Terry Pratchett's Nation

Nation by Terry Pratchett

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
My favorite book of the last year just won the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for teen fiction.Hurray for the Horn Book and whoever voted! This is a wonderful true myth with death and wonder and knowledge and hope--life in an alternate Earth island chain after a tsunami. This is the first book he's written since his Alzheimer's diagnosis and I believe it should have won every award it was nominated for; there's really no way that Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book (see my review) is better. It should certainly have been nominated for a Hugo. Comparing theses two books is like comparing Rowling's Harry Potter series and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials. The latter has a depth the former lacks, despite its popularity. Gaiman is Rowling and Pratchett is Pullman in this instance. And it's usually Gaiman who's dealing with the mythic! At any rate, Nation in its way is as perfect a book as Sherri Tepper's Beauty. Read! Read!

View all my reviews.

For Use in the Classroom with Young Poets

Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets by Naomi Shihab Nye

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wonderful book of poems by young poets taught by Nye in school visits. It's a great resource for teaching--my only wish is that the poet's ages or grade levels were included. It's very handy to be able to tell a group of kids--"If a second-grader wrote that, you can write a poem, too!"


View all my reviews.

Donna Leon's new novel About Face

About Face: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I like spending time with the Brunetti family and I always want more of Signorina Elettra, too. The "mysteries" are always background in these novels to me. I've enjoyed every single novel in the series. Reading about Brunetti's work life, kids, Paolina's academic life, the Conte e Contessa, corrupt business & government... is it all so different? I disagree with Tolstoy, I think we are all alike in our pain, sin, and desperation. Perhaps we are all alike in wanting to be happy. Anyway, I enjoy peeking at the happy Brunetti family-this and the character of Venice and the great writing is what keeps me reading.


View all my reviews.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
So far, only halfway through, but loving it. Remembrance of the French Intellectual of my youth! Truly original, but reminiscent of Montaigne, Colette, of course Proust (and William Carlos Williams), with the comic touch of Moliere. An excellent apologia for life.

Also highly recommended to read while drinking a bottle of French wine--or a pot of tea.

Well done!


View all my reviews.

Miss M joins goodreads.com

The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazing book! Love the author's take on things, especially the "asides" chapters that explain life from a dog's perspective. It's being marketed as YA and I recognize totally the wise, wise-cracking and desperate voice of an intelligent outsider teen. But there's certainly adult subject matter--remember that adulthood came early in those days.

You see, Emer was a girl pirate in the 17th century--and just as she had found her true love (after much tribulation) she was killed and cursed to live the lives of 100 dogs before she can again incarnate as a human.

As the book cover states--"Now she's a contemporary teenager and all she needs is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica." Because if you haven't got love, you might as well have the treasure.

we glimpse all three sorts of her life: as Emer, as various dogs, and as Saffron, the pirate stuck in the contemporary world. But I must leave further details to your own delicious discovery.

As you might guess from the subject matter, there is violence, heartbreak, sex, etc. And no gloss on things.

Very much a sense of rightness at the end. Great cover, too.



I can't wait to read what the author comes up with next!


View all my reviews.

New books

Today I recommend & celebrate a truly springtime Easter, which we don't get often since global warming began. We had wonderful storms on Saturday, complete with rain, and leaves with their still-new green were glowing. The mountains were snow-capped and beautifully purple below. People were smiling and it was a wonderful day.

Last week I read the new Ilona Andrews, Magic Strikes. Still fresh. The most original take on vampires yet, I think; but vampires are peripheral--just where I like them to be. The new Tamora Pierce is on its way, after a two-year wait--that's what I'm most excited about. Beka Cooper, Bloodhound. Whereas Mercedes Lackey has a wide range of series (and a wide range of editors, because the quality of writing, spelling, and editing goes up & down depending) Tamora stays right in tune. I'll be re-reading the older books when I get them unpacked & correct this post if I'm wrong.

Speaking of hounds, I also read Spiral Hunt, by Margaret Ronald, and she's now on my list of must-read. It's not so much the paranormal aspects of the books I've been reading, but the strong women characters. I read fewer mysteries, they're either too grim or too cozy. In these fantasy books, there's also too grim, too much sex and/or romance, too cute, too dark, too violent. There are so many ways to go wrong, aren't there? The authors I like (whether fiction or non-) walk the edges, balanced between one thing and another, never too much but just right. 

I unwrapped a package from Britain last week with glee--a used Maeve Binchy, short stories--but I had read it before. My memory is too good...

I continue unpacking & will have houseguests in a week, but in may hope to be posting regularly. Until then--unless I become incredibly enthused about something.

Here we go!

This will be celebrations of authors, books, food, wine, etc.
Look for regular posts after March, I am moving a household of books, art, manuscripts, computers, etc.

Right before I went to Hawaii over the winter hols (mugged by a whale!), I finished Chalice, by Robin McKinley. What a wonderful book! About how hard it is to rebuild a world and yet how possible (at least that's one of the themes; like a dream, this book is open to interpretation!) Like Sheri Tepper, Robin writes books that are all different from each other and (sorry Sheri--you must remember I've said you wrote the perfect book) less didactic. Anyway I am old enough to have read Robin since her Beauty first appeared and even though I might like to see more of the same characters, she never disappoints with her new departures.

The book was totally unexpected and wonderful and there's a part about bees that reminded me of Elizabeth Goudge's Linnets & Valerians and that led me to Robin's blog which is very funny and I recommend it, too. I love how the characters in Chalice are figuring out what to to & how to be as they go along, because their abilities (but not their sensibilities) are different from 'the tradition" and yet there is no doubt they've been chosen to make things right. And they'll go down trying, if they have to. I enjoyed it immensely, even though I was hoping for a Sunshine sequel. See her faqs about that, sorry.