InfoQuest's ROOT attempt

Greetings to one and all! This is my first time trying this particular challenge, and I'm setting myself a rather lofty goal of 75 books. I'd like to say that'd be a significant portion of my own TBR shelves. It isn't. I've been an inveterate library book sale and thrift store aficionado for about a decade now, so the percentage of unread books on my shelves is rather high, and on top of that, I work at the library checking in books and so always find myself reading newly borrowed materials instead of my own. So, rather than limit my purchases or borrowings, I'll just increase my reading! Or something . . .

Okay, the "rules":
--Five of these 75 should be 500+ pages (either longer works or omnibus/anthologies).

--The rest are totally up to whim or randomness (dice, LT's randomizer, or whatever).
--Reviews are good, but not required (I'm already planning to blog at least once a week, so while I may cross-post, the rest may just be mentioned or discussed casually).
--All of these books should be already on my shelves as of today, January 1st (I know I'll buy more and probably read some, but they don't count).
--Fun must be had (no parenthetical comment here)!

Well, here goes!

1. Thirteen Detectives by G. K. Chesterton (4 January)
2. The Knight by Gene Wolfe (5 January)
3. Love Among the Particles by Norman Lock (5 January)
4. The Wizard by Gene Wolfe (7 January)
5. The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde (8 January)
6. A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson (9 January)
7. The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold (10 January)
8. The X Factor by Andre Norton (13 January)
9. Proxy by Alex London (15 January)
10. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (21 January) 720 pages!
11. 20,000 leagues under the sea; or, David Copperfield by Robert Benchley (23 January)
12. The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard by Arthur Conan Doyle (25 January)
13. The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini (29 January)
14. Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver (30 January)
15. I Will Repay by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (2 February)
16. Master of the World by Jules Verne (15 February)
17. You'll Like It Here (Everybody Does) by Ruth White (16 February)
18. Make Way for Lucia by E. F. Benson (16 February) 913 pages!
19. Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht (18 February)
20. 13690559::Kinslayer by Jay Kristoff (18 February)
21. 707308::The Story of the World, Volume One by Susan Wise Bauer (19 February)
22. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (22 February)
23. Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson (5 March)
24. Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis (10 March)
25. A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren (21 March)
26. Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard (2 April)
27. The Man Who Robbed the Robber Barons by Andy Logan (4 April)
28. Brendan by Frederick Buechner (21 April)
29. Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers (23 April)
30. Brain Camp by Susan Kim (1 May)
31. Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson (2 May)
32. The Runaway King by Jennifer Nielsen (3 May)
33. The Proud Tower by Barbara W. Tuchman (4 May)
34. Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer (5 May)
35. Barking by Tom Holt (5 May)
36. Axis by Robert Charles Wilson (7 May)
37. Too Many Magicians by Randall Garrett (8 May)
38. The Spell of Mary Stewart: This Rough Magic, The Ivy Tree, and Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart (27 May) 701 pages!
39. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide by Douglas Adams (1 June) 815 pages!
40. Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage (1 June)
41. Montmorency on the Rocks by Eleanor Updale (7 June)
42. How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster (17 June)
43. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (4 July)
44. The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold (6 July)
45. Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold (7 July)
46. The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold (15 July)
47. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (22 July)
48. The Second Rumpole Omnibus by John Mortimer (10 August) 667 pages
49. 474177::Home is the Hunter by Helen MacInnes (11 August)
50. The Sphinx at Dawn by Madeleine L'Engle (11 August)
51. The Bloodied Ivy by Robert Goldsborough (13 August)
52. Death in Zanzibar by M. M. Kaye (8 September)
53. 10269000:: The White City by Elizabeth Bear (9 September)
54. Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer (13 September)
55. Lament by Maggie Stiefvater (17 September)
56. Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff (19 September)
57. Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain (23 September)
58. The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope (25 September)
59. The Old Age of El Magnifico by Doris Lessing (26 September)
60. The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson (5 October)
61. The Sunbird by Elizabeth Wein (9 October)
62. Beauty Will Save the World by Brian Zahnd (14 October)
63. The Lion Hunter by Elizabeth Wein (17 October)
64. The Empty Kingdom by Elizabeth Wein (17 October)
65. The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde (17 October)
66. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John LeCarre (18 October)
67. The Long War by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter (21 October)
68. The Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones (25 October)
69. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (6 November)
70. Montmorency's Revenge by Eleanor Updale (7 October)
71. Well Wished by Franny Billingsley (7 November)
72. April Lady by Georgette Heyer (8 November)
73. His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik (9 November)
74. The Golden Acorn by Catherine Cooper (16 November)
75. Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope (18 November)
76. Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik (27 November)
77. Black Powder War by Naomi Novik (27 November)
78. Whimsy and Soda by Matthew David Brozik (13 December)
79. A Rogue's Life by Wilkie Collins (15 December)
80. Howards End by E. M. Forster (28 December)
81. Federations edited by John Joseph Adams (29 December)
82. Pump Six and Other Stories by (December 31)

Edit (after about 2 weeks):

I've decided that, in order to prevent the likelihood of my putting off reading any new purchase until next year because they "don't count," I'm starting a second ticker and goal of reading at least 14% (like "2014"--get it? Yeah, well, 20% seemed too lofty...) of all new and unread acquisitions this year as well. That means that this second ticker will change in goal as well as accomplishment as the year progresses. This will hopefully also keep me aware of how many new books I've bought and received, without making me feel like I'm "limiting" or "depriving" myself.




1. A Stone for a Pillow by Madeleine L'Engle (21 January)
2. The Grand Babylon Hotel by Arnold Bennett (30 January)
3. Sold Into Egypt by Madeleine L'Engle (15 February)
4. A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz (20 March)
5. Genesis for Normal People by Peter Enns and Jared Byas (25 March)
6. Genesis of Grace: a Lenten Book of Days by John Indermark (19 April)
7. Ancient-Future Faith by Robert Webber (1 May)
8. The Shadow Throne by Jennifer Nielsen (5 May)
9. Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Trenches, Treaties, Mud, and Blood by Nathan Hale (14 May)
10. Letters from the Land of Cancer by Walter Wangerin (31 May)
11. Gilded by Christina Farley (6 June)
12. The Well's End by Seth Fishman (11 June)
13. The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns (19 June)
14. World of Trouble by Ben Winters (20 June)
15. Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer (22 June)
16. How to Make Your Cat an Internet Celebrity by Patricia Carlin (6 July)
17. Viminy Crowe's Comic Book by Marthe Jocelyn and Richard Scrimger (14 July)
18. Expiration Date by Tim Powers (19 July)
19. The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman (roughly 25 June) -- Yes, I forgot to add this one earlier...
20. Fatal Enquiry by Will Thomas (20 August)
21. The Accident by Chris Pavone (2 September)
22. The Gandalara Cycle by Randall Garrett & Vicki Ann Heydron (4 September)
23. The Birds of Pandemonium by Michele Raffin (26 September)
24. Prince of Fools by Mark Lawrence (8 October)
25. The Android's Dream by John Scalzi (15 October)
26. The Eye of Zoltar by Jasper Fforde (18 October)
27. Waverley by Sir Walter Scott (4 November)
28. Montmorency Returns by Eleanor Updale (7 November)
29. The Twyning by Terence Blacker (10 November)
30. Through History with J. Wesley Smith by Burt Shafer (22 November)
31. Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons (23 November)
32. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (24 November)
33. Artful by Peter David (29 November)
34. Nightbirds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken (29 November)
35. Murder in Ancient China by Robert van Gulik (7 December)
36. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute (9 December) audiobook ROOT
37. The Grand Tour by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (9 December)
38. The Mislaid Magician by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (10 December)
39. The Time Trap by Harry Kuttner (11 December)
40. Rumpole on Trial by John Mortimer (12 December)
41. The Mystery of the Hidden Room by Marion Harvey (14 December)
42.The Skies Discrowned and An Epitaph in Rust: The Complete Novels by Tim Powers (17 December)
43. Adelina Schlime : a snail tale by Tatjana Hauptmann (19 December)
44. The Spiritglass Charade by Colleen Gleason (20 December)
45. Asterix in Britain by Goscinny & Uderzo (21 December)
46. When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart (30 December)

Welcome to the group and happy reading!

Welcome InfoQuest. Enjoy your reading!

Welcome and good luck! Those library book sales are such fun but so dangerous for the TBR pile...

Happy New Year Info and good luck with your challenge.

Thanks very much for the welcomes! Yes, rabbitprincess, I feel exactly the same way. My favorite sales (and the worst by far) are the fixed price bag sales. I end up stuffing any book that sounds interesting into the bag, because, after all, it doesn't cost any more to add just one more book to the bag. =)

My first finished TBR of the new year is actually about three-quarters a reread: Thirteen Detectives is an anthology of short stories by G.K. Chesterton which I've mostly read in their own original collections, though I wasn't sure about that when I purchased it. It does, however, have a new introduction and three rare or not-otherwise-collected stories, so it's worth being added to my collection for that reason alone. Also, it's a pretty decent looking hardcover, where most of my Chesterton are Dover reprint paperbacks. Most of the stories are top-tier Chesterton mysteries, though a few of his more didactic were unfortunately included. I think my favorites of the included stories are "The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (which I've now learned was Jorge Luis Borges's favorite), "The Tremendous Adventure of Major Brown," and "The Bottomless Well"--all of which I've read before, alas. Of the new stories, my favorite was the slightly gimmicky Sherlockian pastiche "The White Pillars Murder," which was a little silly, but fun in its own way. Most of these stories show Chesterton at his paradoxical and colorful best, so all in all, it was a good first choice.

I've got a couple other half or more read books, but I think I'll start a new one anyway...

Congratulations on finishing your first book of the year!

I know just what you mean about the bag sales. But isn't it wonderful that we love books, as opposed to, say, airplanes? I mean, flight lovers never get to wander into a building only to have someone hand them a bag and say, "Please fill this with all the airplanes you can fit in it for just $2.00." Or, "Go ahead, you can stuff another biplane in there! We just have to box them back up if you don't take them."

So for us, it's sort of like having our fondest wishes presented to us as almost magical gifts. :)

Ha!! Indeed.

Merryann, that's a great--and hilarious--point! I feel ever so much better now about collecting books rather than planes or elephants or obelisks. =)

So far, so good. I've already read more than 5% of my goal, which means at my current (unlikely) rate, I could easily read 150 books I own, instead of just 75. We'll see how long this lasts...

I finally finished and reviewed Love Among the Particles, which was my Early Reviewers win from last April. As might be suspected from the really, really long time it took me to get around to reading the last half, I was not a fan of this short story collection, though it's mostly my fault, I think. Anyway, not a really fun reading experience.

I also read both parts of Gene Wolfe's The Wizard Knight and my blog post/review is here. For now, it's probably enough to say that I really loved it, despite a few quibbles I generally have about his work (and then end up overlooking anyway, which is why he's one of my "favorite authors" here on LT). It's very much a "your mileage may vary" book, I think, but it worked for me this past week.'

Most recently, I finished the latest installment in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, The Woman Who Died A Lot. While it did do well at giving greater depth of characterization than some earlier books and included a bit more serious SF speculation, I can't say it was quite as absurdly fun or funny as usual. Part of that was the aforementioned depth--when you're dealing with major identity and loss issues, it's hard to be off-the-wall without off-putting levels of flippancy. However, there wasn't quite as much zany inventiveness as I've come to expect from Fforde, so I felt a little deprived. That's not to say it wasn't worth reading by any means; I just wish I'd had slightly altered expectations.

Well, Christmas break is coming to an end this Monday, so I'd better get back to some more reading!

I've not started the Jasper Fforde books yet but they are in my mind as TBRs. Would you recommend starting with this one? I'd like to look forward to MORE funny as I keep reading them as opposed to less. Or does the reader really need to know the characters before getting to this book in your opinion?

You are doing a very good job of ROOTing, Info!

Merryann, I would suggest reading at least the Thursday Next series in order; while most of the books are pretty random, they do build on each other in a chronological order. The first one is The Eyre Affair, and it's pretty darn awesome, especially for book lovers. The rest of them do fluctuate a bit on the hilarity-ometer, but it's nothing like a steady decline in my view, and even the one I just read is still pretty funny, compared with "serious" books.

Connie, thanks for the encouragement. I'm hoping to build up enough of a buffer to insulate against later responsibilities, deadlines, and shiny library books. So far, so good...

Therefore, I've read two more, for good measure. A Company of Swans was one that the LT random "book of yours" picked for me. I'm not sure that I ever read any Ibbotson before this, though I've been intending to for a while and so have collected a handful or so. I don't think this one probably was a great first choice, though. Hopefully not, anyway. It's really a rather stereotypical romance: girl runs away from loveless home, proves to be marvelously talented/beautiful/whatever, meets and falls for readily reformable (and fabulously wealthy) rake, endures stupid relational barriers, is pursued by straight-laced relations, and gets the guy in the end. Whoop-dee-do. I guess there were some nice touches in dialogue and occasionally characterization (for instance, the undesired suitor isn't really all that bad of a guy, just not her type), but I'm not really into standard romance plots unless there's something else going for them, so this one did not go over well.

And while I knew previous books of this tetralogy also had heavy romance elements, I was pleased to find that The Sharing Knife: Horizon continued the previous book's emphasis on developing an intercultural community rather than dwelling as much on the details of the central romantic relationship (which is a tad bit icky to me, but whatever). I don't think this series/four-part novel is anywhere near as marvelous as Bujold's science fiction, but I'd known as much at the outset, so while I was never blown away by these books in any sense, I also never felt really let down. All in all, it's a solid fantasy with an interesting, if not fascinating world, and the characters seem fairly real, so I guess all's well that ends well.

Now I want to read something entirely different. I'm not sure what, at the moment, but preferably something with less mushy stuff. ;)

Great start into the reading year. Seems like you already built up kind of buffer if the next weeks aren't going so well.

I think sometimes that it must be a bit frustrating for Bujold to want to write books about other people when so many folks may just want more Vorkosigan, but I have to say I agree with your sentiments about Sharing Knife: Horizon. Whatever she writes, I'm going to immediately read, but so far nobody has 'clicked' for me like the Barrayar people. I'm open to it happening, though!

Tallulah, thanks for the encouragement! I'm hoping now to continue doing well and exceed the 75, but we'll see. =)

That's pretty likely, I agree, Merryann. Hopefully she doesn't end up like Doyle or Christie, though, and decide to kill her way out of a popular series!

The X Factor was kind of weird vintage science fiction, and while I guess I'm glad I can finally say I've read some of Andre Norton's work, it wasn't my ideal sort of space travel/planetary adventure thing. I "reviewed" it on my blog, but mostly the pacing was uneven and I didn't buy the whole telepathy thing the way I was supposed to, so it fell flat. I do want to try some more of her fiction later (and I think I own at least one more), but I'm not excessively eager.

Proxy was one of those dystopias that really hook you, which was nice. I was just going to start it last night before bed (bad idea, I know), and instead I stayed up to finish it. The twist at the end was a little much, though, and it got me thinking a little too critically of the novel as a whole. Unfortunately, it turns out that the novel is also one of those dystopias that really don't work all that clearly once you finish it, so while I mostly enjoyed the reading experience in the moment, in hindsight, I have rather more criticism than praise. I'm trying to piece together a review for that one, but I either sound excessively curmudgeonly or very blah, so I'll have to come back to it.

You are really doing great Rachel! Though it isn't how I normally read, I have 3 or 4 books going right now. I seem to get more actual reading done when I read one at a time except for a bedside book of poetry or short stories.
I attempted the Jasper Fforde Thursday Next series a few years back when I was still on the 75 book challenge. It was all the rage over there at the time but it just wasn't a good fit for me. I am happy that you are enjoying them though and they seem to be rated fairly high here on L.T.
Keep up the good work. You are inspiring us.

Thanks, Rainpebble! I know what you mean about multiple books going at once; I usually have one or maybe two "serious" reads, plus an audiobook and a book of short stories or something, but when I start more than that it gets hard to keep track and actually finish one... Fforde's not to everyone's taste, I know, though of course probably no author is, really.

I've finally finished Vanity Fair! Lots to think about with this one, but on the whole, I really very much enjoyed it. I'd heard Anthony Trollope was an admirer of Thackeray, and I had a copy of the latter's most famous novel, so that's why I picked it up. And I can see some of the similarities between the two Victorians, though the earlier writer is a bit more satirical, I think. That's not to say he doesn't create some real characters, because I surprised myself by actually caring about pretty much all of them, no matter how absurd they are. Of course, I've heard a lot about Becky Sharp/Rebecca Crawley as a "modern woman" trapped in the Regency era, but I wasn't prepared for her near-sociopathic tendencies; though she was a marvelous and in many ways likeable character, I felt just as much for her "victims" as for her, which made for strangely divided loyalties. The other women of the novel were quite varied, though, in their conventionality, and it was fascinating to see how Thackeray managed to skewer and yet provoke empathy for just about all of them. I shall have to think and say more about this novel in future, but for now, I'm very pleased. It was rather a long "slog," but I'll miss the people of Vanity Fair.

I've also nearly finished A Stone for a Pillow, which will be my first acquired-and-read in 2014 book. I may just update this post once I've finished it, likely later this afternoon, or I may post again some other day. We shall see!

In retrospect, January was a pretty nice month, as far as "progress" goes, and not too bad on the enjoyment front as well. Of the listed books finished last month, probably the two books of The Wizard Knight were the most enjoyable overall, but Vanity Fair was a close second, and I really enjoyed my mini-sequence of turn of the century/Edwardian adventure stories in the last couple days of the month. So, all in all, lovely times... I'll enumerate, though, briefly.

A Stone For a Pillow was pretty good, though it didn't feel quite as fresh as its predecessor, and there was quite a lot of repetitious and seemingly unnecessary circuity. I don't know whether it was the comparative lack of stories to comment on (Jacob's really only a couple of chapters, in comparison with all of primeval history and Abraham) or L'Engle's pet topics, but it got a little dull, sadly. I've started Sold into Egypt, after a short break, and thus far it seems rather more focused, which is good.

David Copperfield, or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was a collection of fairly forgettable short humorous pieces by Robert Benchley. The humor was often reliant on fads or otherwise dated material, but I think I'm moderately well versed in 1920s Americana to be at least familiar with much of it, so it wasn't the distance of the material, I don't think. I'm not sure if I'll keep this one around as a curio or just let it go. It's a toss up.

The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard was, on the other hand, remarkably fun. I often forget Doyle has a lighter side, and in this one, he really lets it shine. The Napoleonic hero tells the stories of his youthful adventures, in which he all to often finds himself in a scrape of his own making and fights his way out dashingly and absurdly. I almost felt sorry for the poor hero, once in a while, but he's so conceited and yet tries so hard to be noble that it's really quite silly. Some of the adventures are spine-tingling enough, but the fact that they're being told in retrospect makes them more set pieces than thrill-a-minute sorts. Regardless, I look forward to reading the first book (this is the second) of these adventures.

The Sea-Hawk was a bit sillier, in a rather bad way. Sabatini tends to lean that way, I think, given the few I've read. In any case, unfortunate Cornwall privateer Sir Oliver is accidentally framed for murder and then purposefully shanghaied into galley-slavery. Fighting his way to freedom and fortune as a Muslim corsair, he returns to England to avenge himself on his randomly villainous younger brother, and the cold-blooded warrior finds himself in a pickle after he incidentally kidnaps his former sweetheart along the way. There's plenty of exoticism going on here, what with the slave markets and "as Allah wills" and harem intrigue, and more than a bit of really weird character interactions. I was most puzzled by the younger-brother-as-villain, since he seems to have no reason to betray his brother other than narrative necessity; other characters make similarly inexplicable about-faces just to cause trouble for the main character (who himself seems really wishy-washy about love, religion, patriotism, family ties, and pretty much everything thing else most people hold pretty strong views on). It was still a pretty entertaining story of its type, but certainly nothing like realism.

The Grand Babylon Hotel tries for a bit more realism, but its secret tunnels and Balkan machinations and insanely wealthy Americans aren't really much more likely. Said implausibly wealthy American, Mr. Theodore Racksole, is vacationing in London, and when the cook at The Grand Babylon Hotel won't make the birthday dinner his daughter wants, he buys the hotel and gets his steak and beer. He also gets more than a little trouble, as princes and corpses start disappearing, and senior members of the staff start acting suspiciously. This book was written as a serial, and it does keep up the tension pretty well, though all in a light-hearted vein. There's a little romance, a little wit, a little danger--all the elements needed for a lovely frothy story. I'm a little surprised, actually, that no one seems to have made a fun little movie out of it or at least the general idea of it. Or perhaps there is one, and I've just not heard of it. Not unlikely. In any case, it was fun.

Liesl and Po was perhaps less fun, though likely on purpose. Dealing with loss and grief ought to be less fun, and the tone is pretty spot on for a children's novel. For whatever reason, this novel felt very like The Tale of Despereaux or something vaguely fairy tale-esque like that, which isn't at all a bad thing. Newly orphaned Liesl befriends Po the ghost-child, who aids her in her quest to bury her father's ashes near her mother's in a far-off village; meanwhile, Will the apothecary's orphaned assistant must flee when he accidentally delivers ashes instead of the promised Greatest Magic his master entrusted to him. I'm not sure the worldbuilding is especially logical, but for a mournful and yet ultimately optimistic fable of grief, it's quite poignant.

And that's all for now. In addition to the above mentioned L'Engle, I'm currently listening to Absalom, Absalom, which is fascinating (and the book version is on my shelf, so it counts), and working my way through Make Way for Lucia, which though exceedingly fun is quite long and will take a while at this rate...

I have the Make Way for Lucia on my TBR and can't wait to read it. I am hoping to get to it perhaps this summer when on holiday. But I won't be able to count it for my ROOT purposes as I purchased it just in January of 2013. But I will be looking forward to your comments and I like how you have done your mini-reviews in one post. That makes it really nice for those of us who come by to check out your thread at month's end.
Good job. Keep it up.

The Grand Babylon Hotel does sound like it would make a good movie, or maybe a miniseries! There is a movie coming out called The Grand Budapest Hotel, but it doesn't seem to have the same plot -- just a similar title.

What a great summary, Rachel! Real nice job.

Make Way for Lucia is indeed very good (as I'll mention a bit below), rainpebble--I hope you like it when you get the chance to read it!

I hadn't heard of that movie before you mentioned it, rabbitprincess, but I agree it doesn't sound similar. I wonder whether Wes Anderson meant the title similarity intentionally at all.

And thanks, connie53, for the encouragement!

I finally finished Make Way for Lucia the other day! And a couple other books, but that's the one I'm most excited about. Not that it was at all a bad reading experience--in fact, I'm a little sad there aren't any more Mapp & Lucia stories (by Benson, at least. It's just that it was a very large, very long tome, and although I was enjoying each episode, it seemed like I was making very little progress overall.

Basically, Mrs. Emmeline Lucas (known to one and all as Lucia) is an extremely energetic middle-aged woman who strives successfully to dominate every social sphere she enters and does so charmingly and exasperatingly. Miss Elizabeth Mapp has equally high goals for social domination, but her methods are different and rather less charming. Understandably, their rivalry (started in the fourth novel of the series, the third of which deals exclusively with Miss Mapp and the first two solely with Lucia) is both bitter and underhanded. Village life as portrayed in these books is pretty much a confirmation of my worst nightmares as a person with social anxiety--everyone is constantly minutely observing and judging everyone else, behaving both politely and rudely, but pretty much always quick to think the worst of each other. And yet it's marvelous fun and funny and satiric, like Thackeray on a smaller scale with more than a dash of screwball comedy or like Wodehouse, if the "terrible" aunts were his heroines and romance never entered the picture. It's really quite lovely, and I'll definitely return to these novels for comfort reading.

I've also finished a few shorter books with more mixed feelings. Sold into Egypt was indeed better than its predecessor and very nearly as good as the first book: I very much enjoyed the fictional monologues that ended each chapter from different character's perspectives. And L'Engle's own memoir-type element had more focus, as she was writing the book after her husband's death and chronicling her reactions to life without him. I suppose it doesn't help that I've always liked the story of Joseph, and I appreciate L'Engle's allowing him to be an existential character, where some other treatments have tried to shoehorn him into a Christ-figure role which is much less interesting and not very logical.

Master of the World was nothing like the best Verne ever (despite some essay I read a while back that more or less claimed as much). It felt like an abridged version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with all the fun parts and any effort at characterization removed, as both feature a mysterious and dangerous vessel commanded by a lone, implacable genius. But at least Captain Nemo feels like a character and by the end he has some sort of motive; "Robur the Conqueror" is pretty much just insane, and though he proclaims himself "master of the world," he doesn't seem to have all that much interest in doing anything but traveling around the United States as quickly as possible with no visible purpose. It was pretty boring and irritating.

I picked up You'll Like It Here (Everybody Does) without any clear sense of what it was about. It's one of the Battle of the Books novels around here, and the copies circulated at the library have no jacket description, just a mysterious quote from the book, so it piqued my interest enough to buy a discarded copy and try it out. Maybe it's partly my having just reread The Giver with my students and maybe it's partly my lingering dystopia burnout, but I really, really didn't like this book. It's middle grade fiction, so I know there's a different standard for logic and originality, but oh brother . . . I felt like I was reading a cheap knockoff of Lowry's classic with an entirely unnecessary bit of Twilight Zone (we also read a teleplay, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" for class recently) thrown in. A family of aliens (who are entirely ordinary humans except for technology advances and a random glowing blue streak in their hair) tries to find a safe alternate universe for themselves and wind up in a totalitarian "utopia" run by "the Fathers" (who we never meet and whose aims we never have any clear sense of) in which creativity and originality are rooted out by violent and chemical means. I could list all of the really annoying things--like the use of historical figures, the "retirement home" for people over 65, the Idiot Plot elements, and on and on--but it just annoys me to think about it any more. Not keeping this one and not sure why it ever was picked to be a Battle book . . .

The Lucia series sound really really interesting. How many books are out there already?

Could you explain what a Battle Book is?

Hi Tallulah Rose! As far as I can tell, E.F. Benson wrote six Lucia novels (which are collected in the larger volume I read) before his death in 1940, but it looks like Tom Holt and Guy Fraser-Sampson each wrote two novels using the characters and settings Benson created. I don't know whether theirs were "approved" by anyone or not, but I'll likely try Holt's books at some point, since I've enjoyed his humorous science fiction and fantasy novels.

As far as the Battle of the Books goes, I think the term can mean a couple different things, but the one around here seems to be a modified version of this program, a mixed book club/contest for upper elementary students. Our list has forty books, though, and each school selects a number of students to send to a district-wide competition. The library where I work buys extra copies and puts them all in a special shelving area to simplify things and highlight the books for interested students. It seems like a fun program, especially for kids who love to read. =)

Well, I sort of stopped reading my own books for a while there. But I'm back, however slightly and slowly! I did finally finish Absalom, Absalom! a while back and "loved" it, much as I have every other Faulkner I've tried thus far (which is just the famous ones). That's not to say it wasn't tremendously draining and frustrating emotionally and mentally, because of course it was, but there's just something about it that's very "satisfying" somehow. I tried starting to blog about it, but that pretty much put a temporary block on my ability to write anything reasonable, so maybe later...

I've also read a bit of non-fiction lying around. Okay, Mother Courage is only non-fiction because it's drama, but that sort of fits. I guess it might have been more of a feat if I'd read it in the original, but all I had was a translated paperback I picked up a while back because it was free. I'm sure there's a lot of scholarly discussion about what Brecht was doing with this play, politically and philosophically, because it felt like that sort of thing. But as a story, it was rather unsatisfying. Set during the Thirty Years' War, the drama follows "Mother Courage," a camp follower who peddles a variety of goods, and her three children, who each in their own way fall victim to the war that has supported them and their mother. It's not exactly uplifting, as one might expect.

The first volume of Susan Wise Bauer's Story of the World is quite fun for an elementary-aged history text. It's a little eclectic in format, as some parts are very Socratic/interactive in approach, others are presented as fictionalized vignettes, and still others in a more traditional textbook style. But on the whole it's engaging and would make a great central reader for homeschooling elementary history, supplemented of course with more colorful books (there are very few pictures and that mostly poor black and while reproductions or sketches). Mine may be an earlier edition, but the lack of nice pictures would be the only real drawback otherwise, I think. This one I had around because I found it for less than a dollar and was curious, as I'd heard good things about the author's work.

By now I should probably just admit it: I love Bill Bryson's popular history/science works, but I generally don't get all that interested in his "travel" books. Notes from a Small Island actually bored me. It seemed like an endless cycle of Bryson travelling through unpleasant weather to towns full of ugly architecture with nothing to do. Yes, there are interruptions of fascinating sight-seeing and a few intriguing anecdotes, but it's mostly pretty boring and feels a touch mean-spirited, even though I think it's not supposed to be, really. I got a very similar feeling from his The Lost Continent, only maybe he was a little grumpier in that one. Not a whole lot of fun in any case.

I reviewed Kinslayer here and on LT, so I don't have anything else to add. I really wanted to like it more than I did the first one, and for a while I thought I might. Then it got more and more disconcerting. I don't have a problem with dark fantasy in theory, but it helps if I'm in an unshakably optimistic mood, which doesn't come often. Plus, I just love eucatastrophe, and I rather doubt that's where Kristoff is headed.

Currently, I'm listening to C.S. Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms, which will be a ROOT for me. I'm also slowly approaching the finish line of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: I'm not sure if it's my reading comprehension skills or the translation, but some sentences really teeter on the brink of sense, which means I probably should stop trying to use it as bedtime reading . . .

Thanks for the explanation. Sounds like an interesting programme!
And congrats on all the reading you've done so far!

Well, the congratulations were a bit early, as I really only finished 4 ROOTs and 2 "bonus" ROOTs in March, but at least I've not fallen behind. Or off the face of the earth, despite appearances.

A Generous Orthodoxy was actually a really quick and enjoyable read. I appreciated McLaren's efforts towards nuancing the strange position I and many other (post/emerging/whatever)evangelicals find ourselves in. Despite how "shocking" I've heard this author could be, I really didn't see much startling stuff in here, and I more or less agreed with many of his ideas and critiques. Not that one has to agree to appreciate them, but it is always nice to feel camaraderie or something. And I look forward to sampling more of McLaren's writings in the future.

I picked up A Voyage Long and Strange at the library's perpetual book sale because I'd enjoyed Confederates in the Attic last year and had intended to read more by Horwitz anyway. As with the earlier book, I found myself fully engaged and intrigued by all the fascinating ideas he presented, but it was comparatively slow going nonetheless. Much of the "unknown" history of European exploration of the New World prior to the Pilgrims I'd encountered briefly in college or other works of nonfiction, but there was definitely a lot more detail and breadth in this book. As he did with the Civil War, Horwitz travels in wake of the history he retells, exploring how the events of the past still affect and influence today; as this history is often less well known and definitely further in the past, there's less of this than in the other book, but the influences and results were a little more surprising to me for that reason. All in all, this was a very neat book, and I'm glad to have a nice hardcover copy.

The only other book from my shelves that I managed to finish last month was Genesis for Normal People, which I finally ordered on Amazon to go along with my informal Genesis study. I'd only read Enns' blog and Telling God's Story, but both are pretty fascinating, so I was rather looking forward to this. As I hadn't bothered to look at the page count, I was a little surprised to find this a very slim volume, but it's still informative, if a little thinner on criticism than I'd expected. Honestly, with all this reading on Genesis lately (I've also borrowed Genesis for Everyone and am using Genesis of Grace as a Lenten devotional), details of what I read where and when are getting a little mixed up... so I'm getting a bit vague.

Oh yes, I also finally finished Fear and Trembling. I did give up for a while in the third section, before just deciding to sit down and finish it the other day. Unfortunately, while I did read the whole thing, I can't say whether I comprehended the whole thing. Like I said before, I'm really hoping it's the translation, because I actually skipped two pages near the end and didn't realize it for the whole page, because I was so used to having a hard time making sense of everything. It's really disconcerting. Not to mention that I was a little nonplussed by Kierkegaard's insistence on the individuality of faith; while I think I understand this is more a matter of philosophical distinction (not to mention the importance of individual devotion to and relationship with God), it still feels strained to me. But, of course, I probably only got about every other point, so who am I to say anything.

The Man Who Robbed the Robber Barons was another library sale find, this one during the infamous $3/bag sale. The title was definitely a draw, and the cover included a sketch that looked like Einstein crossed with Walt Whitman, which was also pretty compelling. And the contents proved equally fascinating. I love the serendipity of correlated non-fiction topics and it just so happened that I had just finished reading about New York newspapers in the 1830s (in the library-borrowed The Sun and the Moon) when I started this one, more or less randomly. And it deals with New York newspapers/journals at the turn of the century, and one of the earlier "antagonist" penny-paper editors (the irascible James Gordon Bennett, Sr.) appeared in this one! Ok, so it was just a brief mention, but still! (I'm also read/listening to The Proud Tower which touches on the same era and am keeping an eye and ear out for further overlaps.) Regardless, this story of a scheming, self-aggrandizing, yet oddly lovable scoundrel who used his celebrity journalism as a blackmail mill was pretty great.

Well, that's it so far. Hopefully my reading will pick up a little in April. Reading just nonfiction seemed like a good idea back in March, but I'm looking forward to some science fiction or mystery soon...

Happy Reading, Rachel. SF or mystery sounds real good! Just go for it.

>26 InfoQuest: "...cover included a sketch that looked like Einstein crossed with Walt Whitman..."

I looked. Yep. Lol!

It is quite a funny illustration, isn't it, Merryann? I suppose it must be a political cartoon, but I'm not sure. Thanks, connie53, for the good wishes. I did go for it, once Lent was over, but so far mostly library books...

Not sure why Brendan was my first fiction ROOT in a while, but that's how it turned out. I like Buechner's fiction in small doses--I tried reading The Book of Bebb once, and that was just too much in one sitting. But Brendan was just enough. He retells the legends surrounding the mariner-saint from the perspective of a lifelong best friend with a splendid mix of humorous disbelief and heartful awe. More often than not, Brendan's adventures turn out to be much less mystical than claimed, but every so often, there's something truly miraculous. The saint himself is a mysterious and yet very human figure, at once striving for holiness and abysmally overwhelmed by his personal failures. A fairly paradoxical work, really, but one that felt right in the end.

Dinner at Deviant's Palace was also pretty great. I just like Tim Powers more and more, I think. This is either my fourth or fifth--an ebook I bought when it was a daily special for a dollar or two--and though an earlier work than others I'd read, it's not at all sophomoric. Set in postapocalyptic California, the novel follows a musician-redeemer who is persuaded to rescue his first love from the clutches of a horrific cult he himself narrowly escaped from. From the introduction, I knew this was a reworking of Orpheus and Euridyce, but it works just fine whether considered mythologically or no. There are plenty of the usual post-apocalyptic horrors and few unique ones (there's really something to be said for the hemogoblin, a jellyfish-esque vampire-doppelganger, though the main villain is its own version of serious ick). The cult is, thankfully, not the usual fundamentalist Christianity turned nightmarish, but clearly its own brand of appalling messianic gobbledegook. And the hero, though he does endure bout after bout of pain and suffering, is no superman or would-be savior; in the end, being the hero requires him to face his own evil as much as that outside of him. All in all, this was a very good and satisfying novel, and all the better for being entirely self-contained!

Brain Camp was something I picked up in the library booksale (I think for ten cents). I've enjoyed YA graphic novels illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks before, and this one seemed possibly fun. It was, mostly, if a little simplistic. I may keep it around, or I may not; we'll see.

Ancient-Future Faith has been on my radar since college, where I first heard of it shortly after Webber died, but I never came across a copy until this year. Webber's thesis is that contemporary Christianity (especially in its evangelical permutations) is based on concepts of modernity, and the cultural shift to postmodernity has pulled the rug out from under it, but a return to "classical" (say 100-600 or so) focuses of Christianity will enable it to be not only culturally relevant but theologically grounded. There are plenty of nice charts demonstrating the shifting focuses of the church, which necessarily involve some serious simplification, but Webber's critiques are overall apt and his solutions feel promising. In my own recent experiences with church visits, I've seen something of both sides of the church's response to postmodernity, and on the whole I appreciate the ancient-future emphases. On the bookish side, I was glad to find this was a very accessible read, since for some reason I had it in my head that it would prove tough going.

Well, now that we're in the last stretch of the school year, things are getting a bit hectic, but I'm hoping to do a bit more reading this week than has become usual lately, and hopefully much of that will be ROOTs! Currently I'm about 1/4 through Instruments of Darkness, but it's really not holding my attention. Maybe soon it will pick up...

>26 InfoQuest: "A Generous Orthodoxy" is one of my TBRs, but I think it will be one of next year's ROOTs. I know what you mean though about wondering what all the fuss was about as it didn't seem all that unorthodox/dodgy despite the hype, I felt like that when I read Rob Bell.

>30 Jackie_K: I think I read one of Rob Bell's a while ago (maybe Velvet Elvis?), and while I wasn't a huge fan of his style, it seemed reasonable enough. I've a copy of Love Wins floating around somewhere which your comment reminds me I probably ought to try one of these days. It'd count as a ROOT after all. =)

So I went on a reading binge this past week or so and thoroughly enjoyed it. House-sitting is tremendously conducive to reading, I've found. At any rate, Instruments of Darkness did pick up about half way through, about the same time when I realized that I knew who was behind the whole thing and why. That didn't really ruin the suspense at all, since the unraveling was intriguing enough, and I do intend to try the sequel sooner rather than later. It's not a ROOT, though, so I probably won't mention it again, unless it's particularly noteworthy.

I also rushed through The Runaway King and the trilogy-ending The Shadow Throne to mixed results. Maybe it was the closeness of the reading experiences, but I just didn't enjoy the last one half as much as the second installment. Jaron's a lot of fun as a narrator and a devil-may-care hero, so maybe it's the seriousness and near-fatalism that kept creeping into the third one. It felt a little out of character. I mean, if I were the teenaged king of a beseiged country, I'd probably be pretty fatalistic myself, especially if I thought my true love were dead, but I'm not Jaron, and he didn't seem the type to give into the mullygrubs so readily. It all turned out peachy, of course, as this was more middle-grade fiction than young adult, but the unevenness of The Shadow Throne in that respect (and in the increasing obviousness of plot twists and blatancy of characterization) made it a bit of a disappointment overall.

My most recent audiobook turned out much more interesting than I'd thought: The Proud Tower counts as a ROOT because I have a hardback copy, but I didn't really read more than 50-75 pages. Nadia May is probably my favorite female audiobook narrator, and she did a lovely job with this one--not counting the freakish American accents, alas--giving zest to the historical detail and making sure each quote was in the voice and something of the accent of its original speaker. I thought I knew something of the upheavals that took place during the turn of the century and the years leading up to WWI, but Tuchman really included a lot that I either hadn't heard of or hadn't quite placed right in my mental timeline. Thanks to Anthony Trollope I've discovered that antiquated politics is far more fascinating than contemporary kerfluffles (ok, it's far lower stakes, which helps), and this book gives plenty of background on the major shifts and events of the period in Parliament, Congress, and the Reichstag, not to mention the Hague conferences and the various international socialist and trade union congresses. It was all quite fascinating, and I've already put the audiobook version of The Guns of August on hold to continue in this historical mode. Alas, I don't own a copy, so it won't be a ROOT.

This is getting a bit long-winded, so I'll speed up. Bath Tangle was mid-range Heyer, neither completely absurd nor completely fun. I think the problem was the "hero," whom I found insufferable even before I discovered he'd intentionally toyed with the affections of an impressionable teenager just to spite the heroine; the fact that her mother was a gold-digger and that the girl was dazzled by his title really isn't sufficient excuse. The minor characters were fun, though, and the heroine was much less grating than her counterpart.

Barking was pretty darn awesome. I do like Tom Holt in general, but I had the impression this was one of his more dreary demonic office fantasies, which it wasn't quite. Instead, this book focuses on vampire and werewolf lawyers, not to mention a unicorn and zombies. It's pretty much a remarkably silly paranormal mashup with a dash or two of speculative physics to spice things up. Just really fun.

Axis is more hard science fiction than I usually read, but I read Spin some years back and had this paperback practically forever, so yeah. I read it. I'm kind of curious where the phenomenon of the Speculatives will go from here, but I'm not sure if I want to wade through the pedestrian plotting and thin characterization to figure that out.

Too Many Magicians was also marvelously romp-ish. My copy started off with a ridiculously sincere introduction, in which the editor strove mightily to persuade readers that Garrett's alternate history was implausible and idealized, while insisting that the story was fun and a tribute to all sorts of mystery and fantasy figures. This set off my "attention: nonfun ahead" alerts, but it was a false alarm. Of course the historicity is really impossible, and yes, it's a idealization of medievalism, but come on, should one expect something else? The locked-room murder itself was appropriate ingenious, the forensic magic fantastic, the inclusion of homage characters nicely balanced, and all in all, I really enjoyed this and hope to come across more by Garrett in future.

Now that we're officially in the home stretch of the semester (I hope to be completely done with grading and all in two weeks!), I may fall back into a much slower reading pace, but this has been a lovely month so far. =D

You did a lot of writing there, Rachel! Impressive!

>32 connie53: Definitely more impressive than my reading, at least lately . . . However, that will hopefully keep this update from becoming more tl;dr fodder. =)

Grading is now finished, so it's officially summer around here. Gardening is also in full swing, which reduces reading time a bit, as did a recent spate of work meetings and interviews, but I did get through a few longer tomes recently, so I'm still ROOTing along!

I decided to start The Spell of Mary Stewart when I heard of her recent passing. On the nostalgia front, my first (and for a long time, only) book by her was a Reader's Digest abridged version of The Gabriel Hounds which I must have read at about nine or ten. I vaguely remember it feeling exciting and exotic, but somewhat hard to comprehend, which probably isn't surprising. In any event, I've read a bit more of her "romantic suspense" since then, but I don't think I'd read any of the three in this volume before. All three were engaging and suspenseful with more or less rounded female main characters suddenly enmeshed in intrigue--par for the course, but nonetheless quite satisfactory. The romance element never overwhelmed the stories, I don't think, which was also good. I found Wildfire at Midnight the least believable, as I couldn't believe the villain's insanity would work so conveniently or remain so compartmentalized; it also featured the least comprehensible romance, as the apparent hero rarely interacted with the heroine "on screen" and their reunion seemed more a matter of narrative convenience than the result of any real maturity or compromise . The Ivy Tree was better, though I guessed the "big reveal" early on; it also featured, to my mind, the most realistic romantic relationship and the most plausible villain/motive. This Rough Magic scored bonus points for setting, but the casual stereotyping of the locals was a bit off-putting.

Whoops. Getting long-winded again. Drat.

Well, I also finished The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, roughly five years after starting it. Having read the first book, I always intended to return to the series but didn't get around to it until now. Reading books two and three was tremendously easy and ridiculously fun. Books four and five, not so much. Maybe I was getting a little bored, but I don't think so, having read some reviews noting the same thing. The ending left me rather rankled as well. But overall, I'm really glad to have read the series and loved the characters and ridiculous environs of Adams' universe(s), though I doubt I'll ever reread Mostly Harmless . . .

Letters from the Land of Cancer was one I sort of bought for my mom: she'd listened to an interview with the author and wanted to read it. Her enthusiasm for his writing style won me over, and I read it quickly up to the point where she had stopped and then read the rest aloud to her. (I really do love reading aloud, though I rarely get the chance anymore.) Wangerin does have a way with words and a remarkable honesty about his internal and external experiences which I'd not encountered before, having only read his fiction--which is equally marvelous, but of course less personal. As a memoir and memento mori, it's quite moving and revealing.

Three Times Lucky was really great too. I'd read a few good reviews, and they were right: Mo LoBeau is an irrepressible character and narrator. Set in contemporary North Carolina, this middle grade novel tells of her investigation of a local murder and her own mysterious origins. Mo--found floating down a flooded river as an infant and named Moses before her gender was known--is aided in her detection by her many friendly (and of course quirky) neighbors. Though overlight light in tone and touch, the book deals straightforwardly with problems of addiction and relative poverty, not to mention murder, robbery, and kidnapping, and the author's respect for her audience is evident in that factual portrayal. As an adult, I didn't feel any sense of "talking down" or airbrushing or overtones of the "problem novel," so even without the comedy and fun this novel would have scored high. My one quibble (or set of quibbles) was in the revelation of the mysteries at the end. I wasn't wholly sold on the reasons for the formation of Mo's adoptive "family," and the solution to the twined mysteries raised, for me, more questions than answers. But for its target audience, I don't doubt it's solid enough. And there is a sequel, which may clear things up. Even if it doesn't, I fully expect to enjoy it one day not too long from now.

Well, that was not much shorter than before. Oh well. At least I'm "caught up" for now. Pleasant summer reading to one and all!

Did you know there's another book now about Mo and the Three Times Lucky people? I'd say the name of it, but it's stuck in a box, waiting for me to get enough of my 'already owned' books listed to feel good about cataloging the 'just got' books. It looks to be as fun as the first. :)

>34 Merryann: Yes, I had heard as much, and I've got a hold on my library's ebook copy. It does sound like a lot of fun, and the reviews are pretty promising as well. =)

Since I've now reached the most "meaningful" number, an update is in order. As I've not got much at all to report, it shall be delightfully brief. By my standards, at any rate.

I read the first Montmorency book quite a while ago and found it more than a bit "meh" but for whatever reason, when I found two more in the series at a used book sale, I picked them up anyways. Maybe it's because I've since read some of Eleanor Updale's blog posts over at History Girls and appreciated them; maybe it's just because I'm something of a bookfiend. Regardless, I now own them and picked up the second one to read earlier this month. Montmorency on the Rocks was really very fun, both as a mystery and as historical fiction, and I liked it so much that I picked up the other one I own immediately after finishing it. Alas, it was the fourth book. So I've had to request the third installment through the local consortium and will have to read it first. Oh well.

Gilded was really very tedious. I feel bad about immediately disliking a first novel, because I know the author put in a lot of work and finally has achieved some measure of "success" in getting published and so deserves respect and a modicum of praise just for getting to that point. And having never finished any creative writing project (not counting assignments), I can't honestly claim to do as well or better. But really. The plot was holey to say the least; the heroine's love interest was silly (and why she have to fall for the only available European-American and be obsessed with his looks?); the prose was workaday at best and hokey/cliched at worst. Ok, so maybe I'm just being overly picky. That's quite feasible and I'm more than willing to admit I might just not be the target audience and not have been in the mood. But I wanted to be in the mood, and at first I was willing to go along for the ride. It just never clicked with me, and I spent most of the reading humphing and highlighting especially ridiculous passages and making snarky remarks in the notes section of my free Kindle edition. It was entertaining, in a mean-spirited way which I regret but freely admit. If the author happens across this (unlikely, but if it happens--sorry!), I do wish to congratulate her for persevering and for getting published, which is no mean feat, and I wish her the best luck in future. But I don't think I'll pick up the sequel, as my reading would doubtless be colored by negative expectations.

Along the same lines, I wasn't that into The Well's End, though I found it much more engrossing and much less annoying. I did review it for LV, so I've mostly said all I feel like saying. I do intend to read its sequel, because the plot twist at the end snagged my attention, even if it was odd.

Lucky (perhaps) #42 was How To Read Literature Like a Professor, which I've just realized I'll be teaching from in the fall and so decided I probably ought to read, since I've had a copy floating around for a while now. I'll admit it: knowing it was popular, I fully expected to dislike it and be annoyed by Thomas Foster's methods of literary criticism. But drat it, I really enjoyed it. Foster uses a lot of archetypal criticism a la Norton Frye, and that's the first kind (and practically only, aside from biographical criticism) I was introduced to in high school, so I really enjoy working from that perspective and appreciated the updated approach given here. Bits of other major critical approaches (feminist, Marxist, deconstructionist, etc.) are also addressed--I wish Foster had included the names and key terms he was alluding to, though I can always give those to my students as we go--and the whole idea of reading literature critically without losing the joy of story is done very well. I'm going to make this book the central focus of the literature studies in the upcoming course, if at all possible, and am really looking forward to discussing it with the students. What fun. =)

I guess this wasn't too long. Okay, for four books, it was probably too long . . .

>35 InfoQuest: Not at all too long. It's taking me forever to get caught back up on all the threads I missed while I was gadding about elsewhere, but this was a joy to relax and read.

I'm especially pleased to hear the first sequel to Montmorency was enjoyable. I quite liked the first one, so I shall now look forward to getting and reading the others.

>36 Merryann: Thanks for the encouragement, Merryann! Even if no one else reads it, I do like keeping track of what I thought about recently read books, because it seems that I forget all too quickly.

The Lies of Locke Lamora was further into the grittier sort of fantasy than I tend to go, but this criminal mastermind/heist novel was really quite good after its fashion: the twists and turns are suspenseful and numerous, the stakes increase with every chapter, and the clever hero finds himself nearly out of his depth more than once. The language was a little distracting, partly because I'm just not used to that much cursing and partly because it seems odd that a fantasy world wouldn't have a few unusual epithets. On the other hand, it can be rather distracting when all the swear words are non-English in a fantasy, so I guess it's a matter of authorial preference. Regardless, I like this one well enough to intend to read the sequel someday, though I think I'll put it off for a while.

The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls are more in my usual fantasy vein, and so I enjoyed them much more unreservedly. The fact that they're written by one of my most favorite authors helps, but even if they weren't, I'd be very glad that I own the complete trilogy. Dealing with the usual intrigues and supernatural complications of higher fantasy, the series has at its core a fascinating theological system, one which I found oddly compelling and even quite "true" in some ways, despite its pagan elements. I've started on the third book and will likely finish it today or tomorrow. They're really marvelous books.

The Evolution of Adam I bought as an ebook a few weeks back when the author posted on his blog (which I follow) that it was temporarily on sale; I'd not been able to get a copy through the library and jumped at the chance to acquire it without much outlay. I appreciated Enns's attempt to find a way out of the first Adam/Second Adam quandary, though I don't know that it would be very persuasive to someone not already wanting to find "permission" to believe in human evolution. It does leave more questions than answers, theologically, but that's a good thing in many ways.

World of Trouble I received as an Early Reviewers book, and so I posted a review for it. I don't have much else to say, but it was very fitting and not at all a disappointment, given my enjoyment of the first two books in the trilogy. I would like to know what happened after the end, so if Winters ever writes a sequel--or, better yet, a sequel trilogy!--I'll be sure to read it.

I actually went online and bought a brand new copy of Wonderbook when I was halfway through reading a library copy, which I think is the first time I've ever done so--a very high recommendation to be sure. As it's a guide to and inspiration for writing imaginative fiction, I wanted to have a copy available to me whenever the itch to start writing pops up. Besides, it's a really fun book to page through, with all the absurd and thought-provoking illustrations and diagrams.

How to Make Your Cat an Internet Celebrity was another Early Reviewers book, which I again reviewed immediately after reading. It's a gimmicky little book, so there's not much to say. It'd probably have been funnier if I hadn't read it through in one sitting. As it was, I found most of the jokes a little thin, though I liked some of the pictures. I probably won't keep the book, but I may pass it on as a white elephant gift or something like that, as it's a finished copy rather than an ARC.

And that's about it for the last month or so on the ROOTs front. Now that I no longer have borrowing privileges at the public libraries (the only negative part about living in an unincorporated area), maybe I'll read more of my own books. Or I'll just start reading more "serious" stuff, since I now have access to pretty much all the academic libraries in the state...

I've been thinking it's about time to reread The Curse of Chalion. Lois McMaster Bujoldstuns me with how good her writing is.

>38 Merryann: The Chalion books really do seem likely to merit a reread, and I hope you enjoy them as much or more the second time. =)

Just tiptoeing in here and peering around at the cobwebs for a couple minutes. Looks neglected. Whoever started this thing really should have posted recently...

Well, I've been busy reading and doing other things. Mostly other things. But commuting three times as far and twice as long has one advantage: I've been listening to audiobooks more quickly, so even when it seems like I'm not getting any "real" reading done, there's always a book I'm plodding away at.

Most recently, I finished listening to Prince of Fools, which I did like, despite a few more or less major reservations. I got it through Early Reviewers, which means there's a review up--a really, really long one, actually. And now I've started on The Android's Dream, my first book by John Scalzi and one I picked up during one of Audible's sales, because it sounded amusing. The humor was quite puerile at first, but now that we've gotten into the more detective-ish part, it's getting better.

But I am reading physical books too! Last night, I picked up and finished one of Elizabeth Wein's backlist titles from my shelves, The Sunbird. Her Arthurian/Aksumite stories are really fantastic, and I fully intend to read the last two ASAP, especially since they'll count as ROOTs.

So, though I'm far behind my previous pace, I expect to still reach my ROOT goal by the end of the year, hopefully more so once the semester ends in December. The holiday break at the college will also be good, since that'll be more than a week off just in time to cram in the last of the ROOTS.

My personal not-yet-ROOT challenge (to read at least 14% of my new acquisitions) is not going so well. It looks pretty good on the ticker at the moment--just three more books would be really doable--but I've got literally two or three dozen new books to add to LibraryThing. Yeah, booksale season started around here. And it was my birthday last month. And I went to a books-only garage sale today. Oh well. Book acquisition is only part of the fun, but it is a fairly significant part sometimes.

Sounds like you are doing well sneaking up to your goal! Don't worry about the "new" books, they are everyone's "hazard"!

You just keep on reading, InfoQuest.

>40 Tess_W: & >41 connie53: Thanks for the encouragement! Sneaking is indeed a good term for it. I feel very sneaky when I gulp down books on the sl while I really ought to be doing something "productive..."

I've actually finished six official ROOTs since the last post, plus two bonuses, and of those, only one was an audiobook. Ok, so one of them was an ebook I've been trying to finish forever. And none were really all that lengthy. But it's a success, regardless.

Beauty Will Save the World was the aforementioned everlasting ebook. I don't know how many pages it actually was, but it seemed about four times longer than it should have been. Zahnd had good points and could express himself pretty well, but he had the same habit that I do when writing formally, which is restating the same thing multiple times in increasingly "lovely" ways until the full effect is not so much baroque as cluttered. So it took forever to read. Because I got sick of it. But I did finish it, and I think the original was a free ebook (from forever ago), so nothing lost.

The Lion Hunter and The Empty Kingdom make up the two part The Mark of Solomon which, so far, is the end of Elizabeth Wein's Aksumite/Arthurian saga. I really hope that her recent success in YA WWII fiction means that her publisher will encourage her to continue this series, because I like it. So there. I actually had never heard of Aksum until teaching World History for the first time last year (I know, terrible, right?), and now I find myself wanting to know more about the era and location. It's pretty fascinating stuff. And of course the story itself is a masterfully told tale of espionage and intrigue from the perspective of a remarkably mature teenager, who's treated pretty awfully. Wien is pretty good at that sort of thing, and I'm very impressed. Next year my copy of Rose Under Fire will count as a ROOT...

The Android's Dream was the first thing I've read/listened to by John Scalzi, and like my recent experience with Prince of Fools, probably a book I'd have enjoyed more if I read it than listened to it. The overall plot was decent enough, the prose wasn't notably clunky, the narrator wasn't bad, and so on. But I'd again have preferred to skim over the violent and immature bits, so as to just get on with the plot. Regardless, it was an inexpensive way to make the ride back and forth from work significantly less monotonous.

I also whipped through Jasper Fforde's The Song of the Quarkbeast and The Eye of Zoltar under the mistaken impression that they were the last two books of a trilogy. Looks like it's a quartet though. Bother. And ended on something of a cliffhanger too. Double bother. While set in probably my least favorite of Fforde's zanily fantastical worlds, the adventures of Jennifer Strange are nonetheless a great deal of fun, and I only wish I found out how she'll manage to thwart the schemes of the Mighty Shandar. Oh well. Something to look forward to, hopefully next year.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is my first by John le Carre, though I've been slowly collecting a few of his books over time, for no really good reason other than he's supposed to be a master of the espionage novel, and they were all either free or really cheap. I actually picked this one to start with because I acquired a copy of the recent film version and wanted to have an excuse to watch it. I don't always make a rule of reading the book first, but in this case, it seemed a good one. And it was. I really liked the book, actually. The film was quite good also, though I ended up (perhaps not surprisingly) arguing with several interpretations and, ultimately, preferring the novel.

The Long War was pretty much what I expected: a slightly dragging, but overall serviceable expansion of the multiverse first explored in The Long Earth, with just enough of a twist or two to encourage a continuation of the series. I already have a copy of The Long Mars, but I think I'll put it off a while; thus far the series is a bit heavy-handed in exploring themes and a bit light on characterization.

So that's about it for now. I've also read a few library books and listened to a really wonderful audiobook of Rumpole of the Bailey (which I borrowed through I-Share, the Illinois academic consortium which has become my new best friend and favorite work routine). I'm also using Waverley as a bed-book/soporific, though things have gotten significantly more interesting since the eponymous figure finally got in trouble for taking too long a vacation. It'll be a "bonus ROOT" as I found a free paperback copy after starting the ebook as a 200th anniversary challenge. Also, I recently started back on the long-neglected Gentlemen, Scholars, and Scoundrels, a Harper's Weekly compendium with selections from 1850 to the late 1950s, which I think I started reading back in January or February...

Still moving along in fits and spurts and finally getting quite close to the main goal...

Finished reading the last two books of The Dalemark Quartet, which I liked very much more than I remember liking the first two, oddly enough. The Spellcoats was quite fascinating as a story in its own right, as well as a source of the continuing mythology of Dalemark, but I really enjoyed The Crown of Dalemark, with its time travel and whatnot. I knew, of course, who the mythically splendid king would end up being, as it was rather obvious, but it was fun watching it all turn out. And though the age discrepancy was a bit weird in the romance, I was glad the lovers weren't really star-crossed. When done right, that's a nice twist. When done wrong... well, that's no fun. But Diana Wynne Jones nearly always does things right, so I'm glad I spent a few days with her and intend to spend some more with her next year (once Dark Lord of Derkholm counts as a ROOT, in fact).

Waverley is finally done, Gott sei Dank. Ok, that's unfair. It was Scott's first novel and more or less invented historical fiction, as I've heard, but it takes forever with the duller bits and skims over the interesting stuff. The women actually aren't too badly characterized, but they're nothing to write home about--unless you're Waverley, the dullest of whimsical heroes, who lets himself be tossed about by every fickle thought and suggestion of his newest best friends, whatever side they may be on. I mean, honestly, the fellow really is the most lackadaisical hero, and everyone treats him with a ridiculous amount of courtesy and kindness. He literally gets away with treason, after all, not that anyone seems to mind. To my mind, the person who randomly decides to join his new friends on a war against his own people to support a king he doesn't quite believe in is far more at fault than one who honestly supports a cause he believes in and to restore his homeland to the place he feels it merits. Can you tell I majorly prefer Fergus to Edward? Not that the Vich Ian Vohr isn't a jerk, because he definitely is, but at least he is the sort of awful person who makes for a good hero. In any event, I finished the book, and since I've really enjoyed Sir Walter Scott's novels before, I'll just say this wasn't my favorite and leave it at that.

I picked up Gilead because I've always meant to read it after studying Housekeeping in my senior seminar, and with the recent praises for Lila cropping up all over the place, it seemed a good idea. Besides, there was an audiobook available on I-Share, and it seemed the sort of book that would be better to listen to than read. And it was a marvelous audiobook, in fact. Not that the reader was the best ever--he was very good overall, but at times I felt like he was overdoing it--but lingering over the individual words and passages was really lovely, and something I'd have almost certainly missed or sped through too quickly while reading. As usual, the books I enjoy I don't have much to say about, but it was very nice all the same. Since I do have a paper copy, though I didn't read it, this counts as a ROOT anyway.

And so we come to November 7th, a very nice day indeed. Not only did I get quite a lot of work done, but that evening I also managed to read two ROOTs and one bonus ROOT! Ok, so they were all short and written for teens/children, but it was very nice to feel accomplished and enjoy myself. Montmorency's Revenge was, I thought, the last of the series, but it ended on a really blatant cliffhanger, so I quickly searched and found out that there was a really cheap ebook of Montmorency Returns, so I bought it and read it. While I always find myself a little disappointed while reading this series (maybe it's all the telling?), they are rather fun, and I liked getting to the end. Though it wasn't really a tremendously satisfying one, so perhaps Eleanor Updale will add to it.

Well Wished was an interesting little book. I've read two others by Franny Billingsley (yes, Chime is my favorite), and I've had this one for a while because the cover was just so weird. Ok, so the book was weird too, but mostly in a good way, exploring friendship in a really true and complicated way, and including an interesting narrow fantasy element. I felt like there was a lot more to the story than was actually written, which is nice if a bit frustrating, but for a children's book it was quite complex.

And that leaves two, and this is getting ridiculously long again! As with most Heyers, I felt like I'd read April Lady before, though if I did, I didn't note it. It was fair to middling, not maddening in any way, but not really great either. It's that blasted variant on the Idiot Plot in which romantic difficulties would entirely fade away if the two would just admit their affection. The only reason it's not utterly stupid is that they're already married, so there's some excuse for constantly misunderstanding each other.

His Majesty's Dragon I picked up yesterday just to start something and then read 2/3 of it before deciding that sleeping was a good idea. And then read the last third when I ought to have been getting ready for work, so I was very nearly late and didn't remember to pack a lunch... Yup. Starving myself for the sake of reading too much. That's me. Military fantasy/science fiction really aren't my thing, and neither for that matter are dragons, but this one engaged my attention, and I'm glad I have the first three, which will count as a couple more ROOTs, either this year or next. =)

Well, it's been over a week, and I've only read two ROOTs and one was a bonus at that. Bother. And both were quite lame middle grade/YA ebooks. Double bother. And I've only read one library book aside from them. Botheration. And it's getting very cold around here, which is probably why I sound so grumpy. =)

Ok, so The Twyning wasn't really totally lame, just not my cup of tea. I can tell the author was trying to be somewhat original, which was a good effort, but it was just too icky and yet simplistic for me. I did write a review (because it was an Early Reviewers book), but it's probably the one of my top three laziest, at least in part because I was doing it on my phone and so really didn't want to type much. Perhaps I should revise it. But not tonight. Some other time.

On the other hand, The Golden Acorn really was lame, a silly middle-grade fantasy complete with a thinly characterized "Chosen One" and various one-note magical creatures. Thankfully, it was a Kindle freebie, rather than something I actually had hoped would be good, but I felt like I had to finish it just to count it, which made it feel even more of a chore than it would otherwise. Every character's feeling was clearly stated, after it was implied; every silly plot twist was foreshadowed; and everything depended on ridiculous, unexplainedly specific "druidical" magic. At least it had a fairly light touch and included some legitimately humorous comic relief. But it felt remarkably like a slog for something so simple and straightforward.

As the next ROOT will be the final one, at least goalwise, I feel it ought to be momentous in some way, but probably I'll pick up a very thin something just to get it done sometime this week. For now, I'm just reading God's Word in Human Words for my library reading; listening to Phineas Redux, which will count as a ROOT and which I'm very much enjoying but won't probably finish for another couple days; and glancing every so often at my poetry and prose anthologies, expecting that someday (perhaps after the semester ends?) I'll feel like really making some headway in them.

Yesterday, (well, it was after midnight, but since I hadn't gone to sleep yet, it seems to count as yesterday), I finished my 75th official ROOT and so reached my goal. Hurrah!

And a very fine book it was too, on the whole. I really do love Anthony Trollope, though I don't understand quite how so many people feel one either must love him or love Dickens but not both, since I find them both remarkable and grand fun in their own ways.

In any event, I finished listening to Phineas Redux last night, after having switched back and forth between the novel in ebook and audio forms (Amazon's Whispersync actually worked more than half the time, which was nice) for the last couple days, more because I wanted to find out how Finn got out of his scrape and into the arms of Madame Goesler than to hurry along my ROOTing, though there was an element of that too at the last.

Mostly I just want to gush and comment on the fact that I want a whole lot more cats, if only so I can name them after all the characters in the Palliser novels. Really, how marvelous (and adorable) would it be to have a Madame Max, Lady Glencora, and Phineas Finn all in fur? Though I must admit I see a Planty Pall more as a large and long-suffering dog than anything else. On the more gushing front, Trollope's comments on the mental situations and processes of all his characters really is the best part: they're so very human and so very apt, albeit quite Victorian.

And that's the part that I really could spend the most time on, since writing criticism is so much simpler and more interesting than writing praise: though I really and truly loved the whole book and have loved all the Trollope I've read (with the possible exception of the first half of Can You Forgive Her? which seemed both interminable and blah), it's really drattedly Victorian at times. I could write a monograph on his female characters. And I meant that literally: I'd be fascinated to examine them, literarily. They're (sorry, Dickens) completely human and just as likely to be intelligent and active as his male characters and are viewed sympathetically even when they're going against societal norms--but every dashed one of them can only give her heart away once. It's downright ridiculous. The only heroine of his who's able to care for several men equally (Lizzie Eustace) is emotionally/psychologically stunted and incapable of sincere affection, but literally every other important female character is fated/damned/whatever to only love one man, regardless of circumstance. Even in situations where Trollope could easily have allowed them to develop multiple equally feasible romantic attachments, he doesn't. I suppose one might possible offer Lady Glencora as a counterargument, since she seems to ultimately care for her husband, despite her youthful romance with Burgo Fitzgerald, but I don't know that Trollope presents either attachment as romantic love. She's stupidly infatuated with Burgo, and though she ultimately recognizes the merits of her husband, she doesn't seem to have any more of a romantic feeling for him than Madame Goesler had for her first husband or the old Duke.

But whatever. This particular novel and its predecessor The Eustace Diamonds also unfortunately are very Victorian in their treatment of the minor character of Mr. Emilius/Mealyus, whose constantly referred to as "the Bohemian Jew," and it's not at all a neutral phrase. Nor is he a very neutral figure. In the previous book, I tried very hard to hold out for a neutral reading of his character; it wasn't really possible, but the attempt could be made reasonably well. In this one, he's not at all a remotely sympathetic character, and that's a real pity: Trollope could have easily found an alternate antagonist to dispatch of Mr. Bonteen, and I wouldn't have minded if it were Quintus Slide... I suppose the fact that the hero of Phineas Finn and Phineas Redux is both an Irishman and a Catholic should count towards diversity, but he's not particularly either: we don't see him ever participate in any religious activities or even think anything noticeably Catholic.

But, again, whatever. I really did like this book, and I fully intend to enjoy The Prime Minister in a few weeks/months.

Congratulations on reaching your goal.
I enjoyed your comments on the Palliser novels, and I totally agree that Planty Pall should be a dog. The poor man! I watched the BBC series this year and now I've got the books on my list for next year.

Hurray for meeting your goal!

Congrats!

Thanks, MissWatson, rabbitprinces, and tess_i_am48, for the congratulations! Reaching a goal is always lovely.

And, of course, realizing that a goal is still within reach is lovely too. I've been acquiring books over the last couple of months and putting off adding them to LT, partly because I wanted to have time to just sit down, add them all, update the tags, and select the right covers (all of which seems to take quite a lot of time), and partly because I wanted to put off updating my second ticker. That one has been stuck at 27 books (14% of those acquired this year) and I'd finally reached that goal and wanted not to know just how far behind on that I actually was.

Well, there's still a ways to go. 12 books, to be exact, because I had (mumblefourboxesofbooksmumble) a fair amount of books to enter and just did so this evening. It's really ridiculous the way books follow me home, especially when they're 50 cents or less--or worse yet, free. I think I've now added just about every book that's been awaiting LT entry, so everything should be set for next years' ROOTing. And for 2016. And, um, a lot time after that... in fact, I could probably just read owned books for the next five years and still have more to go. Except that I'd be missing series installments, which would be frustrating.

But really I'm not a bit frustrated: it's been a lovely night of cataloging, despite my sticking spacebar--gah! While in the midst of it all, I read one more bonus ROOT, Through History with J. Wesley Smith, a little Scholastic collection of history-themed, one-panel comics, in which the large nosed title character constantly provides bad advice to historical figures. Some were cute, but a few were based on myths or commonly confused facts, which was a little annoying. Still, they'd be nice to lively up a history lecture, so I may copy a few and use them that way.

And now time to put away some of these teetering piles of books--and then read some more of them! =)

Congrats on meeting your goal! That's a great feeling isn't it?

Thanks, connie53! It is a very nice feeling, I agree. =)

Although this wasn't much of a reading week, due to all the holiday preparation and whatnot, I still got through a few, mostly because none of it required a great deal of focus. Throne of Jade and Black Powder War, while fun fantasies/alternate histories, seem to benefit from a fast read, as otherwise I think I'd be really bored by them: there are a lot of fairly repetitious and slower bits which I will fully admit to skimming. I'm not a great fan of battle scenes, for one, or extended travel sequences, for another, so by skimming over much of those, I read both books in a day. I've got the next two in the series, but I don't know whether I'll gulp them as well or leave them be for a bit. Probably the latter, but you never know.

Nightingale Wood took a touch more time and attention, as it really was quite a witty little book, hovering on the fine line between satire and human interest comedy. All of the characters were at least a wee bit self-absorbed, but I still found myself rooting for just about all the women and was glad to see them (mostly) satisfied with their lives in the final chapter. I think the only other Stella Gibbons I've read was the usual Cold Comfort Farm, and there is a bit of similar between the two, in tone and focus, but this one was a bit more charitable on the whole.

Ancillary Justice was one I got as a cheap Kindle edition, since it'd been so lauded and sounded quite interesting. And it was. I don't know that it's much of a spoiler to say that Ann Leckie did a nice job, I think, of portraying an AI with multiple bodies, as well as a variety of "gender-blind" society, though at times it seemed there could have been more ways to explore both elements. While it did take a bit to get oriented and engaged, I very much liked it, by the end, and plan to read the sequel(s) sooner rather than later.

Artful seems likely to also have a sequel, but I'll definitely pass. While there were parts (scenes and turns of phrase, mostly in the first quarter or so) that I really enjoyed, this Dickensian-vampyrical novel felt very under-done and uneven. I don't object to mashups and fanciful homages, and Peter David actually can do a fine pseudo-Victorian authorial voice in the comic vein, but as the story progressed, it felt more like a lame paranormal fantasy and less like a neo-Victorian romp. The ending (when we learned that the Artful Dodger was Queen Victoria's first/true love whom she would have abdicated for and that Fagin-the-vampyre would later become Jack the Ripper) really jumped the shark for me and left a much worse impression than I think I'd have had otherwise. Thankfully, this was a Kindle freebie, so I didn't lose any money on it, but that's about two hours I won't have to read something less disappointing, which is too bad.

I've been doing some reading here and there, especially of ebooks acquired in 2014, so I've not finished anymore official ROOTs.

Nightbirds on Nantucket was great fun and added more alternate history to the mix than I remember in previous installments of Joan Aiken's "Wolves" series. It still had that indefinable air of absurdity beneath the historical trappings, which I really do love. I've requested the next two books through I-Share, after which point the I own the next two or so, so eventually the series will again be ROOTable. Lovely fun.

Murder in Ancient China is really just two short stories I got for free; I'd heard of Robert van Gulik's murder mysteries set in (as the title suggests) ancient China, but I'd not tried any, so these were my first. As murder mysteries go, they were fairly straightforward, though one was actually not a murder at all. I think I might possible enjoy trying these again for the sake of the setting, as I've not read much set in China, whether ancient or modern, but for mysteries they were pretty thin and a little too short to tell much about characterization.

A Town Like Alice was oddly frustrating. I'd heard good things about it off and on for a number of years and really loved On the Beach. Then I found out it was set in the Australian outback (I've an unreasonable prejudice against that locale for no real reason, other than I'm not fond of deserts, I guess) and that it was bothersomely racist, so I didn't ever get around to it. Until the audiobook was really cheap, that is. So I listened to it, and I really found it odd--alternately fascinating, irritating, and having the air of an intro to entrepreneurship fable. I rather liked the narrator and was actually very sorry for him in the end, when he finally admits he was in love with Jean; I was mostly pretty impressed by Jean Paget, who really knew how to make the best of some rather bad situations; but I found Joe Harmon irritating and dull. The racism was rather glaring at times, and I really didn't need all the economic details, which felt almost didactic and really too simple to be true, in my perspective. But on the whole I rather enjoyed the novel than otherwise.

The Grand Tour and The Mislaid Magician were everything I'd hoped of the sequels to Sorcery and Cecilia, just really fun romps in a magical version of Regency Europe. I actually really liked the latest installment the best, I think, but then again, they each had their highs and lows. Some of the writing is a bit meh and the characterization occasionally feels off (perhaps due to the alternating authors?), but I'd be glad of another sequel, if it were in the offing. The next generation really seems likely to get into grand Victorian scrapes. Strangely enough, The Mislaid Magician was the second novel I read this month that included a lost princess Victoria and attempted to hide her identity by referring to her as "Drina".

That brings me to The Time Trap. It really is. There's an hour or so I'll never have back. Ray Bradbury may have had nice things to say about Henry Kuttner in general, but I sure hope he wasn't fond of this particular book. Gah. Ick. There were two major female characters (and really only two minor ones) and among all of them, there were at least ten scenes in which the female character(s) ended up naked, nearly always not of their own accord. Oh, and that never happened to male characters. Well, maybe once. But every female who got within arms' reach of the hero felt compelled to kiss him, if nothing more steamy. Botheration. The plot itself was just lamely weird: random hunky (apparently) archeologist finds a lost city, falls into a "time trap" that send him back to ancient times at the whim of a mad scientist from the far future, and proceeds to time-hop with a beautiful (often naked) and infatuated princess, a random Sumerian guy, and a mysterious other-future-guy. They encounter plant-men, zombies, giant ants, South American human sacrificial tribesmen, a crazed priestess (naked and infatuated: check!), some kind of aquatic dinosaur, and a leopard-woman (more "in heat" and naked, but that counts). And of course it ends with an exploding brain. And a mauling. Thrills a minute. Oh and the hero loses consciousness about half-a-dozen times without any noticeable effect. It's really lame and ridiculously so. The sort of thing you wish you had someone to read portions aloud to.

But it's late, and I really need to quit being on the Internet, so that's about it. Hopefully by the next time I update the semester finals will be taken and graded, and I'll be free to ROOT away! (Well, except for the other job. But still...)

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Glad to hear your thoughts on A Town Like Alice. Haven't felt compelled to try it, despite liking On the Beach and Pied Piper. It is reassuring to know that I'm not totally missing out ;)