Sheik Seduction, by Dana Marton

Well, if February is my month to read romances (and I'm slacking), I figured I HAD to read a Harlequin. I was not looking forward to it- I imagined awkwardly written sex scenes and a lot of, well, I don't know what.

This was a big surprise. First off, I lost track of the body count around page, oh, 15. Tom Clancy doesn't have this many firefights and explosions. Secondly, there was a lot of fighting off wild hyenas. (Hyenas in the middle east? must look up). Third, the heroine steals a camel to save the sheik. Fourth, only one sex scene, and not too squicky.

So, that's one thing I had dead, dead wrong. I'm serious- they shot people the whole way through the book, the sheik's remote village cousins all had cell phones etc, the heroine kicked major a**, including bashing a bad guy up the head with a tire iron and jumping from a moving truck, and... well, I don't know what else to say.

It wasn't my favorite book ever, but it wasn't the worst (See First Light) and made me realize that I've been assuming that I knew what these were like and that I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Also, just checked- there are totally hyenas there. Go, Dana Marton!

Lady Fortescue Steps Out, by Marion Chesney

Regency romance. Well done, clever idea, and fun.

Very typical of the genre, but still light and quick.

Junk Beautiful, by Sue Whitney

Some pretty cool ideas in this. I'd like to come back to this when I have more time.

Pure Sea Glass, by Richard LaMotte

Beautiful photographs. Interesting breakdown of how often each color glass is found per 1,000 pieces of sea glass found. Made me want to go beachcombing.

First Light, by Rebecca Stead

This might be the worst book I've read since I started this list.

I don't even know how to fully express what a disaster this was from start to finish- the concept (a secret underground civilization at least 7 generations old under the ice in Greenland founded by people fleeing genocide in England (?) that is discovered by a teen there with his parents who are studying global warming and mitochondrial DNA and the teen is psychic- or rather, is an "eye-adept" which is genetic and he can communicate with dogs who talk and and oh to hell with it.)

Stupid beyond all reason, an epic waste of time (thing was long, too), incredibly pretentious, badly written, nonsensical, silly, painful. Astoundingly, it is on the Rhode Island Children's Book Award list.

Lady Susan, by Jane Austen

Interestingly different Jane Austen epistolatory novella.

Lady Susan is not meek, demure, honest or humble- she's a bit like a widowed Becky Sharp, plotting and scheming all the time.

Fun and very different from Emma, P&P, S&S, etc.

Bog Child, by Siobhan Dowd

Extraordinary book. Technically YA, but amazing.

Fergus is cutting peat in 1980's Northern Island when he and his father come across an Iron Age body preserved in the bog.

From that point, the story of Mel, a girl in 80 AD and Fergus' own story echo each other in various ways, complementing each other.

Fergus' brother Joe is in prison for his involvement with the IRA, and joins the hunger strike that killed Bobby Sands.

A young Welsh soldier named Owain and a girl from Dublin named Cora round out the main characters, and oh, this was just so well done.

It reminded me of one of the most powerful poems I know, about a bog mummy.

Punishment

by Seamus Heaney

I can feel the tug
Of the halter at the nape
Of her neck, the wind
On her naked front.

It blows her nipples
To amber beads,
It shakes the frail rigging
Of her ribs.

I can see her drowned
Body in the bog,
The weighing stone,
The floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first
She was a barked sapling
That is dug up
Oak-bone, brain-firkin:

Her shaved head
Like a stubble of black corn,
Her blindfold a soiled bandage,
Her noose a ring

To store
The memories of love
Little adulteress,
Before they punished you

You were flaxen-haired,
Undernourished, and your
Tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
But would have cast, I know,
The stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur

Of your brain's exposed
And darkened combs,
Your muscles' webbing
And all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb
When your betraying sisters,
Cauled in tar,
Wept by the railings,

Who would connive
In civilized outrage
Yet understand the exact
And tribal, intimate revenge.

Gilding Lily, by Tatiana Boncompagni

A fun, frothy and well-done take on New York socialite life.

Despite owing a lot to Edith Wharton (and who doesn't, really) this book about Lily Bartholomew (sneaky, Tatiana, sneaky indeed) showcases her rise and fall from grace among the "top girls" of the NYC social scene, and does it in a way that made this over-covered territory seem fresh, which is a heck of a trick.

W.

This was wonderful, and terribly sad.

Mrs. 'Arris Goes To Paris, by Paul Gallico

This was such a sweet, strange, and poignant little book.

Mrs. 'Arris (Harris) is a London char, who one day sees a Dior dress in an employer's closet, and becomes filled with longing to have one of her own.

It was really lovely, this book- it made me cry.

And it made me want to go to France.

Ordeal by Innocence, by Agatha Christie

I had thought that I hadn't read this, but about 5 pages in I realized that I had. Still, it was lovely to read an Agatha Christie that was a little unfamiliar!

Diary of a Chav, by Grace Dent

This was fantastic. The voice was perfect- I could hear Essex girl Shiraz saying everything, and I could see her and I could see Collette Brown, and Carrie and Bezzer and it was funny and sad and vulgar and kind of depressing. Shiraz at her "superchav academy", waiting to get out at 16 to get a job at a sporting goods shop to earn some real money was heartbreaking, and as she began to look at her real life options the book took on a whole new level. People don't talk about social mobility much in YA.

It was so great (interesting?) to read a UK YA novel that wasn't about the middle class. Georgia Nicolson, for all her flirting and lipgloss, goes to a 'nice' school with 'nice' friends and the boys she and Jools avoid in the park are the very boys that this Shiraz and her mate Carrie eye and ignore and blow bubble gum at, and what's-her-name from the Girl, 15 books is clearly well off what with the trips to France (not package tours) and so on.

Shiraz's neighbor Uma with the ASBO and her 'work experience' at the bhaji packing plant were so well written.

One thing I am struck by, is how the heck did big hoop earrings and tracksuits and hoodies lined with fake fur become the international uniform of the... I don't know if there's a politically correct term for this and I feel like I'm on edgy ground, but what the heck? Was there a memo? UK, Rhode Island- big hoops and skinny headbands, eyeliner and gobs of lipgloss, fake tans and fake nails, rap and cars- amazing.

Three Girls and Their Brother, by Theresa Rebeck

Fast and fun read. Nice to read an adult novel, but I am surprised at what great reviews this got. It was goodish, but read like chick-lit strained through Holden Caulfield's voice. If there was one more 'old', as in "his big old stupid movie" (p. 265) or "big old macho creep (p. 149) or "good old Dad" (p. 93), Salinger could have sued. (Except, you know, for the lack of a really good plot.)

Streams of Babel, by Carol Plum-Ucci

Hm.

I just finished this, am not sure why I'm as upset about it as I am. Teen trash, why should it bug me? Ok, well it's been recommended by people whose opinions I often share, so this is about something.

Ok, on the one hand, it's terror-thriller YA, so that... what, diminishes expectations of a solid plot? I guess it does- YA fiction kind of has to 'star' teenagers, and so that makes for instant plot holes.

I just didn't like it. I didn't like the hidden rah-rah American thing, so carefully concealed behind a veneer of showing 'the other side'- all that talk about Mogadishu and the Kurdish asylum issue just clouded everything and anyway, the terrorists who took down the World Trade Center were from freaking Saudi Arabia, which is never mentioned once in the book. If the terrorists had been Kurds, maybe I could see bringing all that into the book, but they weren't.

Pakistan-raised Shahzad's character seemed strained, as if Plum-Ucci had really had to work to get a guy with his motivations, and the ending really bothered me.

SPOILER SPACE

Ok, I really have to work out what felt so wrong here. Tyler Ping's mother was a spy. Tyler Ping was some kind of uber-hacker who helped Shahzad track down the terror cell meeting place and time- interestingly, a college "Panel to Discuss The True Nature of American Foreign Policy". Yup- that's suspicious, ain't it. People questioning what was going on in 2002? Wicked suspicious.

Anyway, after much Clancy-type absurdity, we reach a point where we are treated to the following lecture:
"A terrorist is a person who holds principles above people...They have replaced people with principles. Principles become their best friends. It sounds very high and mighty. However, we live in a world still too influenced by intelligence over instinct. Thank you, the Enlightenment. But terroristic behavior is not high and mighty. It's sad, and and sad is simple."

Ok, that makes no sense at all, even if one is inclined to diss the Enlightenment (which for the record, I am decidedly a fan of). But there's a contradiction even in this daft little speech- He's saying that instinct is better than intelligence, but then saying that emotion is simple, and bad. And all of this from an intelligence agent!

Anyway, the next awful thing is that (of course) Tyler Ping promptly betrays his mother- if that's not a clear example of 'principle over people', I don't know what is.

Aye yah.

And then of course the end was sickening, when Shahzad visits the World Trade Center site and realizes that to honor his father's life, he'd better get shopping.

"Where is the nearest Kentucky Fry?" I ask in English..."And I want a Yankees baseball cap"..."And then we should make to the Gap. I need the blue jeans."

Yeah. Welcome to America, kid.

To Be Mona, by Kelly Easton

Well, I read this because it's Rhody YA, and it was ok. I read it fast, and quite liked Sage's voice, but the whole Roger thing felt kind of forced.

Leon's Story, by Leon Walter Tillage

This was extraordinary. An autobiography, apparently read by children in school often, but one I had never heard of before.

Leon Tillage tells his story of growing up during segregation in North Carolina. The most sickening things happen, and his retrospection is filled with such forgiveness and understanding of how hard it was for his parents' generation to believe that equality would ever happen. One part in particular really struck me- he was talking about the Klu Klux Klan at this point, and how he and his parents would hide when the Klu Klux Klan went riding.

"They weren't interested in participating in marches and stuff like that; they felt like Moses was going to lead the blacks out of bondage like he did the Jewish people. They were thinking... the only thing they could belive in was God, they prayed about every little thing that went on. The figured He was going to send somebody from Heaven. Thank God they had that to hold on to."

This book was devastating, and as Leon grew to participate in the equal rights movement, inspiring.

Fuck the South.

A Man Named Thoreau, by Robert Burleigh

Mmmm. Guess what, it's a picture book biography. (See below.)

But you know, this one was better for me. Was it better because there were more words and less pictures? Am I that verbal? Is it too hard for me to go back to children's books because I need the words to mean so much? I don't know.

This book was aimed at slightly older children, and was much more complex- it wasn't just a 'here's a hero/athlete/warrior' story, it was a story about someone who had something to say about America and what life means, which made it much more tolerable to read.

Surfer of the Century, by Ellie Crowe

Another picture book biography. Not as good as Wilma Unlimited, not as bad as A Boy Called Slow.

Dreadful pictures, I thought. Didn't capture the magic of water at all and make Duke look like Frankenstein.

Wilma Unlimited, by Kathleen Krull

A better picture book biography of Wilma Rudolph. Much better than A Boy Called Slow.

A Boy Called Slow, by Joseph Bruchac

Children's picture book biography of Sitting Bull.

NOT my favorite, but the illustrations were lovely.