His Own Last Good Beijing Will Be Baptized

The Last Good Day, by Gail Bowen
Gail Bowen is awesome. For some reason I stopped reading her backlist and now I had this one to enjoy, and still two more upstairs, as yet unread. *beams* Nothing like reading about a middle-aged sociology prof living in Saskatchewan to take me away from the exigencies of day-to-day life.
(168/300)

His Own Where, by June Jordan
A strange and poetic YA novel that deals with true young adult themes, not kid stuff. Kind of an escapist fantasy, kind of bleak. A bit hard to read, but in a challenging/woth-it way, not an annoying way.
(169/300)

Through Time: Beijing, by Richard Platt and Manuela Cappon
The text was pretty standard kid's-non-fiction-book-y, quality but not very exciting, and the illustrations were beeootiful.
(170/300)

Trespassers Will Be Baptized, by Elizabeth Emerson Hancock
I was severely underimpressed with this book for the first two-thirds or more. Nothing really wrong with it, I just wasn't enamored of the voice or taken by the stories. Somewhere during the last third though, I was completely won over and started finding most things very funny and/or very touching. Soooo, two stars for the first part, 4 stars for the last bit. Weird how that can happen. Dunno if it was me or her.
(171/300)

The Elusive Cerditos

Los tres cerditos, by David Wiesner
A fun rendition with some pleasant surprises. And until the surprises started, I felt quite pleased with how smoothly I was able to read it.
(172/300)

The Elusive Embrace, by Daniel Mendelsohn
An erudite and insightful memoir, mixed with an erudite and insightful classics-infused discussion of life's dichotomies. Sometimes the discussion part was just plain wrong, but in interesting ways. I really enjoyed this.
(173/300)

Tex and Molly Curse Glitter

The Curse of the Spellmans, by Lisa Lutz
If I really enjoy a book, I'm always a bit cautious about trying another by the same author - especially if it's a sequel. What if that special shiny spark is gone? But in this case, second verse was even better than the first. Izzy Spellman is one of my favorite funny narrators. I actually teared up a bit at one point too, though that may be more hormonal than actually creditable to the writing.
(174/300)

The Glimmer Palace, by Beatrice Colin (ARC)
This book had a weird trick of being simultaneously gritty/factual-seeming and hazy/magic-realist. Nothing magical or impossible actually happens, it's just that everything has this bizarre larger-than-life quality to it, probably because of the authorial voice. The combination worked very well. Oh, and it's about a woman living through the changes to Germany in the early part of the twentieth century, kind of, and kind of about the early days of German films and kind of about Berlin during the Weimar Republic in general. If you are into that kind of thing, you will like this book - though I will warn the squick-adverse that it is rather awfully grim by times.
(175/300)

Tex and Molly in the Afterlife, by Richard Grant
A whackload of new age speculation, biology, religion mash-ups, wacky non-coincidences, and witty, entertaining story that might irritate me if it were non-fiction, but somehow that witty, entertaining story makes it all go down smoooooooooooooth. Feels like Matt Ruff's Fool on the Hill in some ways. Very tasty, prob. not for everybody - but I loved it. Grant's definitely on the find-more-of-this-soon list.
(176/300)


... the only nice thing about being sick is that really there is nothing that seems more appealing or more necessary than lying in bed polishing off novels. I'm a good chunk into the next one, too.