Tipping the Velvet, by Sarah Waters

Well, after Sarah Waters ghost story The Little Stranger was placed on the long list for the Booker prize, to my surprise, I decided I had to find out what all this was about, so went ahead and read this one. 1998, and it is a hell of a good book, if surprisingly bawdy and explicit. Nan's life, from an oyster girl in Victorian Whitstable, to her days on the music hall stage, to her time as a kept girl of a wealthy woman of varied and unusual tastes, was extraordinary reading, and I understand why she has the reputation as a writer that she does. I still don't see nominating The Little Stranger as one of the 13 best books of the year, but if there's any taking into account other works by the same writer, she should certainly win something, at any rate.

Man Booker Prize Long List

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt

Summertime by J.M Coetzee

The Quickening Time by Adam Foulds

How to Paint A Dead Man by Sarah Hall

The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey
Me Cheeta by James Lever

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

Not Untrue and Not Unkind by Ed O'Loughlin

Helopolis by James Scudamore

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Love and Summer by William Trevor

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

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.