January Reading List

[mainemilyhoon.livejournal.com]

Sanditon and other stories by Jane Austen
I'd read most of these stories before, since my first copy of Northanger Abbey had Lady Susan/Sanditon/The Watsons included, and others I'd picked up along the way. But I'd never read them all consecutively before, in a chronological order so that you can see Jane Austen's writing style develop. It was pretty fascinating, but I'm glad she learned how to work in the absurd characters on the side instead of making them the focus - too many of those stories in a row got very irritating. Also, I disagree with the guy who wrote the introduction and went on and on about how Sanditon would have been her finest work and that she was planning to do this and that with the story - I think it's much too short and unedited to show any such thing.

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice
No disrespect to Nancy Mitford, but this is the book I hoped The Pursuit of Love was going to be. It reminded me a lot of I Capture the Castle, too - an impoverished upper class family living in a mouldering old mansion and trying to hide their lack of money from the world, though it would never occur to any of them to, y'know, get a job. (The horror!) I keep wanting to call it "fun and frothy", but that doesn't really do it justice. Because it is light, but there's also a meatier side, what with the aftermath of the War, and the heroine's father having died, and her mother not dealing with that very well (or much of anything - she veers wildly from worrying about money to splurging on Dior dresses because she couldn't possibly wear anything cheaper). And there's romance of a sort, though it sneaks up on you and you almost have to read between the lines at the end to figure out whether it's really happening.

My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss
I've always been frustrated by the lack of books about life in Germany. You can go to the France or Italy section of the library and find stacks of books about "how I bought a beautiful house in a beautiful village full of charmingly quirky people, and what it taught me about life," but when you turn to the Germany section it's all Hitler. So I was a little disappointed that so much of this book took place outside of Berlin, while Luisa Weiss was living in New York and trying to decide whether to stay. I found it frustrating that she spent so much time complaining about being torn between two cultures, and acting like there was anything keeping her from moving back to Germany other than her own lack of decision-making. There wasn't really much of a story to tell, and the book might have worked better as a straightforward cookbook, without the memoir. Because the recipes all look really good.

Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart (audiobook)
Apparently I don't hate audiobooks if I already know the story inside out and can tune out for a minute or two without losing my place. I didn't love Davina Porter as a narrator - her voice was too old and too snooty for Linda, and the one she put on for Raoul was dreadful - but it was fun to have this to make the time pass faster one week at work.

This Shattered World by Aimee Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
My enthusiasm for this series had waned since I read These Broken Stars last year, but it only took a few chapters for me to be right back in love with the world and the characters. Since the story follows new characters on a new planet, and moved Lilac and Tarver to secondary status, it managed to avoid second-book-syndrome and be fresh and fun, not a rehash of what came before or too obviously holding back for the next book.

White Hot Kiss by Jennifer Armentrout
Terrible. I have no idea why I read this, unless it was to see whether it would be as bad as her Lux series. It was worse.

Miss Jacobsen's Journey by Carola Dunn
I loved the premise of this one - a girl who rejected a suitor in a very humiliating way ends up stuck with him on a journey through France to deliver funds to Wellington's army - but the story had no heart. The red herring love triangle was tiresome and the ending was abrupt and silly.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
I have mixed feelings about this one. I did love the writing, and the atmosphere - English village murder mystery is always awesome - but Flavia. Oh, how I hated Flavia. It's not just that she's unconvincing as an 11-year-old, it's that she's not funny or clever or at all likeable. Instead of rooting for her to solve the mystery, I kept hoping that the police would do it first and take her down a peg or two.

The Demon Catchers of Milan by Kat Beyer
The Halcyon Bird by Kat Beyer
Mia finds out about her family's profession in the most horrific way - when she is possessed by an ancient, power-hungry demon who has already claimed the lives of two family members. These were not the books I was expecting - I assumed they'd be more typical YA paranormal romance, and instead they're mostly learning a new culture and learning to fight demons, with only a little romance. I was actually a bit disappointed by the new love interest in book 2; unusually for me I was rooting for Mia and her third cousin Emilio, who seems like a much better match for her. (I mean, third cousins are practically not related at all, right?) The books are a little slow-paced, and I'm hoping book 3 brings the mystery to a satisfying conclusion without dragging things out too long.

Where am I Wearing? by Kelsey Timmerman
Very interesting, if a little less in-depth than I'd hoped. The author travels to Honduras, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and China to put meet the factory workers who made his favorite outfit. I thought he got hung up too much on finding the exact factories where things were made, and he got really irritating sometimes, like when he talks about eating "tortillas and green goop" in Bangladesh. But it was fairly eye-opening, and reveals that the whole clothing industry is a lot more complex than it appears. It's not as simple as boycotting child labor, for example, since the kids probably aren't going to go to school if they're not at work: they'll just find another job, or beg on the streets, or worse. I just wish he'd offered more suggestions at the end instead of "how to recreate my experiment with your own outfits".

Second Chance Pass by Robyn Carr (skimmed at work)
Agh, why do I do this to myself? I HAAAATE Robyn Carr's books, but every time I see one, morbid curiosity makes me pick it up. Her books are just so bland, but she obviously thinks that she's being so edgy and cool. This one was the worst so far, I think. I'm not sure whether it was a romance novel or a pro-breastfeeding tract. Every woman in this book is either pregnant or nursing, or wants to be. And they all have home births, because only wimps want to be in a hospital with access to painkillers. I'm not even sure now if there was a romance. I don't remember any.

Mystery Man by Lisa Jackson (skimmed at work)
Normally I hate when romance authors head-jump, but here I would have liked to get part of the story from the hero's perspective. Since he spends 90% of the book being "mystery man", it felt really one-sided and obsessive to only get the heroine's side of things. And the big reveal at the end - is he really Devlin? Or was she mistaken? - is so anticlimactic that I immediately regretted wasting any time on the silly book.

A Portrait of Jane Austen by Lord David Cecil
I sometimes find biographies boring, but this one was very readable and interesting. I hadn't realized before how little is known about Jane Austen the woman - we know about her family and her work, but thanks to her sister destroying a lot of her letters, her personality has to be patched together and filled in with guesswork. Toward the end of the book there's a shift in tone, though, and I couldn't tell whether it was that Jane Austen's life became melancholy or if David Cecil was deliberately cultivating that impression.

The Brandons by Angela Thirkell
Very, very silly, a bit like a female P.G. Wodehouse. The action all revolves around which of two cousins might inherit Brandon Abbey once "Aunt Sissie" dies, and several characters falling in love with the empty-headed widow Mrs. Brandon. I liked it but I felt like I was missing something - maybe it's part of a series?

The Law of Loving Others by Kate Axelrod (skimmed at work)
What I got from this book was, "Don't send your kids to boarding school, because they'll turn into pot-smoking, promiscuous, pretentious brats."

The Courage of Cat Campbell by Natasha Lowe
Sequel to The Power of Poppy Pendle, one of my all-time favorites. Poppy's daughter, Cat, couldn't care less about her mother's baking, and wants nothing more than to be a witch. Unfortunately the family's magic gene seems to have passed her by...until an encounter with a spider awakens her dormant ability. This was just as cute and fun as Poppy Pendle, and I loved the "magic spells" at the end.

The Conspiracy of Us by Maggie Hall
Billed as "a teenage Da Vinci Code" for fans of Ally Carter, I had high hopes for this one, but it was a little too fast-paced, with not enough character development. The story takes place over less than a week, so the romance felt rushed and out of place, like it should have waited for a second or even third book, to give things time to develop. And the "conspiracy" didn't quite work for me, either. There just wasn't enough detail, or enough time taken to explain things and fully introduce characters.

No Denying You by Sydney Landon (skimmed at work)
I should have put this down as soon as the main character said Fifty Shades of Grey was her favorite book, but I never learn.

Italian Food by Elizabeth David (gave up 1/3 of the way through)
Elizabeth David is one of those food-writing-people who everyone seems to know and love. Due to personal issues with the formatting of her books (teeny-tiny type, weird paragraph spacing), I've never read anything by her until now. And...I'm underwhelmed. The food all sounds odd and unappetizing, and her writing doesn't seem (to me) like anything special. But then, I love Nigella Lawson's over-the-top food descriptions, so what do I know?

Jane Austen: A Biography by Elizabeth Jenkins (gave up after 50 pages)
Compared to the David Cecil biography, this one is a mess. Instead of being laid out in chronological order, the author jumps around, talking about Jane Austen's childhood in one paragraph and her writing process in the next. Random bits of poetry show up at least once per chapter, rarely having anything to do with what the surrounding text is talking about. It's dull and hard to follow, and I much prefer the other Jane Austen biography I read this month.

Comments

[bluiidmommy.livejournal.com]

What an impressive reading list!! It was fun to see some books that I may be interested in.

[sk8eeyore.livejournal.com]

This reminded me that I've never read Sanditon or Austen's other stories before, and now I'm more curious to do so. Seeing the development in her writing would be fun.