2011 Wish List

I often send myself emails of books that sound interesting with the intention of adding them to my wish list. Apparently I have not gathered these random emails since April 2009 so thought I better do so.

Biblio Mysteries
Here are some links to some great lists:
Green Chair Press Books on Books list

Manchester Public Library Death Among Books

Evanstan Public Library Bibliomysteries

Amazon List Top Biblio Mysteries

The Last Book by Zoran Zivkovic

Homicide in Hard Cover by Kate Carlisle (series)

Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop by Otto Penzler (short stories)

Murder is Binding by Lorna Barrett (series)

Japanese Literature
Ryunosuke Akutugawa – Rashomon & 17 other stories – translator Jay Rubin

Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan

The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata

Spring Snow' by Yukio Mishima

Japanese Science Fiction

Japan Sinks - Sakyo Komatsu

Paprika – Yasutaka Tsutsui

Shinju by Laura Joh Rowland

Science Fiction / Fantasy
Dark Universe – Daniel Galouye

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds

The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson

Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente

Lilith's Brood by Octavia E. Butler (Erika Bann recommended)

Viriconium by M. John Harrison

Cowboy Angels by Paul McAuley

Home Fires by Gene Wolfe

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

Literature
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

Lethem – Chronic City

Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan (about the Brontes)

Various Flavors of Coffee, A Novel by Anthony Capella

The Blind Contessa’s New Machine by Carey Wallace

Golden Tulip by Rosalind Laker

Death as a Side Effect by Ana Maria Shua

The Unburied by Charles Palliser

Scary Stories
The Beetle by Richard Marsh

Curios: Some Strange Adventures of Two Bachelors

Edited by Ellen Datlow:
Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe

Lovecraft Unbound

Charles Stross - the Atrocity Archives (Lovecraft inspired)

Cory Doctorow – Someone Comes to Town and Someone Leaves Town – Project Guttenberg

The Red Tree by Caitlin Kiernan

Washington Post List

Amazon Listmania

Awards and Best of Lists
Locus Award Finalists

Man Booker 2009

Vandermeer Best of 2009

Best of the Decade

Best of 2010 Publisher Weekly

Time Best of 2009

Books on Books
How Reading Changed my Life by Anna Quindlen

List on Savage Reads

Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer

How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas Foster

The Case for Books by Robert Darnton

Magic and Madness in the Library editor Eric Graeber

Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill

Book by Robert Grudin

Art Books
The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser

The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean

Making Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Thomas Hoving

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Foger Rewrote the History of Modern Art

Post by Citizen Reader about Art Thrillers

About Van Gogh
Irving Stone’s Lust for Life, Adam Braver’s Crows Over the Wheatfield, Alyson Richman’s The Last Van Gogh and Sheramy Bundrick’s Sunflowers.

Antarctica
Polar Reading List

The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and Antarctica

Antarctica: Life on the Ice by Traveler’s Tales

Nonfiction
Collapse by Jared Diamond

The Power of the Sea by Bruce Parker

The Siege of Shangri-la by Michael McRae

Bookmarks

Here's what looked interesting in the Jan/Feb and Mar/April Bookmarks Magazine.

The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene - NF
Life by Keith Richards - NF, S
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
The Beautiful Cigar Girl by Daniel Stashower
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Cut! by Denise Imwold - NF, S
The Risk Pool by Richard Russo - S
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin -S & L
By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham - S
Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie
read Haroun and the Sea of Stories first
World and Town by Gish Jen
Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King - S
Three Seconds by Roslund & Hellstrom - S
start with The Beast
The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell - S
start with Faceless Killers
Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat -SF
How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming by Mike Brown - NF

All seem to be available on the Kindle except, Daughter of Time, Risk Pool, Girl In Hyacinth Blue, Three Seconds, Troubled Man and Cut! seems to be out of print entirely.

New York Trilogy

by Paul Auster

I have been hearing about Paul Auster for many years, and then I read this great review by Carl V. The New York Trilogy is really three stories which were originally published separately and now are published together : City of Glass, Ghosts, and the Locked Room all set in New York City. While sort of noir mysteries they don't really fit that genre and are more of a postmodern endeavor. City of Glass is about a writer who takes on a surveillance job and gradually begins to question realty (and includes a character called Paul Auster). Ghosts is about a detective named Blue who is investigating Black and sending reports to his client White. The Locked Room is about a mediocre writer who gets caught up and lost in a childhood friend's family and literary work after his friend's disappearance.

But you don't read this for plot. The writing is amazing, the characters are intriguing and you never know what is going to happen next. While it is difficult to describe it was thoroughly enjoyable. I definitely intend to read more Paul Auster.

My Name is Red

by Orhan Pamuk

Nobel Prize winning author, Orhan Pamuk's, My Name is Red is an unconventional murder mystery / love story set in 16th century Istanbul. The sultan has commissioned a group of miniaturists or illuminators to secretly illuminate a special commemorative manuscript, but when one of the illuminators is found dead, the other illuminators begin to worry.

I loved many things about this book. I knew very little about 16th century Istanbul or Islamic illuminated manuscripts so it was very educational and interesting for me. I loved that there were multiple narrators, including a dog, a coin, a corpse, the color red. Istanbul, its court and its inhabitants really came alive.

What I loved the most was the illuminated manuscripts themselves. Random House's web site has several fascinating images, such as this:

I knew that Islam has certain reservations/prohibitions about representational figures, but this book really elaborated on the many Islamic views and the tension with the "European style". This was especially interesting as many points of view were presented and the many differing opinions and practices, even in the 16th century, really made the issue interesting.

I must say however, despite the fact that I learned a lot from this book and liked many things about it, over all I didn't really enjoy the experience of read it. It was very dense, not particularly lengthy or difficult, but it was an effort to get through it. I am glad I read it but I am not in a hurry to pick up another one of Orhan Pamuk's books.

Once Upon A Time V

Finally it is time for Carl V's Once Upon A Time challenge. I remember when I joined this challenge for the first time. I was new to blogging, new to challenges and didn't think that I actually liked fantasy. What I have realized is that fantasy is so much broader than magicians, fairies, dragons and knights and actually encompasses my favorite type of books - books that are not too constrained by reality such as those by Kafka, Murakami, Calvino and Saramago.

For more information on this challenge that focuses on fantasy, folklore, fairy tales or mythology go here and for the review site go here. It runs from March 21 to June 20, 2011.

I have so many books that I could read for this challenge. I bought Jeff Vandermeer's Finch last year and then decided to save it for this year so I had time to savor Shriek, so I will definitely be reading Finch. I also have had The City and the City since it came out so I definitely will be reading that. I also enjoyed the Calvino and Ajvaz so much last year that I would like to read more of them. And I of course have more Saramago to read. So here is a pool of books to chose from.

Finch by Jeff Vandermeer
The City and the City by China Mieville
The Castle by Franz Kafka
The Alchemist and the Executioness by Bacigalupi and Buckell
Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Stone Raft by Jose Saramago
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz
The Library by Zoran Zivkovic
The Last Book by Zoran Zivkovic
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey
The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Invitation to a Beheading by Vladamir Nabokov
The Narrator by Michael Cisco

And if that isn't enough there is always Jeff Vandermeer's Best Fantasy of 2010 review to get inspiration from.

I am going to sign up for the Journey because I appreciate the flexibility and lack of stress which means that I will read at least one book but I might read more. I did the Journey last year and ended up reading four. I also plan on watching Midsummer Night's Dream on DVD and I hope to do a few short story weekends with Jorge Luis Borges. Thanks Carl for hosting another great challenge.

Broken Angels

by Richard K. Morgan

I read Richard K. Morgan's Philip K. Dick Award winning Altered Carbon for the Sci Fi Experience two years ago and enjoyed it. While this is the second book about Takeshi Kovacs it is very different from Altered Carbon. Altered Carbon was essentially a noir detective story that just happened to be set in the future. In Broken Angels you meet up with Takeshi Kovacs embroiled in a war on a distant planet, working as a mercenary for a giant corporation trying to lay claim to an ancient Martian artifact, in the middle of a war zone. While it was much more of an action/war adventure, I was very happy that it explored the implications of the advanced technology laid out in the first book.

In Kovac's world people have stacks embedded in their spinal column that contain their memories and personalities and as long as your stack is recovered when you die you can either be "re-sleeved" in another body or exist in virtual reality. Because your consciousness can be put into a digital format this has interesting implications for torture, sex, space travel and warfare conducted by soldiers that don't die a "real death".

I also found the story line about the Martians fascinating. The Martians were long gone when humans discovered their cities and artifacts, but by using the Martian technology and information that they left behind, human beings have been able to leap far beyond their capabilities, especially in terms of space travel. I don't want to give the plot away but I found the entire Martian story line fascinating and hope that it is developed more in the following book.

I will definitely read the next (and supposedly last) Takeshi Kovacs book, Woken Furies, which is set on Kovac's home world, Harlan's World, and delves into Kovac's history.

The Windup Girl

by Paolo Bacigalupi

I had been hearing great things about this book since it came out in September of 2009. And the buzz only continued to grow as it won both the Hugo and Nebula for best novel in 2010. It also seems to appeal to people that do not normally read science fiction and even made Time magazine's top ten fiction books in 2009. Sometimes a book with all that buzz just cannot live up to its billing but I was really wowed by Windup Girl.

The story is set at some time in the future in Bangkok Thailand, after oil has run out, the sea levels have risen and plagues have decimated the world's food supply. Methane made from animal dung lights the street lamps and cook fires and kink-springs are used to power everything from boats and factories to guns. Computers are powered by the individual pedaling away at the treadles and bioengeniered beasts called Megodonts (as pictured on the cover) do the heavy labor. The primary means of transportation are sailing ships and dirigibles. While this may make it sound like a steampunk novel, I didn't really get that vibe from it, but I am no steampunk expert. My favorite part of the novel was the extraordinary future Bangkok, with sky scrapers built during the Expansion now crumbing and overcome with vines since electricity is gone but filled with people.

The primary interest of the novel is genetic engineering both of the food supply and of people and animals. Much of the food supply is tainted and has become deadly to eat while calorie companies control the food supply of genetically engineered crops. Engineered animals, such as the Cheshire cats that shimmer in and out of sight like the one from Lewis Carol's Wonderland, have almost obliterated all of the natural species. And the calorie men search for original genetic plant material to work their gene hacking magic. The Windup Girl of the title is a genetically modified humanoid created by the Japanese as a companion, secretary and translator for a wealthy businessman who abandoned her in Thailand where "New People" are illegal.

While the characters were fully developed and interesting and the plot was complex and fascinating, what I loved most about the story was the way the reader is just dropped into this complex world and allowed to slowly figure it out. To me the city of Bangkok is the main character and the large themes are the main plot devise. It is not preachy in any way but the author manages to create a frightening world that in light of our current state of affairs seems not really that far fetched. It certainly has made me look at "calories" in a new light.

The publisher, Night Shade Books, currently has free downloads of "Windup Stories" which contains two stories that are set in the same world as The Windup Girl, The Calorie Man and Yellow Card. I enjoyed reading them, especially since I understand that The Calorie Man was the genesis of The Windup Girl. I would however recommend reading the book first as it fully immerses you in this world and I think better prepares you to appreciate these stories.

And if you need more convincing here are some reviews from Cory Doctorow , SF Signal.

I read this as part of Carl V's Sci Fi Experience.

Dark River

by John Twelve Hawks

This is Book 2 of the Fourth Realm Trilogy. I read the first book, the Traveler, when it first came out in 2005. Set in the present day, an evil organization is developing more and more sophisticated ways to track all movements and activities of the population. From credit card and banking transactions, to surveillance cameras on the streets, tickets purchased, web sites visited, and phone calls made, the Tabula is tracking your every movement. The first book was about a Traveler - a person with the ability to travel to "other realms" and a Harlequin, a sword carrying protector of travelers and their pursuit by the Tabula. I thought it was an interesting premise and it was written as an exciting thriller. While I didn't think it quite lived up to all the hype, I did enjoy it and was interested in reading more.

The second book, Dark River, picks up were the first one left off. The Tabula is working furiously to achieve total control of the population. Two brothers search for their legendary Traveler father, one brother working for the Tabula and one hiding from the Tabula, living off the grid and protected by the young Harlequin Maya. While this was clearly a middle novel and could not be read on its own, it did make me interested to continue following the adventure and read the next book The Golden City.

Winter's Tale

by Mark Helprin

I first read this in the 80s shortly after it first came out. I rarely re-read books but this one really stuck with me all these years and I am glad that I finally re-read it. On a second reading it certainly did not disappoint! And while I remembered some sections vividly, there was a lot that I did not remember which made for an interesting read.

Winter's Tale is very difficult to describe. Superficially the story is about a burglar who falls in love with a young dying heiress when he breaks into her mansion. But that is just what gets the story going. In my mind the main character is the mythical New York City that Helprin creates which seems to always be enfolded in winter and threatened by a cloud wall. We experience almost a century of the city from the days of sailing ships, horse drawn carriages and cobblestone streets to the modernization of electric lights, mighty bridges and printing presses. There is a small upstate town which is not on any map and usually cannot be found, a white horse that can seemingly fly, and an epic struggle to build bridges.

The writing is spectacular and I could vividly picture flying up the frozen Hudson river in a sleigh under piles of fur, hiding in the lighted constellation ceiling of Grand Central Station or skulking through the sewers with the Short Tails gang of Five Points. While this is definitely fantasy it is not elf and dragon sort of fantasy but rather a look at turn of the century New York as a wondrous and romanticized place that you wish it had been. And you don't have to have ever been to New York or even like New York to enjoy this book. One of my favorite books of all time. Read it!

Reading Deliberately 2011

Last January I decided to try and read more deliberately. I believe the quality of the books that I read in 2010 was much higher than in 2009. I think this is in part due to my leaving my real world book club (and therefore cutting out books I didn't really want to read) but also reading some great books that I have intended to read for a long time but never seemed to get to. I therefore am going to try it again this year.

Books I intended to read in 2010 and still intend to read in 2011:

Gold Bug Variation by Richard Powers
The Castle by Franz Kafka
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Lost City of Z by David Grann (nonfiction)

There are also books that I have that would be perfect for challenges that I intend to participate in:

Finch by Jeff Vandermeer - Once Upon a Time
The City and the City by China Mieville - Once Upon a Time
Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - RIP

In addition I would like to read a book about Art, a book about Food, a book about Books or Reading, a nonfiction book as well as something from the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels List which I am extremely slowly working through (The Sound and the Fury is on it).

This is a shorter list than last year but perhaps I can complete it this year and I reserve the right to add to it as I am sure I am leaving something important out.

2010 Year in Review

I cannot believe that 2010 went by so quickly. At the beginning of 2010 I decided to read a little more deliberately. While I did not achieve all my goals I did make significant progress and had a good reading year over all, especially as it included some really great books.

My five favorite books from 2010:

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

It was very hard to narrow it down to only five, especially since I really loved all of my honorable mentions below. It didn't make any sense to me however to pick 11 favorites since I only read 26 books this year. I guess it goes to show that I had a very successful reading year at least in terms of quality!

Honorable Mention:
Shriek
The Other City
New York Trilogy
A Wild Sheep Chase
Brasyl
Housekeeper and the Professor

Reading Achievements for 2010:
I read twenty six books, which does not compare to most book bloggers but I am quite happy with that number as it is one more than last year and I expected to have read less as it was an especially hectic year for work and life. Of the ten books that I intended to read in 2010 I managed to read half of them, which isn't bad. Of the seven that I had on my shelves that I intended to read for challenges I only read three of them. Indeed, I didn't do very well with Challenges in 2010. I completed the Sci Fi Experience (3 books read), Once Upon A Time (4 books read), RIP (1 book read) and Japanese Literature (1 book read) but dropped out of the Speculative Fiction Challenge and Mind Voyages. I did manage to read two books related to art (The Savage Garden and My Name is Red) and one book about books (The Man Who Loved Books Too Much). I am way behind in writing reviews and need to get better about that, especially since my main goal in having this blog is to replace my physical reading diary.

Statistics:

Although some of the books could fall into more than one category for the purposes of this list I only assigned one category for each book.

Nonfiction - 2

Science Fiction - 3

Horror - 0

Fantasy - 4

Mystery - 3

Literary - 9

Thriller - 3

Other - 1

Female authors - 5

Male authors - 21

New to me authors - 15

Audiobooks - 10
Ebooks - 4

I was surprised that I listened to more audio books than ebooks but since my husband has returned my Kindle to me I bet that ebooks will increase in 2011.

Sci Fi Experience 2011

It is time once again for Carl V's Sci Fi Experience. If you want to join in go here and if you want to check out people's reviews go here. I have been waiting for this to begin! I have Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan on my ipod ready to listen to (I enjoyed his Altered Carbon) and the Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi on my coffee table in hard cover. I also have Daemon by Daniel Suarez, Light by M. John Harrison and Old Man's War by John Scalzi on my Kindle. I don't think I will get to all of these but if I do there are many more on my list. And as always I am looking forward to reading all the other reviews and adding to my wish list. Thanks Carl for hosting again!

Kook

What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave by Peter Heller

I am not a surfer, never aspired to be a surfer, don't live in a location where there is much surfing and don't know any surfers. I was spending way to much time in an airport and looking for something lighter than what I had with me for reading and picked this up in a bookshop. I cannot say it is a great work of art or well written for that matter but it was entertaining and introduced me to a world that I knew nothing about. In fact, I immediately went out and rented three surf movies: Endless Summer, Step Into Liquid and Blue Horizon. I had no idea that people are surfing one hundred foot waves. I also picked up the new book, The Wave by Susan Casey, that looks really interesting.

But back to this book. Peter Heller seems to have made a career for himself going on adventures and then writing about them: extreme kayaking Tibet's Tsangpo gorge, the "deepest river gorge in the world"; a radical and dangerous campaign on an "eco-pirate ship" against Japanese whale hunting in Antarctica - and that is just his published books. His adventures are also chronicled in his articles in Outside Magazine, National Geographic Adventure as well as others. His web site has quite a few of his articles. But back to this book - Kook about surfing.

In Kook, Peter Heller sets himself the task of trying to learn how to surf in one year. He starts out in California and works his way through Baja and into Mexico. In the process he meets all sorts of surfers, from guys nobody has ever heard of to the famous. Oh yeah, and his girl friend comes along and learns to surf too. A surfer certainly wouldn't read this book the same way I did but for a non surfer it was a very accessible and entertaining introduction to the surfing world. I don't know if this is the best introduction to surfing (you cannot beat the visuals of a video for really understanding the waves) but I found it very interesting and was glad I read it. I will probably pick up some of his other books as well.

People of the Book

by Geraldine Brooks

This book was a surprise to me. I read great reviews of it when it first came out in 2008 added it to my wish list and forgot about. Years later I needed to put something on my ipod for a trip, came across it, remembered it was supposed to be good and got it without really knowing what it was about except vaguely a book. While it was far more serious then I expected, I really enjoyed it. The framework is that our narrator is a young rare book restorer who is tasked with restoring the Sarajevo Haggadah and when she comes across a clue in the book to its history such as a wine stain, salt or an insect wing, we get to hear the story of how that wine stain etc. got there and gradually the entire history of the Haggadah unfolds.

And quite a history it is, from its creation in Spain and travels to Venice, Vienna and Sarajevo barely escaping the inquisition, the Nazi's and the Bosnian War. The author has an interesting map on her web site of its travels. While not a "thriller" I thought the story was just fascinating, especially since it is in most part true. And I am always fascinated by illuminated manuscripts.


I was not familiar with the Sarajevo Haggadah or its history but I don't think that took away from my enjoyment of the work. Obviously this is a work of fiction and I understand that experts knowledgeable of the actual book and its history may take issue with some literary license taken but as a literary work I thought it was great. Each of the story lines was fascinating as well as the many characters and I also learned a lot of interesting history that I was unfamiliar with. I highly recommend it.

A Wild Sheep Chase

by Haruki Murakami

This is my third Murakami book (after Kafka on the Shore and The Wind -Up Bird Chronicle) and I was certainly not disappointed. Apparently this is the third in the Trilogy of the Rat but I haven't read the first two (which are not readily available in English) and did not feel that I was missing anything while reading A Wild Sheep Chase. The un-named main character is drifting in his life, his wife leaves him, his business is ok but not very interesting, he describes his life as mediocre. Then he gets summoned by a mysterious businessman interested in a photo of sheep used in one of his brochures. He is tasked with finding the unusual sheep and sets off on an adventure. He meets interesting characters - a woman with the most beautiful ears, a sheep man, a sheep professor who never leaves his hotel room and it appears that his friend and business partner (the Rat) who had earlier disappeared is also on the trail of the same sheep.

This was the most straight forward Murakami that I have read (and also the earliest) and can easily be read as a simple detective story. But what I love most about Murakami is the beautiful writing and of course the wonderful characters. And if you feel like it, you can delve into the endless quest of "what is it trying to say" and "what does the sheep symbolize". What resonated most with me however was the narrator's nostalgic yearning to recapture something of his youth. His stay at the cabin in the mountains with nothing to do but read and cook or bake, perhaps go for a run made me nostalgic for my youthful stays at my parents cabin, with nothing to do but read, cook or go for a walk in the woods or a swim in the bay. No television, no dvd, no running somewhere on an errand or to pick up take-out. I miss that.

I understand that Dance, Dance, Dance is a sequel to this and I am looking forward to reading that as well. I am looking forward to lots more Murakami in my future, including a new release in English in the fall of 2011. Although I admit that when I find an author that I really enjoy like Murakami I am afraid to read all of his work too quickly for fear of running out of new books to experience. If anyone has any suggestions on which Murakami I should try next, let me know.

I note that In Spring It Is Dawn has started a Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge 2011 which I immediately signed up for. This book completes my participation in Bellezza's wonderful Japanese Literature Challenge 4. Thanks for hosting another great Challenge Bellezza!

Bookmarks

Here is what looked good in the November / December Bookmarks Magazine issue.

C, Tom McCarthy
Room, Emma Donoghue
Bitter in the Mouth, Monique Truong - S
Hunger, Knut Hamsun
Percival's Planet, Michael (about discovery of Pluto)
What is Left the Daughter, Howard Norman (set in Nova Scotia)
The Bird Artist, Howard Norman
The Dreaming Void, Peter F. Hamilton - SF
The Dervish House, Ian McDonald - SF
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
Zero History, William Gibson
Fall of the House of Walworth, Geoffrey O'brien -NF

All books appear to be available for the Kindle.

Bookmarks

Here is what looked interesting in the September/October 2010 Bookmarks Magazine.

The Man Who Invented the Computer, Jane Smiley
The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
Passage, Connie Willis
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, Reif Larsen
The Tattooed Map, Barbara Hodgson
The Incident Report, Martha Baillie

Contemporary Russian Literature:
Something by Boris Akunin
Dream Life of Sukhanov, Olga Grushin
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books, Elif Batuman -NF
The World to Come, Dara Horn
Moscow Rules, Daniel Silva

Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan - S
Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban -SF
Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman - S
Deep Creek, Dana Hand
The Thousand Autums of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell - S
Kraken, China Mieville -SF
The Passage, Justin Cronin - SF
Blood Oath, Christopher Farnsworth
Operation Mincemeat, Ben Macintyre - NF

The Savage Garden

by Mark Mills

Bookmarks had a review of Mark Mills’ new book, The Information Officer, a thriller set on Malta during WWII. While I don’t often read books about war I have always been interested in (yet know little about) Malta because the Knights of Malta once owned the island where I currently live. In reading about the Information Officer many of the reviewers liked it but commented that it was not as good as the Savage Garden. I looked up the Savage Garden and it sounded interesting as well, so I decided to start there.

The Savage Garden is the story of a young Englishman who comes to Tuscany to study the famous Renaissance Garden of Villa Docci. While living with the family at the Villa and studying the garden he begins to investigate the garden’s and the family’s history and learns of two unexplained murders that occurred 400 years apart. As he delves deeper into the symbolism of the garden and becomes more personally entangled with the family things get more and more dicey for the young man. It is a mystery after all so I don’t want to give the plot away. Suffice it to say that while the murder mystery was entertaining but fairly light, I really enjoyed the mystery of the garden. It was very atmospheric and I could just see the beautiful yet crumbling villa, the now neglected once spectacular garden and the quirky family. It made me want to buy a plane ticket to Florence right away. Not great literature, not great mystery writing but an enjoyable diversion if you want a pleasant visit Tuscany without actually going there. I bet the author could bring Malta to life as well so I will probably give the Information Officer a try sometime.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

by Allison Hoover Bartlett

There are few genres that I enjoy more than books about books. I love reading about other people obsessed by books and the entire book world. This is especially true as the world of book collecting is a world I have chosen not to participate in but I entirely understand its allure. Years ago when I lived in Boston one of my favorite things to do was to go to the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (which is incidentally this weekend) all by myself. I never bought anything but I would just gaze at the beautiful book bindings, fore edge paintings, illuminated manuscripts and rare first editions. I understand the lust for these things. For myself I have chosen to focus on the experience of reading and not to collect or focus on the books as objects, but I could easily have been a rabid collector. I therefore really enjoy reading about others who participate in the book world and was looking forward to reading this.

This non-fiction work tells the story of the author tracking down and getting to know John Gilkey, a notorious book thief. While Gilkey goes to great extremes to steel his books, and while both he and the author often proclaim his love for the books, I just never bought it. It seemed to me that Mr. Gilkey was simply a thief with a compulsion but that he had no real love or appreciation for the books. It seemed to me that he could have easily been compulsively steeling jewelry or paintings. As a mere thief and not a true book lover, I felt absolutely no empathy for the man. In addition, I thought the story line was rather dull and it wasn’t very well written.

I would skip this book and read A Gentle Madness or Used and Rare. Of course many people loved it. On Amazon it has 107 reviews with an average rating of 4 out of 5 stars. Carl V. from Stainless Steel Droppings also really enjoyed it.

Sweetness At the Bottom of the Pie

by Alan Bradley

Sometimes you are just in the mood for something light and fun. Eleven year old Flavia de Luce is a little bored rambling around in her English country manner house and doing experiments in her chemistry laboratory. But then she finds a body in the cucumber patch and the police seem to be focusing on her father as the prime suspect so what is she to do but solve the murder herself! This outrageously precocious 11 year old is very entertaining, especially since I listened to this in audio and the narrator, Jayne Entwistle, did a marvelous job with Flavia. While not a great work of literature it was clever and fun and I would not hesitate to read more in this series when in the right mood. For a more detailed review check out Carl V’s at Stainless Steel Droppings.