2008 - The Year in Books

[zalena]

You know, for kids...
The Ranger's Apprentice #4: The Battle for Skandia
by John Flanagan
The Black Book of Secrets by F.E. Higgins
House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
Larklight by Philip Reeve

Young Adult
* The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson:
Volume 1: The Pox Party
Volume 2: Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation
Peeled Joan Bauer
Doing It by Melvin Burgess
* Monster Blood Tattoo by D.M. Cornish
#1 – The Foundling
#2 – The Lamplighter
Rumors: A Luxe Novel by Anna Godbersen
Time of the Eagle Sherryl Jordon
Elizabeth Knox:
- Dreamhunter
- Dreamquake
Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne
How They Met and Other Stories by David Levithan
Snow Falling on Spring by Moying Li
Under My Roof by Nick Mamatas
The Outcasts by L.S. Matthews
Caddy Ever After by Hilary McKay
My Bonny Light Horseman: Being the Further Waterborne Adventures of Jacky Faber… by L.M. Meyer
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
Almost Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
The Ghosts of Kerfol by Deborah Noyes
Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve
Confessions of a Serial Kisser by Wendelin Van Draanen

Grownups
The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell
Margaret Coel:
- The Eagle Catcher
- The Ghost Walker
* The Girl with the Braided Hair
Beginner’s Greek by James Collins
By a Lady by Amanda Elyot
The Geographer’s Library by John Fasman
My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
Carol Goodman:
- The Drowning Tree
- The Ghost Orchid
- The Lake of Dead Languages
- The Seduction of Water
* The Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland
Smila’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
The Legend of the Seventh Virgin by Victoria Holt
Eva Ibbotson:
- A Company of Swans
- A Countess Below Stairs
- Magic Flutes
- Madensky Square
- The Morning Gift
- A Song for Summer
The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
* The Last Cowgirl by Jana Richman
Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Crybaby Ranch by Tina Welling

Other Worlds
Sarah Addison Allen:
- Garden Spell
- Brown Sugar
Forest Mage by Robin Hobbs
Charlene Harris:
- Dead Until Dawn
- Living Dead in Dallas
- Club Dead
Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
The Stone War by Madeleine E. Robins
Kim Stanley Robinson: Mars Trilogy
- Red Mars
- Green Mars
- Blue Mars
Fortune and Fate by Sharon Shinn
Olympos by Dan Simmons

Non-fiction
The Moronic Inferno by Martin Amis
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Thomas Cahill:
- How the Irish Saved Civilization
- Mysteries of the Middle Ages
- Sailing the Wine Dark Sea
* When Sex Counts: Making Babies and Making the Law by Sherry F. Colb
I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloan Crosley
Café Europa by Slavenka Drakulic
The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
Warming the Stone Child by Clara Pinkola Estes
* This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
Love and Louis XIV by Antonia Fraser
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Bully for Brontosaurus by Stephen Jay Gould
The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw
* Elizabeth Hardwick:
- Seduction & Betrayal: Women and Literature
- Sight Readings: American Fictions
* The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler
Athenais by Lisa Hilton
She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel
How to Spot a Bastard by His Star Sign by Adele Lang
Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer
* The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand
* The Secret Life of Puppets by Victoria Nelson
The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death by Laurie Notaro
Anam Cara by John O’Donohue
Camille Paglia:
- Sex, Art, and American Culture
- Sexual Personae
- Vamps & Tramps
Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs by Wallace Stegner
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

Comments

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

How were the rest of the Ibbotson grownup books? I've been curious about those.

And you've read Fortune and Fate? I didn't know it was out yet. How was it?

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Ibbotson's grown up books are largely romances about noble women who are down on their luck, but manage to find love anyway. They are appropriate for teenagers, with mild sexual content. Sweet and impossible romances, in which good deeds are always rewarded.

Madensky Square is a possible exception. It is about a woman who owns her own business and is the mistress of a Field Marshall. (Very high rank in the Austro-Hungarian world.)

I am not real fond of Shinn's 12 Houses series. I read them, dutifully, because I like her as an author. But I can't get into this particular world. I don't know why. I still recommend them to people who enjoy good fantasy/romance. This one was very consistent with the others. With a nerdy love interest, which was a nice twist. (The protagonist is a female warrior.)

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

The romances sound like sweet light reading. I'll keep an eye out.

I like the 12 Houses series quite a lot, which is why I asked; I know this new one doesn't have the main six from the other books as main characters (though I understand they show up), so I'm curious to know how it'll differ--I quite like those six and the interplay between them, and how they've changed and developed. I'll still get a copy of it when I can, though, even without them.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I think you would like the Ibbotson. They have these extended casts that get in on bringing the two lovers together, and it never fails to warm my heart. She has a new one coming out this next year!

I think you might also like Carol Goodman, who does gothic suspense with a tiny bit of romance.

And god, I'm loving Charlene Harris. They are what they are, but provided a nice antidote to Twilight.

The Shinn books are about Wen who has broken off on her own. The Riders catch up to her by the end of the book, but most of it is her adventures with a different group of people. If you have read General Winston's Daughter, I highly recommend it.