A Discovery of Witches (Deborah Harkness)
I cannot recommend this one enough - the story of a researcher witch, who has kind of renounced her powers, doing work at Oxford's Bodlean Library, a mysterious manuscript (shades of a supernatural Lord Peter??), a hunky vampire who does yoga, a quirky enchanted house, over 500 pages of intrigue. I turned off Glee because I was so close to finishing it - I thought I could read during the commercials or whatever, but I found myself so absorbed, I couldn't put it down, and I turned off the background noise so I could focus wholly on the book. It's the first in a trilogy which makes me DESPERATE because the next book won't be out until 2012. Read it, you won't be sorry. I could not put it down and even schlepped this massive hard cover tome on the train with me so I could read it on my daily commute.
Dead Reckoning (Charlaine Harris)
Just once, I'd like to read a nice book about Sookie Stackhouse where something nice happens, you know? Maybe she could go to work, hang with Sam, then go home and have a deep, uncomplicated talk with Eric, her vampire lovair (and then do what one does when one entertains a gentleman caller, in a most - ahem - spectacular manner), and then, I don't know, have some cookies? Dead Reckoning does not have many such happy moments for our favorite telepathic waitress. There's vamp politics a-brewing, an odd tension between Pam and Eric, and the new head honcho, Victor. Plus someone's been targeting Merlotte's and business isn't so great. It's up to Sookie (but of course) to figure out whodunit. Oh, and there are two fairies living with Sookie. Fun, huh? This book picks up where Dead in the Family left off - and as always, left me wanting more. This one, I inhaled in the space of a single evening.
Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)
I've been a fan of Neil Gaiman's since Good Omens (probably one of my favorite books of all time). This one is --- oh so hard to describe ---- a trip to the place people go when they fall through the cracks, a romp through London's Underground. All because protagonist Richard Mayhew wouldn't look away when he saw someone bleeding on the street. He offered help, and got sucked into London Below. This is the pick for One Book, One Chicago, and it is SO MUCH BETTER than last year's (awful) pick, Brooklyn. It is fantasy at the most breathtakingly vivid - funny and scary and imaginative.
Alice I Have Been (Melanie Benjamin)
I'd read a few reviews of this book and thought it sounded good. I then forgot all about it until I ran across a copy of the book on one of my (many) trips to the library. It's a fictionalized account of the life and times of Alice Liddell, otherwise known as the inspiration behind Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. I found it incredibly moving and sad (it made me cry. On the train. That was a fun afternoon commute home) - the story of a little girl kept forever young through that famous story, and how the creation of the story haunted her throughout the rest of her life. A beautiful and well-crafted story. It even offers a little analysis about the Victorian attitude towards children and why it wasn't creepy at all, back in the day, for Carroll (aka Charles Dodgson) to take photographs of little girls, hang around with them and take them around (rowing on the Isis! Another book set in Oxford!). It offers a suggestion of the nature of the relationship between Dodgson and his young muse (Alice was only 7 when they met) and how that relationship shaped the rest of Alice's life. Read it. I now also have the urge to go and read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland again, too...
If You Were Here (Jen Lancaster)
I was so looking forward to getting this book - I went to the Borders on State Street on my way to work so I could get the book right when they opened. This one is Jen's first novel and details the adventures of Mac and Mia, a couple living in Chicago when they decide to take the plunge and buy a house in the suburbs (a fictionalized North Shore town Abington Cambs, a very thinly disguised Lake Forest). The house they buy is a fixer upper and the book goes through their adventures in home ownership - and there are many. It is told in Jen's signature engaging style and I busted out laughing several times (again, on the train. Sorry, fellow commuters, for disturbing you from your Wall Street Journals). I just love the way she writes, and it was a quick, light, fun read. I loved that her character wrote books about Amish teenage zombies in love (and I think I'd like to read "Buggies are the new Black"). I didn't get all of the John Hughes references. I think I'm from the right era, but I honestly don't remember all of those movies. Please don't think I'm a traitor to my generation or anything, but I just didn't watch a lot of movies as a kid. So I'm pretty sure I saw them....at some point.... but I don't remember them. I have no idea who Jake Ryan is or why anyone would want to move into his house. I get he's some kind of 80s Teenage Dream? But I have no mental image to call to mind. I'm curious though, and plan to rent some movies - anybody up for a John Hughes party?
All in all, I enjoyed it very much and hope Jen keeps writing novels - although I would read pretty much anything she felt like writing.
(But I feel duty bound to point out, as a lifetime suburbanite that everyone in the other suburbs totally makes fun of the North Shore snobs in Lake Forest. So when Mac and Mia were moving there I was all, ewwww, why??? Yes, I know, I get it, Jake Ryan's house. Still.)
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