The Next Dark Age

Book 68 – 60 Book Challenge 2013, Book 2 – The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge

This was chick lit, but decent chick lit.  A dozen women gather each year for a Christmas Cookie exchange and the founder of the tradition is our narrator.    For each character, we get a backstory and a cookie recipe and then our narrator sketches out a short history of one of the ingredients (vanilla, sugar, etc.)

I finished the book a few days ago, but the interweaved histories are already fading from memory.  It was a lot of people to follow, so there wasn’t much depth.  The interpersonal tensions were not so tense that there was any doubt as to the outcome.

But there was a bunch of Christmas Spirit.

  Book 67 of 60 Book Challenge, Book 1 of The Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge

A Very Special Christmas Novel in the middle of a series about His Majesty’s Spies or something in Regency England.  Jane Austen herself makes an appearance (for no good reason that I can see).  Secret messages were hidden in pudding and a noc list of some sort has disappeared.  The baddies seem to think our heroine, a new young schoolteacher, has it.

This was heavier on the romance and lighter on the mystery than I had hoped, but our hero was the most charming thing.  And I really dig the idea of a full twelve days of Christmas holiday in the countryside.

Books 61 – 63 – The Glamourist Histories, by Mary Robinette Kowal

The idea is “Jane Austen in a world where Magic exists”.  So I’m in.  The magic is called “Glamour” and is primarily used for art.  But there are other uses and I expect they will develop with the world of the novels as they progress.  Our heroine Jane is , of course, a rather plain near-spinster who is a very talented glamourist.  Enter the curmudgeon who is equally as talented.  Stir and bake.  After the first book, I wrote on Goodreads that the homage to Jane Austen was a bit thick.  But the hero and heroine marry and then there is a sequel!  And another!  They even get a bit dark with some mystery and intrigue.  So the narrative grows past Jane Austen.  Unfortunately, the publisher has decided to make each book cover more bodice-ripping than the last.  I was embarrassed to be walking around with that third one and the fourth looks like the trend shall continue.  A fabulous series nonetheless and the first time since I started seriously using the library again that I thought, “Damn.  I sorta want a copy of that”.

Books 64-65 – Two Hercule Poirot Novels, by Agatha Christie

I do love Poirot.  However, Murder in Mesopotamia was narrated by an incredibly annoying character and it took away from the charm.  The mystery was pretty decent, though.  I guessed the solution to Death on the Nile although to be fair, that’s probably because it has been rehashed about a hundred times in random TV shows.  But the actor that does Poirot with the BBC did the reading and that made it even more charming.

Book 66 – First Family: Abigail and John Adams, by Joseph Ellis

So.  Dude who did the fantastic Founding Brothers, and a biography of Jefferson (haven’t read it yet) writes about the partnership of John and Abigail.  It was gratifying to know that Ellis also seems to think that Jefferson was a two-faced..nevermind.  But otherwise, I found this rather less thrilling than I imagined.  I gave it three stars on Goodreads and wrote: “There wasn’t a whole lot here that I hadn’t heard before, but the angle was interesting. It spent much more text on the time the Adamses spent apart than the later years (like in the White House) that they spent together – because the primary source was the letters they wrote to each other.“

Now where was I?  Ah.  New York.

Book 54 – New York, by Edward Rutherfurd

A fictionalized history of the city of New York, following several families from the time of the Dutch settlement through 9/11.  It was epic.  There were several historical events of which I was not entirely aware – like how absolutely hideous the riots of 1864 were.  (Then I saw it again on Copper.)  It tended to breeze through some parts and  go into great detail in others, but I was ok with that.  I am going to read every single thing this guy has done.  But it will be very slow going.

Book 55 – We Never Make Mistakes: Two Short Novels, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The “we never make mistakes” is the end of a story of a guy on duty at a train station calling in for backup because he thinks that a man claiming to be a lost soldier might actually be a baddie.  By the time the backup arrives to take the soldier away, our hero isn’t so sure.  And I just gave away the entire story.  Sorry about that.  It was a short story!  But Solzhenitsyn was very good at finding the hearts of the honest among his countrymen and while I can’t say I actually enjoy this stuff, I really appreciate it.

Book 56 – A Theft, by Saul Bellow

A rather convoluted short novel about a woman, her necklace, her nanny and their lovers. And insurance fraud.  It wasn’t fabulous, but I needed somewhere to start with Bellow and this was easy.

Book 57 – William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, by Ian Doescher

This is the most charming thing ever and why isn’t is already on stage?  If there is a Kickstarter, I am so in.

Book 58 – Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates

OK, fine.  I hadn’t heard of it until Kate and Leo did the film.  At least I read it before seeing the Kate and Leo film.  Seriously.  Because I don’t want to see Kate and Leo do this shit.  This story was alarming and depressing at the same time.

Book 59 – Another Deborah Knott book, by Margaret Maron

You know the author has run out of ideas when she brings international espionage to the small town mysteries.  And yet I keep reading.

Book 60 – The Widows of Eastwick, by John Updike

This sequel didn’t suck.  Besides reuniting our heroines, it was a tale of consequences and redemption.  Not exactly a page turner, but the theme played out well.

OK, almost there.

Books 44 – 46 – Flavia de Luce books by Alan Bradley

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a book my mother read a couple of years ago.  She recommended it highly and a copy is in my house.  Then I saw it was available as an audio download from the library.  Flavia is an 11-year-old girl in England.  Her mother has died, her father is rather broken and her two older sisters are completely horrid.  Flavia is a scientist with an actual laboratory in the house.  And she solves mysteries.

The audio narrative is good, the mysteries don’t suck and Flavia is charming.  So I read two more in the series.  By the second book, the mystery was still pretty good but the sibling rivalry with her sisters had run thin so I hope it peters out in the next couple of books.  And Flavia vs. the police department is at least funny, if not entirely believable.

Book 47 – The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

This was a pick for my book club, and I really enjoyed it.  Oscar is nerd.  Lives in New York with his mother, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, and sister.  There is a multiple point of view thing going on, even as the narrator is a semi-interested outsider.  I remember three things that we talked about: first that there are plenty of times that Spanish phraseology crept into the text.  I understood enough to appreciate them, but not everyone in the group felt the same.  Second: Oscar’s mother seems like a horrible, horrible person for most of the book, until you reach the piece from her perspective.  I had wished that perspective came earlier in the book, but I concede that might’ve wrecked the effect.  Third:  between this and The Time of the Butterflies, the DR seems like a really frightening place.

I’ll be looking for this author again.

Books 48 and 49 – Those first two Gillian Flynn books

I am not sure if Gillian Flynn is so wildly popular everywhere, or if Chicago has embraced a native author, but people are rabid over her stuff.  Dark Places and Sharp Objects were packaged as a two-in-one for download from the library, so I went for it.

Dark Places is right.  The plot involved a young woman whose brother had been convicted, partially on her testimony, of murdering her mother and two sisters when she was…five or so.  Twenty five years later (and still convinced that he did it) she is short of cash and accepts “assignments” from a cultish sort of group looking for evidence to exonerate him.  The solution was..odd, but good enough and the ride was great.

Sharp Objects had me going for awhile.  And mad about it, too.  Two young girls have gone missing in the heroine’s hometown.  As she is a reporter, she is sent to cover it.  Oh, and her sister died when she was young, she has a very young half sister and had a cutting problem so bad that there are words carved into every inch of her body.  The solution seemed terribly obvious, but there was just enough of an even more sick twist at the end.

Interesting (to me) note:  When I first rated these on GoodReads, I had Sharp Objects at four stars and Dark Places at three.  With the passage of time, however, Dark Places seems like it was the better book.

Book 50 – Alice I Have Been, by Melanie Benjamin

A sort of historical fiction from the point of view of the girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland.  Apparently the story was taken from a whole lot of gossip about Lewis Carroll.  It was engaging at the time, but I am already over it.

Book 51 – The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach

A lady recommended this to me at a Project Linus gathering, and it was available in audio from the library.  It is mostly a coming of age novel, masquerading as a baseball novel.  It was a slow burn but the tension built to the point that I had to quit the audio because the narrator was too slow and I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I checked out a hard copy to finish it.

Without giving anything away, one thing I remember is rooting for every. single. character. to get what he or she wanted.  I loved that.

Book 52 – I Suck at Girls, by Justin Halpern

The Sh*t My Dad Says guy writes a book that is exactly what the title says.  I don’t remember the exact exchange, but there was one where I was listening and walking down the street and laughing out loud like a crazy person.  I an not-able-to-breathe way.  And I played it over and over again.

Book 53 – One more Deborah Knott book, by Margaret Maron

It was called Three Day Town.  You know you are running out of ideas when you have your characters from one series meeting the characters from your other series.  But it was fun.

OK, I am tired of this already.  I think I have about a dozen more to go.  Later.

Book 37 – City Boy, by Herman Wouk

Was meant as a sort of Tom Sawyer for urban kids.  Herbie Bookbinder is the chubby, smart, teacher’s pet of a kid.  Aged..11ish, living in the Bronx in the 1920’s.  The story goes from the end of the school year through a summer at overnight camp.  The adventures are rather far-fetched, but  suppose that was also true of Tom Sawyer.  It was a pleasant enough read.

Book 38 – Little Bee, by Chris Cleave

The book that doesn’t want you to know what it is about before you start reading.  A couple and their young son are on a vacation in Africa – trying to save their marriage –  when something really bad happens.  Told alternatively from the point of view of the wife and the teenaged girl that was also caught in the really bad.  So we have First World Problems colliding with actual Third World Problems and the choices that people make.  Sometimes it was a bit much.  For example, what kind of lunatic would go back to the scene of the really bad thing?  But I was so caught in the tension that I stopped the audio book and picked up my real copy so I could read faster.  That always says something.

Book 39 – The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

I heard somewhere that this was supposed to be a sort of Harry Potter for an older crowd.

Well.  The characters are in college.  Our hero is never entirely convinced of his own talent, and so neither was I.  The twist was another world..sort of like Narnia.  A series of children’s fantasy novels that happened to exist.  It was an interesting premise, but it seemed to take forever to get there.  It felt like..the Origin Novel and the first adventure were crammed into the same book.  I liked it, but it took an awful lot of investment.

Book 40 – Revolutionary Characters, by Gordon Wood

I am pretty sure I heard of this book during that Academic Earth course on the American Revolution.  The subtitle was, “What made the Founding Fathers different?”  The answer, if I remember correctly, was that they did such a good job of creating an egalitarian republic of merit or whatever that they ensured another Revolutionary Generation would never happen again.  The “Revolutionaries” being the very small, very elite and hyper-educated ruling class.  Obviously, we could argue this one.

It is written in a series of profiles of the usual suspects, and includes Thomas Paine and Aaron Burr, which I particularly enjoyed.

Book 41 – The Marriage Plot – A Novel, by Jeffrey Eugenides

Dude that wrote Middlesex.  The title comes from the study of 18th century English novels that our heroine takes on in college.  I remember thinking, while reading, that I must be over the college-age novel because I didn’t love this or The Magicians or I am Charlotte Simmons, which were so popular with the book club types.  I give this one some points for portraying bi-polar disorder  in (what I understand to be) a realistic way.  That is by far the best reason to read this book.

Book 42 – Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West, by Dorothy Wickenden

The author wrote a charming history of her grandmother – a New York society girl of the 1910s – who went to Colorado with her best friend to teach rural kids in a two room schoolhouse.

It was my souvenir book from Jackson Hole.  I found it in Local section of the little book shop on the town square, so I just pretended that it took place in Wyoming.

Book 43 – In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, by Erik Larson

The family is that of Ambassador Dodd, an academic that really just wants to write his book on the Old South or whatever but took the assignment anyway.   I really liked the side stories of the people whose paths crossed the Dodds, but the Dodds themselves were tiresome at best and downright unlikable at worst.  So I felt like I was slogging through what I thought would be a page-turner.  However, Larson sets the scene of tension increasing to terror extremely well, which makes the book worth reading.