1. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
Brilliant? Yes. Insightful? Oh yes. Enjoyable? Hell no. This is a mindfuck of a book and I'm still trying to wrap my head around why someone who can write so well would choose to use their talent to tell this story. Kinda made me hate being human.
2. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
A lovely kaleidoscopic story of black women's lives, many of which end up intersecting with each other. So many perspectives and so well rendered--it would have been easy to parody or overplay some of the views expressed, but Evaristo crafts her characters with subtlety and with kindness, even for the ones that are a bit off-putting in their self-righteousness. I really enjoyed this book.
3. Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
Hmmm. I can see what the author is attempting to do: craft a fictionalized version of a "lost" famous woman, the 17th C Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, who Virginia Woolf mentioned briefly. By the end of the book, I do think I know more about her, but do I care? Not really. It very much feels like examining the fancy and whimsies of a rich, entitled woman and despite the ground she broke (publishing her fancies and being the first woman allowed in to visit the Royal Society) I felt like I was just watching someone strive for celebrity and attention and ultimately did not care.
4. Jingo by Terry Pratchett
Thank god there's still a few Terry Pratchett books I haven't read yet because my need for his humor and gentle wisdom right now it high (impeachment anyone?). This is an excellent one about the potential start of a useless war and Lord Vetinari and Sam Vimes' efforts to stop it. Particularly relevant in the wake of the almost-war with Iran that our disgrace of a President tried to start.
5. Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
Audiobook version of this one and immensely satisfying.
6. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell
A sweet YA graphic novel about love, relationships (including friendships) and wanting to be wanted. Excellent depiction of emotions, attractions and how some people treat other people poorly but never really have to pay a price. It's set in Berkeley and, whoah boy, what a bubble of acceptance it is portrayed as (and I say that coming from another bubble of liberal culture.) Idealistic and hopeful, but boy howdy, the old grump in me wanted to introduce the characters to the rest of the country/world because the ease and dismissal of anyone who didn't live up to their standards (like a 90 year old grandmother) kinda bugged me; then again, very true to a teenage perspective!
7. The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
That was fun! A light crime novel about an interpreter who uses the knowledge she gains from translating conversations for the police to start her own little drug distribution business. It is filled with a particularly French sense of snark and perspective, particularly of the absurdities of massive bureaucracies and the need to protect one's individual interests from the state. I really enjoyed it.
8. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
More ridiculous fun (and relief from the upsetting world) with Sam Vimes, this time on an ambassadorial trip to Uberwald. Perhaps not quite as tight as some of the other books, but that's not surprising since he's dealing with so many populations (dwarfs, werewolves, vampires, the Watch who come with him and the Watch who are left behind.)
9. Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
Audio book. An excellent Pratchett novel, and one that doesn't require encyclopedic knowledge of discworld to enjoy (it helps having an affection for Sam Vimes who appears at the end, but it isn't required.) Amid the humor there are lots of wise moments and musings about gender and behavior and societal pressures.
10. Making Money by Terry Pratchett
Excellent audiobook and a nice follow up to Going Postal. Moist Von Lipwig is growing on me (which sounds alarming!)
11. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
A fast, short read and a lovely one. Strange but refreshing, particularly in the decision not to explain everything. You accept the weird premise: children who burst into flames, and you go from there. And it takes you into a place where you think about love, and what it means to care for people and how some people use others for their own purposes and other people simply don't. Highly recommended.
12. Educated by Tara Westover
This is called a memoir but for me it was a horror story, one in which the villains won't fucking die. There are interesting musings about education and the individual's hunger for knowledge and meaning, but really it's about abuse and the tight grip it holds.
13. The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer
It has been at least 20 years since I read this play and different things hit me this time. It holds up as a snapshot in time of what the AIDS crisis looked like for a particular population. What struck me the most was not the politics of policy but the politics of identity that the play addresses. It shows the evolution of gay identity from one where fucking as many people was not necessarily a sexual act, but a defiant, identity based act and how telling gay men to stop fucking when the AIDS crisis hit felt like it was synonymous with saying "don't be gay." It is fascinating to see how gay identity has changed since the play was written and how gay marriage and gay identity have become far more nuanced than this existentialist existence from the era the play represents.
14. The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths
A standard mystery novel, entertaining enough, not surprising in the least.
15. A Bright Room Called Day by Tony Kushner
Kushner's play that preceded Angels In America. I'm not sure how it would be as theater--unlike some play scripts I couldn't really visualize anything out of the ordinary with it--but it is interesting in his desire to show parallels between the Weimar republic's end and Hitler's rise and a narrator/observer commenting on Reagan and what we now know was the beginning of the end of the progress of the New Deal.
16. Angels in America: Millenium Approaches by Tony Kushner
I'm re-reading this because my kid has decided to do an extended essay on the plays and (despite being 17) actually wants to talk to me about them. And holy cow I'd forgotten how beautiful they are. Really really happy to be spending time with them again.
17. Thud! by Terry Pratchett
This one was...fine. Probably my least favorite Sam Vimes story, but one which took place before most of the rest of the ones I've read so it was good to finally learn the origin of Diamond, King of the Trolls, and the Gathering Dark. There were definitely good moments, but the main plot of the longstanding conflict between the dwarves and the trolls didn't grab me the way some other bits of Discworld have.
18. The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
I listened to the audiobook (read by Michael York) of this while painting a room and it was excellent company. Short, entertaining, beautifully read and just what I needed to keep the tedium at bay.
19. The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
Oh man this was a beautiful and hard read, hard because I've grown so attached to Cromwell and you know what is coming for him. It was worth it though, to feel all the anguish, to see the net closing in, because it gave so much: thoughts about power and flawed systems and flawed character and memory and family and protecting what you love and I could go on and on. I held my breath while reading the last pages and as soon as I was done, went back and read it again.
20. Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
Absurd and lovely and the audiobook is wonderfully read by Stephen Briggs. I never thought that I'd be interested in a plot that focused on sports and football hooliganism, but when laced with the sturdy wisdom of Glenda, the dizzy loveliness of Juliette and the grounded wisdom of Mr. Nut, I wanted this book to go on and on.
21. How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse: Book One of the Thorne Chronicles by K. Eason
Oh what a lovely escape from reality! A strong heroine, a nicely filled out world and some quirky fantasy touchstones (fairy gifts! In outer space!) I'm glad that there is a second book coming out in October.
22. Murder in the Afternoon by Frances Brody
An entertaining-enough mystery set in Yorkshire; nothing earth-shattering but as the earth is currently in a pretty shattered state, that's just fine by me. I listened to the audiobook which was capably read and it allowed me to continue my examination of Yorkshire accents (and a brief dip into the Lancashire accent! Thrills!)
23. Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves
Is it stupid to pick an audio book based on wanting to hear the accent it will be read in? Well, stupid or not, I did get some pleasure listening to the reader's nice Scottish accent. It was an easy enough listen, not particularly compelling in the mystery category, but then I don't think Jimmy Perez is the most interesting detective, but it's fine for an escape. I thought the autistic character was handled with surprising sensitivity but that other characters' reactions to a murder was implausibly blase: a few days after your nanny has been murdered, do you think you'd be focusing on a seaside picnic?
24. The Last Emperox by John Scalzi
This was a fun-enough enough finale to the trilogy that started with The Collapsing Empire. I don't think it was a particularly good book, the plotting was thin and the conclusion was rushed, particularly the part where there's supposed to be a solution to all the chaotic stuff that happened in the previous two books and rather than showing any of that or even really explaining it, we're told that it'll happen because certain leaders have been put in place. More than some of Scalzi's other books the characters all started to sound alike and all started to sound like Scalzi (if you read his entertaining blog, Whatever, and you should because it is often pretty interesting, you can quickly recognize the voice.) I mean, he's not alone in this: all of John Green's characters usually end up sounding like John Green and if you like John Green then that's still pretty pleasant. So thumbs up for the entertainment aspects of this book, but maybe not for the craftsmanship.
25. Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett
With the world such a hot mess, this was my retreat to keep me sane. Spending time with Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat and Agnes was just the therapy I needed.
26. Deacon King Kong by James McBride
This is the best book I've read so far this year, and I suspect it will be the best book I read all year. It's an intertwined story of people living in and near a housing project in Brooklyn that is both profane, hilarious and deeply compassionate. If you want a book to give you hope about humanity with all of its eccentricity and charm, and with none of its failings covered up, read this.
27. A Death in The Dales by Frances Brody
Oh, not a particularly good mystery (abrupt, unlikely ending and a blase dismissal of a significant character who, it was revealed, intentionally overdosed his aunt when she was in pain and faces no consequences other than the loss of the main character's affections) but a soothing escape from the current shit show of the world. I listened to the audio book, which is capably read, and enjoyed being in the English countryside well enough to keep listening.
28. White Bird by R.J. Palacio
Graphic novel holocaust story, definitely pitched to be gentle in introducing the history. It's told through the lens of a French survivor gently informing her completely clueless American grandson about her experience being hid by neighboring farmers in their barn. I have mixed feelings about this book: it is pretty and there's nice visual metaphors about the mindset it takes to endure and the ultimate message, that people have to be kind in the face of tyranny, are all well and good. But it is so sanitized. There's no sense of suffering when it comes to the girl being hid: no dirt, no hygiene problems, only a tiny bit of discomfort when she's cold in the winter and hot in the summer. And I think that kids could handle a little bit more of that in order to understand the gravity of the history. I know this isn't the same audience as "Maus" but I still think that the avoidance of the ugly in this book is problematic.
29. Apeirogon by Colum McCann
This is a breathtaking book. 500 sections to lead you to the middle where the words of the two men who inspired the story rest and then 500 sections for you to go back out in the world, but changed by the experience. Like all of McCann's works, it is hard to summarize because it is about so many things and he lays down a thread (say, an aside about the migratory habit of a particular species of bird) and you don't know what it's doing in the middle of this story about violence and loss and grief and the power of stories and a craving for decency. But then, the bird swoops in again and punctuates a moment a hundred pages after it was first mentioned, and you feel your gaze drawn up to the sky, and then you are pulled back down to the deaths of the two daughters again. It sounds like it would be hell to read, but it's not. It's wildly hopeful and painful and beautiful at the same time. It is not a book that I was able to read quickly: this book took me months to finish. But it is so non-linear and exquisite that it was like getting to know a favorite sculpture. One day, you look at it in the morning and from one angle, the next day you only spend a few minutes at high noon and see it from behind, and the next you come at dusk and circle it and give it all your attention for hours. I will never forget it.
30. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
There are some authors that have earned my trust and Louise Erdrich is one of them. Her deeply compassionate attitude towards both her characters and her readers helps me to know that scenes of suffering and abuse are not gratuitous. There are plenty of upsetting events--both against individuals and against an entire people--that happen in this novel, which is based on her Grandfather's work in the 1950s that preserved her tribe. But the story is presented with such grace and balance and beauty that learning about injustices of the past never feels like work: it feels like a privilege to be able to understand the events in a way that a fictional story can sometimes do better than a factual list of statistics and events. I don't know if Erdrich will follow and include some of these characters in future books, as she has often has recurring characters in her other novels, but I'd love to see more of Patrice and Millie and Wood Mountain.
31. Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore
Brutal but lyrical story set in West Texas in the 1960s and 70s. It's a beautifully written novel about a place that is far from beautiful. If you can make it through the first chapter, which features a brutal rape, then you can make it through the book. The rest of the book uses the events in the first chapter as a way to probe the connections between the women and girls of the town, from an 11 year old girl, abandoned by her mother, who decides her summer project is to rescue a homeless Vietnam Vet, to an acerbic retired teacher who is falling apart after her husband died of brain cancer, to the young mother who came to the aid of the raped girl and is trying to hold it together in the face of harassment and hostility. The characters are artfully drawn and the links and connections build and intertwine. It's not an easy book, but it is an excellent one.
32. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Printed below the title, on the cover of the American edition of the book, is the phrase "A Novel of the Plague" and I would say this is a little misleading (it does not appear to be on the cover of the British edition).This exquisite book contains a death from plague, but the novel is the story of a woman, and her existence, so woven with the natural world, is a thing of great beauty. "A Novel of the Plague" seems to me to be a marketing effort to appeal to people who are put off by the name "Shakespeare," which is never uttered in the book, nor is William or Will, ever named. He's Agnes' husband; Susanna and Judith and Hamnet's father; he's Mary's eldest son. The only minor misstep I found in this amazing book was the chapter that traced the passage of the flea that carried the plague to Stratford. It was well-written and cinematic and probably very educational for people with no prior knowledge of how the plague was spread. But it felt like a Tudor-era insert of a scene from the film "Contagion" and was included both to justify the phrase printed on the cover and to emphasize that while this is mostly a small story about one family in a town in rural England, even such an isolated place is connected to the wider world. I understand why it was included, and there's no fault in the crafting of it, but it pulled me out of the incredible intimacy that O'Farrell has shared with her readers and I simply think the rest of the book doesn't need it. While not a winning marketing phrase, this is "A Novel of Relationships" both between people and between people and the natural world. Nature is so vivid and lush and bountiful and dangerous in this book and O'Farrell brings it alive with such lyrical, beautiful prose that it casts a spell. It makes you want to run outside and crush leaves between your fingers and inhale the smell, and rummage around in the woods for treasures, and pay attention to what the wild animals around you are doing. And the sensitivity to the relationships between people is so beautifully rendered: from the rage a teenage Tudor girl would feel toward her stupid family, to the love and attraction between a man and woman, to the mysterious connections between twins, to the overwhelming power of a parent's love which is the most vividly explored of all, this is a book that never hits a wrong note when it comes to exploring how people need and love and fail and nurture and neglect other people. It is simply a stunning work of imagination and, despite being centered around a desperately sad event, I found the book to be strongly affirming of the richness of life. For people who love Shakespeare, it is also an intriguingly creative way of showing, rather than telling, how Shakespeare may have been inspired to write his most famous play. While it is only referenced near the end of the book, I couldn't stop thinking throughout the novel of Hamlet's soliloquy that contains the lines "The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" Ultimately, O'Farrell shares the credit of the creation of the play with the wisdom he gained by being married to Agnes, by being the son of Mary and John, by being the father of Hamnet. Like I said, it is a novel of relationships, and an amazing one at that.
33. The Truth by Terry Pratchett
A lovely witty detour into Ankh-Morpork while on vacation. This book covers the birth of newspapers and the press. While often hilarious and ridiculous, it has lots of wisdom about power and politics that is extremely relevant these days.
34. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
I haven't seen the tv series which this book seems to be in dialog with, taking as a given that "Baby Nicole" is living under a fake name in Canada and that Offred made it too and is living life as an agent of the underground (not with her baby). The whole novel is about the undermining of Gilead through the actions of three character: Nicole, her half-sister (the baby that Offred and Luke tried to escape with) who was raised by a Gilead power-couple, and Aunt Lydia, who is also an agent of the underground. It's a fast-paced book, not moody and contemplative like my favorite of Atwood's books (Alias Grace, Year of the Flood), though still entertaining. Normally reading about a fundamentalist theocracy would not be something I'd call entertaining because of our reality when there are incessant attempts to restrict our freedom and push us towards this model. But since the book is about the crumbling of Gilead and the elaborate process of undermining those in power, it manages to be less upsetting than I thought it would be. There are moments of Atwood's trademark insights, the statements that lacerate as you read them, exposing the raw, painful truth about what flawed creature humans are under our rituals of behavior and manners. Most of these come via the voice of Aunt Lydia and fleshing out her back-story as a pre-Gilead judge makes a lot of sense in transforming her from the monster who enforces oppression to the person who crafted a system of safe spaces in a monstrous regime and who is working ultimately for revenge. But most of the book is taken up with the action--moving from plot point to plot point to show (sometimes a bit implausibly) how the power was undermined.
35. Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
I pretty much always have a Terry Pratchett book to turn to since they are my comfort read. That said, this one isn't the greatest. I love spending time with Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg but the plot felt a little sloggy and there were too many fat jokes and it didn't help me escape reality as well as many other Pratchett books. Still head and shoulders above many other escapist reads, but not one I'd suggest anyone start with if they need to be convinced of the value of Discworld.
36. Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
This one is a love letter to Nanny Ogg in all her bawdy, grounded version of witching. It's fun to go back and revisit the development of the characters that are in a more fully realized form later in the series (the Tiffany Aching books).
37. 1919: poems by Eve L. Ewing
My favorite kind of poetry book: one that links together poems to tell a story. This one is about the 1919 Chicago Race Riots and brings history to life in a way that makes it vivid and unforgettable. It reminded me a bit of one of my favorite books like this, Michael Ondaatje's book of poems about jazz musician Buddy Bolden, Coming Through Slaughter. Lyrical, beautiful and important.
38. Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
I re-listened to the audio book and it is as wonderful as ever; such great storytelling (and a line that I'm pretty sure that JK Rowling stole and put in Dumbledore's mouth.)
39. Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
Not one of my favorites and not a Discworld book I'd read again. Amusing in moments, but it lacked a central message so just felt like scene after scene.
40. Winter by Ali Smith
Re-reading this because I started Summer and realized that I'd enjoy it more if I remembered more of Arthur's story. It is a lovely book about messy families and I'm glad to have refreshed my memory before diving into Summer. And it got me to download Cymbeline which I've never read properly so there's that to look forward to in the realm of literary discovery.
41. A Better Man by Louise Penny
Every so often I try to get on the Louise Penny bandwagon and read one of her mysteries and damn it, it just doesn't work. They just bug the crap out of me and I am baffled by the popularity. So, I read another one and kept hoping that it would reveal the mystery of its popularity and came away with yet another shrug. I still don't get it.
42. Summer by Ali Smith
Any book by Ali Smith is way better than most books out there, but this is my least favorite of the season quartet, mostly because it doesn't stand on its own. The other three books had links and connections, but this one is more of a "tidying up" book, bringing back characters from the other books and connecting them in what felt like too convenient ways. And (SPOILERS) in making Art into Daniel's son and then having him fall in love with Elizabeth so that he (unknowingly) ends up caring for his absent father, it just felt too tidy, particularly when the book is looking at the current societal chaos: the UK may be careening towards the abyss with Brexit combined with the COVID-19 crisis, but we don't have to worry about the characters we have grown to care about. They are all tidied up . The two siblings who are introduced at the beginning are wonderful and I wanted a whole book about them: I don't think I've ever read such a perfect capture of the push-pull, love-hate complexity that the sibling relationship can contain. But after the opening scenes, they just pop in occasionally. It also saddened me that the invisible people--the undocumented immigrants held in perpetual prison--from Spring were hardly remembered in this book. Compared to the treatment of the characters from Autumn and Winter, they remained as peripheral as they are to society and were only brought in in the final pages for a feel-good moment (another too convenient connection that made me feel like Smith was just trying to figure out how to leave this project.)
43. The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths
The second in a series. Good, solid, entertaining: what I wanted right now in a mystery novel. I'm glad the author brought back Cathbad, the druid, and hope he continues to appear in the future books of the series.
44. Network Effect by Martha Wells
Oh I needed this: a full-length (rather than novella) Murderbot novel to whisk me away from current crises! This book was a wonderful development of the character and its humans and friends. Prickly and loyal and deeply snarky Murderbot is a character that I suspect the author loves as much as I do.
45. The House at Sea's End by Elly Griffiths
Decent enough mystery, did its job to distract me from the news, though the murderer seemed kind of dropped in at the end of story and wasn't very compelling or interesting.
46. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
I remember when this came out in the late '80s and I intended to read it. Obviously it slipped through the cracks and I'm only getting to it now. I found it a surprisingly lovely meditation on loneliness and connection. Some of it hasn't aged well, particularly the language and references to one of the trans characters; I do think including being trans as a facet of a character in the year it was written, rather than the reason for the character's existence, was pretty progressive for the time. There was wistfulness in the story and longing and meditations on life and meaning, all condensed into a pretty tight plot.
47. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
What a lovely surprise: I assumed that this would be a fairly straightforward Pratchett parody but instead it was a wild and lovely twisting tale. On a narrative level, there were so many different plot lines to follow and the fact that he pulled them all together into one story is impressive. The fact that each was also enjoyable in a different, unique way was amazing. I loved the pairing of Death and his servant Albert and their attempts to fill in for the Hogfather: ridiculous and tender and so revealing of what makes humans interesting, all at the same time. Susan's craving for normality battling with her super-powers (as Death's granddaughter) that are necessary to save the world, while also being a sensible, tender and fierce governess to two little children, was also a fantastic plotline. The ridiculousness of the Wizard's at the Unseen University making a mess of everything, while also bumbling through a meditation on belief, was both hilarious and thought provoking. And then all the familiar minor characters who make an appearance and further the richness of the story, like Foul Ole Ron and his band of beggars, and a gang of thieves who somehow share a moral compass, though not one that anyone could easily define.
Amidst all this amazingly intricate storytelling, there was also some seriously beautiful language: I loved this description of a winter landscape: "They lurched down through the freezing woods, the snow glowing orange in the risen sun. Cold blue gloom lurked in hollows like little cups of winter." I mean, "little cups of winter"? How can you not love a book that includes treats like that nestled into a story that keeps you turning pages?
48. The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
I really wanted to love this historical fiction: I wanted to sink into its 560 pages. And I did for about half of them. The story is split between the 17th C, following a Jewish woman who scribes for a blind Rabbi and develops her own intellectual, questing philosophy, and the 21st C, in which two scholars at an un-named London university find her papers in the walls of a house and start to piece together the clues of her existence. The 17th C story is compelling and beautifully written and the characters are complicated and the relationships are rich (particularly the one between the scribe and the rabbi). But the 21st C characters are, sadly, not. They are thin and uncompelling and tedious and serve almost entirely as a device to reveal information about the 17th C storyline. I struggled with their sections (the tales of academic pettiness really aren't on the same level as those about surviving plague in London) and thought about giving up on the book, but then decided that once I had recognized that the 21st C parts weren't suddenly going to turn a corner and become the equal to the 17th C sections, that I could just speed read them, to glean the information that the two scholars uncover about the 17th C woman and then get back to her story. It's frustrating to have enjoyed and want to recommend half a book, but there it is.
49. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
A re-read but this time the audio-book version which is excellent. I wanted to check in w/the story before deciding whether it'll be a holiday gift for the geeks in my life. Answer: yes!
50. The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman
I listened to the Audiobook (full-cast, excellent production) of this short story which intertwines the stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.
51. Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
I listened to the audio book for this and it was one of the best performances of a serious book that I can remember (comic novels are a different category and I apply different criteria). Juliet Stevenson gives an inspired reading of so many different voices and it warms and fills out this novel. I also appreciated the book itself which focuses on the power of stories and what happens when people tell stories: true stories, stories they want to be true, falsehoods with malicious intent and falsehoods that are fictions to understand something unexplainable. It may be a little bit sentimental, but I enjoyed the gentleness of the narrative and was happy to have spent 16+ hours listening to it.
52. A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths
Entertaining enough mystery, boosted by the prominent role of Cathbad, who is by far my favorite character in this series. I was relieved that the author decided that putting Ruth in peril in every book was getting a little tired and so put other characters in jeopardy this time.
53. The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow
As someone who has studied Austen seriously, I'm probably the wrong audience for this book. Maybe for someone with a passing knowledge of Austen (or maybe someone who has just has seen one of the P&P movies/tv series?) this might be more warmly received. I found the amount of "lifted" Austen to be pretty disturbing: scenes that took place between Lady Catherine and Elizabeth in P&P are lifted word for word into a scene between Caroline Bingley and Mary. Did the author really think that no one would notice? It's one thing to replay a P&P scene from Mary's point of view (such as the memorable family dinner with Mr. Collins) and to include Austen's dialog because Mary is hearing it, but it's another thing entirely to just take and transpose what Austen wrote and claim it as your own. There are also bits lifted from Persuasion (when Mary, like Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, is convinced that Mr. Sparrow is beneath her) and Sense and Sensibility (all the stuff about Feeling vs Intellect that takes place in the Lake District, with a little elementary inclusion of the late 18th/early 19th C. interest in the Sublime.)
Characters that Austen rendered with some subtlety are here turned into caricatures. While it's clear that Austen thinks that Mrs. Bennet is shallow, she still shows her affection for her family and how she's trapped in a system where women are dependent and mostly powerless. In this book, the character is monstrously vain and emotionally abusive. Even Charlotte Lucas is rendered unsympathetic. The only character who comes off marginally better in this book than in P&P was Mr. Collins. While I wouldn't say his back story is compelling (a remote father stunted his emotional development), it was a relief to see the author paint one character with a fine brush.
54. A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas
This was a clever and engaging mystery. There's a tight plot, nicely drawn characters and few historical goofs (still don't see why an editor wouldn't catch that upper-class characters wouldn't use the slang term "quid" for pound, but these gripes were minimal and not too distracting.) It took a while for me to keep track of all the Lord this's and Lady that's and how they were related but that's on me, not the author. I'll definitely be reading the next book in the series.
55. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
A terrific graphic memoir about the struggle to assert a non-binary identity in a primarily binary world. It does what the best memoirs do: allows the reader to understand another person's perspective and struggles, confusion and moments of lucid clarity.
56. A Conspiracy in Belgravia by Sherry Thomas
This time I tried the audio book and it was decently read. This book is made for puzzle lovers with lots of discussion of the mechanics of particular types of ciphers. I am (sadly) not one of those people so those parts missed the mark for me. I did still enjoy the development of the mystery and the intricate plot. I became a little tired of the incessant "nibbling of muffins" that is repeated whenever Charlotte sits down to tea but that's a small gripe for a book that served the purpose of distracting me from reality.
57. The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas
A decent continuation of the series with one glaring exception: the decision to consummate the relationship between Charlotte and Lord Ashton meant that the book lurched from an involved mystery into a schlocky romance and took liberties with its characters to do so. Charlotte goes from one scene in which she explains how she counts in order to tolerate the hugs her sister wants to give her, to being a little vixen in bed asking if they have time to "do it again" before their pressing duties to solve the damn mystery. Later, the author backpedals and says that becoming lovers was necessary to trick the person who was threatening Lord Ashton--they had to really do it because otherwise he might not believe their act and he'd know that they are on to him!--which rings a little false when you realize that Charlotte has been crossdressing for much of the book with no one the wiser.
58. Death of a Maid by M.C. Beaton
A lovely little mystery with (yay!) plenty more episodes to come. I listened to the audio book which is read by one of the best audio book readers ever, Graham Malcom. He adds so much compassion and humor and wry wit to lines that may or may not contain them naturally. This is just what I want from a mystery: distraction, immersion (which leads to drinking countless cups of tea to match all the references in the text) and escape.
Brilliant? Yes. Insightful? Oh yes. Enjoyable? Hell no. This is a mindfuck of a book and I'm still trying to wrap my head around why someone who can write so well would choose to use their talent to tell this story. Kinda made me hate being human.
2. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
A lovely kaleidoscopic story of black women's lives, many of which end up intersecting with each other. So many perspectives and so well rendered--it would have been easy to parody or overplay some of the views expressed, but Evaristo crafts her characters with subtlety and with kindness, even for the ones that are a bit off-putting in their self-righteousness. I really enjoyed this book.
3. Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
Hmmm. I can see what the author is attempting to do: craft a fictionalized version of a "lost" famous woman, the 17th C Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, who Virginia Woolf mentioned briefly. By the end of the book, I do think I know more about her, but do I care? Not really. It very much feels like examining the fancy and whimsies of a rich, entitled woman and despite the ground she broke (publishing her fancies and being the first woman allowed in to visit the Royal Society) I felt like I was just watching someone strive for celebrity and attention and ultimately did not care.
4. Jingo by Terry Pratchett
Thank god there's still a few Terry Pratchett books I haven't read yet because my need for his humor and gentle wisdom right now it high (impeachment anyone?). This is an excellent one about the potential start of a useless war and Lord Vetinari and Sam Vimes' efforts to stop it. Particularly relevant in the wake of the almost-war with Iran that our disgrace of a President tried to start.
5. Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
Audiobook version of this one and immensely satisfying.
6. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell
A sweet YA graphic novel about love, relationships (including friendships) and wanting to be wanted. Excellent depiction of emotions, attractions and how some people treat other people poorly but never really have to pay a price. It's set in Berkeley and, whoah boy, what a bubble of acceptance it is portrayed as (and I say that coming from another bubble of liberal culture.) Idealistic and hopeful, but boy howdy, the old grump in me wanted to introduce the characters to the rest of the country/world because the ease and dismissal of anyone who didn't live up to their standards (like a 90 year old grandmother) kinda bugged me; then again, very true to a teenage perspective!
7. The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
That was fun! A light crime novel about an interpreter who uses the knowledge she gains from translating conversations for the police to start her own little drug distribution business. It is filled with a particularly French sense of snark and perspective, particularly of the absurdities of massive bureaucracies and the need to protect one's individual interests from the state. I really enjoyed it.
8. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
More ridiculous fun (and relief from the upsetting world) with Sam Vimes, this time on an ambassadorial trip to Uberwald. Perhaps not quite as tight as some of the other books, but that's not surprising since he's dealing with so many populations (dwarfs, werewolves, vampires, the Watch who come with him and the Watch who are left behind.)
9. Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
Audio book. An excellent Pratchett novel, and one that doesn't require encyclopedic knowledge of discworld to enjoy (it helps having an affection for Sam Vimes who appears at the end, but it isn't required.) Amid the humor there are lots of wise moments and musings about gender and behavior and societal pressures.
10. Making Money by Terry Pratchett
Excellent audiobook and a nice follow up to Going Postal. Moist Von Lipwig is growing on me (which sounds alarming!)
11. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
A fast, short read and a lovely one. Strange but refreshing, particularly in the decision not to explain everything. You accept the weird premise: children who burst into flames, and you go from there. And it takes you into a place where you think about love, and what it means to care for people and how some people use others for their own purposes and other people simply don't. Highly recommended.
12. Educated by Tara Westover
This is called a memoir but for me it was a horror story, one in which the villains won't fucking die. There are interesting musings about education and the individual's hunger for knowledge and meaning, but really it's about abuse and the tight grip it holds.
13. The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer
It has been at least 20 years since I read this play and different things hit me this time. It holds up as a snapshot in time of what the AIDS crisis looked like for a particular population. What struck me the most was not the politics of policy but the politics of identity that the play addresses. It shows the evolution of gay identity from one where fucking as many people was not necessarily a sexual act, but a defiant, identity based act and how telling gay men to stop fucking when the AIDS crisis hit felt like it was synonymous with saying "don't be gay." It is fascinating to see how gay identity has changed since the play was written and how gay marriage and gay identity have become far more nuanced than this existentialist existence from the era the play represents.
14. The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths
A standard mystery novel, entertaining enough, not surprising in the least.
15. A Bright Room Called Day by Tony Kushner
Kushner's play that preceded Angels In America. I'm not sure how it would be as theater--unlike some play scripts I couldn't really visualize anything out of the ordinary with it--but it is interesting in his desire to show parallels between the Weimar republic's end and Hitler's rise and a narrator/observer commenting on Reagan and what we now know was the beginning of the end of the progress of the New Deal.
16. Angels in America: Millenium Approaches by Tony Kushner
I'm re-reading this because my kid has decided to do an extended essay on the plays and (despite being 17) actually wants to talk to me about them. And holy cow I'd forgotten how beautiful they are. Really really happy to be spending time with them again.
17. Thud! by Terry Pratchett
This one was...fine. Probably my least favorite Sam Vimes story, but one which took place before most of the rest of the ones I've read so it was good to finally learn the origin of Diamond, King of the Trolls, and the Gathering Dark. There were definitely good moments, but the main plot of the longstanding conflict between the dwarves and the trolls didn't grab me the way some other bits of Discworld have.
18. The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
I listened to the audiobook (read by Michael York) of this while painting a room and it was excellent company. Short, entertaining, beautifully read and just what I needed to keep the tedium at bay.
19. The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
Oh man this was a beautiful and hard read, hard because I've grown so attached to Cromwell and you know what is coming for him. It was worth it though, to feel all the anguish, to see the net closing in, because it gave so much: thoughts about power and flawed systems and flawed character and memory and family and protecting what you love and I could go on and on. I held my breath while reading the last pages and as soon as I was done, went back and read it again.
20. Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
Absurd and lovely and the audiobook is wonderfully read by Stephen Briggs. I never thought that I'd be interested in a plot that focused on sports and football hooliganism, but when laced with the sturdy wisdom of Glenda, the dizzy loveliness of Juliette and the grounded wisdom of Mr. Nut, I wanted this book to go on and on.
21. How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse: Book One of the Thorne Chronicles by K. Eason
Oh what a lovely escape from reality! A strong heroine, a nicely filled out world and some quirky fantasy touchstones (fairy gifts! In outer space!) I'm glad that there is a second book coming out in October.
22. Murder in the Afternoon by Frances Brody
An entertaining-enough mystery set in Yorkshire; nothing earth-shattering but as the earth is currently in a pretty shattered state, that's just fine by me. I listened to the audiobook which was capably read and it allowed me to continue my examination of Yorkshire accents (and a brief dip into the Lancashire accent! Thrills!)
23. Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves
Is it stupid to pick an audio book based on wanting to hear the accent it will be read in? Well, stupid or not, I did get some pleasure listening to the reader's nice Scottish accent. It was an easy enough listen, not particularly compelling in the mystery category, but then I don't think Jimmy Perez is the most interesting detective, but it's fine for an escape. I thought the autistic character was handled with surprising sensitivity but that other characters' reactions to a murder was implausibly blase: a few days after your nanny has been murdered, do you think you'd be focusing on a seaside picnic?
24. The Last Emperox by John Scalzi
This was a fun-enough enough finale to the trilogy that started with The Collapsing Empire. I don't think it was a particularly good book, the plotting was thin and the conclusion was rushed, particularly the part where there's supposed to be a solution to all the chaotic stuff that happened in the previous two books and rather than showing any of that or even really explaining it, we're told that it'll happen because certain leaders have been put in place. More than some of Scalzi's other books the characters all started to sound alike and all started to sound like Scalzi (if you read his entertaining blog, Whatever, and you should because it is often pretty interesting, you can quickly recognize the voice.) I mean, he's not alone in this: all of John Green's characters usually end up sounding like John Green and if you like John Green then that's still pretty pleasant. So thumbs up for the entertainment aspects of this book, but maybe not for the craftsmanship.
25. Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett
With the world such a hot mess, this was my retreat to keep me sane. Spending time with Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat and Agnes was just the therapy I needed.
26. Deacon King Kong by James McBride
This is the best book I've read so far this year, and I suspect it will be the best book I read all year. It's an intertwined story of people living in and near a housing project in Brooklyn that is both profane, hilarious and deeply compassionate. If you want a book to give you hope about humanity with all of its eccentricity and charm, and with none of its failings covered up, read this.
27. A Death in The Dales by Frances Brody
Oh, not a particularly good mystery (abrupt, unlikely ending and a blase dismissal of a significant character who, it was revealed, intentionally overdosed his aunt when she was in pain and faces no consequences other than the loss of the main character's affections) but a soothing escape from the current shit show of the world. I listened to the audio book, which is capably read, and enjoyed being in the English countryside well enough to keep listening.
28. White Bird by R.J. Palacio
Graphic novel holocaust story, definitely pitched to be gentle in introducing the history. It's told through the lens of a French survivor gently informing her completely clueless American grandson about her experience being hid by neighboring farmers in their barn. I have mixed feelings about this book: it is pretty and there's nice visual metaphors about the mindset it takes to endure and the ultimate message, that people have to be kind in the face of tyranny, are all well and good. But it is so sanitized. There's no sense of suffering when it comes to the girl being hid: no dirt, no hygiene problems, only a tiny bit of discomfort when she's cold in the winter and hot in the summer. And I think that kids could handle a little bit more of that in order to understand the gravity of the history. I know this isn't the same audience as "Maus" but I still think that the avoidance of the ugly in this book is problematic.
29. Apeirogon by Colum McCann
This is a breathtaking book. 500 sections to lead you to the middle where the words of the two men who inspired the story rest and then 500 sections for you to go back out in the world, but changed by the experience. Like all of McCann's works, it is hard to summarize because it is about so many things and he lays down a thread (say, an aside about the migratory habit of a particular species of bird) and you don't know what it's doing in the middle of this story about violence and loss and grief and the power of stories and a craving for decency. But then, the bird swoops in again and punctuates a moment a hundred pages after it was first mentioned, and you feel your gaze drawn up to the sky, and then you are pulled back down to the deaths of the two daughters again. It sounds like it would be hell to read, but it's not. It's wildly hopeful and painful and beautiful at the same time. It is not a book that I was able to read quickly: this book took me months to finish. But it is so non-linear and exquisite that it was like getting to know a favorite sculpture. One day, you look at it in the morning and from one angle, the next day you only spend a few minutes at high noon and see it from behind, and the next you come at dusk and circle it and give it all your attention for hours. I will never forget it.
30. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
There are some authors that have earned my trust and Louise Erdrich is one of them. Her deeply compassionate attitude towards both her characters and her readers helps me to know that scenes of suffering and abuse are not gratuitous. There are plenty of upsetting events--both against individuals and against an entire people--that happen in this novel, which is based on her Grandfather's work in the 1950s that preserved her tribe. But the story is presented with such grace and balance and beauty that learning about injustices of the past never feels like work: it feels like a privilege to be able to understand the events in a way that a fictional story can sometimes do better than a factual list of statistics and events. I don't know if Erdrich will follow and include some of these characters in future books, as she has often has recurring characters in her other novels, but I'd love to see more of Patrice and Millie and Wood Mountain.
31. Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore
Brutal but lyrical story set in West Texas in the 1960s and 70s. It's a beautifully written novel about a place that is far from beautiful. If you can make it through the first chapter, which features a brutal rape, then you can make it through the book. The rest of the book uses the events in the first chapter as a way to probe the connections between the women and girls of the town, from an 11 year old girl, abandoned by her mother, who decides her summer project is to rescue a homeless Vietnam Vet, to an acerbic retired teacher who is falling apart after her husband died of brain cancer, to the young mother who came to the aid of the raped girl and is trying to hold it together in the face of harassment and hostility. The characters are artfully drawn and the links and connections build and intertwine. It's not an easy book, but it is an excellent one.
32. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Printed below the title, on the cover of the American edition of the book, is the phrase "A Novel of the Plague" and I would say this is a little misleading (it does not appear to be on the cover of the British edition).This exquisite book contains a death from plague, but the novel is the story of a woman, and her existence, so woven with the natural world, is a thing of great beauty. "A Novel of the Plague" seems to me to be a marketing effort to appeal to people who are put off by the name "Shakespeare," which is never uttered in the book, nor is William or Will, ever named. He's Agnes' husband; Susanna and Judith and Hamnet's father; he's Mary's eldest son. The only minor misstep I found in this amazing book was the chapter that traced the passage of the flea that carried the plague to Stratford. It was well-written and cinematic and probably very educational for people with no prior knowledge of how the plague was spread. But it felt like a Tudor-era insert of a scene from the film "Contagion" and was included both to justify the phrase printed on the cover and to emphasize that while this is mostly a small story about one family in a town in rural England, even such an isolated place is connected to the wider world. I understand why it was included, and there's no fault in the crafting of it, but it pulled me out of the incredible intimacy that O'Farrell has shared with her readers and I simply think the rest of the book doesn't need it. While not a winning marketing phrase, this is "A Novel of Relationships" both between people and between people and the natural world. Nature is so vivid and lush and bountiful and dangerous in this book and O'Farrell brings it alive with such lyrical, beautiful prose that it casts a spell. It makes you want to run outside and crush leaves between your fingers and inhale the smell, and rummage around in the woods for treasures, and pay attention to what the wild animals around you are doing. And the sensitivity to the relationships between people is so beautifully rendered: from the rage a teenage Tudor girl would feel toward her stupid family, to the love and attraction between a man and woman, to the mysterious connections between twins, to the overwhelming power of a parent's love which is the most vividly explored of all, this is a book that never hits a wrong note when it comes to exploring how people need and love and fail and nurture and neglect other people. It is simply a stunning work of imagination and, despite being centered around a desperately sad event, I found the book to be strongly affirming of the richness of life. For people who love Shakespeare, it is also an intriguingly creative way of showing, rather than telling, how Shakespeare may have been inspired to write his most famous play. While it is only referenced near the end of the book, I couldn't stop thinking throughout the novel of Hamlet's soliloquy that contains the lines "The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" Ultimately, O'Farrell shares the credit of the creation of the play with the wisdom he gained by being married to Agnes, by being the son of Mary and John, by being the father of Hamnet. Like I said, it is a novel of relationships, and an amazing one at that.
33. The Truth by Terry Pratchett
A lovely witty detour into Ankh-Morpork while on vacation. This book covers the birth of newspapers and the press. While often hilarious and ridiculous, it has lots of wisdom about power and politics that is extremely relevant these days.
34. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
I haven't seen the tv series which this book seems to be in dialog with, taking as a given that "Baby Nicole" is living under a fake name in Canada and that Offred made it too and is living life as an agent of the underground (not with her baby). The whole novel is about the undermining of Gilead through the actions of three character: Nicole, her half-sister (the baby that Offred and Luke tried to escape with) who was raised by a Gilead power-couple, and Aunt Lydia, who is also an agent of the underground. It's a fast-paced book, not moody and contemplative like my favorite of Atwood's books (Alias Grace, Year of the Flood), though still entertaining. Normally reading about a fundamentalist theocracy would not be something I'd call entertaining because of our reality when there are incessant attempts to restrict our freedom and push us towards this model. But since the book is about the crumbling of Gilead and the elaborate process of undermining those in power, it manages to be less upsetting than I thought it would be. There are moments of Atwood's trademark insights, the statements that lacerate as you read them, exposing the raw, painful truth about what flawed creature humans are under our rituals of behavior and manners. Most of these come via the voice of Aunt Lydia and fleshing out her back-story as a pre-Gilead judge makes a lot of sense in transforming her from the monster who enforces oppression to the person who crafted a system of safe spaces in a monstrous regime and who is working ultimately for revenge. But most of the book is taken up with the action--moving from plot point to plot point to show (sometimes a bit implausibly) how the power was undermined.
35. Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
I pretty much always have a Terry Pratchett book to turn to since they are my comfort read. That said, this one isn't the greatest. I love spending time with Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg but the plot felt a little sloggy and there were too many fat jokes and it didn't help me escape reality as well as many other Pratchett books. Still head and shoulders above many other escapist reads, but not one I'd suggest anyone start with if they need to be convinced of the value of Discworld.
36. Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
This one is a love letter to Nanny Ogg in all her bawdy, grounded version of witching. It's fun to go back and revisit the development of the characters that are in a more fully realized form later in the series (the Tiffany Aching books).
37. 1919: poems by Eve L. Ewing
My favorite kind of poetry book: one that links together poems to tell a story. This one is about the 1919 Chicago Race Riots and brings history to life in a way that makes it vivid and unforgettable. It reminded me a bit of one of my favorite books like this, Michael Ondaatje's book of poems about jazz musician Buddy Bolden, Coming Through Slaughter. Lyrical, beautiful and important.
38. Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
I re-listened to the audio book and it is as wonderful as ever; such great storytelling (and a line that I'm pretty sure that JK Rowling stole and put in Dumbledore's mouth.)
39. Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
Not one of my favorites and not a Discworld book I'd read again. Amusing in moments, but it lacked a central message so just felt like scene after scene.
40. Winter by Ali Smith
Re-reading this because I started Summer and realized that I'd enjoy it more if I remembered more of Arthur's story. It is a lovely book about messy families and I'm glad to have refreshed my memory before diving into Summer. And it got me to download Cymbeline which I've never read properly so there's that to look forward to in the realm of literary discovery.
41. A Better Man by Louise Penny
Every so often I try to get on the Louise Penny bandwagon and read one of her mysteries and damn it, it just doesn't work. They just bug the crap out of me and I am baffled by the popularity. So, I read another one and kept hoping that it would reveal the mystery of its popularity and came away with yet another shrug. I still don't get it.
42. Summer by Ali Smith
Any book by Ali Smith is way better than most books out there, but this is my least favorite of the season quartet, mostly because it doesn't stand on its own. The other three books had links and connections, but this one is more of a "tidying up" book, bringing back characters from the other books and connecting them in what felt like too convenient ways. And (SPOILERS) in making Art into Daniel's son and then having him fall in love with Elizabeth so that he (unknowingly) ends up caring for his absent father, it just felt too tidy, particularly when the book is looking at the current societal chaos: the UK may be careening towards the abyss with Brexit combined with the COVID-19 crisis, but we don't have to worry about the characters we have grown to care about. They are all tidied up . The two siblings who are introduced at the beginning are wonderful and I wanted a whole book about them: I don't think I've ever read such a perfect capture of the push-pull, love-hate complexity that the sibling relationship can contain. But after the opening scenes, they just pop in occasionally. It also saddened me that the invisible people--the undocumented immigrants held in perpetual prison--from Spring were hardly remembered in this book. Compared to the treatment of the characters from Autumn and Winter, they remained as peripheral as they are to society and were only brought in in the final pages for a feel-good moment (another too convenient connection that made me feel like Smith was just trying to figure out how to leave this project.)
43. The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths
The second in a series. Good, solid, entertaining: what I wanted right now in a mystery novel. I'm glad the author brought back Cathbad, the druid, and hope he continues to appear in the future books of the series.
44. Network Effect by Martha Wells
Oh I needed this: a full-length (rather than novella) Murderbot novel to whisk me away from current crises! This book was a wonderful development of the character and its humans and friends. Prickly and loyal and deeply snarky Murderbot is a character that I suspect the author loves as much as I do.
45. The House at Sea's End by Elly Griffiths
Decent enough mystery, did its job to distract me from the news, though the murderer seemed kind of dropped in at the end of story and wasn't very compelling or interesting.
46. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
I remember when this came out in the late '80s and I intended to read it. Obviously it slipped through the cracks and I'm only getting to it now. I found it a surprisingly lovely meditation on loneliness and connection. Some of it hasn't aged well, particularly the language and references to one of the trans characters; I do think including being trans as a facet of a character in the year it was written, rather than the reason for the character's existence, was pretty progressive for the time. There was wistfulness in the story and longing and meditations on life and meaning, all condensed into a pretty tight plot.
47. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
What a lovely surprise: I assumed that this would be a fairly straightforward Pratchett parody but instead it was a wild and lovely twisting tale. On a narrative level, there were so many different plot lines to follow and the fact that he pulled them all together into one story is impressive. The fact that each was also enjoyable in a different, unique way was amazing. I loved the pairing of Death and his servant Albert and their attempts to fill in for the Hogfather: ridiculous and tender and so revealing of what makes humans interesting, all at the same time. Susan's craving for normality battling with her super-powers (as Death's granddaughter) that are necessary to save the world, while also being a sensible, tender and fierce governess to two little children, was also a fantastic plotline. The ridiculousness of the Wizard's at the Unseen University making a mess of everything, while also bumbling through a meditation on belief, was both hilarious and thought provoking. And then all the familiar minor characters who make an appearance and further the richness of the story, like Foul Ole Ron and his band of beggars, and a gang of thieves who somehow share a moral compass, though not one that anyone could easily define.
Amidst all this amazingly intricate storytelling, there was also some seriously beautiful language: I loved this description of a winter landscape: "They lurched down through the freezing woods, the snow glowing orange in the risen sun. Cold blue gloom lurked in hollows like little cups of winter." I mean, "little cups of winter"? How can you not love a book that includes treats like that nestled into a story that keeps you turning pages?
48. The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
I really wanted to love this historical fiction: I wanted to sink into its 560 pages. And I did for about half of them. The story is split between the 17th C, following a Jewish woman who scribes for a blind Rabbi and develops her own intellectual, questing philosophy, and the 21st C, in which two scholars at an un-named London university find her papers in the walls of a house and start to piece together the clues of her existence. The 17th C story is compelling and beautifully written and the characters are complicated and the relationships are rich (particularly the one between the scribe and the rabbi). But the 21st C characters are, sadly, not. They are thin and uncompelling and tedious and serve almost entirely as a device to reveal information about the 17th C storyline. I struggled with their sections (the tales of academic pettiness really aren't on the same level as those about surviving plague in London) and thought about giving up on the book, but then decided that once I had recognized that the 21st C parts weren't suddenly going to turn a corner and become the equal to the 17th C sections, that I could just speed read them, to glean the information that the two scholars uncover about the 17th C woman and then get back to her story. It's frustrating to have enjoyed and want to recommend half a book, but there it is.
49. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
A re-read but this time the audio-book version which is excellent. I wanted to check in w/the story before deciding whether it'll be a holiday gift for the geeks in my life. Answer: yes!
50. The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman
I listened to the Audiobook (full-cast, excellent production) of this short story which intertwines the stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.
51. Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
I listened to the audio book for this and it was one of the best performances of a serious book that I can remember (comic novels are a different category and I apply different criteria). Juliet Stevenson gives an inspired reading of so many different voices and it warms and fills out this novel. I also appreciated the book itself which focuses on the power of stories and what happens when people tell stories: true stories, stories they want to be true, falsehoods with malicious intent and falsehoods that are fictions to understand something unexplainable. It may be a little bit sentimental, but I enjoyed the gentleness of the narrative and was happy to have spent 16+ hours listening to it.
52. A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths
Entertaining enough mystery, boosted by the prominent role of Cathbad, who is by far my favorite character in this series. I was relieved that the author decided that putting Ruth in peril in every book was getting a little tired and so put other characters in jeopardy this time.
53. The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow
As someone who has studied Austen seriously, I'm probably the wrong audience for this book. Maybe for someone with a passing knowledge of Austen (or maybe someone who has just has seen one of the P&P movies/tv series?) this might be more warmly received. I found the amount of "lifted" Austen to be pretty disturbing: scenes that took place between Lady Catherine and Elizabeth in P&P are lifted word for word into a scene between Caroline Bingley and Mary. Did the author really think that no one would notice? It's one thing to replay a P&P scene from Mary's point of view (such as the memorable family dinner with Mr. Collins) and to include Austen's dialog because Mary is hearing it, but it's another thing entirely to just take and transpose what Austen wrote and claim it as your own. There are also bits lifted from Persuasion (when Mary, like Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, is convinced that Mr. Sparrow is beneath her) and Sense and Sensibility (all the stuff about Feeling vs Intellect that takes place in the Lake District, with a little elementary inclusion of the late 18th/early 19th C. interest in the Sublime.)
Characters that Austen rendered with some subtlety are here turned into caricatures. While it's clear that Austen thinks that Mrs. Bennet is shallow, she still shows her affection for her family and how she's trapped in a system where women are dependent and mostly powerless. In this book, the character is monstrously vain and emotionally abusive. Even Charlotte Lucas is rendered unsympathetic. The only character who comes off marginally better in this book than in P&P was Mr. Collins. While I wouldn't say his back story is compelling (a remote father stunted his emotional development), it was a relief to see the author paint one character with a fine brush.
54. A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas
This was a clever and engaging mystery. There's a tight plot, nicely drawn characters and few historical goofs (still don't see why an editor wouldn't catch that upper-class characters wouldn't use the slang term "quid" for pound, but these gripes were minimal and not too distracting.) It took a while for me to keep track of all the Lord this's and Lady that's and how they were related but that's on me, not the author. I'll definitely be reading the next book in the series.
55. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
A terrific graphic memoir about the struggle to assert a non-binary identity in a primarily binary world. It does what the best memoirs do: allows the reader to understand another person's perspective and struggles, confusion and moments of lucid clarity.
56. A Conspiracy in Belgravia by Sherry Thomas
This time I tried the audio book and it was decently read. This book is made for puzzle lovers with lots of discussion of the mechanics of particular types of ciphers. I am (sadly) not one of those people so those parts missed the mark for me. I did still enjoy the development of the mystery and the intricate plot. I became a little tired of the incessant "nibbling of muffins" that is repeated whenever Charlotte sits down to tea but that's a small gripe for a book that served the purpose of distracting me from reality.
57. The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas
A decent continuation of the series with one glaring exception: the decision to consummate the relationship between Charlotte and Lord Ashton meant that the book lurched from an involved mystery into a schlocky romance and took liberties with its characters to do so. Charlotte goes from one scene in which she explains how she counts in order to tolerate the hugs her sister wants to give her, to being a little vixen in bed asking if they have time to "do it again" before their pressing duties to solve the damn mystery. Later, the author backpedals and says that becoming lovers was necessary to trick the person who was threatening Lord Ashton--they had to really do it because otherwise he might not believe their act and he'd know that they are on to him!--which rings a little false when you realize that Charlotte has been crossdressing for much of the book with no one the wiser.
58. Death of a Maid by M.C. Beaton
A lovely little mystery with (yay!) plenty more episodes to come. I listened to the audio book which is read by one of the best audio book readers ever, Graham Malcom. He adds so much compassion and humor and wry wit to lines that may or may not contain them naturally. This is just what I want from a mystery: distraction, immersion (which leads to drinking countless cups of tea to match all the references in the text) and escape.