a lot of 'characters' in the food industry, some good and some bad. Bourdain also gives a lot of helpful hints about what you should and shouldn't do (mainly, opening up a restaraunt is don't do number one, but people are always doing so anyway).

I'm definitely not a foodie, a lot of times I eat strictly because I have to. While there are some foods I do love, I'm not an adventerous eater, but I still found this book interesting.

Number 19 is Mad Kestrel by Misty Massey. Basically, all I can say about this one is it has pirates, main character is female pirate captain, there's magic, and main character (Kestrel) has pre-requisite "I'm attracted to you but I hate you, I hate you, I don't trust you, I have to trust you, I hate you still, ok, you're trustworthy, I love you" relationship with other character who is sort of one of the main protagonists. Not a great book, but fun enough. I like pirates.

Numero 18 of the year is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This is another of those books that keeps getting recommended or I sort of keep meaning to read, but every time I pick it up and read what it's about, all I can think is 'how can this not be gawd-awful depressing?' Because really, what about a 14 year old being raped and killed isn't gawd-awful depressing?

And yet, it isn't. I don't know how Sebold managed to pull it off, but the book's not depressing. Yes it is sad in places as we watch main (dead) character Susie Salmon watch her family slowly disintigrate after her death, but because not every family member collapses completely, there is a sort of... triumph to this book. The grief is heavy, but not insurmountable for some. And of course, we see the different ways in which they all grieve.

And because we get the tale from Susie's POV, she is not a hole of loss in the book; she is still very much a going concern and is, dare I say it, alive to the reader.

I did have some problems with the book though; I admit, I really would've liked it had there been a little more justice for Susie. Also, I wasn't really sure about the ending, but I think it also ties into the wanting more justice for Susie.

Anyway, I did enjoy this book, and my main reason for finally picking it up; reading that Peter Jackson is doing a movie adaptation of it, means I will be checking out the film when it's released as well.

Hmm, not sure why the sudden increase in getting books read, but I've managed to polish off two more:

Number 16 is the Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden. This is a fictionalized account of a young, Scottish doctor who gets sucked in by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's charisma during Amin's reign 1971-1979. The book does a very good job of making you understand why the doctor is simultaneously intreuged and repulsed by Amin, but I'm not entirely sure it does a good job of displaying how brutal Amin's regime was. Oh it is shown, but perhaps because the doctor himself seems so... dispassionate about it, it's hard for the reader to feel outrage either. In fact, it really isn't until the doctor is threatened with bodily harm and imprisonment himself that he realizes how bad the situation actually is and decides he needs to get out of Uganda. It's hard to feel bad for him because he doesn't seem to feel bad for those around him. But still, overall, this is a very interesting book and definitely makes Idi Amin a larger than life character; it doesn't glamourize or humanize him, I think it does try to show him for what he was. I would definitely like to check out the movie version now.

Number 17 is How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young. I previously read Young's follow up to this memoir, so it was nice to actually read this book, his first 'take' on making it (or not) in the US. Toby gets a chance to work at fabled magazine Vanity Fair, but basically bollocks it up. He has a very entertaining view on the life of upper class New Yorkers and he desperately wants to be part of that elite, but at the same time, he detests it. I've also seen the movie version of this book, and was quite surprised at how... deep the book is compared to the movie. Toby is more interested in the class hierarchy of New York, something he didn't realize was there, and something that he feels is even more restrictive than the supposedly increadibly restrictive class system of Britain. HtLFaAP seems less a memoir and more a sociological thesis of a Brit living and working in New York. Very interesting from that point of view. And the funny thing is, Toby doesn't come across sounding like sour grapes in that he didn't make it as a writer there; I think he was greatful for the experience, and even more greatful to find out that in the long run, it really just wasn't for him.

Well, I'm remiss in posting again I see. Mainly due to a VERY busy May, and now June is all about getting ready for when the baby arrives...

So just a quick run-down of the last three books I've read:

Number 13 is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susannah Clarke. Long gone are the days where I can polish off a 1000 page book in a matter of days. Now it takes me a couple of weeks at least. Anyway, this was a book I'd always been meaning to read, but never got around to. The size didn't deter me, but I'd heard a few times that it was really boring, and I guess that put me off. But I finally grabbed it from the library and found that I quite enjoyed it. Taking place during the Napoleonic Wars, it centers on two magicians, the older Mr. Norell and his young 'apprentice' Jonathan Strange. They want to bring back English magic, and put it to work for their country fighting Napoleon. But of course, they have wildly divergent personalities, which eventually clash. Overall, I really liked this book, Clarke's writing style did a nice pastiche of early 1800s novels, and she sets up a very nice internal consistency of how magic works (or doesn't work) in her world, and I very much like her mythology of Faerie and the Raven King.

Number 14 is Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. Ok, I honestly cannot remember if I'd read this puppy before, as a friend of mine had lent me the first Thursday Next book, The Eyre Affair , but I did enjoy that, and enjoyed this one too. Fforde's world is a strange mix of sci-fi, crime novels and a degree in English literature. Kinda reminds me of the comic book Fables, in that fictional characters have a life of their own outside of the works we see them in. Anyway, I like these books for their literariness, but I find Thursday to be a bit of a cypher herself; somehow I just don't find her that interesting of a main character.

Number 15 is The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde. The Wuthering Heights anger management self-help group was worth the entire price of admission of this book.

Number 12 is The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean. This book details the rise and fall of Enron, which earned the dubious title as filing the largest single bankruptcy in US history. Way to go guys!

I work for a company that develops risk management software, and all I could think while reading this book, is how desperately Enron could've used some. Of course, they also probably wouldn't have USED it, they were rampant in their desire to run barely legal end-games around sound risk management and accounting procedures, but still... what they tried to get away with was just wow. And the thing is, working for the company I do, I actually understood some of what they were trying to get away with. I know what credit derivatives and zero return swaps and counterparties are. Makes me feel smart :) I mean, I don't understand everything; it's kinda like knowing enough of a foreign language to get the gist of the conversation, but knowing you're still missing nuances.

Anyway, it is a fascinating, maddening book reading about all these people who got pretty damn rich yet it never seemed to be enough. And that's the problem, no one ever said 'enough', not the banks, not their accounting firm, not their lawyers, becuase everyone was too busy making money off them, until finally, the house of cards couldn't be sustained and no one was making money anymore. Then they were cut loose.

Number 11 is The Sound of No Hands Clapping by Toby Young. This is the sequel memoir from Young, who gave us How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, which was his 'insider's report' when working at Vanity Fair. It was turned into an amusing movie starring Simon Pegg (yes, it seems we really will see him in anything), but I hadn't yet read the book. G tried to find a copy of the book in a used bookstore, but was only able to come up with this one.

SoNHC is about Young's attempt to be a screen-writer. He has no experience in doing so, but manages to land a couple of jobs that require him to crank one out. Of course one of these jobs is to adapt his own book, How to Loose Friends... so that some big-shot Hollywood producer (he never names said producer, nor really gives enough good clues as to his identity, but I took great delight in deciding that the producer was Robert Evans, because frankly, everything is better with Evans in it). But as Young embarks on this career, his family life becomes more complicated as his newly wedded wife becomes pregnant (twice, over the course of the book) and so now he must worry about actually making money from his writing efforts.

It's an interesting look at Hollywood from someone who really had no clue how to play the game, wasn't entirely sure he wanted to play the game (no, no he didn't) and eventually decided that yeah, his family was more important to him than becoming a BIG NAME SCREENWRITER (which really no one becomes anyway). He does become a bit of a playwrite, which makes him some money and makes him happy, so the book does end on a nice, happy note.

I still want to read How to Lose Friends and Alienate People though, because I'm definitely going to read VF editor Graydon Carter as being played by Jeff Bridges. He was a hoot in the movie.

Number 10 this year is The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

This is one of those books I've been told to read or have heard recommended by others umpteenth times. Until last week, I've managed to ignore all recommendations because well, it's a romance (and not a cheap, fun romance-novel romance) and it's about time travel. As a trope, I generally really dislike time travel. I find it needlessly complicated and usually annoying. I also don't really consider myself a 'romantic' person, although, as I think about it, I do enjoy the odd love story, and like it even better when it has a happy ending. Perhaps that is why I don't count myself as a lover of Romances; they usually end badly.

So, I admit, I was all set to not like this book. I was wrong. It was a lovely book. I think it helped that Niffenegger kept the time-travel simple; it is a genetic condition main character Henry has. He cannot help but spontaneously move through time, arriving naked and nautious, to witness his life (and that of Clare's, his wife) from different points in time. Henry cannot change time, he just moves through it. That is the sort of time-travel I can handle.

I guess one of the main reasons I liked this book is the narrative. It is told from both Henry and Clare's perspectives in a very nicely done, non-linear format. I love non-linear narratives. Not sure why because they can sometimes be a pain in the ass, but when they're done well, they are a hell of a lot of fun to read. A bit of a challenge, but not too much, until it all comes together almost seamlessly. To pull one off successfully is to be much admired. And this one is quite successful.

Of course, like all good Romances, this one ends bitter sweet, if not downright sad. It is beautiful and uplifting in so many ways, and who am I to argue with the whole, 'there is definitely one right person out there for you, and it may not be perfect, because nothing is, but it will be perfect for you' theme I felt was running through it, but still, I wish there coulda been a happy ending.

Number 9 of the year is Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

Now, I'm going to start off saying right away that I've been told repeatedly, from different, trusted sources, that this is not a good book. And in comparison to the Dexter television show, no, it's not good. However, nor is it horrible. It's readable, but you can definitely see where the show improved on it. And after having watched two seasons of the show, it's impossible not to compare the book to the show.
So yes, we have one of those (as far as I'm concerned) rarities where the book is NOT better than the other form of media that has spawned from it.

It is also impossible to read this book now and not hear actor Michael C. Hall's voice for Dexter. But the thing is, even with this v/o, I didn't find book-Dexter very... scary. Oh he tells us he's a monster and he tells about how he's killed (and we see him do it), but there's something about the way he's written that makes him seem less than menacing. Perhaps it's Lindsay's overuse of alliteration that does it, I'm not sure. Dexter's inner monologue is nearly flowery, romantic at times, and somehow, it doesn't really work as it makes him less of a monster that he waxes poetic at the moon and whatnot. Book Dexter has none of the... menace that Michael C. Hall so effortlessly portrayed in the series. It was a bit of a let down.

Also, the book does nothing to set up the ultimate identity of the Tamiami Trail Killer (aka the Ice Truck Killer in the show) and by the time you do learn his identity and his connection to Dexter, you're kinda like... what? Where did this come from? The show, on the other hand, built it up brilliantly through flashbacks and Dexter's remembering and whatnot. In the book, Dexter has dreams, but they don't feel connected to his past, rather it focuses on this idea that Dexter could actually be the one physically carrying out the killings, but in a fugue/somnabulastic state. It doesn't really work.

Basically, I can see why the show was made; there's a good idea in here about a serial killer who hunts other serial killers, but the execution of it isn't very good. The show's writer to the initial idea and ran with it, and then were blessed with an extremely good actor who is easy to root for, but still scares the hell out of you while you do so.

Book number 8 of this year is Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon. It's a historical mystery set in the colonial Carolinas in 1699. We follow legal clerk Matthew Corbett and his magistrate/father-figure Isaac Woodward to Fount Royal, where Woodward has been summoned to decide whether a witch is living in the newly established settlement. The two are immediately thrown into danger, even before they reach the town, stopping off at an inn where the inhabitants basically rob and murder their patrons. They narrowly escape and make their way through a torrential downpour to arrive at Fount Royal with nothing but their pajamas on their backs. Once at the town, they must deal with the inhabitants, some of whom stand to gain if Rachel, the accused witch, is executed. Soon it becomes obvious to Matthew that everyone has secrets, even the magistrate.

The characters are all right; Matthew comes off as rather insufferable sometimes, and there isn't really enough clues laid out through the novel to make you think the ending makes sense, which basically makes for an ok read, but not a great one. Not really much to say about this book I guess.

Book 7 is Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maughm. Yes, I seem to be on some sort of American Lit kick all of a sudden.

The Razor’s Edge tells the story of an American, Larry Darrell (yes of course I immediately thought to myself "Hi I'm Larry, this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl"), who, traumatized by his experiences as a fighter pilot in World War I, decides to search for some transcendent meaning in his life. The novel starts its story through the eyes of Larry’s friends and acquaintances as they witness his personality change after the War, but Larry eventually ends up 'narrating' more of his own experiences about halfway in. His rejection of conventional life and search for meaningful experience allows him to thrive while the more materialistic characters suffer reversals of fortune. The other major characters are, Isabel, Larry's erstwhile fiancee, and Isabel's uncle, Elliot Templeton, unrepentant snob and bon vivant. The novel takes place over 20 years, from about 1920 to the late 1930s and changes locations, from Chicago to London to Paris to the French Rivera.

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Because of the subject matter, American expats living abroad basically, I couldn't quite help but contrast this book with Hemingway's writing. Maughm is much more descriptive and nowhere near as blunt as Hemingway, but his writing suits his subject matter as Hemingway's suits his. Maughm paints a picture of high society through Elliot, but then immediately gives us a counterbalance through the life of Larry, who is searching for something meaningful and even spiritual in life, but he's not quite sure what. Larry's 'loafing' takes him all over the world, through Europe and eventually to India where he embraces a lot of the eastern teachings. And despite the fact that Larry does 'nothing' (something quite frowned upon by most everyone else), he does seem to be the most peaceable of the characters. I wouldn't say he's completely happy, but he seems to be content. In his own way, Larry does seem to anticipate the Beat writers' generation, but I don't think he's wandering for the same reasons.

One thing that did initially throw me about this book is that the narrator is Somerset Maughm himself, and it took me a couple of chapters in to realize this. At first I found it kinda jarring, but his first person narration did eventually work and gave an interesting perspective on things, as Maughm's status as a successful writer allowed him to move through both the upper class and bohemian worlds, without taking either of them too seriously.

I definitely liked this book enough to venture onto Maughm's other great novel, Of Human Bondage. After that, I may take a break from American lit for a bit.

Book number 6 for this year is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

Now, a little bit of background as to why this book was chosen... I am a regular watcher of Jeopardy. I'm (not to brag) actually pretty good at it and so I like watching it and feel especially S-M-R-T when I get the Final Jeopardy answer and none of the contestants do. Yes, I take my victories where I can. Anyway! One of the categories a few weeks ago was American Literature, and over two separate questions, two contestants kept trying to give the answer 'A Tree Grows In Brooklyn'. I'd never heard of the book, but didn't think too much of it as my knowledge of American Lit isn't that great, having only had to take one half-credit in American Lit for my degree. So, when I was at the library a couple of weeks ago and spied the novel there, my curiosity was piqued and I picked it up.

First published in 1943, the book is a thinly disguised autobiography, but still, it works. It is the tale of Francie Nolan and her family, who are pretty much dirt poor, struggling to make ends meet in turn of the century Brooklyn. It's not a romanticized tale about being poor, it is pretty unflinching at what the family has to do to survive, and it is this realism that is one of the book's strong points. It is realism told in a beautifully crafted way and I think that's what makes this book just sing.

The female characters in this book are particularly strong, they are the ones who basically make the decisions, get things done, do what they have to do for the family to survive. Francie's mother Katie is the main breadwinner as Francie's father Johnny is an alchoholic and a dreamer. He's tries and he means well, and he is a good father, but he never... succeeds. Katie Nolan, works hard and quickly realizes that education is the key to her children having a better life than hers, and this is something that Katie's immigrant mother tried to instill in her a long time ago. Francie's aunts are also strong women, although you might not think so at first, and her Aunt Sissy is a completely fascinating character in her own way.

When I got to the ending, I at first was disappointed that so many of the strong women characters seemed to be being 'rescued' by men. But after a few thoughts, I realized that wasn't true. Katie Nolan accepts a marriage proposal from a long-time admirer and won't have to work as hard as she did. And I realized that it wasn't a rescue, but something that she deserved. I doubt Katie could ever stop completely working, it didn't seem to be in her makeup to be idle, but it meant she could stop worrying, she found someone who could share her burden and be a partner in the way Johnny Nolan couldn't have. And Francie, off she went to college, where she should be, with a sort of marriage proposal of her own in her future, but I also got the idea that she wouldn't just blindly accept the proposal because she needed a man to take care of her. She would accept it if the proposer still suited her. So basically, all the characters did end up in places that made sense for them and didn't diminish them.

I could go on and on about this book actually, but I won't :) Betty Smith's prose is gorgeous. She also seemed to be a bit of a feminist before her time. I understand why this book resonates so with people and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Ack. So bad with updating... Too much stuff happening what with new house and, since getting new house, have also learned that I am pregnant. Which may mean I'll have more time to write during the summer, when I'm up at all hours, struggling to stay awake. Or not. Who knows.

So, what have I read since my 'year end' post in February?

Books #1 and 2 were cheesy romance novels because my brain just wasn't up for anything taxing just after moving. Surprisingly, one of them was pretty good, even though I can't remember the name of it right now.. The other, Once A Rebel, pretty standard romance stuff, but with pirates, so that's a bonus.

Book #3 was The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. It's a gorgeous book, a throwback to such tales as "The Turn of the Screw, Wuthering Heights and Rebecca. A 'ghost' story without being a ghost story, and also a love letter to books and reading, I highly recommend this one and should really do a more in depth analysis of it. Truly gripping.

Book #4 was Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. This book is a fabulous companion to Bill Bryson's Shakespeare because it is the complete opposite. Where Bryson's book pointed out how little we actually know about Shakepseare, Greenblatt's book takes what little we know and extrapolates from that. It is essentially historical fiction, but it works. There's long been (silly) questions about how a not increadibly educated man from rural England could've written all those marvelous works, but Greenblatt does a superlative job of taking what we know about Shakespeare and logically extrapolating how he could've written all those marvelous plays. A bit of a heavy read, but an extremely interesting one.

Book #5 was Wicked by Gregory Maguire. I thought this was a very interesting idea, and I generally like famous works told from another view point (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), but there was something about the execution of this novel that I just found... off. I liked the politicizing of Oz, and Elphaba was made fairly sympathetic (but perhaps not enough so?), but once the story did meet up with the actual Wizard of Oz events, I found it really didn't work. Somehow, Elphaba's actions as the Wicked Witch that Dorothy met didn't match the actions of the person we'd been reading about up till then and I found that jarring. Not a great book, but not too bad either.

I've done a bunch of re-reads as well at this point, but now with having a library right down the street, I'm aiming on going there regularly and so being able to up the new reads this year. Hopefully.

Due to numerous things at the end/beginning of the year, I've been completely remiss in both my reading and my updating this thing. Holidays and moving make for a busy time, so that's why it's only now that I'm getting around to doing my Year's End.

This wasn't a good year reading-wise as I only managed to read 27 books in total, down from 2007's total. I'm not exactly thrilled with that, but it is what it is. Other achievements, such as getting my husband out of debt and buying a house, were accomplished this year, and that is something to be proud of.

So, what did I manage to read in 2008?

The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman. The last book of the His Dark Materials trilogy.
Around the World in 87 1/2 Gigs by one of my mainstays, Dave Bidini
The Children of Hurin by J.R.R Tolkien
Titan, Wizard and Demon all by John Varley
The Shipping News by another of my mainstays, Annie Prouxl
The Language of Stones by Robert Carter
The Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore
The Year of Living Biblically by A.J Jacobs
Thud! by Terry Pratchett
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage by one of my favourite Canadian authors, Alice Munro
Those Who Walk Away by Patricia Highsmith
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the Worldby Dan Koeppel
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Dragon Harper by Todd and Anne McCaffery
The Knight by the Pool by Sophie Mason
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Prouxl
The Dubious Hills by Pamela Dean
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Just Fine the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx
Friends Like Theseby Danny Wallace
America Unchained by Dave Gorman
Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Once again, a good cross-section of classics, humour, fantasy, horror and short stories. Annie Proulx distinguished herself as my most read author this year with three books gracing the list. Most depressing book? Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Best book I read this year? In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan completely changed how Graig and I shop for food. We even joined a local farm share for the summer due to it's influence.

While it may be Feb. and I'm only just writing the year end for 2008, I have already read a few books in 2009 and those will be coming up soon. Now that we've moved into the new house and are pretty much settled, I feel that there's definitely more time for reading again. This year, we'll push past the paltry 27 books.*

*Just to remind everyone, the totals in this blog are NEW books only. I do not write up or keep track of re-reads. Re-reads usually account for another 20-30 books read over the course of a year, but as some are religiously read every year, I don't find tracking them to be worthwhile.