The Year in Review

[maribou]

Kim Stanley Robinson - A Short Sharp Shock
As erudite and compelling as his other work, but a hell of a lot more confusing. Like a serial dream.

Dawn Prince-Hughes - Songs of the Gorilla Nation
An intriguing half-memoir/half-natural-history book written by a woman with Asperger's syndrome and a Ph. D. in anthropology. It's about what you'd expect from those tidbits of information, and recounted with skill and emotional weight. It rubbed me the wrong way a couple of times, but my overall impression is very good and I'd recommend it to anyone who shares my fondness for primates or my fascination with high-functioning mental disorders.

Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle
It was every wonderful and captivating thing that I was promised. Reminds me of being younger and reading What Katy Did or The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, only with more adult subject matter. Very clever and eccentric and made me laugh out loud.

Jane Lindskold - Changer: A Novel of the Athanor
This urban fantasy cum modern mythos started out as my gym book, but it was too well-crafted, engrossing, and intelligent for the gym. I kept forgetting to pedal because I was so involved. So I took it home and finished the last 400 pages or so all in one sitting. The plot's both solid and intricate, the characters are sympathetic while remaining distinctly Other, and it's so damn well-written I only noticed the pervasive narrative use of the present tense twice. Usually I can't read anything longer than about 100 pages written in the present tense, because it drives me up a wall, so this is quite impressive.

James McManus - Positively Fifth Street
This book is really enjoyable. It's an odd sort of hodge-podge. It's mostly about poker, specifically no-limit hold 'em. But it's also a true crime book (though more erudite than most of those), a meditation on the nature of love, and a bunch of fairly intelligent musings on competition and aggression. Also, there are some great character studies. I am of the opinion than anyone who's really into poker will probably end up doing a lot of skimming; it seems to be written for a not-a-complete-newbie-but-not-a-card-sharp-either audience. People who don't play poker could still really enjoy the book, if they are the patient and games-minded sort - there's an extensive glossary in the back.


Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
SO SO SO SO good. It's basically a whirlwind tour of science and scientists, and the stuff I already knew about was presented so engagingly that I didn't care that I already knew about it, and the stuff I didn't know about was Really Interesting, and I only caught one or two teensy eensy mistakes which I could actually get into arguments with people from my field about anyway. And he managed to make a really intelligent book that I don't think would leave non-science-geeks in the dust, which, y'know, furthers the cause of wonder.

William Horwood - Skallagrigg
William Horwood is one of my most favorite authors (Mostly he writes books about moles. And theology. The same books. It's weird.), but most of his books are out of print in the US and hard to get. No matter how much I like someone, I'm unlikely to pay scads of dollars to read a paperback. In any event, this came into my bookstore the other day, so I could use my trade credit on it, after having been wanting to read it for 7 or 8 years. Was worth the wait. It's a hard book to describe (though I should point out that it has no moles in it, being close to completely realistic in content, if not tone), but any time I find myself wishing a 700+ page book wouldn't end, I know I've found a keeper.

Craig Thompson - Blankets
This is a graphic novel which is mostly the artist's remembrances of his childhood and adolescence, and the strains and sweetnesses of his early relationships with his family, his first love, and her family. Outright beautiful in some places, and completely captivating.

Atul Gawande - Complications
Candid and insightful essays of a surgical resident. The best book I've read about medicine in ages.

Margaret Laurence - The Diviners
I am now in love with Margaret Laurence. The book is such a whole, complete, solid object; it's told near-stoically, in short gruff frequently-fragmented sentences, but the story that emerges is delicate and subtle, even during its most implausible moments. Extremely recommended.

Sarah Micklem - Firethorn
Probably the most original fantasy I've read since Martin's Game of Thrones. The originality lies not in the themes, or even really the plot (woman follows man to war, and the rest would be a spoiler, but) - it's the rawness and the voice and all the details - magic, religion, contraception, fabrics, etc etc etc.

Homer - The Odyssey
The Odyssey is not as funny as The Iliad, but it has a far better plot and much less hacking/gore.

Jeff Smith - Bone: One Volume Edition
Oh my stars was this good. I used to get this on a pseudoregular basis (it had kind of an erratic distribution schedule) back when my sweetie had a box at the comic store. So I was very excited when it finally came out in a single collection. Mm Mm Mm Mm Mm. Highly recommended.
Er, I notice there's not really much description of the book in that review - so, imagine Pogo as an epic fantasy and you'll be close.

Richard Terrill - Fakebook
A poet comes back to his saxophone after 10 years away. If you like jazz, or if you've ever really loved doing something, and then stopped doing it, you should like this book. I liked it so much I gave it to my junior high school band teacher. And I hadn't seen him in 6 or 7 years.

A. S. Byatt - The Virgin in the Garden
A. S. Byatt = Victor Hugo with more sex and different assumptions. Yay!

Daniel Handler - Watch Your Mouth
This is a wretched and utterly delightful book, which may be partially blamed for my having missed my Greyhound to Denver after I'd already checked my luggage. Completely absorbing, funny, a great ear for voice, and awfully smart. Don't read it if you're easily squicked though, it's rather sick-minded.

Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Really a wonderful novel, one of the best I've read all year. Sort of Dickens mixed with Austen mixed with Victorian scholarship (complete with lengthy footnotes), only its own thing moreso than any of those.

A. J. Jacobs - The Know-It-All
Okay, I just posted about this one yesterday so I won't bother reposting the review.

Susan Brind Morrow - Wolves and Honey
An amazingly lovely book, delicate and penetrating. Loosely woven around the lives of two men, longtime friends of the author - one a trapper and the other a beekeeper. Full of appropriate classic quotations and thoroughly literary. It took me a while to get into it, but I was highlly enamored by book's end.

Edward Conlon - Blue Blood
Eddie Conlon is an NYPD cop with a Harvard degree. His book is a mixture of daily procedures, funny anecdotes, family history, US history, political musings, and some other stuff. Some reviews have complained that it's too mixed up and jumps around too much from one thing to another, but I actually enjoyed his style - in a 512-page book, variety is a good thing. I loved this book. Loved, loved, loved this book. And I had 2 people stop me on the street while I was reading it to enthuse about how much they'd also enjoyed it.

Comments

Thanks for mentioning "Skallagrigg"

[(Anonymous)]

... and I just wanted to ask - is it just me or is the book built up to work like the game "Skallagrigg"? I mean as in: "There, in the world of "Skallagrigg" [...] I grew progressively weaker and (it seemed) more handicapped."

Aet

Re: Thanks for mentioning "Skallagrigg"

[maribou]

I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but I think you may be right.