2010 in Review

2010 has been a rough year for me.  I've had multiple health problems, loads of stressful events, and my father died right before Thanksgiving.  I am blessed to have excellent health care and the support of many loving friends and family.  Aside from those things, reading and blogging about what I read has been sustaining to me throughout this rough year.

As always books are my escape, my hidey hole, food for thought (and often mind candy).  My blog will be two years old in April 2011 and I can't at this point see myself stopping.  Reviewing the books that I read has opened up new relationships with books for me - I make connections and remember other things and think about how to write about all that.  The book blogging community gives me hope for us all with so many avid readers out there talking about books.  So often people don't read anything (not even a cereal box) and I can't imagine how anyone could sustain that.  Books are as basic as food and water to me - how awful to have a starving mind.

I am shamelessly ripping off these end of year questions from E.L. Fay at This Book and I Could Be Friends.  I believe she also shamelessly acquired them from elsewhere.  It's a good set of questions and I'm happy to be shameless with her.

How many books read in 2010?

190 books read this year (yes, I'm aware that I'm ... extreme).

How many works of fiction and non-fiction?

163 Fiction (88%), 26 Non-Fiction (12%)

Male/Female author ratio?

103 Male (54%), 87 Female (46%)

I don't choose books by the gender of their author - glad to see there's a pretty even distribution, though.

Favorite books of 2010?

See my list of these here.  I want to add an 11th to this list - I'm just finishing Howard Norman's What is Left the Daughter and am completely blown away (see a review next week).  I started the year with Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel and ended it with The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell and the Howard Norman book.  If 2011 begins and ends this well, it'll be a great year.

Least favorite?

Ah, so many to choose from I can't pick.  I will, however, tell you about my two pet peeves from this year:  1) good books buried in an overly large text that needed a freakin' editor (Really, people?  1000 pages of drivel?  Really?); 2) wave after wave of books aimed at adolescent girls whose primary message is that being a real girl means being materialistic, utterly shallow, conformist, and getting jerked around by guys who are unavailable plus emotionally and physically abusive.  The latter is just appalling to me.  Year after year we send young women messages that affirm their inadequacy and year after year we wonder why so many of them turn out unmarried and pregnant at 16 and/or living with partners who abuse them.  When does it stop?  Okay - /rant off.


Any that you simply couldn't finish and why?

Heh.  Multiples.  See my semi-regular feature - Abandonment Issues - for details.

Oldest book read?

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1888).

Newest?

Lordy - don't keep track of publication dates by month.


Favorite character of the year?

Two:  Thomas Cromwell from Wolf Hall and Temple from The Reapers Are the Angels.

That's more stats than I've provided in, well, a year.  Onwards towards a brand spanking new year and decade.  I'm hoping for better times throughout.  Best wishes to you all for a safe and happy new year!

Book Review - The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

Synopsis:  Inspired by their heroes Xavier Cugat and Desi Arnaz, brothers Cesar and Nestor Castillo come to New York City from Cuba in 1949 with designs on becoming mambo stars. Eventually they do--performing with Arnaz on "I Love Lucy" in 1955 and recording 78s with their own band, the Mambo Kings. In his second novel, Hijuelos traces the lives of the flashy, guitar-strumming Cesar and the timid, lovelorn Nestor as they cruise the East Coast club circuit in a flamingo-pink bus. Enriching the story are the brothers' friends and family members--all driven by their own private dreams. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990.

First Line:  "It was a Saturday afternoon on La Salle Street, years and years ago, when I was a little kid, and around three o'clock Mrs. Shannon, the heavy Irish woman in her perpetually soup-stained dress, opened her back window and shouted out into the courtyard, "Hey, Cesar, yoo-hoo, I think you're on television, I swear it's you!"

Random Quote:  "His feelings of hopelessness always led him back to Maria, and thoughts of Maria led him back to hopelessness.  He loved Delores, loved his children - why, then, were things so wrong?"

Review:  I read this book when it first came out and loved it.  After the follow-up book, Beautiful Maria of My Soul became available, I decided I need to read it again.  I still love it.


Image by Olivander via FlickrThe story of two Cuban brothers who immigrate to New York in the '50's to pursue their musical dreams, The Mambo Kings Play Song of Love really captures the flavor of its time and of its music.  The language and imagery are rich and evocative of black beans and rice, platanos, cigarette smoke, and music spilling out into the street.  I especially loved the descriptions of the brothers, silhouetted in their windows playing and composing music (much to the dismay of their sleeping neighbors) - this is classic imagery, reminding me of photos of musicians from the time.


Mambo Kings is earthy and sensual - its mood hectic and vibrant -  and offers us a glimpse into another time and culture (and isn't that what the best books do?).


FTC Disclosure:  From the San Leandro Public Library

Rating:  Purple

Queen Hereafter

Synopsis:  Refugee. Queen. Saint. In eleventh-century Scotland, a young woman strives to fulfill her destiny despite the risks . . .

Shipwrecked on the Scottish coast, a young Saxon princess and her family—including the outlawed Edgar of England—ask sanctuary of the warrior-king Malcolm Canmore, who shrewdly sees the political advantage. He promises to aid Edgar and the Saxon cause in return for the hand of Edgar’s sister, Margaret, in marriage.

A foreign queen in a strange land, Margaret adapts to life among the barbarian Scots, bears princes, and shapes the fierce warrior Malcolm into a sophisticated ruler. Yet even as the king and queen build a passionate and tempestuous partnership, the Scots distrust her. When her husband brings Eva, a Celtic bard, to court as a hostage for the good behavior of the formidable Lady Macbeth, Margaret expects trouble. Instead, an unlikely friendship grows between the queen and her bard, though one has a wild Celtic nature and the other follows the demanding path of obligation.

Torn between old and new loyalties, Eva is bound by a vow to betray the king and his Saxon queen. Soon imprisoned and charged with witchcraft and treason, Eva learns that Queen Margaret—counseled by the furious king and his powerful priests—will decide her fate and that of her kinswoman Lady Macbeth. But can the proud queen forgive such deep treachery?

First Line:  "Caught between two willful queens, I am, and should have taken more care to tread lightly - like crossing a stream over slippery stones when the current is strong and cold."

Random Quote:  "Margaret continued, the afternoon sunlight glinting on the gold-inked letters of the opening phrases.  The illustration showed an evangelist with red-gold hair and beard, seated in a grand chair, his blue and green robes draped in folds as he raised one knee, with one foot placed on a stool."

Review:  I'm a big fan of historical fiction, particularly of times and people that represent a shift in society - from Catholic to Protestant, from nobility to merchant classes.  In Queen Hereafter, Susan Fraser King examines eleventh century Scotland and the story of Queen Margaret, a Saxon girl given in marriage to Malcolm (the King who killed MacBeth) to buy his support for her exiled brother and family.  This takes place at the beginning of a glittering royal court in Scotland, in marked contrast to the older, traditional ways.  Each side of this change is represented by a character - Queen Margaret on the one hand, and the bard Eva on the other.

King Malcolm III of Scotland - Image via Wikipedia

The novel is rich in period detail and the writer's imagery is quite beautiful.  The characters are well-drawn and Ms. King avoids the trap of placing a modern woman in a character who is decidedly not modern.  Queen Margaret is true to her nature (and eventual sainthood) - longing for the convent, accepting her fate, and trying to bring the light of her God to her new people.  This leads to my problem with the novel - I just loathed Margaret.  So pious, so self-righteous - I just wanted to smack her in the face with a shovel.  This is a personal problem, however, and not related to the overall quality of the book - just not what I prefer.  Overall a good book, if not my cup of tea.

St. Margaret from the Workshop of Tintoretto - Image by Tilemahos Efthimiadis via Flickr

FTC Disclosure:  Advance review copy from publisher for TLC Book Tour

Rating:  White

Susan Fraser King

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for making me a part of this book's blog tour.  Be sure to check out the rest of the book's tour stops!

Susan Fraser King’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Monday, December 6th:  Royal Reviews
Tuesday, December 7th:  Passages to the Past author interview/giveaway
Wednesday, December 8th:  Stiletto Storytime
Thursday, December 9th:  Scandalous Women
Friday, December 10th:  Rundpinne
Monday, December 13th:  Books Like Breathing
Monday, December 13th:  Life in Review
Tuesday, December 14th:  Life in the Thumb
Wednesday, December 15th:  Hist-Fic Chick
Friday, December 17th:  Simply Stacie
Monday, December 20th:  Elevate Difference
Tuesday, December 21st:  The Maiden’s Court
Wednesday, December 22nd:  Girls Gone Reading
Thursday, December 23rd:  Thoughts from an Evil Overlord
Monday, December 27th:  Teresa’s Reading Corner
Tuesday, December 28th:  The Tome Traveller
Wednesday, December 29th:  Chaotic Compendiums
Friday, January 14th:  Luxury Reading

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) random teaser sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS (make sure that what you share doesn't give too much away! You don't want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"Tortoise had been one of the stick-fighters who had accompanied us, a member of Bao's old gang of thugs and ruffians.  For all that, he'd been a loyal companion with a generous heart, the first to pledge himself to the quest to free the dragon and the princess."

     - Naamah's Curse by Jacqueline Carey

In My Mailbox Monday

In December, Mailbox Monday is sponsored by Lady Q at Let them Read Books. In My Mailbox is sponsored by The Story Siren.  These are the places where we brag about share the books that arrived in our mailboxes each week.  As always, I also try to find a mailbox that is somehow associated with what I'm reading right now.  I'm reading Naamah's Curse by Jacqueline Carey.  Since it's a fantasy book with a main character whose heritage is loosely based on the Celts, I found a pretty Celtic mailbox for your viewing pleasure.

Two books this week, one a gift from my son and one from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  I'm especially pleased with the gift from my son because it's something I've been wanting to read and checked out from the library, but just found it too huge to get through in the time allotted.  It's cool to see how well my son knows me.

The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming (from LibraryThing Early Reviewers).  One of the enduring mysteries of modern espionage is the Cambridge Spy Ring—the group that included Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean—and the identity of the long-rumored sixth man. Many theories have been proposed over the years, yet no one has come forth with any irrefutable proof. And Sam Gaddis, an academic with a specialty in modern Russian hi...moreOne of the enduring mysteries of modern espionage is the Cambridge Spy Ring—the group that included Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean—and the identity of the long-rumored sixth man. Many theories have been proposed over the years, yet no one has come forth with any irrefutable proof. And Sam Gaddis, an academic with a specialty in modern Russian history, is the least likely person to do so. Until an old friend reveals that she’s working on just that story, suddenly dies; Sam’s need for money becomes pressing, and he finds his way to someone claiming to have access to the real sixth man.

Thelonious Monk:  The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin Kelly (from my son).  "The piano ain't got no wrong notes!" So ranted Thelonious Sphere Monk, who proved his point every time he sat down at the keyboard. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of "bebop" and establishing Monk as one of America's greatest composers. Yet throughout much of his life, his musical contribution took a backseat to tales of his reputed behavior. Writers tended to obsess over Monk's hats or his proclivity to dance on stage. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. But these labels tell us little about the man or his music.  In the first book on Thelonious Monk based on exclusive access to the Monk family papers and private recordings, as well as on a decade of prodigious research, prize-winning historian Robin D. G. Kelley brings to light a startlingly different Thelonious Monk -- witty, intelligent, generous, politically engaged, brutally honest, and a devoted father and husband.

Book Review - Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties by Michael Lesy

Synopsis:  "Things began as they usually did: Someone shot someone else." So begins a chapter of this sharp, fearless collection from a master storyteller. Revisiting seventeen Chicago murder cases—including that of Belva and Beulah, two murderesses whose trials inspired the musical Chicago—Michael Lesy captures an extraordinary moment in American history, bringing to life a city where newspapers scrambled to cover the latest mayhem.

First Line:  "Carl never lied."

Random Quote:  "Police followed a trail of the woman's blood, through a yard, up a flight of stairs.  Russell Mosby was washing blood out of the dead woman's clothes - worth some money, why throw them away? - when the police walked in."

Review:  Murder City wasn't exactly what I anticipated.  I suspect I'm jaded by the Luc Sante book, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York - an excellent history of all kinds of dubious activities in New York of the 1840's through the 1890's.  It's social history at its best, illuminating the underground history of a major American city.

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr
Chicago in the twenties is interesting in its own way, but perhaps most of all for the sheer amount of murders and murder trials that occurred during the time period.  The tabloid press played a large role in this history as did Prohibition, changing standards of behavior for women, and the rise of the Mob.  Michael Lesy focuses on murders committed by ordinary people, but rather than presenting a broad social history this book is twenty short true crime stories with nothing really connecting them.  I found this disappointing.

Written in staccato bursts of language that seem to mirror the rhythms of machine gunning, the stories are too short to be anything other than superficial when presented on their own as they are here.  Sprinkled with a few photos, it's also frustrating that other photos that he describes prominently in the stories aren't printed here.  My disappointment may lie in my expectations and for some this may be a wonderful read, but for me it reads like any other quickly written true crime novel (ripped from the headlines in Law and Order speak).  It's completely ephemeral, skipping across the surface like a mayfly, but never diving into the depths.

FTC Disclosure:  Purchased from Amazon.com

Rating:  White

Happy Christmas!

Top 10 Reads of 2010

Bookworm by Brian Dettmers

So here I am on Christmas eve having survived a trip to the grocery store for a few things.  I say survived because a woman in a big red SUV quite literally nearly ran us over - tapping us both with the back of her car before my husband yelled at her - an adrenalin rush I didn't need.  In any event, we're back home and plan not to leave again until at least Monday.

I've been thinking about the best books I've read this year and thought I'd list my Top 10 (which will be hard because I've read a lot of good books this year.  This isn't a best published in 2010 list - these are the best books plucked out of my reading pool for the year.  Here they are:

1. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
2. The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt
3. Property by Valerie Martin
4. The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell
5. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
6. The Group by Mary McCarthy
7. The Grass Harp by Truman Capote
8. Keeper by Kathi Appelt
9. Dispatches by Michael Herr
10. The Executor by Jesse Kellerman

These are linked to my reviews. It was a great reading year - I'll post a year-end wrap up post at, well, the end of the year.  Happy holidays to all.  I wish you all the joys of the season, but especially the pleasures of the table.

Fa la la la la!

Book Review - The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell

Synopsis:  For twenty-five years, civilization has survived in meager enclaves, guarded against a plague of the dead. Temple wanders this blighted landscape, keeping to herself and keeping her demons inside her heart. She can't remember a time before the zombies, but she does remember an old man who took her in and the younger brother she cared for until the tragedy that set her on a personal journey toward redemption. Moving back and forth between the insulated remnants of society and the brutal frontier beyond, Temple must decide where ultimately to make a home and find the salvation she seeks.

First Line:  "God is a slick god."

Random Quote:  "See, there's a music to the world and you got to be listening otherwise you'll miss it for sure.  Like when she comes out of the house and the nighttime air feels dreamy cold on her face and it smells like the pureness of a fresh land just started.  Like it was something old and dusty and broken taken off the shelf to make room for something sparkle new."

Review:  I've been gaming on computers and the Internet in some form or fashion since the late eighties.  MUD's, MOO's, MMORPG's - text-based or graphically based I've played a lot of games over the years.  I also play single-player RPG's, but I'm very picky these days about what I play.  I play games because it's fun and because gaming is one of the coolest forms of storytelling that has emerged in my lifetime.  The best games let you live inside a highly developed and often contextually changing story.  There are a few that come to mind - Bioshock, Planescape:  Torment, and Dragon Age.  All of these games me kept entertained for many many hours, enthralled by the stories they told.

Image via Wikipedia

One of the best of the RPG's is the Fallout series.  Set in a post-apocalyptic America after the bombs have fallen, this series fleshes out its premise to an amazing level.  The game is huge in terms of landscape, of quests, of storylines, of possibilities that will change depending on the choices you make.  I'm currently playing Fallout New Vegas and at 124 hours of playtime I'm not even close to completing it.  Why am I talking about gaming?  It's all about the landscape.  The Reapers are the Angels reads like the landscape of Fallout feels.  Barren, but beautiful and pockmarked with survivors and mutants creating their own places in the world.  The big difference here is that rather than a nuclear apocalypse, this book is after the zombie apocalypse.

Image via Wikipedia

This is one of the best novels I've read all year.  In the same way that I delighted in Let the Right One In for its creative take on the vampire novel and it's wonderful writing, The Reapers are the Angels drew me into its world in a similar way.  Just as Let the Right One In was a literary novel that had a vampire, so Reapers is a literary novel with zombies in its landscape - they're not central, it's not really about them, they're just part of the landscape and yet they define the landscape and the story.

Bits and pieces of this novel remind me of Mark Twain and, oddly, True Grit, but Reapers has its own literary sensibility.  The story of Temple, a girl who is trying to figure out her place in her world and her travels through it, Reapers elevates itself far above its genre and brings with it a multiplicity of pleasures for the reader.  You need this book.

Book Review - The Burning Wire by Jeffery Deaver

Synopsis:  As Earth Day approaches, someone breaks into the power company and starts manipulating the electric grid in New York City to create "arc flashes," 5000-degree sparks that leap from electrical outlets and kill anybody nearby. It can happen at anytime, anywhere . . . . Is it eco-terrorists, or a disgruntled employee of the utility, or some psychotic individual? Lincoln Rhyme, Amelia Sachs and the crew from the prior Rhyme books have to race against time to find and stop the killer before more people die.

First Line:  "Sitting in the control center of Algonquin Consolidated Power and Light's sprawling complex on the East River in Queens, New York, the morning supervisor frowned at the pulsing red words on his computer screen."

Random Quote:  "Around 11:30 a.m. yesterday morning there was an arc flash incident at the MH-10 substation on W 57 Street in Manhattan, this happened by securing a Bennington cable and bus bar to a post-breaker line with two split bolts.  By shutting down four substations and raising the breaker limit at MH-10 an overload of close to two hundred thousand volts caused the flash."

Arc Flash

Review:  One-tenth of one amp of electricity is enough to stop your heart and kill you.  Your hairdryer pulls about ten amps.  Scared now?  I am.

Jeffery Deaver takes this simple bit of information and expands it into a thriller that you can't put down.  He's writing at the top of his form in The Burning Wire and I loved this book.  Non-stop thrills, plenty of things to be scared of, good guys and bad guys, and lots of things to learn about electricity.

Although he's always a good writer, I've been disappointed with the recent Lincoln Rhyme novels and was beginning to wonder if Deaver had jumped the shark with this series, but this book may be one of the best in this series yet.

The only downside of this book is that I'm now highly aware of how much metal I touch every single day even when it's raining and how easy it is to electrify things.  Walking home from work in the rain last night I actually hesitated before pushing the button to cross the street.  It's metal and has a light in it and thus could be easily wired to kill.  I did touch it, but it took a minute.

FTC Disclosure:  San Leandro Public Library

Rating:  Purple

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) random teaser sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS (make sure that what you share doesn't give too much away! You don't want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"The rush of 1921 was the wildest anyone could remember:  the crowds were smaller, but they were rougher.  As sophomore named Persinger showed up at the Evanston police station, escorted by friends.  He was dazed and shaken; his friends were angry.

     - Murder City by Michael Lesy

In My Mailbox Monday

Vintage 1920's Mailbox

In December, Mailbox Monday is sponsored by Lady Q at Let them Read Books. In My Mailbox is sponsored by The Story Siren.  These are the places where we brag about share the books that arrived in our mailboxes each week.  As always, I also try to find a mailbox that is somehow associated with what I'm reading right now.  I'm currently reading Murder City:  The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties by Michael Lesy so I found a vintage mailbox from the 1920's.

Quiet mailbox this week, although I did get two books.  One of them is a Christmas present from my son so I haven't opened it yet and can't show it to you.  I also got something from a publisher:

The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire #1) by Clay Griffith and Susan Griffith.  Vampire predators run wild in this exciting steampunk adventure, the first in an alternate history trilogy that is already attracting attention. In 1870, monsters rise up and conquer the northern lands, As great cities are swallowed up by carnage and disease, landowners and other elite flee south to escape their blood-thirsty wrath. One hundred fifty years later, the great divide still exists; fangs on one side of the border, worried defenders on the other. This fragile equilibrium is threatened, then crumbles after a single young princess becomes almost hopelessly lost in the hostile territory. At first, she has only one defender: a mysterious Greyfriar who roams freely in dangerous vampire regions.