amysisson's 2015 goals and book list

2015 Goals:

- 75 books total (57 as of 09-15-15)
- 60 books that are new to me (39 as of 09-15-15)
- 45 books by women (34 as of 09-03-15)
- 40 books that are new to me and from my own shelves (24 as of 09-15-15)
- 3 books in German
- 3 nonfiction books
- 3 audiobooks (4 as of 08-31-15)
- 3 books that fit into my 50 States Challenge
- 3 (new to me) books published before 1950 (4 as of 07-05-15)

List. (NOTE: touchstones will appear in individual messages but not in this list -- it becomes unwieldy after awhile!)

1. Clotheshorse by Marjory Hall. YA - vintage. Repeat. Read 01-04-15.
2. Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher. General fiction. New. Read 01-08-15.
3. Noggin by John Corey Whaley. YA - science fiction. New. Read 01-09-15.
4. Once Upon a Time in the North {audio} by Philip Pullman, read by the author with dramatized cast. Fantasy. Repeat (of print book read). Listened to audiobook on 01-18-15.
5. Great Expectations {abridged audio} by Charles Dickens, read by Hugh Laurie. British literature. Listened to audiobook on 01-18-15 (started 01-15-15).
6. Straw Hat Summer by Marjory Hall. YA - vintage. Repeat. Read 01-20-15.
7. Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle. General fiction. Read 01-23-15.
8. A Year from Now by Marjory Hall. YA - vintage. Repeat. Read 01-25-15.
9. Carnival Cruise by Carol Morse (Marjory Hall). YA - vintage. Repeat. Read 01-27-15.
10. The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman. Fantasy. Repeat. Read 02-02-15.
11. Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld. YA. Read 02-08-15.
12. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Quandary Phase by Douglas Adams {audio, dramatized cast}. Science fiction. Listened to audiobook on 02-10-15 (started 02-02-15).
13. Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman. Children's. Read 02-19-15.
14. Half Bad by Sally Green. YA - fantasy. Read 02-23-15.
15. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine. YA - historical. Read 03-03-15.
16. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu; translated from Chinese by Ken Liu. Science fiction. Read 03-12-15.
17. Vanished by E.E. Cooper. YA. Read 03-24-15.
18. Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block. YA. Read 03-27-15.
19. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin. YA - fantasy. Read 03-31-15 (repeat).
20. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. YA - historical. Read 04-14-15 (repeat).
21. The Old Beauty and Others by Willa Cather. Literature - American. Read 04-15-15.
22. My Dog, Cat by Marty Crisp, illustrated by True Kelley. Children's - general fiction. Read 04-16-15.
23. Looking for Alaska by John Green. YA. Read 04-21-15 (repeat).
24. The Bookwoman's Last Fling by John Dunning. Mystery. Read 04-24-15.
25. Chief Takes Over by Helen Rushmore. Children's - general fiction. Read 04-25-15.
26. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. YA - science fiction. Read 04-27-15.
27. The Martian by Andy Weir. Science Fiction. Read 04-29-15 (repeat).
28. Star Trek: The Amazing Stories (anthology), edited by John J. Ordover. Science fiction. Read 05-06-15.
29. Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars by Ellen MacGregor. Children's - science fiction. Read 05-18-15.
30. Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. YA - science fiction. Repeat. Read 05-29-15.
31. Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein. YA - historical. Read 06-04-15.
32. Cullum by E. Arnot Robertson. Literature - British. Read 06-14-15.
33. The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins. Fantasy / Horror. Read 06-18-15.
34. Miss Fix-It by Adèle deLeeuw. YA - vintage. Read 06-25-15.
35. The Janitor's Girl by Frieda Friedman. YA - vintage. Read 06-28-15.
36. The Luck of the Bodkins by P.G. Wodehouse. Period fiction - British. Read 07-05-15.
37. Mixed-Up Summer by Bianca Bradbury. YA. Read 07-14-15.
38. Wood by Hugh Howey. SF. Read 07-16-15.
39. Armada by Ernest J. Cline. SF. Read 07-19-15.
40. Y is for Yorick: A Slightly Irreveret Shakespearean ABC Book for Grown-Ups. Humor. Read 07-20-15.
41. The Secret Place by Tana French. Mystery. Read 07-25-15.
42. Peggy Finds the Theater by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage. Read 07-25-15.
43. Peggy Plays Off-Broadway by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage. Read 07-26-15.
44. Peggy Goes Straw Hat by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage. Read 07-26-15.
45. Peggy on the Road by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage. Read 07-28-15.
46. Peggy Goes Hollywood by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage. Read 07-29-15.
47. Peggy's London Debut by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage. Read 07-30-15.
48. Peggy Plays Paris by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage. Read 07-31-15.
49. Peggy's Roman Holiday by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage. Read 08-02-15.
50. Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 08-10-15 (repeat).
51. Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 08-14-15 (repeat).
52. Kitty Takes a Holiday by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 08-16-15 (repeat).
53. The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (dramatized audio CDs). Science Fiction. Listened 08-31-15 (repeat).
54. Mosaic by Jeri Taylor. Science fiction. Read 08-31-15 (repeat).
55. Kitty and the Silver Bullet by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 09-03-15.
56. The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson. Science fiction. Read 09-05-15 (repeat).
57. Lost & Found (anthology), edited by M. Jerry Weiss and Helen S. Weiss. YA (anthology). Read 09-11-15.
58. Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 09-14-15.
59. The Carpet Makers (translated from German) by Andreas Eschbach. Science fiction. Read 09-21-15 (repeat).
60. Kitty Raises Hell by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 10-04-15.
61. Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher. Young adult - mainstream. Read 10-08-15.
62. Kitty's House of Horrors by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 010-13-15.
63. The Merro Tree by Katie Waitman. Science fiction. Read 10-28-15 (repeat).
64. The Sin-Eater's Confession by Ilsa J. Bick. Young adult - mainstream. Read 10-29-15.
65. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green. Young adult - mainstream. Read 10-31-15.
66. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith. Mystery. Read 11-29-15.
67. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. Young adult - fantasy. Read 12-01-15 (repeat).
68. Rebel Angels by Libba Bray. Young adult - fantasy. Read 12-08-15 (repeat).
69. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray. Young adult - fantasy. Read 12-10-15.
70. Legion by Brandon Sanderson. Science fiction. Read 12-13-15 (repeat).
71. Legion: Skin Deep by Brandon Sanderson. Science fiction. Read 12-14-15.
72. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. Children's. Read 12-21-15 (repeat).
73. The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson. Fantasy. Read 12-25-15.
74. The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas by Madeleine L'Engle. Children's. Read 12-25-15.
75. Dream Houses by Genevieve Valentine. Science Fiction. Read 12-27-15.
76. Out of Abaton: The Wooden Prince by John Claude Bemis. Read 12-30-15.

FORMAT:
Audio book - 4
E-book -
Print - 72
TOTAL - 76

REPEAT OR NEW?
Repeat - 24
New - 52
TOTAL - 76

GENRE:
Children's - general fiction -
Children's - science fiction -
Fantasy -
General fiction -
Humor -
Literature - American -
Literature - British -
Mystery -
Period fiction - British -
Science fiction -
YA -
YA - fantasy -
YA - historical -
YA - science fiction -
YA - vintage -
TOTAL - 76

1. Clotheshorse by Marjory Hall. Read 01-04-15.

This is a vintage YA career romance that I've read many times before. I mainly read it again at this point because I had just returned from a week long Christmas-trip, had held a New Year's Eve party, had had a houseguest, and could pick this up and put it down quickly in between trying to reclaim the house from said New Year's Eve party.

This is one of the author's many career romances, about a young woman who goes to work at a fashion magazine. It has its weaknesses, but I still love it.

2. Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher. Read 01-08-15.

This short novel is not just written entirely in letters, it's written entirely in letters of recommendation from one Jay Fitger, a professor of English at a small undistinguished college and a professional curmudgeon who has begun to recognize the many mistakes he's made in life. This book is clever, funny and serious at the same time, and quite original. I highly recommend it to anyone in academia.

3. Noggin by John Corey Whaley. Read 01-09-15.

I expected a little more from this book based on the good reviews it has been getting. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't that earth-shattering. Travis wakes up five years after his death, having been a volunteer to have his head separated from his cancer-ridden body and frozen. His head has been attached to a new body, donated by a volunteer who had brain cancer. For Travis, it seems he's just been asleep for a few days, and he unconsciously expects to pick up his life right where he left it before he got sick. Things don't work out that way, of course. The book was decently written and I felt that Travis's relationships with his friends and parents were touching, but there were no surprises in this book at all.

Noggin has an interesting set up. Too bad it didn't work that well.

And welcome over to 2015.

4. Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullmann. Listened to audiobook 01-18-15.

I wasn't sure whether to list this under my short story reading. It's a novella, and was published as a standalone work. And it did take 2 hours and 15 minutes. So I'm listing it here under my "book" reading instead of my short story reading.

I read this in print when it came out in 2008, but picked up the audiobook at Half Price Books some time later. This is the first time I've listened to it. I like that it's narrated by the author but that it employs a fairly large cast for the individual characters. I also like that the audiobook reads the text of some of the ephemera items that came with the original book. The story was a little confusing to me in audio, in trying to keep the characters straight, and unfortunately I didn't remember enough from my 2008 reading of the book to get any help there. But I still enjoyed it. I didn't like the voice for Iorek Byrnison, the polar bear, but liked the rest of the voices. This story is mainly about the first meeting of Lee Scoresby, the Texan aeronaut, and Iorek.

My favorite aspect of the story is that Lee Scoresby has always thought his daemon Hester was a jackrabbit, but at the end of this story he is called a "man of the north," because it turns that Hester is actually an Arctic hare.

I tend to think audiobooks should get two separate ratings, one for the content and one for the performance. As it happens, I would give both 4 stars in this case.

5. Great Expectations: abridged audio by Charles Dickens, read by Hugh Laurie. Listened to audiobook 01-18-15 (started 01-15-15).

I normally don't do "abridged" but was willing to because I wanted this audio version narrated by Hugh Laurie. It turns out I'm glad I did the abridged version, because I didn't think all that highly of the story. I don't know Dickens well, and was surprised by how Gothic it was, with Miss Havisham dressing in her old bridal finery and stopping all the clocks at 9:20.... I did very much like Hugh Laurie's expressive reading. This isn't something I would likely listen to again, however, so I'll be donating it or trading it in somewhere.

I give the story 3 stars and Hugh Laurie's performance five stars, hence the 4-star overall rating.

I don't think I had ever heard the word curmudgeon before 2015 (I'm not a native English speaker) , and it's the second time I read it since I joined this group. Makes me wonder if there's a message for me here. ;)

>9 chlorine:

LOL!

6. Straw Hat Summer by Marjory Hall. Read 01-20-15.

It's not my intention to read so many repeats (50% of my reading so far this year!), but I've been traveling plus doing a short-story-a-day challenge, and I have encyclopedia articles to write on various books that I have in progress. So, these YA vintage books are what I go to when I have only a few minutes to read and not much brain energy to expend!

This is not one of Hall's better books. In this one, Gail Prentice is bored on her family's farm when a summer theater troupe suddenly needs to turn their family barn into a theater. This book has more of Hall's characteristic weaknesses than her characteristic strengths. There are way too many coincidences, the main character willfully falls for all the wrong people first, and she doesn't know the state-of-mind of her actual love interest until the very end of the book. In other words, the characters get to the point of an "understanding" (eventual engagement and marriage) without ever having had many dates or prior discussion about their relationship. Gail's attitude is something like "I guess I'll find out if I have a man in my life when he finally gets around to saying something."

On the plus side, Marjory Hall always wants her characters to grow up and realize not everything is about them. And I enjoyed the details about summer theater, even if I found some of them unbelievable.

7. Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle. Read 01-23-15.

A young man with a severe face-disfiguring injury makes a modest living running a play-by-mail game set in a post-apocalyptic America. He faces a possible lawsuit when two of the players in his game take it too far with tragic consequences, and compares the nature of the game with the path his own life has taken.

I thought this was a thoughtful book, but it never gave me enough information to satisfy. I think the author is trying to get across the point that people don't often understand their own actions, especially those that are spur-of-the-moment, let alone the actions of anyone else. I don't disagree with that message, but I would have liked more factual information about what the two players in the game thought they were doing.

8. A Year from Now by Marjory Hall. Read 01-25-15.

Another repeat of a vintage girls' career romance novel. Again, not one of Marjory Hall's better ones. In this one, six friends who have majored in Home Economics sally forth into the world, agreeing to have a reunion exactly one year later so they can see how they've fared. First, I think the book would have worked better with four characters instead of six. Second, within that single year, three of them become engaged to men they've known for only months -- in one case, one of the men proposes on their fourth date and she accepts!

Sigh.... I know things were different back then, and to be fair, a big part of this book is meant to convey that it would be a shame to quit working a job you enjoy just because you're getting married. But still! Don't get me wrong; I love these kinds of books or I wouldn't keep reading them, but this author can do, and does, a lot better in many of her other books.

Stopped reading The One & Only by Emily Giffin. I thought the Texas and football backdrops would make it interesting to me, but I found the characters unlikeable or stupid or both.

9. Carnival Cruise by Carol Morse (Marjory Hall). Read 01-27-15.

Unlike most of Hall's books, this one takes place during high school rather than after. So it's not a career book, but nor is it a maltshop romance. It's a cruise ship romance; 80 members of a high school marching band are rewarded for their hard work with a cruise to a little island called Toluca. Poppy, the main character, comes out of her shell and finds romance.

I like that the book promotes the idea of travel for broadening one's horizons. Hall's trademark plot device of everyday girl wins the son of the CEO gets a little old, though.

The One & Only was one of the worst books I have ever read. It became quite offensive with a frivolous use of domestic violence as a convenient plot point. You did the right thing by giving up.

>16 RidgewayGirl:

Oh, thank goodness I didn't spend more time on it!

Stopped reading The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. It's a Newbery Medal winner, but only 20 pages in and I couldn't stand a single character. :-(

It would appear I'm the pickiest reader on the planet. I stopped reading Life Animated: A Story Of Sidekicks, Heroes, And Autism by Ron Suskind. A year or so ago I read the article upon which this full-length book is based, and the article was fascinating. And I still think it's an amazing story, about a little boy with fairly severe autism who was able to start re-connecting with other people through lines and situations in Disney movies. He's grown up now and even went to college, I believe, where he founded a support group for others like him.

So I think it's an inspiring and important story, but I find that I don't really care for the writing style on the line level. Plus the article pretty much summed up the story, so I don't feel like I'm going to get the payoff I would want (I already have it, in a way) for wading through the whole thing when I don't like the writing style itself.

I would recommend at least the article, or for those really interested in the subject, the book is worth a try. It's highly rated, so I think this is just a matter of personal taste.

I heard his father, I think on npr. It was a fascinating piece.

10. The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman. Read 02-02-15.

Repeat of a fantasy novel, read for purposes of writing an encyclopedia essay. I do love this series and feel this is a good, solid conclusion to the trilogy, but I like the first and second books better.

11. Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld. Read 02-080-15.

This is a mainstream young adult novel about a recent high school graduate who has just signed a lucrative publishing contract for a YA paranormal she wrote during NaNoWriMo. She's determined to take her $300K advance from her two-book contract and turn it into "living the writer life in New York City" for as long as she can, telling her parents she's deferring college for just one year. Her story is interspersed with chapters of the novel, which she's currently re-writing, and there's some crossover between the two. She also quickly falls in love with a slightly older fellow author.

I liked the book alright, but wow, her path to publishing was ridiculously easy. I suspect the portrayal of the YA publishing field in NYC is somewhat accurate, but the problem is, it doesn't make the characters, including Darcy, particularly likeable. There's a sort of "special snowflake" vibe, and the writers take themselves pretty damn seriously -- some of which may be warranted, and some of which may not be warranted. Several characters comment on how lucky Darcy is in her path to publication, but that also serves to draw attention to how unrealistic it is. Hey, come on a book tour with someone really famous! Hey, knock your first public appearance out of the park! Hey, all the more established YA writers will be really nice to you!

Darcy also goes from her very first romantic kiss (until which she didn't know if she preferred boys or girls) to essentially living with her new lover in a matter of a few weeks, without much mention of their physical relationship, which you would think would be kind of a big deal.

The interwoven novel was mostly interesting, but I never felt that the love interest in that section was particularly interesting. So overall this was a cute concept, executed fairly well, but somewhat forgettable.

>22 amysisson: I call it the "YA Syndrome". Every hard choice is taken away by either someone helping or by just chance; things just line up properly. Not that there aren't YA novels that don't go so much down that road but most do... Nice review :)

12. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Quandary Phase by Douglas Adams. Audio book with dramatized cast. Finished listening 02-10-15.

This consists of four BBC radio episodes of the fourth Hitchhiker's book, which is So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. Incidentally, this has always been my favorite of the five books. I'm considering this "new" rather than a re-read because there are significant differences between this and the original text of the book. I have to say, it was very well adapted and I liked the cast, especially the ones who voiced Ford Prefect and Fenchurch (who I've always liked better than Trillian). Surpise casting: Christian Slater as Wonko the Sane.

recent high school graduate who has just signed a lucrative publishing contract for a YA paranormal she wrote during NaNoWriMo. She's determined to take her $300K advance

I like reading books about authors and have an interest in the business side of things (used to check out various agent blogs), but that sounds very not believable. Do they at least show her spending a lot of time editing or was it finish! submit! get publishing contract!

>25 DieFledermaus:. It was finish, submit, get publishing contract, and then spend the next year re-writing after her editor sends her "the editorial letter." Which I know authors do get, so there often is a lot of revising even after manuscript has been accepted, but for a first novel I'd think they want it in pretty good shape before giving her a $300,000 contract!

There have been some Cinderella publishing stories for young people, like the girl who was a freshman or sophomore from Harvard. That's the one the publisher had to recall because she had plagiarized most of it.....

Stopped reading Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger. I found this for $3 on the clearance shelves at Half Price Books today; it's a novel from the point of view of a lady's maid who travels to Egypt with her mistress, who has tuberculosis. When the maid finds a life (i.e. love) of her own, she realizes that as loving and generous as her mistress has always acted, she does not see her maid as a person.

I thought this had great potential, and I read to page 38, but I got caught up in the tense changing from past to present, sometimes mid-paragraph. It's not exactly grammatically incorrect -- it's an authorial choice -- but it makes the book seem clumsy and does not add suspense (or logic, for that matter). It was annoying me enough that I decided that I wouldn't get enough payoff, especially as we start knowing the major plot developments, to make it worth my annoyance.

13. Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Skottie Young. Read 02-19-15.

This is a fun illustrated children's book about a father who goes to buy milk for his children's breakfast, takes a long time, and comes back bearing a very tall tale of pirates, vampires, aliens, dinosaurs, volcanoes, time travel, and the power of milk. I plan on buying this for at least one of my nephews, probably two.

14. Half Bad by Sally Green. Read 02-23-15.

This is about a boy whose father is an infamous Black Witch, making him a "Half Code" among his pure White Witch half-siblings.

This book is one-note, with ridiculously sadistic villains. It's the first in a trilogy, and has no significant resolution. It's bloated in places. I won't be reading the rest of the trilogy.

Stopped reading The Talented Clementine by Sara Pennypacker. The illustrations by Marla Frazee are charming, but I don't like the voice -- first person voice in a character this young strikes me as odd, and she comes across as a more smart-alecky Ramona, whose antics were generally very innocent.

Stopped reading The Hive Construct by Alexander Maskill. I loved the prologue, set up on the perimeter of a huge city (New Cairo) in the Sahara desert. It had a rough, lawless feel. But once inside the city, the book becomes politics and computer hacking.

There was also a new widow with children who conveniently turns out to have a police background that's perfect for commanding the rebel forces within the city.... A little too convenient. Plus I really dislike family political intrigue in stories.

Not badly written, not at all ... just perhaps not to my taste.

15. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine. Read 03-03-15.

I adored this book. It's a retelling of the fairy tale of twelve dancing princesses. In the fairy tale, a king is mystified at why his twelve daughers manage to wear out their shoes every night, not knowing that they sneak out to go dancing. In this book, the daughters are not princesses, but rather sisters during Prohibition in New York, whose father wanted a son and who cruelly keeps his daughters from the world because he thinks they are a detriment to his fortune and ambitions. One night, Jo, the eldest, sees that her next sister in age, Lou, is ready to run away out of frustration and desperation. So Jo decides that they will go out dancing at one of the speakeasies in the city, to burn off that restless energy. As the years go by, the younger sisters join in (there are two sets of twins, in case you wonder how so many daughters can be born in so few years!).

This sounds flighty, but really it isn't. The girls live a horrible existence, shut away from the world, not going to school or even church. Then their father decides it's time to start marrying them off to the highest bidder, regardless of their wishes. And when he finds out that his daughters have been defying him for years, things get really ugly -- remember, this is a timeframe in which a father or husband could have his daughter or wife locked away for "insanity."

It's not easy to keep twelve sisters distinct as characters, and I will admit that I probably could not list them all, but I think the author does a good job of it. And Jo is such a great character -- her sisters call her "General," half affectionately and half resentfully, but they do not understand the extent of their father's cruelty as Jo does, because Jo tries her best to shield them from it.

I'm glad you read a good book after three stinkers. I already have The Girls at the Kingfisher Club on my list of books to look for, but I may just need to order it purposefully instead of hoping I'll run into it somewhere.

16. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu. Read 03-12-15.

This was a complex, interesting book. I had some definite issues with it, but there were some parts I really liked, and I'm glad I read it.

Detailed review (with spoilers) appears on my review blog: http://amysreviews.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-three-body-problem.html

>28 amysisson: What age are you thinking for Fortunately, the Milk. I looked at some amazon reviews and of course found pretty different views on what age it would work for.

>35 japaul22:

I just sent it up to Canada for one of my nephews who is about to turn 8. I also plan to send it to another nephew later in the year who will be turning 10.

Since it's largely humor, I think it works for a larger range of ages than other books might. It would also be a great book for parents to read aloud to kids as young as 6 or 7, I would think. But I have to admit, I'm not terribly good at judging age-appropriateness, as I don't have kids myself.

Hope that helps!

Thanks! I'll wait a few years before getting it for my 5 year old.

I just visited your blog for the first time and really enjoyed your "complete" review of The Girls at the Kingfisher Club. It sounds like there is ample room for serious transformations to take place here and if so, I would be very interested in reading this novel. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

BTW, I have marked your blog for future reference. ;-)

>38 Poquette:

Thanks, that's very flattering! I really enjoyed that book. It was just this lovely surprise.....

Oh my. I just read the dustjacket copy for The Three-Body Problem, which I deliberately avoided reading until I'd finished the book, and it says:

"With the scope of Dune and the rousing action of Independence Day, the near-future Three-Body Trilogy...."

Um, a WORLD OF NO! There is not a heck of a lot of action in this book. Even the one large-scale, dramatic combat scene is very ... quiet.

Stopped reading The Heroines by Eileen Favorite. I loved the premise, which is that heroines from books come to stay at the narrator's mother's boarding house in modern-day Illinois, but I found the writing to be clumsy.

17. Vanished by E.E. Cooper. Read 03-24-15.

I thought this book was pretty poor and would have stopped reading, but I had to review it. It just felt amateurish in its plot and character motivation, and the sociopathic "bad guy" getting his/her comeuppance is only implied, depriving the reader of that satisfaction.

18. Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block. Read 03-27-15.

I've read several of this author's books and I'm used to her freewheeling style, but this one was all over the place. Teenager Dirk is afraid to reveal to his grandmother, who has raised him, that he's gay. When he is severely beaten and hospitalized, he has visions in which his ancestors tell him their stories, many of which have bits of magic in them. Right at the end, a "genie" gives Dirk the story of the young man with whom he will eventually have a loving relationship.

There's a fair bit about drugs in this book; it reads a bit as though the author was on them when she wrote it. She always has lovely imagery and her stories are heartfelt, but this book wasn't nearly as effective as many of her others have been for me. Or I may have grown out of whatever phase I was in that made me enjoy them in the first place.

19. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin. Read 03-31-15.

This is a repeat reading of a YA fantasy book about life after death. It absolutely one-hundred-percent stands up to a re-reading ten years later. One of my favorite parts is the dogs.

I think I'll re-read this again in another ten years. :-)

20. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. Read 04-14-15.
It's n
I loved this just as much as the first time I read it. I'm to write an encyclopedia article on it, which is why I re-read it now. I'm also going to write about the second book, Rose Under Fire, which I haven't read yet. Can't wait!

For anyone unfamiliar with this book, it's young adult historical about World War II, about two young women who become best friends and who have different roles in the war. It's probably not for anyone who is overly squeamish, as one of them becomes a prisoner and is treated very badly. I'd recommend not reading any detailed reviews, because the less you know about it going in, the more amazing it is to read.

21. The Old Beauty and Others by Willa Cather. Read 04-15-15.

This book consisted of three stories, the last three of Cather's to be published, in 1948:

"The Old Beauty" -
"The Best Years" -
"Before Breakfast" -

I reviewed each story individually, but am having trouble getting touchstones to work -- when I click on "others" to get the right touchstone for "The Best Years", if freezes my page. Probably way too many books with those words in their titles.

I am surprised that the overall stars for the book are lower than the stars for any of the stories individually.

Ps: use the id of the work to force the touchstone. If you want. :)

>47 AnnieMod:

Accident! That was meant to be 3 stars ... fixed now!

How/where do you find and then put the ID of the work? I'm not familiar with this. Do you put a number in the brackets instead of the title?

>48 amysisson: left_bracket work_id::title right_bracket will force the touchstone. You can find the work id in the url when you look at the book.

>49 lesmel:

Thanks, that worked!

22. My Dog, Cat by Marty Crisp, illustrated by True Kelley. Published 2000. Read 04-16-15.

This is one of those thin Scholastic paperbacks, which I probably picked up at a school fair or library conference at some point. It's about a boy who wishes for a big dog he can name "Killer" that will help him deal with the local bully, but he instead ends up petsitting his aunt's tiny Yorkshire Terrier for six weeks. Even worse, the dog is named "Cat." Cute, but utterly predictable and a little forgettable.

23. Looking for Alaska by John Green. Published 2005. Read 04-21-15 (repeat).

This was a repeat read for a literary essay I'm writing. I enjoyed it, but not quite as much as I think I did the first time. I found the characters a little more whiny and mean-spirited than I'd like.

24. The Bookwoman's Last Fling by John Dunning. Mystery. Read 04-24-15.

I picked this up some years ago on a bargain table and it recently caught my eye on my own shelves. It's fifth in a mystery series, but I was able to enjoy it on its own for the most part. A former-homicide-cop-turned-book-dealer is asked to evaluate an extremely valuable collection that has had certain volumes cherry-picked from it over years; the long-deceased woman who owned the collection was also married to a racehorse-trainer, so this book alternates between those two worlds, with the larger emphasis on horse-racing.

Since the series is based on the cop/book dealer, I might someday seek out more books in the series, but I wouldn't consider it a priority. I'm not sorry I read this, though. But again, priorities: I won't be keeping this on my shelves as I know I won't re-read it.

>53 amysisson:
I enjoyed the Cliff Janeway mysteries by John Dunning. I found the first one hard to get into and tried it again later. Each book can stand alone and is about something interesting about books, e.g., The Sign of the Book deals with the value of author autographed books. The author John Dunning is a rare book collector so has personal knowledge of the subject. I read them because I like books about books and mysteries, and here they come together.

25. Chief Takes Over by Helen Rushmore, illustrated by Charles Geer. Children's - general fiction. Read 04-25-15.

If it were just based on the illustrations, I'd give this book 4 1/2 or even 5 stars, but the story itself is somewhere between 2 1/2 and 3 stars. It's your basic boy+dog story, ala Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins and Ribsy stories. (In fact, I'm going to make sure I create a cross-recommendation.)

Picked this up in a used bookstore the other day for a couple of bucks. I'll be on the lookout for more from this illutrator.

26. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. Published 2004. Read 04-27-15 (repeat).

Another repeat for a literary essay I'm writing. In an odd coincidence, last year when I read it for the first time, I started it on April 25 and finished on April 27. This year, exact same dates for both start and finish.

I loved it just as much this time.

27. The Martian by Andy Weir. Published 2014. Read 04-29-15 (repeat).

Still very good. A few bits that went over my head, but it's a great story.

Considering that I read The Martian last year, you wouldn't think I'd stay up til all hours to finish it a second time, but I was in the mood. The author has been at NASA Johnson all week. On Tuesday I went to see his reading/talk, and yesterday went back to get my book signed. And since I had to wait over an hour, I started reading it again, and then found I had to finish....

28. Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars by Ellen MacGregor. Published 1951. Read 05-18-15.

I picked this up at an antique mall, having already owned (but not yet read) two others in the series. I decided to start reading this one even though I didn't know where it fell in the series, and by happy coincidence, it was the first. It's basically a simplistic, charming science fiction story for kids, with pretty reasonable science considering both the time it was written and the intended audience.

I probably won't actively go looking for the rest of the books any time soon, but I'll be on the lookout for them and when pick them up when I see them for a reasonable price. The illustrations by Paul Galdone are charming, also.

29. Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. Published 2010. Read 05-29-15.

Another repeat for an encyclopedia article I'm writing. Pretty darn good book. (Extremely) Minor quibble is that the author is too fond of using the phrases "pain blossomed" and "blossoms of pain." Seriously, a copy-editor should have noted how many times those phrases are used. We get it!

But still, thoughtful SF about haves and have-nots.

30. Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein. Published 2013. Read 06-04-15.

This was not the same experience as reading Code Name Verity, but it was just as powerful in a different way. I rarely read either fiction or nonfiction about concentration camps, but I knew that if I were going to, this would be the author whose book about a concentration camp I should read.

Both books are about storytelling, in a way, and how it can save lives, sometimes literally and sometimes more figuratively.

31. Cullum by E. Arnot Robertson. Originally published 1928 (this edition published 1989). Read 06-14-15.

I'm calling this British literature, although perhaps it isn't literature and should just be called "period fiction."

In any case, this is the story of a pragmatic half-French half-British nineteen-year-old who mistrusts the idea of love in light of her parents separation. She works horses with her father and has literary ambitions; her life changes completely when she falls in love with an author named Cullum, who seems to believe the lies he's spinning while he's spinning them.

I was quite invested in this book for at least 3/4 of it or more, but I could not forgive the protagonist when, in her grief over the broken love affair, she mistreats a horse horribly. This results (predictably, I might add) in the horse throwing her, causing an injury that will be with her for the rest of her life. I feel as though we're supposed to now feel sorry for her, or as though she has atoned for that behavior by sustaining this injury.

Nope. You don't abuse an animal, ever, just because you're hurting emotionally.

Then, with my sympathy pretty much gone, I had to endure too many more pages of her whining. I only finished because I was so far along at that point.

That's not to say this is badly written, which is why I've still rated it at 3 stars instead of lower. It is well-written, and people, both in fiction and in real life, do stupid and sometimes unforgivable things. This author just happened to hit one of my very big trigger buttons.

32. The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins. Published 2015. Read 06-18-15.

OK, so a detailed review will follow if I can get my thoughts together, but I seriously cannot remember the last time a book blew my mind quite this intensely. I have never read anything else like this.

I will say that I had this weird experience -- I got the book through Early Reviewers, and imagine I requested it because, duh, "library" in the title! A spec fic book about a library!

Then I started reading it and remember thinking, "Oh wow, this is horror. I don't think I'm going to like this." And a little further in, I thought, "Wait, maybe this is fantasy ... just dark fantasy." Well into the book, I thought, "Nope, it's horror, and this is really intense." Later I thought.... well, I'm not giving away what I thought just then.

Holy cow, I'm going to have trouble sleeping tonight. Not because of the horror aspects (and they are there), but because I'm going to have trouble stopping thinking about this book long enough to fall asleep.

>32 amysisson:

My spoiler-free review is here: http://amysreviews.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-library-at-mount-char.html

Three seems to be plenty of five star reviews for The Library at Mount Char. Hope it's not still keeping you awake. Loved the review.

33. Miss Fix-It by Adèle deLeeuw. YA - vintage. Read 06-25-15.

Adèle deLeeuw is one of the many maltshop and career romance writers of the era I collect (1930s to 1970s, which the emphases on the 1950s and 1960s). I just recently got an inexpensive copy of this book and was excited to have something new of hers to read, but I really didn't enjoy it. It was so heavy-handed -- I mean, I'm all for characters growing, but "Miss Fix-It" put her nose into so many people's problems that it got to be pretty ridiculous. On the other hand, I did like that she was a bit of a tomboy who enjoyed fixing physical things, and that her father was supportive in letting her start a small repair business, even though it drove her mother crazy. But overall, I was glad when the book ended, as I was a bit tired of it by then.

34. The Janitor's Girl by Frieda Friedman. YA - vintage. Read 06-28-15.

It was a toss-up whether to call this YA or middle grade, because the main character, Sue, is only 12 years old, but the outlook seems more mature to me than that. She and two of her three siblings are anxious to see what their new home in a large New York apartment building, where their father is the new superintendant, will be like. Sue's 14-year-old sister Laura, however, is already sure that everyone in the building will look down on them. Sue handles herself well, but even she has to overcome some prejudices of her own when her father's assistant, an immigrant, asks Sue to befriend his daughter, who has just arrived in America and is unsure of herself.

Predictable book, but feel-good, and the illustrations are absolutely charming -- they reminded me of Joe and Beth Krush's illustrations for some of Beverly Cleary's maltshop titles. The Janitor's Girl was first published in 1956.

35. The Luck of the Bodkins by P.G. Wodehouse. Period fiction - British. Read 07-05-15.

This is a standalone novel by Wodehouse, and the first thing I've read from him. It's a comedy of romantic errors involving a trans-Atlantic voyage, a smuggled necklace, a plush Mickey Mouse, a Hollywood starlet, a movie producer, a clueless cabin steward, and three couples who have trouble getting straight just who is loyal to whom. I found this amusing, although I wouldn't have minded if it had been about 1/3 shorter.

36. Mixed-Up Summer by Bianca Bradbury. YA. Read 07-14-15.

This was a fairly terrible little book. The author has written one of my favorite YA books, A New Penny, and this one too is about the theme of young marriage (these were written in the 1970s, I believe) and the problems that entails. In A New Penny, the couple "has to" get married because she's pregnant, and she drops out of high school, so the book is mainly about her realizing that this life will work better for them if she goes back to school and tries to be more of a partner in the marriage.

In Mixed-Up Summer, Gay has taken a year after high school to work as a aide in a nursing home, to see if she likes that kind of work well enough to go to nursing school instead of regular college. She is semi-engaged to Tom, a serious young man who had a rough life (his deceased father was and his still living mother is an alcoholic), but who has worked hard to start an appliance repair business. Gay can't make up her mind if she loves Tom enough to marry him, especially because he doesn't seem to have much empathy for people. Gay loves her job, but Tom constantly nags her to quit, saying that it's a nasty place and that most of the residents are losers.

Unlike most such books, I honestly didn't know if Gay would decide to marry Tom or not. And at points I couldn't decide if I wanted her to marry Tom or not. His childhood was difficult, but I'm disgusted that instead of being proud of Gay for doing such difficult, important, and caring work, he hates that she works in the nursing home. I was also kind of disgusted by Gay's parents. Clearly, they're meant to be portrayed as supportive, but I kind of think they were also idiots at times. Gay's mother is a nurse, and there's nothing more she would like than to see Gay follow in her footsteps. Yet when Gay complains that Tom nags her to leave her job, Gay's mother doesn't seem to think that's a big deal, and even accuses Gay of trying to change Tom and of being too hard on him. If Tom's attitude about her job weren't bad enough, he also admits that he thinks Gay's own father is a bit of a loser because he can no longer afford to farm his land, and ended up taking a regular job.

And what parents tell their daughter that it's just dandy for her to get married at 19 -- they'll still pay for her college anyway! Different times, I know, but .... To be fair, this isn't the first book I've read from roughly that time period, or maybe a little earlier, where the idea was put forth that college might actually be easier if you get married first, because you'll be all "settled down" and it will be easier to study.

I'm also reminded of how many times in modern romantic comedies, the heroine is about to marry a nice but absolutely wrong-for-her guy that she doesn't love. How do these heroines get that close to the altar when they either don't love the guy, or arent' sure if they do? And I'm also astounded by stories of people who need serious relationship counseling before getting married. If it needs that much work before the pressures of marriage, the changes aren't good that it will last. Sigh...

(Hmm, I''m even more annoyed now than I was when I actually finished the book last night!)

37. Wool by Hugh Howey. SF. Read 07-16-15.

This was an odd reading experience. One of my book groups was reading it, and that gave me the incentive to finally read it myself, which I'd been meaning to do. But I didn't finish in time for the meeting and I didn't want spoilers, so I skipped the meeting. Then I found I had to keep forcing myself to go back to it -- it took me almost a month to read, and I kept starting other books! There's a quite slow period in the middle of the book, and I was tempted to stop more than once.

I'm glad I pushed through, because things really start happening the last 100 pages or so. And I liked the ending, although I would have liked a little more assurance that Juliette was going back to get Jimmy/Solo and the kids quickly -- those poor kids, waiting for her! But she's not the type to abandon them, so I know she will go back.

I don't think I intend to read further. I am intrigued by the fact that Howey has given permission for people to publish fanfic through Amazon's authorized fanfic program. I mean, there are (I think) 45 more silos with stories -- more, if you count the three that have been "crossed off."

Interesting read. Ultimately I gave it four stars in spite of that lag in the middle, because the set-up was intriguing, I cared about many of the characters (although there were some I had trouble keeping straight), and I liked the ending.

>70 amysisson:

I had been staying away from that one because of all the noise around it. Sounds like I need to check it finally.

>70 amysisson: I read a sample of it. I'm not sure I'm tempted enough. Hmmmm

>71 AnnieMod:
>72 lesmel:

Honestly, I'm not sure I can wholeheartedly recommend it to someone who's on the fence about reading it. It shouldn't have taken me a month to read it. I shouldn't have had to keep forcing myself to go back to it. I can't put my finger on the problem; the characters were mostly well developed, the world-building was pretty strong, there were some interesting surprises....

The Martian and The Library at Mount Char, on the other hand, both had me up late at night to finish. (The latter is quite dark, though.)

38. Armada by Ernest J. Cline. SF. Read 07-19-15.

I'm afraid this was a serious disappointment. I absolutely loved the author's first book, Ready Player One, but this one is the most blatent adolescent male wish fulfillment fantasy possible. Which would be fine if it were marketed as middle grade adventure, but not so much when it's marketed to adults. I mean, we're talking Bella/Twilight level wish fulfillment.

I am resisting the urge to be snarky, but wow. I had to force myself to finish, and did so only because I paid money for it.

>74 amysisson: Oh noooooooo!! You are the second person to say it isn't a good novel (sophomore curse, maybe?)

>75 lesmel:

Could be sophomore curse. But simply disappointing is one thing. I spent most of this book seriously annoyed at the 16-year-old mentality. I mean, Every Last Thing in this book is teenage boy fantasy.

39. Y is for Yorick: A Slightly Irreverent Shakespearean ABC Book for Grown-Ups. Humor. Read 07-20-15.

I almost don't like to count this, because it's so short -- a humorous picture book for adults, really. But I want a record of having read it.

This is an adorable, beautifully illustrated Shakespearean ABC book for adults. More detailed review here (also reviews The Not-So-Very-Nice Goings-On at Victoria Lodge):

http://amysreviews.blogspot.com/2015/07/clever-is-as-silly-does.html

>77 amysisson: This sounds wonderful.... :)

>74 amysisson: - Too bad about Cline's second book. I heard lots of good things about Ready Player One - a couple friends were raving about it, and one even bought it for me for my birthday. Armada sounds really, really bad though.

>79 DieFledermaus:

It was really, really bad. I can get myself worked up all over again, thinking about it!

40. The Secret Place by Tana French. Mystery. Read 07-25-15.

This is the fifth in the author's Dublin Murder Squad series. I continue to like that each book has a different viewpoint character, usually one that was a minor character in a prior book. But I admit I'm beginning to weary of the extreme subtleties of psychology that we're expected to believe are realistic. For one thing, it seems to me that which detective gets to work in Murder seems unrealistic; if one person doesn't like another, it seems the latter can be shunted away to Vice or Cold Cases just on that first person's whim. Is there nobody actually in charge of these things? Yes, I'm sure there are interdepartmental politics, but the viewpoint character spent half the book analyzing whether the detective on record is going to be willing to work with him or not.

Spoilers below for both this book and The Likeness:

It also bothered me greatly that this the second book in the series in which we're meant to believe that one or more of a group of friends find the friendship so idyllic that he/she will do anything to preserve it, including murder or covering up a murder. The other book, The Likeness was similar in this regard. In that one, someone is so convinced that this one friendship, at this one point in time, is the only good thing that's ever really going to come out of the world, so everything must be done to keep it just as it is. But even though the friendship was so very close, an undercover cop is able to impersonate one of the group and successfully live in the same house with the rest of them not knowing she's a fake. Yeah, right.....

In The Secret Place, it's a group of four teenagers at a boarding school. I do like, in a way, that they vow to not put up with the bullshit from the boys at the companion school, and stop caring about what other people think when they don't behave conventionally. On the other hand, murder to protect the most spacey and innocent of the group? Ultimately, we end up with two characters who are pretty much insane, and two who are so calculating that they do the most ridiculous things. (For instance, if you think your friend might be heartbroken by a womanizing guy, would your solution be to sleep with him yourself, because that will keep the guy occupied and away from your innocent friend?

Oh, and the bit about the girls being able to float coins and make lightbulbs go out -- sort of a combination ESP/poltergeist thing -- was completely unnecessary. I think it was meant to give off a "unsuspected power of teenage girls" vibe, but it felt quite out of place in this series.

By the end of the book, I had a very hard time caring about who had done what.

41. Peggy Finds the Theater by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage (series). Read 07-25-15.

This is the first in a series of eight books from Grosset & Dunlap, who brought us Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames, Vicki Barr.... In this book, Peggy talks her parents into letting her leave her small town in Wisconsin to tackle acting in the Big Apple. As with Nancy Drew, things happen very easily for Peggy: she finds an amazing place to live with other aspiring actresses (yet with appropriate chaperonage, of course); she gets into the best drama school in the city; she falls right in with an ambitious group looking to put on their own play; and so on.

This book is mostly set-up; the only dramatic "tension" in the book is that Peggy wants to help her new friends find a theater in which to put on their play, which is easier said than done. She finds an old theater being used for sinister purposes (warehouse for a group of thieves), and the building owner is so grateful that he rents the entire building to the group at a very low price. There ends the book; since the second in the series is titled Peggy Plays Off-Broadway, I think we can see where the series is going.

I don't think it's fair to judge a book written at that time and for that specific audience by the same standards I would judge a book written today, which is why I'm giving it the "average" rating of 2 1/2 stars. What's wrong with this book is what was wrong with many, if not most, books published for young people around that time. For what it is, it's decent enough, and I love the pen and ink illustrations by Sergio Leone. I plan to read the rest of the series whenever I need a mental rest, since they're super quick.

42. Peggy Plays Off-Broadway by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage (series). Read 07-26-15.

Second in the series that I started yesterday. In this book, Peggy and friends ready a play in which Peggy has a supporting role, modestly recognizing that she's not nearly experienced enough for the lead. That role is taken by Paula Andrews, who I assumed would be a bitchy diva until such time as she needed help for some problem and then quickly reformed, but I guessed wrong. Instead, the story went with the other trope; while Paula is cooperative, non-competitive, and a hard worker, she is also the rich-girl-who-has-run-from-her-past. In other books I've read from this time period, this can be due to some romantic misunderstanding, but in this case it's because Paula's parents themselves are famous actors, and Paula is convinced that she needs to prove at least once that she can get a part and exceed in it without anyone knowing her parentage. However, she miscalculates her plans and runs out of money, and faints from malnutrition because she hasn't been eating, but still she claims to be a poor orphan, so Peggy has to go snooping to find out the real story. All ends well, naturally!

This book also reminds me of Beth Hilton, Model, in which the profession is depicted as remarkably innocent. In these first two Peggy Lane books, there is not a single ounce of jealousy or backstabbing, and while Peggy expresses regret that talented actors often don't get parts based entirely on having the wrong look, the profession isn't sexed up the way we know it to be today, so no pressuring women to get certain plastic surgery! In Beth Hilton, Model, Beth does have a jealous and competitive cousin who is also a model, but there still -- the profession is all innocence.

I think that's why I like reading these books.

43. Peggy Goes Straw Hat by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage (series). Read 07-26-15.

Third of eight in the Peggy Lane series. Peggy accepts a job as the contract "ingénue" for a summer stock theater company. I've seen that word bandied about for a zillion years, but decided I really ought to look it up. According to Google definitions, it is:

- an innocent or unsophisticated young woman.
- a part of an ingénue in a play.
an actress who plays an ingénue.

What this says to me is that it's a formula role in the theater, and that's actually what I don't like about a lot of theater, especially musicals -- that they are often so "formula" that there are formula names for the roles.

Anyhoo, I didn't like this book quite as much as the first two (not that they're Shakespeare), in part because I've read a fair few vintage career romances specifically about summer stock theater, and this one didn't have the charm that they did. To give this book its dramatic tension, the town movie theater is against the summer stock theater due to the competition, and due to budget, the theater is performing in the high school auditorium instead of a converted barn. It's kind of hard to find the "romance" of summer stock in a high school auditorium, and the movie theater's feeble efforts to ruin the summer stock group are pretty silly. All in all, this isn't a terribly memorable entry in the series.

44. Peggy on the Road by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage (series). Read 07-28-15.

This has be far been my least favorite in the Peggy Lane series so far. Peggy gets a job as understudy, plus a small walk-on role, in the traveling version of a Broadway hit. Much of the book is dedicated to Peggy's efforts to track down an old, reclusive Vaudeville performer that the play's producer has his heart set on to play the grandfather. She does track him down, but then the show's lead actress pitches a fit and tries to ruin the show because she doesn't want to act with him. To say the two have a past together is an understatement, but it's a contrived, ridiculous past. Sigh.... The show barely actually gets to the road, because so much time is taken up with these melodramatic sub-plots, but of course Peggy has done such a stellar job as understudy and girl detective that she gets the role when the actress in her part quits.

45. Peggy Goes Hollywood by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage (series). Read 07-29-15.

Fifth of eight in the series, and a little better than the rest. Although I find much of what happens to Peggy in this book to be unrealistic, even given the changing times, this was one of the only books where the "problem" was actually Peggy's acting career, as opposed to someone else's little problem or slight mystery she solves. Peggy is sent by her agent out to Hollywood, and instructed to buy a new wardrobe she can't afford; her agent on the other end starts setting up glamour dates for her with a well-known film star, but this earns her a reputation as a talentless "face" who just wants to make it in the movies, so she starts losing good roles in spite of her good acting record.

46. Peggy's London Debut by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage (series). Read 07-29-15.

And we went from one of the stronger books in the series to perhaps the weakest one so far. Peggy goes to London, on the advice of people who say she should travel for the experience so she'll eventually be a better actress. Conveniently, her old stand-by sort-of boyfriend Randy the playwright happens to be opening one of his plays there, and it's a play in which Peggy has already acted, so they give her the part = instant job!

Actually, it's not the ease and convenience that bothers me -- that was standard in all these vintage series books, including Nancy Drew -- but rather the Scooby-Doo nature of the mystery they cram into this book. The last book was so much more about Peggy's acting and career choices, whereas this book is concerned with two things: the "mystery," which involves someone taking advantage of a ghost legend to hunt for treasure, and Peggy and Randy's jealousy and inability to discuss their relationship. I guess the idea back then was that the female didn't have the right to broach the subject as to where a relationship was going, so if the guy didn't make a declaration, the girl had to wonder forever! I note also that hers is slightly hurt/sad jealousy, whereas his is angry/hurt jealousy.

Also, in spite of the fact that I always try to remember the times in which these books were written, I found this hard to overlook:

But that was before dinner was served. It too was perfect. Kurt ordered authoritatively and well, choosing the same menu for both of them....

Kurt ordered authoritatively?! Not only is that a clunky-ass phrase, I believe it's also at least the third time in this series that Peggy dines with someone who is described as ordering, for both of them, with confidence, as if this is an attractive quality that you look for in a man. I can just imagine a young woman saying "I wanted to marry him, really I did, but he ... he just couldn't order dinner with confidence! And he expected me to choose my own meals!"

Sorry, sarcasm now off.....

As has happened in previous volumes, this one sets up the next, because Randy has been invited to represent the United States by presenting a play at the Théâtre des Nations in Paris. So Peggy is about to be swept off there too! (OK, I wasn't completely done with the sarcasm.)

47. Peggy Plays Paris by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage (series). Read 07-31-15.

In this book, Peggy travels to Paris only to find that a mistake has put her there ten days ahead of the rest of the American cast for her play. She meets a man on a train who turns out not only to be a theater critic, but also the friend-of-a-friend she was supposed to get in touch with in Paris anyway. He is arrogant, constantly criticizing Peggy and Americans in general, but at the same time often kind.

For the play, Peggy has come in at the last minute to play a role that's new to her in one of Randy's plays, with barely any time to rehearse (because each company representing a country at the festival comes in, gets a few days to rehearse, and then puts on several performances. Peggy struggles to make the role hers, until the director (and her friend, Mal, all the way back from the first book on) asks her to simply imitate the interpretation that the actress (another friend) who originated the role did. Peggy is shocked and hurt at this suggestion, but decides it's more important for her not to let the company down, so she agrees to do it.

This chapter in the Peggy saga didn't really work for me. André, the Frenchman and critic, is not just arrogant, but really incredibly arrogant. He constantly nags Peggy about learning to speak French instantly. While I agree 100% that Americans should make more effort at learning foreign languages and truly should start teaching foreign languages in kindergarten at the latest, we can't learn all the languages. And Peggy had no inkling she'd be specifically going to France one day. So even if Peggy spoke fluent Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, I got the distinct impression André would still think Peggy was a terrible person for not specifically being able to speak French.

Anyway, the company still gives a decent performance, so they're invited to remain on at the festival to fill in for a company that had to cancel. So Peggy has extra time, and Mal gets the actors to agree to rehearse night and day so that Peggy will now have the time to interpret the role her way, after nobly agreeing to copy another actor's interpretation for the good of the show. And she gets rave reviews.

This all seemed a bit silly to me. Naturally, good actors will want to give a characters their own spin, but even if they are imitating something they've seen another actor do, it still has their own spin, in my opinion. I was also annoyed because Peggy does not seem to learn from one crisis of confidence to another throughout the books.

Oh, and this was funny.... I ranted above about Peggy's willingness, or even desire, to have her dates masterfully order dinner for her. But when it's the arrogant André, it's apparently different: With a hand at her elbow, he led her to a small table, helped her to a chair, and then without consulting her preference, beckoned a waiter and ordered decisively. How dare he not consult her preference?!

48. Peggy's Roman Holiday by Virginia Hughes. YA - vintage (series). Read 08-02-15.

The last of the series, and I think I'm glad. I'm not sorry I read these, but try as I might, it's difficult to get past the views of the times. That negative effect is enhanced somewhat in the books' stereotypical portrayal of other cultures (all Frenchmen are arrogant, all Italians are hot-headed sexual harrassers (although the books don't identify them as harassers, it's "just the way they are").

At the end of Peggy Plays Paris, she was about to go off for a month's holiday to a private residence in Nice, France, where she would sit by and occasionally read lines for semi-boyfriend and playwright Randy, while he worked on his next masterpiece. In Peggy's Roman Holiday, we learn that a famous Italian director was also at the house, and hired Peggy to play an important role in his important film, after getting her to promise to learn or memorize Italian well enough to speak the lines. To be fair, the book does discuss how this limited Peggy's ability to act, because she had to carefully time her lines and couldn't respond on the spot to others actors' spontaneous movements or changes in timing. But would a movie director really do that?

What I didn't like about the book, however, was that the female star of the film was being physically threatened by her ex-fiance, and while Peggy was aghast that this was allowed to go on, all the Italians said was that the man had his pride, and the woman had made him look foolish to his friends by jilting him, so what was he to do.... Peggy (of course it's her!) eventually comes up with a way for the man to save face without anyone getting hurt. We also learn that although Peggy was miserable on the set because the director implied he would replace her with another actress, he was just pulling that stunt in order to get her into the right mood for certain scenes that day -- he did this kind of manipulative stuff throughout the entire filming.

I have to admit, this one was pretty off-putting.

I'm going to do a blog post in the near future about the whole series.

Just for fun, here are the Peggy Lane covers. The interior illustrations are even better, in my opinion. The artist is Sergio Leone.

>89 amysisson: But would a movie director really do that?

You would be surprised, especially in those days. Even today, when a production is getting done in the Bulgarian studios and they cannot find actors that speak the language (or want a local big name), it is a phonetic memorization of whatever language the film is in. So I would not be that surprised from that part.

I love the covers... :)

>91 AnnieMod: Fair enough!

What I love most about the covers and particularly the interior illustrations is that they are charming but also 100% consistent across all eight books. Peggy always looks like Peggy, her friend Amy always looks like herself too, and every illustration corresponds to a scene from the text itself.

Which is the proper way to illustrate a book and a series if you ask me. Plus they are not some abstract ideas of someone's imagination but actually show you what they are supposed to (and yeah - I am not good with abstract art in general either - if you want to show me a pond, draw/paint the pond and not some circle that I need to see as a pond) :)

I did go ahead with the blog post about the Peggy Lane series overall -- although really I'm repeating much of what I said here, so it may not be of particular interest to LTers.

But just in case: http://amysreviews.blogspot.com/2015/08/peggy-lane-theater-stories.html

49. Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 08-10-15.

The last book in this series just came out, so I'm starting over from the beginning, having read (I think) three of them before. I enjoyed this again -- fast, light reading although with a bit of a serious touch. Kitty is a radio DJ and werewolf of three years standing; she is struggling to find purpose in her life and her place among her pack, where she both appreciates the protection of being a "cub" yet chafes at the submissiveness this requires. When her radio show spontaneously becomes a talk show about supernatural creatures, people take note, and her identity as a werewolf is outed -- something her pack's alpha does not appreciate.

After I finished this second reading, I looked at a couple of reviews here on LT and was surprised to find how many people seemed quite upset at the rape depicted in the book. As it happens, Kitty was raped by a human the same night she was later turned into a werewolf; then, as part of the pack dynamics, her alpha can have sex with her, or any other female, whenever he wants. While I understand why this was upsetting to some readers, a bit part of the book's point was that it bothered Kitty too, and she worked to find a way to change her circumstances. I guess she wasn't active enough for some folks, but I found it realistic and even a little affirming for how she found her own way, even if she did sometimes need help.

Currently reading the next in the series.

50. Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 08-14-15.

Second in the series. Like the first, I found this to be solidly written and a quick read. I really enjoy Kitty as a character. I also like that this is only the second book in the series, but the not-entirely-secret "secret," that vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures exist among us, is blown wide open, which means we won't have book after book having the characters try to hush up their own existence. The reason Kitty goes to Washington (love the title!) in this book is for Senate hearings, after all.

On to the third book, which I think is as far as I read the first time around. So by book four, I should be getting into new territory.

51. Kitty Takes a Holiday by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 08-16-15.

After the events of the second book, Kitty needs to get away from it all and rents a rural cabin, intending to write her memoirs to date. Someone doesn't want her around, and tries to lay a gruesome blood curse on her; meanwhile, her lawyer Ben is bitten by a werewolf and Kitty must nurse him through the transition to his new life. This creates a new intimacy in their relationship, of which Cormac is jealous.

My notes indicate I had read this back in 2007, but I didn't remember the specifics of the ending back then. I had rated it at 4 stars; I changed it to 3 1/2 on this reading because it did bog down a little in the middle, and unlike the first and second books, this had less plot resolution. This was as far as I'd read in the series. I look forward to the fourth book, which I had to order because the copy I loaned out years ago never found its way back home.

I do think that overall, this series is a cut above much of the paranormal romance and urban fantasy out there.

52. The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (dramatized audio recording). Science fiction. Listened 08-31-15.

This is the audio production from Alien Voices, the production company of Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie. Some years ago they put together a number of these performances based on classic science fiction and (for the most part, I think) recorded before live audiences with the voice actors and foley artists. I've only listened to this and the one called Spock vs. Q, which was the only original work in the line, and really more just a fun thing for the Trek fans.

My 4-star rating here is based more on the production than the original literary work, but that seems fair anyway because it's not as though I can judge the original work in the mindset of the time in which it was written. An eccentric professor joins a sportsman and several others on an expedition to the Amazon, where they set off to find the "lost world" that is still home to dinosaurs. The cast includes John De Lancie (Q from Next Gen), Roxann Dawson (B'Elanna from Voyager, Armin Shimerman (Quark from DS9), Ethan Phillips (Neelix from Voyager), Dwight Schulz (Barclay from Next Gen), Richard Doyle, Marnie Mosiman, and Leonard Nimoy.

Without any intention of being unkind, I have to say that Leonard Nimoy was the weak link in the production. He plays a newspapear editor in London but does not attempt any accent, and his diction is somewhat unclear. Still, he does have a deep, marvelous voice. But the other actors really put a lot into it.

I'm not even sure which of these productions I already own (I have some cataloged here on LT, but I don't know if I got them all). I definitely have Spock vs. Q and I probably have the sequel to that, but I'm more interested in the classic works.

I listened to the first disc of this on the airplane on the way to Spokane for Worldcon, when my seat screen on the plane didn't work. I listened to the second disc here after returning home (because my iPod battery was low and I forgot to bring the charger to Spokane!).

53. Mosaic by Jeri Taylor. Science fiction (media tie-in). Read 08-31-15 (repeat).

I started re-reading this book while visiting my inlaws after attending Worldcon in Spokane; I was in the mood for something light and this was on my mother-in-law's shelves. I'd remembered this book fondly, as it gave some lovely background on Captain Kathryn Janeway of Star Trek: Voyager. (The author has another title, Pathways, that does the same for several of the other Voyager crew members.)

I had originally rated the book at 4 stars, but upon this reading I downgraded it slightly to 3.5 stars. I still really enjoyed the parts about Janeway's past, but I had trouble keeping my interest up in the present day crisis with which the flashbacks alternate. I also felt that a certain part of Janeway's past was overly contrived, specifically the fact that she loses both her beloved father and her first fiance in the same accident, and in fact represses specific details of that memory until she allows them to surface just in time to save the crew in the present crisis.

Guess I'm getting picker in my old age! But I do think that the character background was good for the most part.

54. Kitty and the Silver Bullet by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 09-03-15.

This is the fourth book in the series, and the first one that I hadn't already read, so I'm embarking on new territory. I do like that the main character and her circumstances change significantly over the course of the series, and I'm still enjoying it.

In this one, Kitty goes back to Denver, in spite of the fact that she's technically "exiled" from it due to having left her werewolf pack there, because her mother may have cancer. Naturally, her arrival stirs things up, and the local vampire family as well as the werewolf resident pack seem to have shifting and unclear motivations.

55. The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson. Science fiction. Read 09-05-15 (repeat).

I keep telling myself I'll wait at least 3-5 years before I re-read this again, but then I go and read it again. I read it twice in 2007, once in 2012, one in 2014, and now once in 2015. It's probably my favorite treatment of time travel, in large part because it's one of the most original treatments of the subject I've seen.

28. Star Trek: The Amazing Stories (anthology) edited by John J. Ordover. Science fiction. Read 05-06-15.

I realized I missed this book in my list, so had to stick it in the right place chronologically. I'm not going to bother going back to change the numbers in every individual post since then, although I did change them in the master list post near the top.

Anyway, this was a collection of licensed Star Trek stories that had been published in Amazing magazine. They only came from two shows, Next Gen and Voyager. I based my 2 1/2 star rating on the average of the individual story ratings, and I cataloged each of the individual stories as I finished them. Only two of the seven stories struck me as better than average.

CONTENTS:

Star Trek: The Next Generation

1. "Last Words" by A.C. Crispin - Read 05-03-15.
2. "Bedside Matters" by Greg Cox - Read 05-02-15.
3. "On the Scent of Trouble" by John Gregory Betancourt - Read 05-04-15.
4. "Life Itself is Reason Enough" by M. Shayne Bell - Read 05-06-15.

Star Trek: Voyager

5. "A Night at Sandrine's" by Christie Golden - Read 05-06-15.
6. "When Push Comes to Shove" by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz - Read 05-01-15.
7. "The Space Vortex of Doom" by D.W. "Prof" Smith - Read 05-06-15.

57. Lost & Found (anthology), edited by M. Jerry Weiss and Helen S. Weiss. YA. Read 09-11-15.

As with the anthology above, I calculated this rating based on the average of the individual stories. There were a number of strong stories here, but also a couple of real clunkers, which is to be expected, I suppose. The premise of this anthology was that it was "Award-winning authors sharing real-life experiences through fiction." Let's just say that some of the authors interpreted that theme very loosely.

These days, when I finish a book, I decide whether it's likely I'll ever read it again. If not, and if I have no other sentimental reason for keeping it, I send it off to find a new home elsewhere. In this case, the strongest story of the book, Tamora Pierce's "Testing", is definitely worth reading again. I also gave a high rating to Jon Scieszka's playful "Thirteen Diddles", which is not an actual story. I'm not sure I would need to read that again; it's a clever gimmick that isn't as likely to delight as much again as when first read. David Lubar's "Duel Identities" is a keeper, and looking back, I wonder why I didn't give it another half star.

So ... not sure yet whether I'm keeping the book. I'll research and see it the Pierce and Lubar stories are available elsewhere.

1. "Duel Identities" by David Lubar - Read 08-05-15
2. "The Book" by Shelley Stoehr - Read 09-08-15
3. "To Express How Much" by Mary Ann McGuigan - Read 09-09-15
4. "As Skinny Does" by Adele Griffin - Read 07-13-15
5. "Kids in the Mall" by Mel Glenn - Read 09-10-15
6. "Testing" by Tamora Pierce - Read 07-25-15
7. "Thirteen Diddles" by Jon Scieszka - Read 08-02-15
8. "Tell Me Who You Hang Out With and I'll Tell You What You Are" by Eleanora E. Tate - Read 09-11-15
9. "Final Cut" by Rich Wallace - Read 08-12-15
10. "The World of Darkness" by Lois Metzger - Read 08-02-15
11. "A Safe Space" by Joyce Hansen - Read 08-17-15
12. "Sproing!" by Joan Abelove - Read 08-02-15
13. "Rachel's Vampire" by Paul Zindel - Read 07-22-15

58. Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read 09-14-15.

In this fifth book in the series, Kitty and Ben head to Las Vegas to elope. They're less than pleased to find that not only is a gun convention happening in the same hotel they're in, several known werewolf hunters are in attendance and packing silver bullets. Then Ben disappears on their wedding day and Kitty has to track him down by visiting vampires, a magician whose magic may be real, and were-felines who perform in a Siegfried & Roy type show.

I thought this book was one of the more inventive ones in the series so far, and it hints nicely at bigger evil to come. And I'm glad that Kitty and Ben did end up getting married, at a drive-through no less!

The one thing that struck me as very odd is that Kitty is a werewolf, with a vastly heightened sense of smell even while in human form. She remarks often on the overwhelming number of smells in crowded Las Vegas, including in the casinos, yet does not mention the one smell that even someone with a stuffed-up nose can be overwhelmed by: the cigarette smoke that's everywhere. I have to guess that either 1) the author thought perhaps the casinos would go non-smoking in the near future and didn't want to date the book by commenting on the smoke haze, or 2) the editor or publisher asked the author to leave out references to the disgusting smoke smell. I can't think why the author would be asked to do that, but for any nonsmoker who's ever been to Vegas, not having the smoke mentioned makes the setting a lot less realistic.

The unevenness of short story anthologies is annoying to me. There have been a few where the editor was given great leeway in choosing which stories, which are solid, but too often there are real clunkers liberally sprinkled through any collection.

>104 amysisson: Most of the casinos I was in (in 2009) weren't heavy with smoke. And again in 2014 during ALA, I didn't see a ton of smoking. Air filtering systems and exchange systems have gotten better and better. Then again, I can't smell it anyway.

Smoking is allowed in casinos????

>107 FlorenceArt:

Not only allowed but rampant! We were there for a wedding in August, and every night had to take another shower before going to bed because our hair smelled disgusting.

>106 lesmel:

Hi Leslie! We stayed at the Luxor, and the minute we stepped off the elevator on the ground floor, it hit us like a ton of bricks.

>105 RidgewayGirl:

I suspect with "big names" in anthologies, some editors are very unlikely to turn down the story even if they don't like it....

>108 amysisson: Ha! That's why. I only walked through the lobby of the Luxor early in the afternoon. Places like the Wynn, Bellagio, the Venetian...I don't remember the heavy smoke.

>110 lesmel:

Newer places have a lot better ventilation systems :)

>111 AnnieMod: Uh huh. Mentioned that in >106 lesmel:. That's probably why Wynn et al had less smoke. Newer hotels/casinos.

59. The Carpet Makers (translated from the German by Doryl Jensen) by Andreas Eschbach. Science fiction. Read print book 09-21-15 (repeat).

This is my third time reading this book, this time in preparation for a Mind Meld post on SF Signal in which I will hopefully be taking part.

This book is quite unique -- well worth seeking out!

60. Kitty Raises Hell by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read print book 10-04-15.

In this adventure, something sinister has followed Kitty back from Las Vegas to Denver.

Every time I think maybe I'll stop reading the series, something makes me want to keep going. I do think these are a cut above the rest of urban fantasy / paranormal romance.

61. Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher. Young adult - mainstream. Read print book 10-08-15.

I have read almost every book this author has written, and loved most of them. So I was surprised to realize I hadn't yet read this one -- but I think I probably started it and stopped reading immediately due to a specific trigger for me that I have a difficult time getting past.

Oddly, the problem for me wasn't that between them, only four young people experience ALL of the following issues: motorcycle accident leading to amputation, drug abuse, sexual molestation, domestic abuse, teenage pregnancy, suicide, and being forced to witness a violent suicide. (Although it became a little much for me when the teenage pregnancy was revealed to be deliberate because "I thought I was losing him.")

No, what really bothered me was that the main character, Dillon, and his now-dead-by-suicide older brother, Preston, brutally killed a neighbor's cat when they were kids, because the cat "hurt" their dog. This is the same main character we're supposed to be rooting for throughout the book. And although Dillon experiences some guilt and does come back to this eventually, the people to whom he confesses all say "well, you were a kid" or "well, we all have a dark side."

Um, no.

Even worse is that when Preston commits suicide, he explains to Dillon that he has to do it because the night before, he cheered on an "Accused"-style gang rape in a bar because the girl "was asking for it." Then, because he is handicapped due to the motorcycle accident, his biker buddies put him on the pool table and force the gang-raped girl to have sex with him. And *he's* all humiliated. To be fair, he actually says that he's killing himself because he promised himself that he would end it if he ever went as far as the time they killed that cat. So at least he knows on some level that he had to be pretty far gone to have cheered on that gang rape.

Also, I understand that Dillon is dealing with the fact that his brother then shoots himself right there in front of him, so it's reasonable that the gang rape is not the first thing on his mind. But Dillon goes to confront the biker guys, never mentions a word about the gang rape, but says "you humiliated my brother." And for the rest of the book, which is meant to be Dillon coming to terms with everything, this gang rape is never brought up again. And to think that Preston's girlfriend deliberately got pregnant trying to keep this guy, as though he were worth keeping!

My sense of personal offense aside, this book was a bit of a mess. It alternates between Dillon's first-person letters to the dead Preston and Jennifer's third person POV of her abuse at the hands of her stepfather. Occasionally we get another character's POV, including the typical Crutcher version of a high school principal who cares only about sports and his disciplinary authority. We also get the abusive stepfather POV once or twice. In the case of both the principal and the stepfather, it seems like they are thinking unflattering things about themselves in a quite unrealistic way.

I have to admit, seeing the blatant flaws in this book make me wonder if I was a little too naive when I loved some of his other books so much, particularly "Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes" and Stotan!" I can't decide if I should re-read them because I'm afraid I'll be impatient with the cliched characters -- the jackass principal, the super religious students who are the ones to fall the farthest and fastest, etc.

On a final note, I dug up a 1989 review of this book from when it was first published. The author said something to the effect that it's not a problem to have serious issues in a YA book .... but you don't have to have ALL of the serious issues in just the one book. I agree.

>115 amysisson: This is YA? I mean, I'm all for adult themes in YA - it's not like teenagers are delicate flowers or anything (I have one of these moping around the house, occasionally being brilliant), but geez.

>116 RidgewayGirl:

Yes, this is a YA author well-known for tackling heavy themes. (He's a teacher and therapist in real life.) I like heavy themes in some of my YA, but as that reviewer said, I don't want every last possible issue in a single book! And the gang-rape thing .... that's maybe too much for me in terms of what I think is YA appropriate, especially because Dillon never said something like "I can't believe my brother was part of that." As though Preston's accident and subsequent drug abuse completely explained it in Dillon's mind.

62. Kitty's House of Horrors by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy - urban fantasy. Read print book 10-13-15.

This is one of the best books in the series to this point. Kitty is invited to take part in a two-week-long reality television show at a remote lodge in Montana, in the company of two vampires, a wereseal, two psychics, a magician, and a skeptic. Things get ugly pretty quickly. I felt this book was more suspenseful because I really didn't feel like I could predict what would happen.

Makes me want to keep reading the series. I'm about halfway through.

Stopped reading Trust Me, I'm Lying on p. 71 because I'm tired of YA books in which kids are at ultra-exclusive schools with all kinds of supposed strict rules and consequences for breaking them, yet they constantly get away with ditching classes and (in the case of boarding schools) breaking curfew and/or sneaking out and/or having members of the opposite sex in their rooms. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Prodigy, The Tragedy Paper, and Looking for Alaska. For heaven's sake, in these books they apparently almost never go to their classes! In this particular instance, we got this: "I'm only a minute or two late. If she noted everyone who arrived less than five minutes late, we'd all have failed from lax attendance in less than a month."

Really? Show me that school in real life.

63. The Merro Tree by Katie Waitman. Science fiction. Read print book 10-28-15.

Comfort re-read. I adore this book.

64. The Sin Eater's Confession by Ilsa J. Bick. Young adult - mainstream. Read print book 10-29-15.

I was quite invested in this book for a while, but found myself a little frustrated as the main character continued to make really stupid decisions. That was part of the point of the story -- that we can and do make stupid decisions out of guilt and fear -- but combined with that, the book did not have a satisfactory ending. I know life can be that way, but the book wouldn't even tell us what the main character ultimately decided to do.

65. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan. Young adult - mainstream. Read print book 10-31-15.

This is another book that started very strong but petered at the end. Our first Will Grayson is a high school student who feels ambivalent about his friendship with Tiny, a very large gay teen with a larger-than-life personality. Tiny is determined to put on a musical about his life, and has written Will into the show as a "fictional" character named something like "Phil Wrayson." In the meantime, Tiny is trying to set Will up with Jane, but Will is finding it difficult to let go of his "keep his head down" policy of getting through life (not that his life seems particularly difficult).

Alternating chapters follow another boy named Will Grayson; this one is gay, has a single mother who can't make ends meet on her own, and suffers from clinical depression and thoughts of suicide. His only refuge is his online relationship with a boy named Isaac. When he finally works up the nerve to meet Isaac in person, he finds out that his so-called friend Maura has been catfishing him. But some good comes out of it, in that he meets the other Will Grayson and by extension Tiny, for whom he immediately falls.

What bothered me about this book is that the ending is terribly confusing in terms of what actually happens; it seems as though our second Will Grayson manages to find a bunch more Will Graysons and get them to Tiny's opening night within the span of an hour or two at most, so they can yell out encouragement to Tiny, whose confidence has finally been shaken. I think it would be impossible to track down a bunch of Will Graysons and convince them to drop everything to go to some high school play within minutes to do this. It's possible that second Will Grayson just asked people to pretend their names are also Will Grayson, but that's not the impression I got.

Also, it was kind of indicated that second Will Grayson had blown things with Tiny, and that this grand gesture on his part actually serves to set Tiny up with his next boyfriend.

Also, I'm really tired of movies and books in which teens are left to their own devices with no supervision whatsoever, even in school activities. High schools do not let students put on original plays without someone keeping track of the content of the play. They simply do not. Meanwhile, Tiny is writing and rewriting his show up to the last second, and there's not a faculty member to be found anywhere near the production that I could see. Would Not Happen.

I hear you will be joining us again for a bit....

>123 lesmel:

I wasn't sure if I could say anything yet ... didn't know if/when they announced it. Can't wait! They said six-months part-time -- I'll be working through a temp agency, and can do some from home, apparently. Don't know how many hours per week -- assume 20-ish. This is lovely timing, after all this year's vet bills! ;-)

Right now I am adrift in mounds of paperwork. It's more paperwork than when I got hired there permanently! Tomorrow I go for TB and drug test, then back on Friday for TB reading. It's at a nearby lab, though, so I don't have to come into town just yet.

Can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to some searching!

66. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith. Mystery. Read print book 11-29-15.

This was the third in the Cormoran Strike series by J.K. Rowling, and one I've been looking forward to for a while. As usual, I enjoyed the two main characters, Cormoran and Robin, tremendously. The mystery was good, although I admit I couldn't always remember which suspect was which. The main reason I didn't give it a higher rating, though, was because I think it's a cheap trick to keep dragging out Robin's will-she-won't-she thing with her fiance. It's especially cheap that the book pretends to resolve it by having Robin actually marry her fiance at the end, but hinting that she only went through with it because she thought Cormoran had fired her, and that she was only happy at her own wedding once Cormoran showed up to it. All this time I'd been sympathetic to Robin's wavering, because her fiance is a wanker, but at this point, she is actually the wanker. She's doing her fiance a real disservice by marrying him when she doesn't want to. And since she goes through the entire wedding ceremony without a smile, until Cormoran shows up, she knows she doesn't want to marry him. It's getting very old. Next book we'll have to deal with how unhappy her marriage is.

>125 amysisson: I will be reading this tonight/tomorrow. Am excited!

67. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. Young adult - fantasy. Read 12-01-15 (repeat).

This is the first in the Gemma Doyle trilogy. I listened to the audio book in 2009 and loved it, due in part to Josephine Bailey's excellent reading. I liked reading it in print too, just not quite as much. In any case, a nice mix of magic, slight horror, and historical ficiton, as it's set in a Victornia girls' boarding school.

68. Rebel Angels by Libba Bray. Young adult - fantasy. Read 12-08-15 (repeat).

Second in the Gemma Doyle trilogy; again, I've already listened to the audio book and am now reading it in print. I like it very much, but my main quibble is that there are two many groups of girls to keep track of -- our four main characters, a group of three from a previous school plus one, a group that died in a factory fire.... Plus two teachers with sort-of interchangeable names.

Still good stuff, though.

69. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray. Young adult - fantasy. Read 12-10-15.

Third and final book in the Gemma Doyle trilogy. I thought it was quite good for the most part. I felt that Felicity, went a little over the top in her decision to start wearing men's clothing -- I'm actually all in favor, but it felt out of keeping with the rest of her behavior to that point. I did like that ultimately, the girls' fates depended not just on magic but also on their own actions. I got a little tired of all the double-crosses, and felt that the Tree of All Souls thing was kind of un-memorable.

Glad I finally finished reading this. I liked the audio books better than the print books -- Josephine Bailey is such a terrific reader that she really brought the story to life. I'm keeping my audio book copies and passing the print books on to other readers.

70. Legion by Brandon Sanderson. Science fiction. Read print book 12-13-15 (repeat).

I re-read this first book in Sanderson's novella series to refresh, with the intention of read the second book for the first time.

I absolutely adore the concept, which is that the main character is schizophrenic and his mind creates "aspects," or hallucinations of distinct personalities with very distinct skill sets. The character hires himself out to solve problems, ala Sherlock Holmes. In part, he charges for his services because he needs a big mansion in which to house all of his aspects. I adore the personalities (I note he's careful to say this is not multiple-personality disorder).

I would have given this 5 stars, but I felt like there could have been a little bit more to this. Not necessarily a full-length novel, but I feel like some unidentified potential was wasted.

I note that I also listed this among my short story reading, as it's a novella. I'm double-dipping, because I'm counting it both as a book read and a short work read.

71. Legion: Skin Deep by Brandon Sanderson. Science fiction. Read print book 12-14-15.

I have to admit I was quite disappointed in this sequel. The premise remains fascinating, but I thought the mystery this time was not terribly enthralling, and the motive behind the crime seemed silly to me. There was a tiny bit of movement on the character's condition, in that some of his aspects are behaving in new ways, but there wasn't enough movement to be satisfying -- it felt too much like the author knows where he's going with it, but wants to save something for another novella in the series. And since he's got all kinds of other writing projects going on, it seems it could take quite awhile for him to get around to it.

72. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. Children's. Read print book 12-21-15 (repeat).

This was a fun re-read just in time for Christmas. I feel as though I liked it better this second time around.

73. The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson. Fantasy. Read print book 12-25-15.

I picked this up at the World Fantasy Convention; it's a book I've long wanted to read. Shai is a forger, who can rewrite objects' history to make them into something else. She's also a criminal slated for execution, but has been offered a way to save her own life: she must forge a new soul for the Emperor, who unbeknownst to his subjects is brain dead from an assassination attempt.

The forgery process as described by the author is quite fascinating, although I found it more believable for objects than for a personality. For instance, I loved that Shai could turn her window into stained glass because the frame had once held stained glass, and it "remembered." Objects want to be what they feel like they are. And based on certain similarities with the Legion novellas, although they are science fiction while this is fantasy, the author is clearly fascinated by the concept of people being able to provide themselves with all sorts of skills when needed.

This won the Hugo for Best Novella.

74. The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas by Madeleine L'Engle. Children's. Read print book 12-25-15.

I've been meaning to read this for years, and had almost let another year get away before reading it around Christmas-time, when I suddenly came across it yesterday. This is a quick little chapter book about a seven-year-old Vicky Austin. I have to admit I didn't quite care for it; it's far more overtly religious than the rest of Ms. L'Engle's work, and I had trouble with the idea that the new baby is delivered at the house and the other kids just wait it out downstairs and don't hear a thing.... I know, I probably shouldn't expect too much of this kind of book, but I don't like the whitewashing of childbirth quite that much.

75. Dream Houses by Genevieve Valentine. Science fiction. Read print book 12-27-15.

Another standalone novel, this one published by WSFA Press. I adored the author's non-genre YA novel, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, and had heard good things about this novella, but I'm afraid I was disappointed. I loved the premise -- a woman wakes up alone on a cargo ship to find the rest of the crew dead in their hibernation pods and the ship's AI behaving strangely.

Unfortunately, this was interspersed with long, dream-like sequences about the woman's past, in particular her relationship with her brother. Basically, I didn't find sufficient "textual evidence" in the story to support 1) why sending tainted food would have resulted in what the bad guy wanted; or 2) whether or not the woman's conclusion as to the AI's specific purposes was correct (as in what order it killed the crew in, and why it didn't kill her outright). I also would have liked to have seen how a person with a less muddled past might have coped in the situation.

Interesting, but for me it was unsatisfying and felt like it was trying to be too "literary," with shaded meanings and ambiguity and so on.

Also posting as a short work read in my other thread since this was novella length.

76. Out of Abaton: The Wooden Prince by John Claude Bemis. YA - fantasy. Read 12-30-15.

This is a moderately clever, YA retelling of Pinnochio. It was fine, but my feelings towards it are lukewarm.