book reviews

Helen V. Griffith, Grandaddy and Janetta Together - This is a simple series of children's books about a little girl and her grandfather. While Grandaddy isn't exactly like my grandfather, his speech cadence is similar and his approach to Janetta is as well. There's warmth and love and old-fashioned values and family all rolled into these little books; they're quite lovely.

Elaine Viets, Pumped for Murder - I love this series for its lightness and its growing cast of unusual characters, as well as for the fact that the characters lives are dynamic and continue to move forward. This was not my favorite entry, because I don't love Helen, the lead, as much as her supporting cast, and I don't love her family in St. Louis, which is filled with pretty boring people, and I think the whole plotline regarding her ex-husband's death is tedious and tortured ... but the "A" plot of the book was interesting and I give it a pass because of the overall quality of the series. Hoping for better things from the next one, however!

Christopher Kimball, Fannie's Last Supper - This is a fascinating tale of a recreated Victorian meal and the research and work that went into it. The text explains why the Victorians ate the way they did, where they got their food, and how the modern historians recreated the cooking styles. He gets a bit overly philosophical in the end, but the rest of the book is a really solid and interesting look at Victorian eating.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit - This may be a shocking thing to say ... but I didn't much like The Hobbit. I find Bilbo and Frodo Baggins two of the least interesting characters in Tolkien's world, and this early version of Bilbo has him all-but-character-free. He is a reactor and not an actor, and has very little personality; the large number of dwarves he travels with have even less personality. The adventures aren't bad, but there's really not a lot of resolution. Overall, it seems like a practice book before the actual achievement that is the Lord of the Rings trilogy.