The Maggody Militia, by Joan Hess

As usual, very funny Joan Hess Maggody book. Read it before, will probably read it again, to be honest.

The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson

Wonderful, again. This was so good, and I'm half in love with both Blomquist and Salander.
Sequel to the amazing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, this was violent, dramatic, political, dealt with gender issues and human trafficking and commercialized sexuality, has interesting and well developed characters, and I CANNOT WAIT for the third (and final, presumably, unless that story about the laptop with the last book on it is true) book in the Millenium trilogy.

Twenties Girl, by Sophie Kinsella

As always, fun. I wonder how much longer she will keep the Madeleine Wickham and the Sophie Kinsella writing separate- I think this very much blurred the line, as did The Wedding Girl. I had thought that she was keeping the Wickham for more kind of lit-fic style writing, and Kinsella for the sex+shoes kind of writing, but both The Wedding Girl and Twenties Girl had the same kind of Katie Fforde went to London vibe, and it seems silly almost to keep the brands separate. Just saying.
Anyway, this was great fun, for what it is.

The Chosen One, by Carol Lynch Williams

Good YA- set within a religious compound much like the Warren Jeffs thing- 14 year old Kyra risks getting her entire family in serious trouble if she refuses to marry her much older uncle. Well written issue book.

Born Again Vintage, by Bridgett Artise

Seriously useless how-to-combine-ugly-clothes-into-even-uglier-clothes how to book. Wow.

Exclusively Chloe, by J.A. Yang

Pretty bad YA, but with an interesting premise. The Chinese born adopted daughter of married movie stars wants to find out about her birth family, which could have made for a pretty great book, but it went another way.

The Unnamed, by Joshua Ferris

I was so excited to get this ARC yesterday, and read it straight away. It is wildly different from Then We Came to The End, but is is hauntingly sad in that same way, and was a wonderful, if disturbing read.

Tim, a lawyer, suffers from a condition with no name- he walks and walks and walks, without direction or a plan. Doctors and neurologists and psychiatrists and so on try and try to name his problem, while his wife Jane does what she can to support him and his daughter Becka retreats further into her own sadness.

Scenes of climate change (record breaking winter cold, dying bees, seasonal disruption) lend the book an air of inevitable doom but the focus isn't on the world slowly going haywire around the family, it's about the family going quickly mad within the world.

As with Then We Came To The End, surprising gallows humor had me laughing at some incredible inappropriate moments, adding to the sensation of being caught on some demented downward spiral.

Such a good writer and such a good book. Wonderful.

The Girl Stays In The Picture, by Melissa de la Cruz

Pretty bad YA- I'm surprised, I liked Melissa de la Cruz's Blue Bloods books very much, and Fresh Off The Boat was really good too. The Au Pairs were all pretty terrible, but this one was even worse.

The Finishing Touches, by Hester Browne

Silly but kind of fun book, about a woman trying to update a traditional finishing school for the 21st c. Overly complicated subplots distracted.

How I Became A Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely

Now this was pretty fantastic. Pete wants to become a writer for many reasons, but mostly to upset his ex at her wedding, so studies the market and sets out to write a commercially successful book. The best part of this was the skewering, with sample chapters, of so many of the most recognizable writers out there, and the NYT bestseller lists were hysterical. This was a lot of fun, but also a pretty decent look at what literature means to who.

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters

Gothic horror meets Brideshead Revisited. Creepy, but not spectacularly so.

The Wedding Girl, by Madeleine Wickham

A fast paced fluffy bit of very very very light but kind of fun reading from Madeleine Wickham/Sophie Kinsella. Fun but predictable. but thats kind of fun in its own way.

Finger Lickin' Fifteen, by Janet Evanovich

Fluff but fun. The same as all the others.

The Rapture, by Liz Jensen

FANTASTIC book. Apocalyptic near future environmental disaster thriller with amazing, well-developed and memorable characters, and quite honestly, incredibly good writing. Couldn't put it down, and want to read it again.

Fearless Fourteen, by Janet Evanovich

Fun Stephanie Plum book. Jersey mayhem with all the usual characters.

One Second After, by William Forstchen

Pretty fantastic post-apocalyptic drama. 3 EMPs knock out electrical systems over the continental US, and the story is set in a small town in North Carolina, where the residents have to adapt and then band together to defend the town from rampaging hordes of refugeses.
It was distressingly realistic, and I've read more about the actual possibility of this kind of attack, and it is kind of scary.
If you want to really freak yourself out, go to http://www.empcommission.org/ - the full report to Congress is at http://www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf.
Great read, pretty good book, and *very* anxiety inducing. Good times!

The Blizzard of '78, by Michael Tougas

Interesting photographs, mostly, of the blizzard. Some text. Amazing snowstorm.

101 Projects for Bottle Cutters, by Walter Fischman

Yet another wildly attractive strange hobby book from the mid-seventies. Along with the amazing array of vases, jars, ashtrays and q-tip holders that one can make out of bottles, this book included, surprisingly, detailed instructions on how to build a water pipe.

Bottle Cutting, by Michael de Forrest

Bizarrely appealing 1974 book on the craze that was sweeping the nation. Not much more to say about this one.

Mercury in Retrograde, by Paula Frohlich

Yet another NYC chick-lit name-dropping frothy book.

Not terrible, but it is what it is.

Not as good as Tatiana Boncampagni for the same flavor, quite like Lauren Weisberger, but infinitely better than the loathsome Candace Bushnell, whose whore-oines have been inexplicably misunderstood as some kind of warped symbols of female empowerment. It made a decent bath book, if you ignore some absolute howlers in the writing.

Up For Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over, by Cathy Alter

Well, this was kind of annoying. Good idea- Alter decided to take one year, and follow the advice in magazines to see if her life would improve. It did- and maybe dumbing the jerky boyfriend and learning to cook etc helped with that. What was annoying about it was that she never said how she could afford to spend Beauty Month trying all sorts of new makeups and spas, she never talked about how Clothing Month would devastate a normal person's budget, she never talked about how she could afford all the new pots and pans that went into Cooking Month. Apparently, freelance writers make a lot more money than one could have guessed. I just kind of wanted to slap her silly, which isn't a great way to enjoy a book.

Security, by Stephen Amidon

Disturbing, haunting book. Lives in a small, mostly wealthy college town intertwine in desperately sad ways, and people's attempts to keep their families, lives, and town safe lead to even more trouble. Security company owner Edward is distanced from his crusading politician wife Meg, and drives around all night. One night, he gets a report of an alarm going off at the home of a local business magnate Doyle (whose money, incidentally, is supporting Meg's campaign), and after speaking with Doyle and hearing that it was nothing, drives through the town and comes across Connor, his ex-girlfriend's troubled son. Taking drunken Connor home, he begins to rekindle his relationship with his ex, Katherine. Trouble really beings when Mary, a student at the local college, claims that she was assaulted that night at Doyle Cutler's house, and college classmates, townspeople, and even the newspapers turn against Mary and her father. As events tighten up, all in the space of a week, the awful inevitable looms, and while it is certainly sad, it wasn't shocking.
Good read. Still not what I've been looking for, but it was good, and a writer to read more from.

Terminal Freeze, by Lincoln Child

Slightly silly thriller- I had hoped for a better book. A team of researchers studying global warming's effect on glaciers discover a perfectly preserved large mammal, like a saber tooth tiger but bigger, frozen in the ice. The researchers received grant money from a nature documentary company, so are obligated to let the tv people do what they want with all of their findings, and of course, lots of people die in increasingly horrible ways, and wise native people have to step into the scene. Also, one character is an ice trucker who wants to make a movie about ice truckers. Oh, well.

Well Enough Alone, by Jennifer Traig

Very funny memoir of being a lifelong hypochondriac. It wasn't as funny as her other book, Devil in the Details, which made being an anorexic obsessive compulsive laugh-out-loud funny, but she is definitely an amusing writer.

The Enthusiast, by Charlie Haas

This was a strangely mournful, odd book. Henry Bay writes for specialized magazines- hobby magazines, Crochet Life, Zipline Monthly, things that have a tiny but dedicated fanbase, but he doesn't actually do or love any of the things he writes about, he just loves the enthusiasts. It got long and kind of wildly complicated at the end, but the nugget of such a good book was in this. I'll be psyched to read his next book.

Gone Tomorrow, by Lee Child

Fantastic (and gory) fast paced thriller. Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is on a subway in NYC when he notices a passenger showing every sign of the checklist to suspect a suicide bomber. He tries to intervene, and gets caught up in an international terrorist plot. This was a lot of fun, but some of the ickier bits will haunt my head. Definitely want to read more of these though- now I understand the epic waitlists for this title!

Love You Hate You Miss You, by Elizabeth Scott

I bet this will be huge, with the YAs. Trauma-pornish dead friend and rehab book. Flavor quite like Sarah Dessen. After her last, Living Dead Girl, this was a relief, what with no abduction/molesting etc, but still was v. dark and will be, I'm sure, adored.

The Strain, by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Pretty decent vampire horror/thriller- a plane lands at La Guardia, but never taxis in. When TSA and DHS et al get to it, every one on board is dead. What goes on next is a plot-hole disaster of a story, but it was pretty well done. Kind of Stephen Kingish/Michael Crichtonish/Richard Mathesonish but not as good. Still, was very refreshing after the Jane Austen. Gory and fast, and very cinematic.

Sanditon, by Jane Austen and Another Lady

Well, Jane Austen wrote 11 chapters before she died, but she did leave notes on how it was supposed to end, so supposedly an ambitious Australian writer stepped in to finish it in 1975.

That was pretty seamless, actually- if I hadn't known to be looking for the switch, I wouldn't have noticed. Sweet story, with a surprising (and not very Austen-ish!) twist at the end.

Pygmy, by Chuck Palahniuk

Well, I actually gave up on this, but it took long enough that I am going to mention it. I spent more time trying to read this overly clever and overly long nonsense than it takes to read something enjoyable, so I want to remind myself that Palahniuk is much too witty to be enjoyable, and more violent than even the bleakest Swedes.

The Food of a Younger Land

The subtitle says so much more : The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal .

Interesting collection of WPA essays about regional foods- I loved the chowder arguments and how even in 193x people here were moaning about how no one does a 'real' clambake anymore.

Plum Spooky, by Janet Evanovich

Fun between-the-numbers Stephanie Plum book. I am not personally crazy about urban fantasy, and this one took a definite turn toward the paranormal, but it was fun and quick and not bleak and violent in Sweden, so it had that going for it.

The Swimmer

Unspeakably depressing movie. Based on John Cheever's short story by the same name, Burt Lancaster plays Ned Morrell, who decides to swim, by way of neighbor's pools, to his home. As he gets closer, the reactions of his neighbors and people he meets at a public pool fill in more of the devastating details. oh, god, this was sad.

My Soul to Take, by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Surprisingly violent Icelandic murder mystery. Lovely scenery, though.

A Passion for Sea Glass, by C.S. Lambert

BEAUTIFUL book- not many instructions, but so many ideas, and the photography was wonderful. Made me want to run to the beach.

Eco Craft: Recycle Recraft Restyle, by Susan Wasinger

Pretty great craft book- lovely ideas, well executed, with great instructions. Seed bombs! Oh well. Some really nice projects I'd quite like to make or adapt.

Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell In Love, by Lauren Tarshis

Sequel to Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree, and it was good, but I'm starting to think that the author is making Colleen seem extra-stupid. I don't know if this is intentional. It's all a little worrisome.

The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour, by Michael Bell

This was so much fun! A quick, entertaining YA (6th or 7th grade target, I guess) about girls who work together to solve a puzzle that leads to the ring, and all the clues are set out in the book so one could solve them along with the characters, if only one remembered Algebra 1! It kind of reminded me of The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil Frankweiler, it had a lovely feel to it. Looking forward to the next.

Pineapple Express

Wicked funny movie- again, total dick flick humor, but funny as hell.

Columbine, by Dave Cullen

Absolutely stunning book about the Columbine school shooting. Unbelievable how many things were misreported, twisted, and misrepresented. This was devastating to read, but was so good.

A comment from the author:
Dave Cullen said...


Hey Lexacat. I don't know if I've posted before, but my google alert just brought me to your blog, with my book as your favorite nonfiction of 2009. I really appreciate that. Thanks.
For anyone close to a student or teacher, we’re trying to help them use the book in schools. I just created a (free) Columbine Student Guide and Columbine Teacher’s Guide.

Tropic Thunder

Very funny but wildly inappropriate dick flick. Excellent take-offs of all the classic Vietnam movies with great pokes at Hollywood pomposity.

The Sign, by Raymond Khoury

Excellent, fast paced popcorn thriller. When a research ship carrying a documentary crew covering the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet sees and broadcasts a mysterious spinning light, geologists and climatologists don't know what to think- but religious leaders worldwide feel that they do. As more of the lights pop up in crisis spots around the planet, and a tie is discovered to a holy man in a remote and isolated mountain hideaway, the international community becomes focused on the debate between science and faith. Add an ex-con with some great fighting skills, some corrupt politicials, and some particularly bad-ass monks, and you have a book that I read in one (long and much too late!) read.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

Wow- finally read this, and it really was fantastic. The rave reviews, etc. that I had read hadn't somehow made me realize how dark this was, but it's kind of haunting. A Swedish noir mystery, it kind of transcended genre with its broad look at Swedish history, including Nazi sympathizers, women's rights, and most recently, economic speculation.

Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, by Jenna Woginrich

Wish I could say I liked this, as a friend recommended it, but I found the author really irritating in her holier-than-thou hipster smuggery. And her cheese grater from the antique shop grossed me out.

The Killings on Jubilee Terrace, by Robert Barnard

This was a good mystery, set on the set of a Northern England soap. The relationships between the cast members don't equate with the relationships of the characters they've played for years, and when actors start dying, the police have to get involved. Bit of a mishmash at the end- veered into psychological suspense, almost, but still a fun quick well-written read.

Death and the Walking Stick, by Linda Berry

Once again, a murder mystery, cosy, southern, not gripping but not terrible.

Fragment, by Warren Fahy

Pretty fantastic sciency thriller. A little Jurassic Park, a little Andromeda Strain, a whole lot of bloodshed, and some amazing imaginary beasties made this impossible to put down. Cricton-y science babble and vividly described scenes made it super easy to see this as a major summer movie- the beasties especially seemed like there must be CGI people just begging to design the spigers and disk-ants!

Scarlett, by Cathy Cassidy

Pretty lovely children's book. Scarlett has been expelled from school (again) and her mother packs her off to Ireland to live with her father, his new wife, and her daughter. From her dyed red hair to her pierced tongue and aggressive ways, she has a rough start at the new school there, and soon is being 'homeschooled', by learning about the history of Ireland and the plants and geology of her new home. I thought it was going to veer wierdly off into some kind of myth thing, but it took a nice surprise turn, and was actually very good.

Death and The Family Tree, by Linda Berry

Fun mystery, but it didn't knock me out. The blurbs suggested that fans of Joan Hess (Me! Me!) would enjoy it, so I'm giving a couple of these a go, but while I did like it, it lacked the characteriztion that makes Hess's Maggody series or Donna Andrew's bird books so compulsively readable. However, I am sailing into a second, so maybe they will grow on me.

1001 Old time Garden Tips, edited by Roger Yepsen

Some interesting and funky stuff in here, but not a lot of meat.