February 2013

Stuff I’ve Been Reading: The February 2013 Edition

1. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making – Valente, Catherynne M.
2. The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There – Valente, Catherynne M.
3. The Fourth Bear – Fforde, Jasper*
4. Clay’s Ark – Butler, Octavia E.
5. Pure – Baggott, Julianna
6. The Fitting Room – Minter, Kelly
7. Death of an Artist – Wilhelm, Kate
8. The Revisionists – Mullen, Thomas
9. Sherlock in Love – Naslund, Sena Jeter
10. Dreamsnake – McIntyre, Vonda M.
11. Treasure in the Heart of the Tanglewood – Pierce, Meredith Ann
12. Frankenstein – Shelley, Mary*

Asterisks indicate audiobooks. Italics indicate library books (n.b. 50%!). I didn’t finish reading numbers seven or eight.

This was a bit of an indifferent reading month for me. I was pretty ambivalent about most of the things I read, except the Valente and Pierce books. The two audiobooks were good, and my reread of Naslund was as fun as expected, but the number, variety, and entertainment value of my reads were all down from last month.

Hopefully March will pick me back up again. I’m thinking of tackling Tess of the d’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy, a classic I’ve never attempted, and a book on writing for my nonfiction choice.

WWW Wed Feb 13

What are you currently reading? Nothing. I’m between books. And last week when I said I was between books but picked out the book I was reading next, I ended up finishing three other books before I finally read it. So this week I’ll just list the two books I bought today: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler and Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre.

What did you recently finish reading? The Fitting Room by Kelly Minter, whose study on Ruth I prefer to her nonfiction. Before that, I read Pure by Julianna Baggott (will not read the forthcoming sequels) and Clay’s Ark by Octavia E. Butler (not as good as Lilith’s Brood and certainly not Bloodchild).

What do you think you’ll read next? Death of an Artist by Kate Wilhelm, a standalone mystery by the author of Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, about clones, which I read last year. I’ve selected it because I’ve used up all three renewals, and the library finally wants its book back.

On Audiobooks. Listened to The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde, a Nursery Crime novel featuring detectives Jack Spratt and Mary Mary. Am a third of the way into Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which is so quintessential an example of literary romanticism that I often burst out laughing.

Help! Recommend a historical mystery

I like mysteries.

The detectives can be police or amateurs, the crimes ranging in importance from mysterious happenings to piles of mangled corpses. I don’t care for thrillers, per se, nor necessarily cozies, but I will read them classic, I will read them hardboiled, I will read them intellectual, I will read them comic–and above all I will read them historical.

What I like about mysteries is the character of the detective or detectives (they have to be an interesting person to read about) and the milieu of the crime (it has to be endemic to its location–a crime that could only have happened here, and under these circumstances).

For instance, on a whim I picked up River of Darkness by Rennie Airth, a first book about Inspector John Madden that I am already regretting there are only three of. It’s set in post-WWI England, and Madden is still recovering from his time in the trenches. So, it appears, is the murderer he is hunting. And there are all kinds of brilliant details about the war, and the crime, and the state of law enforcement of the time. Madden is a great protagonist, and the crime is well situated in its historical niche.

My tolerance for mediocre mysteries is high: I read, for instance, more than half of the at-times delightfully campy Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters. I’ve also tried Elizabeth George, Charles Finch, and Wilkie Collins, but none was really for me.

On the other hand, I quite enjoyed Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce mysteries, Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May mysteries (which are always solved via arcane local knowledge), Jasper Fforde’s nursery crime books, Jo Walton’s alternate history “small change” series, and Christie, Sayers, Doyle, Poe and the rest of the classic troupe.

The problem is, such gems are hard to find, and I want more. More!

So recommend me your engaging historical mysteries, please, with attention to good characterization, tight plotting, and detailed, engaging settings.

Immediately, more books

Thanks to a lovely visit from my parents, I instantly jumped my TBR list from 44 to 49.  Five more titles–three from my wishlist–get added to my large stack of books to read.  I am definitely set for the rest of the year, though in all honesty, I’m sure the looming list of titles won’t keep me from the bookstore or library for more than a couple of weeks.

1. Ball, Jesse.  The Curfew.  A new-to-me author of dystopian fiction.
2. Berry, Jedediah.  The Manual of Detection.  The back cover advertised this for lovers of Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, and Jasper Fforde, so I was sold.
3. Treisman, Deborah, ed.  20 under 40: Stories from The New Yorker.  Last summer’s fiction series in a collection, including Teá Obreht and Karen Russell.
4. Ferraris, Zoë.  City of Veils.  Saudi Arabian mystery, sequel to Finding Nouf.
5. Hartwell, David G., ed.  The Science Fiction Century.  More short science fiction in a thousand-page anthology, to take the place of The Norton Book of Science Fiction, which I finished earlier this year.

These will be exciting.  Thanks, parents!