2006

The Secret of Sarah Revere

2006, Books in Bed, Fiction /

The Secret of Sarah Revere was surprisingly good. I’m not a huge historical fiction fan and I’ve found a lot of young adult historical fiction to be over-simplified BS – just more of the same stuff kids are hand fed in school history classes. Now my appreciation of this book might have something to do with my appreciation for Paul Revere – not the mythical hero from “one if by land, two if by sea” fame but the real man who did an awful lot more for the cause than just that one midnight ride.

I also found the author’s note to be interesting though the reader’s discussion questions were a bit bland. There’s a list of other YA historical fiction in the back of the book, I’m hoping some of those are just as interesting as this one was.

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My 2006 Reading List

2 Comments / 2006, Reading Lists /

I read far too many books in 2006 to give a rundown of best/worst so all I’m going to do is make a list and be done with it.  Next year I’ll be tagging the books I read with "2007" so that will make it easier than sifting through the monthly archives – I wish I’d thought of that sooner!

I read a total of 149 150 books: there were 38 non-fiction and 111 112 fiction.  Of those, 21 22 were young adult/children’s books, 6 were audio, 10 were classics and 15 were GLBT or had strong GLBT themes.  Not a bad reading year.  Lots of favorites in there, not too many duds.  That’s all I can ask in a year of books!

If you’re interested in more reading lists from 2006, you can fine a nice group of them at Semi-colon

January:
Clearcut
Breakfast With Tiffany
Wed and Buried
THe Peabody Sisters
The Killing Art
Sky Pirates (The Edge Chronicles)
Over Easy
Uncontrolled Flight
What Do You Do All Day?
Grace At Low Tide

February:
Rococo
The Tent
The Devil’s Picnic
The Email Murders

March:
Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocolypse
Jesus Land
The Leopard Hat
Sock
Money Secrets
Night
For Whom the Minivan Rolls
Ourland
She Got Up Off the Couch

April:
Farewell Legs
A Dirty Job
Whale Season
The Wright Three
Anyone But You
Weekend Makeover
Emotionally Weird
In the Company of the Courtesan
Tithe
The Understudy

May:
The Tenth Circle
To Hell With All That (I didn’t finish it)
Carolina Isle
Pitching My Tent
Rose of No Man’s Land
The Egg & I
Odd Girl Out
Odd Girl Speaks Out
Hot Fudge Sundae Blues
Penelopiad
Girls of a Tender Age

June:
Valiant
Cloud Atlas
Witness
Dragonflight
If You Could See Me Now
Here Be Dragons
The Naked Woman
The Moonstone
Tummy Trilogy
Bullshit
The Day My Butt Went Psycho
Blue Shoes and Happiness
The Lost Painting
Are We There Yet
Dinner With Anna Karenina

July:
The Shadow of the Wind
Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson)
Vanity Fair
The Ancient Child
The Book Thief
Kindred
Black Elk in Paris
The Night Watch
Four and Twenty Blackbirds
The Crucible
Adam & Eve

August:
The Odd Women
The Bullet Trick
The Stolen Child
The Sculptress
The Year of Magical Thinking
Tamburlaine Must Die
The Crying of Lot 49
The Prophet of Yonwood
The Woman Warrior
Some Pig
The Girls
The Effect of Living Backwards
Midwives
Mrs Shakespeare
The Land of Women
Gravity’s Rainbow (I didn’t finish it)
Kristin Lavransdatter

September:
The Story of Lucy Gault
Fan-Tan
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Welcome to Lizard Motel
Snapshots of Bloomsbury
The Sun and the Moon
Soul Kitchen
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
Voyage in the Dark
Anybody Can Do Anything
Drive
Freeglader (The Edge Chronicles)
The Dark Lady of DNA
Confessions of a Pagan Nun
Robinson Crusoe
Misquoting Jesus

October:
Maps for Lost Lovers
Soiled Doves
Crocodile Soup
The Masque of the Black Tulip
The Zombie Survival Guide
The Things That Matter
The Inheritance of Loss
The Devil’s Feather
Now it’s My Turn
The Birth House
Carry Me Down
The Secret River
The Teahouse on Mulberry Street
Mother’s Milk

November:
Killer Dreams
The Rules of Survival
Diary
Hancock Park
Frangipani
The Fourth Bear
Goodnight Nobody
From Here to Reality
Fun Home
The Emperor’s Children
Autobiography of a Face
There is No Me Without You
The Third Policeman
The Coroner’s Journal
The Ice House
As Seen on TV
Acorna’s Children
Lesbian Images
The Creation
The Painted Drum

December:
The Secret of Sarah Revere
Absurdistan
Class Matters
Liberty Square
Happiness Sold Separately
Dirty Blonde
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
No Reservations Required
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
Black Swan Green
Tanglewreck
The Iron Girl
Stage Fright
A Bad Boy Can Be Good For a Girl
The Glass Books of the Dreameaters

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Absurdistan

2006, Books in Bed, Fiction /

Absurdistan is, well, it’s absurd. Amusingly absurd. Since I enjoy the absurd as long as it isn’t TOO absurd, I enjoyed it and I’m wondering why I never read The Russian Debutante’s Handbook.

Poor Misha wants nothing more than to live in NYC with his g/f and spend his father’s money. Well he’d also like to make a difference in the world. Maybe, as long as he can get to NYC where life is wonderful because that’s where his g/f and a lot of great food lives.

I hope he makes it.

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Class Matters

2006, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, GLBT, Non-Fiction /

Class Matters is a terrific book for homeschoolers or for UU folks looking for a non-fiction book discussion. We spend a lot of time talking about feminism or racial prejudice or homophobia but we avoid discussions of class like the plague. Class Matters makes good solid points as to why we need to stop doing this. And it gives a lot of good tips for people who want to take part in classism discussions or movements.

Fabulous book, I’m going to buy it.

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The Problem with Kate Delafield

2006, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, GLBT, Mystery /

I’ve finally figured out what the problem is with Katherine Forrest’s Kate Delafield mysteries, the problem is Kate herself. Her personality varies almost completely from one book to another so it doesn’t even seem like she’s the same person. Kate Delafield has a personality disorder and I wish Katherine Forrest would help her fix that – and fix it so we always see the Kate Delafield who was in Liberty Square (and Sleeping Bones) and not the Kate Delafield who was in Hancock Park.

The entire Vietnam veterans storyline often feels tired and over done but in Liberty Square I never found myself annoyed with the characters for rehashing the problems with Vietnam the way I have with other books. I liked every single one of the characters. I liked the way Forrest covered the problem with being gay in the military, now and then. Even the sappy ending with everyone visiting The Wall felt like it fit and wasn’t forced.

Finally, a reason to like Detective Delafield (and her g/f) again.

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Happiness Sold Separately

2006, Books in Bed, Fiction /

I reserved Happiness Sold Separately from the library because I really liked Lolly Winston’s Good Grief and then sassymonkey blogged about it and reminded me I hadn’t read it. I liked it but not nearly as much as Good Grief.

I’m lucky, I’ve never had fertility problems or faced infertility. And, I find I can’t relate well to stories about women who do have these issues. Not only couldn’t I relate, none of Elinor’s actions felt right to me – right in the, “that’s how I’d feel” or “that’s how I’d react” sort of way. But then again, you don’t really know how you’d feel or how you’d react ’til you go through it, right?

Anyway, I enjoyed the book but it didn’t grab me the way Good Grief did and I didn’t find the characters as likeable as sassymonkey did. I think the only character I really liked was Kat, the next door neighbor. .

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Courtney Love

2006, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I am a Courtney Love fan. There, I said it. My children aren’t thrilled about it, (they are in the “it’s all her fault Kurt is dead” camp and while they’ve all outgrown that a bit, part of them still believes it and part of them still blames her.)

I was really looking forward to Dirty Blonde and it didn’t disappoint me at all. I’m not interested in some traditional auto-biography, tell-all thing from Love. That would be out of character and a waste of everyone’s time. Let’s leave the tell-all stuff to Frances, when she’s grown up and ready. That would be the only Love/Cobain tell-all worth reading.

Dirty Blonde feels like Courtney Love – at least the Courtney Love that I know.

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Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

2006, Books in Bed, short stories /

Is everything written by Haruki Murakami a little odd? First Wind-Up Bird, then Kafka on the Shore and now the short stories in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. And what’s with all of the “zoo” stories?

I didn’t dislike any of the stories, though Crabs made me a little ill and I’ve suggested TW might want to skip that one, and some of them I really did like. They were all just a little odd, a little unusual, a little skewed somehow. Like all of Murakami’s books, I guess.

Did you like Kafka on the Shore? If you did, then you’ll probably like these short stories too. If you didn’t – then skip them.

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No Reservations Required

2006, Books in Bed, Mystery /

I was right, I do like the Sophie Greenway mysteries better than the Jane Lawless mysteries. I like Sophie better than Jane, which is too darn bad. Jane is so darn wishy washy compared to Sophie.

No Reservations Required is a culinary mystery in more than just name only and that’s what I like about Ellen Hart – her mysteries are never just one mystery, there’s always a secondary mystery to solve along with the main crime. They’re rarely complicated but they’re always interesting and amusing. And for you gay folk who would stick with Jane just for some GLBT principles, Sophie’s son is gay and many of the characters are gay and Jane’s father occasionally makes an appearance as a lawyer for some troubled soul. So don’t feel bad if you switch allegiance to Sophie.

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The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

2006, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

I finally read The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. I was beginning to think I was never going to get to read it. Thank goodness I made the time, it was terrific. Sad and frustrating, but really good.

I think the only troubling bit was the timing seemed a little too convenient in places. Death and accidents – the timing, just too nifty and nicely managed in order to create the proper ending. Other than that, I have no complaints at all. Good characters, nice solid plot, not too rambling and not too short. Just about perfect.

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