book reviews

Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl - This was three different books in one: the first third a trite, cliched, predictable story about two self-involved spoiled hipsters; the second third a gripping and unexpected look into an unusual and finely drawn personality; the last third an author's desperate flailing attempt to write herself out of a box and come up with a "happy" ending for characters who don't deserve or know how to be happy. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough of the middle third of the book to be worth rereading or recommending.

Craig Johnson, Death Without Company - The second book in the Longmire series exceeded the first in almost every way. The characters were more comfortable as the author got more used to them and their interactions, the story more fully seated in not only the Western setting but also the fictional one, the pacing much tighter. (Example: I read the first book in two weeks; I read the second in a day.) Highly recommended, although you should probably read the first one first.

H. A. Guerber, Myths of Greece and Rome - Guerber has nothing on Edith Hamilton. His (I assume, given the 1912 inscription on the flyleaf) myth tellings are dry and pedantic and add very little to the overall body of myth literature. The book, however, is well worth keeping because of my Great-Aunt Jennie's inscription - in 1912, she was 17.

Alyson Richman, The Lost Wife - I had hopes for this when I read the opener, the story of an old man at his grandson's wedding meeting the bride's grandmother and discovering she was the wife he'd thought had died in the Holocaust. Unfortunately (spoilers), that's the end of that whole plotline. The rest of the book is an extended, pedestrian, expected, overly melodramatic, too painstakingly descriptive flashback of the extremely uninteresting, not to mention unlikeable, wife's experiences during the Holocaust, and the book ends back at the wedding again with the wife acknowledging her identity. The book I wanted to read was the one that came afterward, and I was highly disappointed that it didn't exist.

book reviews

Amor Towles, Rules of Civility - Towles writes well. He's got a way with words, and he puts them together attractively. Unfortunately, the book's characters were little more than paper dolls, emotionless and unchanging. The main character drifted through the pages, meeting people, parting from people, changing her life, and by the end of it, I had no idea why she'd bothered to do any of it, since she seemed to feel absolutely nothing.

Elizabeth Peters, The Hippopotamus Pool - Peters isn't a perfect writer, but there is no question that she has created dynamic, interesting, emotional characters. I want to know what's happening next to Amelia Peabody Emerson and her extended family, I want to spend more time in her head, and so I forget that I'm reading a book and simply immerse myself in her adventures. The plots of the books are remarkably varied for a series that takes place in the same rather narrow niche, and they call to mind some of the old adventure novels I love.

Robert Service, The Yukon Poems of Robert W. Service - Service's poems tell a story and take you to the land of the Yukon, with its varied denizens. They're not perfected, they're as rough as the boards of a shanty, and that gives them an added feeling of tangibility.

Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason and the Case of the Foot-Loose Doll - Gardner is another who takes what could be a formulaic setting and twists it around into what manage to be remarkably varied plots. In this case, the defendant is attempting to lead a life under a false identity, and gets herself embroiled in an entire world of complications ... and then doesn't entirely come clean to Mason until she has to. It's a clever denouement and has some nice twists.

book reviews

Craig Johnson, The Cold Dish - This is the first novel in the Longmire series, which has recently become a TV show. Having enjoyed the show, I thought I'd try the books, and I'm glad I did. Now, the book had its flaws: I deduced the identity of the killer without even trying by page 72, there were a few factual errors, and it was really slow-moving. But on the whole, I found the characters interesting and well-drawn and the plot hung together well. Definitely good enough to try the next book in the series.

Patricia MacLachlan, Sarah, Plain and Tall - This is a simple, warm book about a family coming together. It is well worth being a classic, even if the long-drawn-out tension of the final chapter doesn't hold up when considered logically, because of the sympathy it shows toward each character and the emotion it conveys in very few words.

Tim Gunn, Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible - Tim Gunn's books always seem to be impulse buys for me, and I'm always glad I gave in to the impulse. The "Fashion Bible" is a history of clothes, delving into where each type of clothing comes from, the historical trends that shaped the changes in each article of clothing, and why we wear what we wear. Tremendously informative and interesting!

Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana deZerega Wall, Unearthing Gotham - This book has been on my TBR shelf for a long time, and I was excited when it came up in the rotation, but ultimately I found it disappointing. It was supposed to be about the archaeology of New York City, and it covered that topic, but not in nearly enough depth, or breadth, for that matter. It couldn't seem to decide if it was a history of New York archaeology or just a history of New York, and as such, did justice to neither topic. It's well-written, but there's just not enough in it.

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.

book reviews

Geraldine Brooks, Caleb's Crossing - I read one of Brooks's previous books, Year of Wonders, and was underwhelmed, so I didn't expect much of Caleb's Crossing ... and I was still disappointed. Year of Wonders at least had some fine moments, while Caleb's Crossing had nothing that particularly stood out. The title is a misnomer, as Caleb is actually only a supporting character, whose role shrinks over the course of the book. The language attempts to be authentic sixteenth-century, but mostly comes across as unnecessarily complicated and pretentious. And the plot had very little that was new - it was a typical 21st-century historical novel, with a female heroine who longs for learning and strains against the confines of her gendered role in her society.

Zane Grey, Robber's Roost - This was a nice version of the standard Western. The hero makes no bones about being an outlaw, joins willingly enough with a group of robbers, and is slowly won away from them and their dark deeds by the love of a good woman. Grey's prose is relatively florid, filled with description and short on character development, but he spins a good tale, and this one was one of my favorites of his.

Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Negligent Nymph - Gardner shook up his standard format a bit here by embroiling Perry in the unfolding plot from the very beginning, giving Perry a very personal stake in the events. This may be the least sympathetic client I've ever seen in a Mason mystery, but it worked well, because Perry had no other choice from the get-go than to go along with her and to get her out of her mess. The story is set in a different county than usual, so the hostility of the district attorney had a different tone than the expected, which was a nice change of pace. Altogether, a solid entry in the series.

Edward Abbey, The Fool's Progress - I admit I didn't make it far into this book. It's one of those hyper-cynical books with a protagonist who's too smart for the rest of the world, leading to him treating women badly and being left alone and miserable. I read through the first fifty pages and nothing happened but the guy moping around in his empty house thinking drunken, cynical thoughts. Not gripping and not interesting.

book reviews

William Bennett Seitz/Harry Moses, Pickups: Classic American Trucks - I'm a big fan of old cars, and particularly old trucks, so Lou got me this awesome coffee table book of restored trucks around the country. The pictures are great, the people's stories are interesting - I really enjoyed it.

Rhys Bowen, Death of Riley - I liked the first book in this series, so I had high hopes for this second one, but I admit to being disappointed. Molly seems to fall in easily with all sorts of unusual people just when she most needs it, it's all very convenient. In addition, where historical fiction is concerned there's a fine line between grounding your character in the time period and straining disbelief, and to have Molly all of a sudden show up and come within moments of preventing the assassination of the president was an event so poorly led up to and so completely coincidental that I didn't buy it. The intrusion of the real world meant that I was no longer living in Molly's world.

Edmund Burke, The Evils of Revolution - I was disappointed in this. I had read about Burke's book many times. It's quoted frequently and figures prominently in the thinking of 19th-century Americans. But the book itself did not impress me - I found it too blustery and not as powerful as I had expected.

Jack Todd, Sun Going Down - This is a western epic, based on the memoirs of the author's own family, and I thought it was overall quite successful. The characters were rich and interesting and they were fully enmeshed in their time period, which came to life on the page. It definitely follows a pattern of misery - as soon as a character expresses happiness, or love for another person, you can be sure one of them is about to die - but that's fairly typical of other books I've read set in the early 20th century west. The first half of the book the characters are more fully realized than in the last half, but the book as a whole was gripping and held my interest.

book reviews

James Thurber, The 13 Clocks - Part Jabberwocky, part Legend of Zelda, this beautifully written story is clever and entertaining and well worth reading many times over.

Jean Edward Smith, Grant - A marvelously well-written biography that made me see Grant, and many of the battles he led, in a new light. I could have asked for more detail about his post-presidential life, which was all wrapped up in a single chapter, but otherwise I found this highly readable and extremely interesting.

Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, The Great Typo Hunt - The story of a man who decides his only superpower is an ability to correct typos, and who sets out to do just that all across the country and back ... and what came of it. Deck and Herson are men after my own heart, and it was heartening to read about their crusade.

Hildegarde Dolson, We Shook the Family Tree - A '40s memoir in the vein of Cheaper by the Dozen. Dolson writes well, her family is adorably wacky, and I've been enjoying her stories for more than twenty years. 

book reviews

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World - I'm a sucker for old-style adventures like those of H. Rider Haggard, and Conan Doyle's book fits right into that category. His characters are drawn into a journey deep into the Amazonian jungle in search of a plateau where prehistoric creatures roam. The characters are unique and interesting, their adventures exciting, and it's overall a fun, satisfying read.

Zane Grey, The Rainbow Trail - Grey is definitely wordier and more highfalutin' than his compatriot L'Amour, and his characters tend to be more romanticized. This book is no exception - it takes place after the events in Riders of the Purple Sage, carrying on with that storyline. The hero is a tenderfoot in many ways, searching for answers in the west, but those answers and the search itself fall by the wayside when he falls in love with a desert flower who is in danger from the Mormons. I like Grey, but I think in writing this book he lost his way a bit.

E. Nesbit, The Phoenix and the Carpet - Nesbit's children aren't clean or clever or particularly nice, which is part of their allure. They're normal children caught up in unusual situations and forced to deal with the consequences of their own hasty wishes and lack of forethought ... and as such, they prove themselves to be quite resourceful.

Elyssa East, Dogtown - I picked this up because I've only recently become aware of the existence of Dogtown, a large tract of wilderness and ruins in the midst of Gloucester, Mass., and I was curious. East weaves together the history of Dogtown itself, ancient and modern, with the tale of a 1984 murder and how that affected Dogtown and Gloucester itself, and with her own history and experiences there. I found myself wishing that she had explored all three themes in more depth, but overall it was an enjoyable and interesting book.

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book reviews

Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus - I was cautiously optimistic about this story ... until I saw that it is set in the present tense and has a framing device that is both first-person and present tense. Those set off warning bells in my mind and turned out to be an excellent predictor of the book's main issue - the author's complete overreach. As a first novel, this book attempted to be an entire smorgasboard of theme and plot and character and setting and every possible thing the writer could cram into it. In the process, she lost her characters and her plot in the depth of her setting, and did her setting no favors by trying to describe it, but at the same time not describe it, so that it could remain mysterious in the readers' minds. It was a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too book for the author, and clearly paid off for her, based on its popularity. But in my mind, her characters were paper dolls, placed here and there for effect but sparking no emotion in each other or in me, and her plot was as vanishingly thin as the smoke and mirrors her magic pretends to be. And without characters or plot (and without a real sense of the 19th century, the time period in which the book pretended to be set), the magical setting lost its glamor for me.

Elizabeth Peters, The Snake, the Crocodile & the Dog - Peters keeps managing to find ways to keep her characters fresh and interesting while keeping them true to themselves. Amelia Peabody Emerson's refreshing wit, the well-drawn supporting characters, and the somewhat zany but always unusual circumstances the characters fall into keep me coming back for more.

Wilkie Collins, Man and Wife - The rather fragile thread this plot depends on is an old-fashioned set of morals and the somewhat confusing Scottish marriage law of the 19th century, but despite the archaicness of the plot and the characters' values, Collins manages to make his heroine sympathetic, his plot complex but interesting, and his six hundred pages feel like three hundred.

Juliette Fay, deep down true - What a refreshing change of pace! After modern novel after modern novel of sharp cuts in point of view, chopped up timelines, characters sacrificed in an obeisance to setting, it was such a relief to sit down to this book - a simple slice of a wo life, simply told, but told so well I was sad to close the book because I miss the main character as though she was my best friend who just moved away. One of the best books I've read this year!

book reviews

Been on a cold streak lately - not a lot of recent reads have made the long-term list.

Robin Adair, Death and the Running Patterer - a murder mystery set in 1850s Australia among the transported convicts. It sounded good, it looked good, it started well - detailed and well-imagined with just a touch of humor. But it rapidly became clear that while the author knew a tremendous amount about the era, he shared it too frequently and too ham-handedly, often inappropriately shoved into dialogue that then sounded unnatural ... and worse, that the characterizations and plot were a distant second to the erudition. Now, I was prepared to enjoy that, too, because I found the details remarkably interesting (unlike Chevalier, in the previous set of reviews, who buried her details within the story and thus dulled their sparkle with the story's bland brush), but when the main character suddenly changed personality two-thirds of the way into the story, and then the denouement ... charitably put, stretched credibility ... well, it was too much. Sorry to say, I can't recommend this one.

John Updike, Rabbit, Run - I couldn't make it more than fifty pages into this one. It had the same flavor as The Catcher in the Rye, a book I personally can't stand - all depressed and down-trodden and gloomy and oh, what a dreadfully dull and hopeless place this world is. Not my thing, not in the least.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Hotel Transylvania - The first Saint-Germain novel is still the best. She was nowhere near as bogged down in historical detail, or in overly complex and intricate plots, as the later books, and Saint-Germain was still an enigmatic and exciting character, with few of the repetitive tropes that characterize the later books.

Elizabeth Peters, The Last Camel Died at Noon - I share Peters's love of the works of H. Rider Haggard, and this takeoff on Haggard's style was a lot of fun. The characters stuck in a completely new environment added an extra edge to their adventures, and it brought the author's inventiveness to the fore. My favorite of the series (after the first one).

book reviews

Godfrey Hodgson, A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving - It's an interesting idea, tracing the development of what we consider "Thanksgiving" from the earliest days of the landing at Plymouth and adding a firm grounding in the changing definitions and ideas of Thanksgiving over time, but overall I found it dryly written and not particularly engaging.

Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring - Chevalier's writing is pretty, sprinkled with carefully described detail and heavy on setting. But in the end, it's like a play you go to for the props and costuming and scenery and not for the acting or the story, because Chevalier provides little in the way of plot or characterization. Her main character, the maid Griet, has no particular personality. Chevalier strives to create one by means of the simple detail of the maid covering her hair at all times, but since we never see the unfettered creature Griet might become if she let her hair down, the conceit has little impact. Vermeer is painted as an unbelievable creature - in complete dominance over the household, yet in so little control that he can't even step in when Griet is accused of a transgression that is obviously his fault in many ways. In the end, the denouement is trivial, even for the times, and Griet's personality remains a cipher. Overall, this appears to have been a book written because Chevalier wished to use the setting, and she created a thin story to support her descriptions.

Elizabeth Peters, The Deeds of the Disturber - A refreshing departure from the Egyptcentric first four installments of the series, this one placed the Emersons in London, in a fascinating exploration of how their typical skills and attitudes are altered in the more genteel atmosphere of what they considered "civilization." One of her better efforts, I thought.

Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins, The Revolt of Mother and Other Stories - A set of stories about homely women, and their strength. Sometimes it's hidden strength, shown in their defiance of those who want to change their lives, or their stubborn clinging to their views of the right way to do things, and other times it's overt, as in the title story when the woman takes over her husband's new barn instead of living in the dilapidated house he's never taken the time to improve. They are simple stories about simple people, but the more powerful because of their simplicity.

book reviews

Lord Macaulay, History of England, Vol. 2 - This volume takes England's history through William and Mary's takeover and ascension to the throne, and follows the vagaries of King James as he flailed about losing his throne and trying to retake it. Macaulay makes no secret of his distaste for James throughout, but manages to be relatively even-handed when it comes to the people of England and their ever-shifting support.

Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - This is a rare case where I saw the movie first, then read the book, and was touched by both. I find the story, of four very different girls who are nevertheless close friends and their travails during a complicated summer, to be sweet and tender and compassionate, and the addition of the magical pair of pants that somehow fits them all perfectly adds the right amount of humor and whimsy.

Shaun C. Grenan, So You Want to Be a Soldier - A how-to booklet on how to get into re-enacting. It was a bit on the dated side, but still had some interesting information.

Robert Kraus, How Spider Saved Christmas - A childhood favorite, refound by my in-house internet detective (thanks, honey!). It's a simple story about Spider being invited to a Christmas party, not knowing what to bring, bringing something foolish, and then having the foolish gift be just what was needed. Always nice to see someone awkward turn into the hero of the hour!

book reviews

Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - This was a rare impulse buy at the bookstore, and more successful than many impulse buys. It's a story built around unusual old-time pictures, about a set of children with rare talents lost in a time-loop. It was an inventive and interesting story, well-told, and definitely a keeper.

Markus Zusak, The Book Thief - This was a book group selection. When I got about 150 pages in and realized I was still waiting for the book to start, that was a bad sign. I really couldn't get a handle on the characters and didn't care about them particularly. I understand why this rather unusual style of narrated storytelling, chopped up with emphatically bolded sentences and chatty asides from Death himself, caught the imaginations of many, but it went right past me and left me uninterested.

Ann Parker, Silver Lies - Another unfortunate failure. I couldn't get interested in the characters, the period flavor (it's a mystery set during the 19th century) was off, and overall I wasn't impressed by the writing.

Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety - An unusual choice for me (it was a recommendation from a friend), but I found the book resonated with me strongly. I dislike the anxiety and the paranoia of modern motherhood, and I agreed with many of the book's points about the insanity of our lives spent devoted utterly to the raising of children, often to our own detriment. A wee bit dated, but still relevant.

book reviews

Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden. There was a lot to like about this complex tale of multiple generations of women across two continents ... a few of the characters were well-drawn, the bones of a couple of the plot arcs were interesting, the language was pretty but not overly tortured. But the book's structure was choppy, jumping around in time and perspective abruptly, which made it hard to keep up with what was going on. And it was impossible not to notice that a third of the book was simply Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. The author went so far as to draw notice to her plagiarism by having Burnett appear in the book as a character, a wink-wink nudge-nudge see-what-I-did-there attempt to pretend that Burnett gained her inspiration from this author's characters. Had the book's plot simply shared a few elements with Burnett's book, it might have been clever. But the point-by-point similarities were too much. Morton would have been better served by writing her own book, not simply rewriting someone else's.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, The St. Germain Chronicles. This set of short stories follows the more modern adventures of Yarbro's count. But they jump from era to era abruptly, and it's hard to follow where they lead. A couple of the stories seem to have no point, the interlaced letters seem only tangentially related to the stories, and overall the collection failed to make me want to read it again.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind. I wanted to like this book, I really did. Two people I respect recommended it to me, and I was hoping it would really wow me. And it was a fine book. Perfectly fine. However, the book's premise is that a young boy finds a book, also titled The Shadow of the Wind, and the book is so gripping and transformative that his whole life bends to grow around the story within the book and the history of its author. The problem there is that I wanted the real book in my hands to be as gripping and transformative as the fictional book in the book, and it simply wasn't quite there. Additionally, the author made part of the book an epistle written by one character to another, but he failed to change his voice or style to reflect that it was supposed to be a hand-written letter, and he also included in it scenes that the letter writer was not present for, which destroyed the illusion. Overall, a perfectly fine book ... but not what I had hoped it would be.

Captain Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy. Marryat was a naval man who wrote naval books in the early 19th century. I suspect he is where Patrick O'Brian gained inspiration, because the books are similar in flavor. However, Marryat found a balance of tone and plot and detail that O'Brian's first book, at least, didn't achieve. Marryat's book was a very tongue-in-cheek, very Dickensian flavored send-up of the naval service, as seen by one rather lucky young seadog, an entertaining, amusing ride for both protagonist and reader.

book reviews

Randall Garrett, Lord Darcy. Lord Darcy is a Sherlock Holmes-type figure who lives and solves crimes in an alternate universe where most of the world is part of the British empire. I found some of the short stories contained in this volume engaging, but overall I wearied of Garrett's imaginary world fairly quickly. The constant reiterations of the background bogged the stories down, the inconsistency of the few items (such as "caffe" and "ouiskie") in the Darcy universe that were differentiated from those in our universe, and Darcy's lack of a personality kept me from being able to immerse myself in that world.

Jane Claypool Miner, Jennie. Part of a 1980s series about teenage girls in various times in American history, Jennie is about a girl who survives the Johnstown Flood. Sadly, there's very little character development, the experience during the flood is generalized and lacks urgency, and the romance is sketchy, at best. One of the lesser entries in the series.

Kathryn Kenny, Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Missing Millionaire. This is the best Trixie I've read in a while. The later entries tend to be on the weak side, but I enjoyed this one. It's about a set of swindlers, gives Trixie exposure to the way a professional detective works, and the various characters get more to do, both emotionally and plot-wise, than usual.

Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Cheaper by the Dozen. I've read this umpteen times, and I see myself reading it umpteen more. This cozy little memoir of life in the household of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, early American efficiency experts, is funny and touching and provides a nice glimpse of the times the Gilbreths' dozen children grew up in.

book reviews

Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander. I've always wanted to read this series, knowing the excellent reputation it has. And I can see where the reputation comes from - it's carefully written, clearly very thoroughly researched, and action-packed. But it was also very dry, and the characters were not compelling or well fleshed out. I'm told that's a problem that is resolved in later books, so I may try the next one, but this first one failed to wow me.

Celia Hayes, To Truckee's Trail. I didn't get very far into this one, finding it filled with some of the major pitfalls of the self-published work. To wit, no editing, no proofreading, and it was impossible to tell whether the book was supposed to be historically accurate, based on history, or sheer fiction. From what I could gather, the author wasn't sure about that, either.

Margaret Sidney, The Adventures of Joel Pepper. My least favorite Pepper book ever. Joel's a mischievous imp, always getting into trouble, making trouble, and never listening. He doesn't improve, he whines his way through the book, and I found my impression of my least favorite Pepper had dropped significantly by the end of the book.

Vonda N. McIntyre, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. I'd read this a number of times as a kid and lost track of my copy, so Lou found me a new one. And it did not disappoint. The book hits all the important points of the movie's plot, but it adds a depth of characterization and a level of background detail that make the characters truly three-dimensional.

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book reviews

New batch!

Wilkie Collins, Legacy of Cain. This wasn't my favorite Collins. He tried to do an experiment with the two main characters, to keep their identities obscured for the first portion of the book, and the end result was that I strongly sympathized with the character he meant to be the villain and didn't think much of the character he meant to be the heroine - and I got the impression that wasn't supposed to be how I felt.

James Ellroy, Suicide Hill. A remarkably short work for Ellroy, and one that felt a bit like a coda to his various Lloyd Hopkins books, but it was a fast and fascinating read and wrapped up Hopkins's career in a way that made sense on a number of levels.

Rhys Bowen, Murphy's Law. The first in a mystery series set in turn of the (20th) century New York, I found the book fast-paced and interesting and the main character, an Irish immigrant, entertaining enough to follow her adventures into the second book, even though I'm not sure I buy all the twists and turns contained within.

Homer, The Odyssey. To be truthful, I find this the least likeable of the big three epics - both The Iliad and The Aeneid are more interesting, and I'm not a big fan of Odysseus. Nonetheless, he does have some fantastic classic adventures, and it's a book well worth reading and owning.

book reviews

Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. A fascinating, well-researched glimpse into the attitudes toward and beliefs about death in that era and how the war changed them ... and how they changed war.

Kathryn Kenny, Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Vanishing Victim. In this case, Trixie actually stumbles on a mystery, as opposed to thrusting herself into it, as she often does. This is #33, and I think the series goes to #39, although the highest numbers are the hardest to find.

Elmer Kelton, The Time It Never Rained. A gripping story about a small Texas town in the middle of an extended drought, and about the difficulty of sticking to your principles and making it on your own. Emotional and thought-provoking and well worth reading.

Merrilee Steiner, Pirate Moon (Swept Away #7). This is the only book in this series - about an '80s teen who discovers a way to travel back in time, and the adventures she and her friends share - that I'd never read before, and I admit, it wasn't quite as good as many of the others. The girl's problems were fairly minor, weren't really resolved by her time travel, and she didn't form anywhere near the ties with the people of the past that the other girls in the series have done. Still, it was an entertaining read, and it's good to have the whole set at last (20-something years later!).