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Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities
Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause
The Autumn People
I'm beginning to think that I only truly love 3 or 4 of Arthur's books, and the residual glow has wrapped around the others in hindsight. This story of Romilly, granddaughter of Romilly known as Millie, can only be described as slight. There's just not a lot of flesh for these oh so spooky bones. The flashbacks are powerful but I found the evil curiously unexplored. Perhaps that gives it some power- the reader can fill out the ugliness, I suppose, but for me, reading it at this terrible remove from adolescence, I simply couldn't be bothered to do so. I'm not trying to damn this book with faint praise- not at all. It's simply slighter than I remembered, less weighty. It's still a ripping good yarn.
Requiem for a Princess. Fifth Printing, 1972
Re-reading an old favorite. This has almost all of the elements of a perfect Ruth M. Arthur book; a mystery, a troubled adolescent protagonist in search of her own authentic life, a scary old witch, a hidden treasure (not to mention a hidden garden), a love interest, and secrets piled upon secrets. The plot is deeply satisfying and the resolution on all fronts delicious. It's interesting how many plot elements Arthur recycled time after time- and how fresh they seemed to be in her hands.
Eona
Before I talk about this book, I have to talk about the cover. Why is there a white chick on the cover? This is clearly a book set in an alternate China/Japan mashup, with Asian characters. Who is this round-eyed tall brunette? Certainly no one I was just reading about. It makes me crazy when publishers do this.Eona was a satisfying second book in what may well be a trilogy, as it has an ending that would be easy to move on from. There were some improbable plot leaps and some odd, throwaway bits (Eona's mom? What was that about?) but the romance/power struggles were involving and interesting. There was perhaps a bit too much agonizing for my tastes. The dragons were magnificent indeed. The Rat Dragoneye was a fully-fleshed, complex bad guy with lots of layers, I maybe enjoyed his character more than the rest. But I didn't like him, which testifies to Goodman's skills as a writer.I liked it a lot. Except the cover?
Eon
5/2011 Re-read. Stet.3/2009 Engaging fantasy which takes a fairly tired plot (girl disguised as boy takes on the world) and renders it fresh if unsurprising. The pacing is excellent, the writing flows seamlessly from crisis to crisis and the resolution, though incomplete enough to make one long for the sequel, is satisfying. The setting, some sort of alternate Eastern land, feels real. The dragons and the traditions of the country all have the weight of centuries behind them. The entire cast of characters is complex and interesting. I look forward to the conclusion.
The Whistling Boy
This is an odd little book. I would have left my previous four star rating stand, except I found the Dinah plotline terribly awkward. It would have been a stronger book without that. Aside from that quibble, it's a lovely story of a young girl figuring out how to get along with her unwelcome stepmother and doing quite a bit of growing up along the way. The supporting characters are sympathetic and real, and the love interest is sorta tortured and vulnerable. The ghostly component of the plot is well-done but not terrifying.
Portrait of Margarita
This one held up to re-reading a little better than did My Daughter, Nicola, but there was a creepy Daddy Long Legs vibe to this that was a little off-putting. The scary, almost supernatural, thread that runs through so many of Arthur's books was a little more developed here in the character of Miss Laura. The subplot about the protagonist's dark skin was unsatisfactory in a lot of ways- I got that Meg felt like there was prejudice because of that, but there wasn't any external supporting evidence in the story. This book is the first place I ever encountered an autistic child, back when autism was comparatively rare. As you might surmise from this wildly scattered review, there's a LOT going on in this book. It's good but not splendid- Arthur's best are so much better than this one, it suffers in comparison. 2.5
My Daughter, Nicola
I remembered liking this better than I actually did. It's awfully slight as far as stories go. I do love the way Arthur brings a certain mannered formality to her stories, and this one's no exception. The plot, though, was lacking. Nicola, for no discernible reason, decides that the way to win her father's love is to find an entrance into the abandoned mine on the mountain. An odd little story.
Dragon Summer
A sweet little story about a girl and the summer that shaped her life. There's a gentle ghost, and a gentle love affair, and a gentle aunt. Well, you get the picture. A lot of the plots (and even the names) that Arthur would revisit more successfully in later works are in evidence here. If this had been the only book Arthur ever wrote, I would have loved it fiercely. As it is, it's more of a curiosity, something to read if you're a Ruth M. Arthur completist, but certainly not her best.
The Spice Necklace: A Food-Lover's Caribbean Adventure
I couldn't get beyond my hatred of the authorial voice. There's this undertone of superiority that I think is totally unintentional, but it's grating. I didn't like the tone, I couldn't get past my perceptions to fully enter into the narrative. Just didn't like it one bit.
I Must Have Bobo!
An adorable story of a boy and a cat, both of whom LOVE LOVE LOVE Bobo the stuffed toy. The boy keeps taking Bobo, then the cat sneaks in and steals him back again. It's minimalist and spare, the illustrations are so cute, and the story so amusing. It's not The Salamander Room, it's not Robert McCloskey, but it's nevertheless a keeper.
Calico Captive
This is not my usual fare, not by a long shot. It somehow ended up on my To-Be-Read shelves, probably a leftover from one of the book exchanges. I was pleasantly surprised to find it a well-written and deeply engaging story. The romance was... well, romancey enough, but easy to ignore. The portrayal of the Natives who captured the English family of the protagonist was fairly one-sided and prejudicial- but rang quite true from their point of view. I wish they'd been captured longer because that was the most interesting part of the story for me. On the other hand, the portrait of Montreal was also very interesting, if less fraught with peril. The quiet fortitude of the older sister was admirable, and the bootstrap-yanking younger sister struck me as having that quintessentially American 'pioneer spirit' we US citizens learn about in school.
THE WINDMILL SUMMER
Delightful. Purely wonderful. I wish I'd had this book to grow up with. An 11 year old girl, fed to the teeth with her houseful of querulous relatives, moves into a windmill for the summer. She loves and cares for several different animals, while honoring their wild natures. There's no talk of taming anyone, no petting, no sweet cuddles. There is respect and love and stewardship. Not to mention some sly fun at the expense of old stick-in-the-mud uncles. And bonus points for a mention of Elizabeth David & scrumptious food discussions. What a lovely little story. Susann, thank you so very much. Do you want me to send it back to you?
The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What You Should Eat and Why
It took me a long time to come back to this book after the tragic abuse of English in the forward ("this problem in languaging") but I sucked it up and carried on. The information is interesting, fun and probably pretty good nutritional advice. It somehow felt too 'rah-rah' to me, though. Too USA Today. Too sound-bitey. I'm a cranky devotee of Michael Pollan, and I like my food information geeky and cloaked in dense layers of information. But this was okay. It would be good for someone just starting to discover real food after a lifetime of McDonald's and Dairy Queen meals.
Quest for a Maid
This wee bittie book is a powerful re-imagining of a couple of different historical events which dovetail nicely here. I saw some of it coming, but not all by any means. The characters are finely drawn, especially Meg and Davie and Peem. Sir Patrick Spens is a hoot. The plot moves along at a brisk clip, and keeps one engaged throughout.It did start off a bit slow, with a good deal of telling in the 'As you already know, Bob' vein, but once through that, it soared.
Exile in Guyville: How a Punk Rock Redneck Faggot Texan Moved to West Hollywood and Refused to Be Shiny and Happy
I enjoyed this snarkified look at West Hollywood in the late 90s. White is whiny and snarky and queeny and hilarious. The whiny never overwhelms the funny. I had a good time with it, and wish he'd write more. There's always room for a cranky ol' queen in my library.
The Queen of Water
This is both an extraordinary story and an extraordinarily well-written one. The book tell the true story of Virginia, who is more or less sold into slavery when she's only seven, and what happens to her over the course of the next ten or so years. This is not a long-ago story, either.Parts of it are very hard to read, especially if one is easily bruised by gratuitous cruelty. Parts of it are like what one imagines surfing on the back of a dolphin would be like, purely joyful. There are a lot of bittersweet moments in Virginia's young life. The cultural divide is a large one for me- there's very little that I knew about Ecuador before picking up this book, so in addition to the story as story, I was also picking up fascinating bits of Equador.Highly recommended. Thanks to Wendy for pushing this.
