Booktalk

[listersgirl]

Clearly one of March's resolutions is going to have to be to post about books at least monthly, if not more often, because some of these books are from November or even earlier, and because I didn't write about them right away, I can't even remember any details.

Jane Austen Mansfield Park

I haven't read much Austen, but this book felt quite different from her other books - more distant or something. I actually liked that - I felt less like we were supposed to think Fanny was the best thing ever, which is good, because I mostly found her annoying.

Bill Bryson Short History of Nearly Everything

I love Bill Bryson. And now I know all sorts of science-y things! It was a fun and engrossing read and kept me entertained through my flight back west.

Meg Cabot Queen of Babble in the Big City

I read this over Christmas break - it was on the Quick Reads shelf at the library, and they weren't kidding. I don't know - I like Meg Cabot, but this was perilously close to a Shopaholic sequel.

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

I feel like Douglas Coupland and Nick Hornby are brothers in writing these days - both doing the multi-narrator point of view, both being more successful with certain characters than others, leading to a somewhat uneven book. The Gum Thief is written in the form of a diary, where a 40-something Staples employee not only records his own thoughts, he also imagines diary entries by his goth 20ish co-worker, who then finds the book and adds her own entries. I liked it, even if it didn't always feel right.

Jennifer Crusie and Bob Meyer Agnes and the Hitman

I really miss Jennifer Crusie writing by herself - I mean, the book was fun, but I could tell that all the parts that made me laugh were hers, and all the parts where I got bored (ie. the hitman parts) were his. That said, it was an entertaining read.

Junot Diaz The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

This was fantastic, despite the fact that there was a lot of Spanish, which is a language I don't know at all. Still, I loved the writing, and the bits about Dominican nerdboy Oscar and how that was something the Dominican community had never seen before cracked me up.

Diana Gabaldon Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Diana Gabaldon Lord John and the Hand of Devils

I'm really loving the Lord John series - Brotherhood of the Blade was highly entertaining. But Hand of Devils, which was three short novellas, was kind of lame, I think because she was trying to create these small mysteries, but they were too short to be at all engaging.

Georgette Heyer Arabella
Georgette Heyer The Grand Sophy
Georgette Heyer Bath Tangle

These were all fun, and much better than the first Heyer I read, so clearly letting globetrotter1 pick for me was the way to go. :D I have to say, though, that for the most part her books end weirdly abruptly. I think that's why I liked Bath Tangle the best of these three - not only did we actually get some inclination of people's feelings for each other *before* the marriage proposal, it had a satisfying ending.

Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow The Story of French: From Charlemagne to Cirque du Soleil

You know I'm a sucker for a book on language, and this was a great one - a little history, a little linguistics, a little look at the place of French today. Plus, because it was written by two Canadians, lots of talk about French in all parts of the world, not just France. Not to mention that the week after I finished it, there was a bit on the potential dissolution of Belgium on Sunday Edition, and I felt very smart, because I already knew what was going on there. Score.

Michael Redhill Consolation

This was fantastic. It's now the Toronto everybody-read-all-together book, so if you want to read along with Toronto, I highly recommend it! It's two stories, one about an forensic geologist in the present, and the other about an apothecary newly arrived in Toronto in the 1850s. The parts in the past were particularly engrossing.

Mimi Smartypants The World According to Mimi Smartypants

If you haven't read Mimi Smartypants, you totally should. You could probably just read her website - I mean, I didn't recognize more than a couple of the stories in the book, which is better than some books by bloggers, but it wasn't anything extraspecialier than the blog.

Charles Stross Halting State

This was awesome - the kind of sci-fi I love. Just a few years in the future, when various technologies are just that much further ahead, and what that means for society. A forensic accountant, a game programmer, and a cop get tied up in a bizarre case of a bank robbery inside a massive MMORG. Fantastic.

Joss Whedon Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home

I think it's official - if even Buffy Season 8 can't truly excite me, I'm clearly just not that interested in comics/graphic novels. I mean, I loved the story, I wanted to read the story, I want to know what happens next, but the pictures just got in the way.

Mary Balogh Simply Magic
Tanya Huff Smoke and Ashes
China Mieville The Scar
Richard Morgan Broken Angels
Heather O'Neill Lullabies for Little Criminals
Michael Pollan The Omnivore's Dilemma
J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Richard Russo Empire Falls
Will Self The Book of Dave

I also read all these. And I loved them all (except Lullabies for Little Criminals, which I liked while I was reading, but got a little annoyed by on reflection). Empire Falls was fantastic, The Book of Dave was totally worth slogging through the boring parts, The Scar and Broken Angels drew me further into their worlds, I love Tanya Huff's Smoke series, and Mary Balogh is always entertaining. And I bet everyone here has already read The Omnivore's Dilemma, or at least has already been told to read it. :)