Another great A.S. Byatt book

The Children's Book - A.S. Byatt
Fascinating and oh so very very well written (unlike this post), The Children's Book is the story of a large extended family at the turn of the 1900's. It starts with the age of Victoria and William Morris and ends at the end of the first World War. Byatt is a brilliant writer - I can't imagine even being able to hold my end up in a conversation with her. This isn't a happy book; I came away from it with the main feeling being that life is a terrible struggle for everyone for everyone to wander through and that fairytales are important and telling and are often times dark reflections of the adult world.

Posing as a book for adults....

The Magicians - Lev Grossman
I was so excited when I started reading this - it reads like an adult version of Harry Potter. Three quarters of the way through it started getting absurd to me and I found myself hating the main characters. I might have been still okay if not for the childish and ridiculous ending. It's getting great reviews, but I found it not worth the time. Still irritated at myself with bothering to finish it.

Images I could look at allll day longgggg

The Way We Live with the Things We Love -- Stafford Cliff and Gilles de Chabaneix -- Gorgeous stuff -- Could almost live on this book alone; wanted to eat it up! May be too European for most American's taste - things are handed down, things can look shabby, things can be crooked - things aren't always done up "perfectly"; but wow are they done up artfully. If you find yourself re-arranging your bookshelf, or the area above your fireplace, or some other niche again and again (as I do, and yes, it is a sickness); this is the book for you. Loved it, it's like those English gardens that seem haphazard and not purposeful, but are beautiful. Sometimes it happens on accident, but usually it's the end result of a lot of work.

Comfort Fiction is sometimes so not Comfort Fiction

Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris - I've read the first three in this series and liked them enough to put this on hold in the library...that should tell you one thing. I started this on a Saturday afternoon and finished it the same Saturday night (with many interruptions) and that should mean something good, but, in this case no. Poor read, poor book - not sure if Harris needs to take a break from the success of the True Blood series on HBO (based on her novels), or what -- but, after I finished this, felt mad with myself for reading the whole thing in the first place!

FEMA = antichrist?

Zeitoun - Dave Eggers

I think this genre is called "Narrative Fiction." Dave tells me it's a post-modern version of "The New Journalism" of Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson. Either way, it's an account of a real man and his family during Hurricane Katrina. Either way, it's brutal. I know that after 9-11 human rights were kind of thrown out the window in an effort to get a handle on terrorism in this country. I had no idea this went on during the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans; I didn't even know that FEMA became a division of Homeland Security.

This is an unsettling, sad read for an American. Things went on that went beyond the horrific things that were reported during those days about the superdome. And the system is so huge, you can't point a finger at any one person. As much as I did appreciate this book and feel that it is important in its own right, I missed Eggers lively personality as a writer. I read a review of this somewhere that praised it because Eggers kept his "post-modern" sensibilities out of it, but, as a fiction reader, I love those sensibilities.

It's a very good book, but to me, not necessarily a "Dave Eggers" book. Still, definitely worth a read.

Chic, natch, with 6 kids...

Downtown Chic - Robert and Courtney Novagratz

While I didn't learn much from the interior design in this book, it's worth a look-see just for the novelty of seeing how a family of 8 renovates/restores/re-sells fairly large pieces of real-estate in and around Manhattan. I found it to be a bit inspiring, but would love to know the back story. As in - how many nannies? how often are they there? how many fights? how many disasters? They have a few cute "disaster" stories and some uplifting things that I enjoyed as a working mom (as in how to cook a good family dinner: pick up the phone and call a delivery place). I know, not that original, but was presented well. The husband and wife are impossibly good looking and put together, so it's really just entertainment in the form of: I must know how they do this.

Of course, they withhold that crucial secret.

All caught up and missing the Highlands already, ye ken?

An Echo in the Bone - Diana Gabaldon Sorry for the cheesecake image, but feeling the plaid right now! Just finished her 7th novel in the Outlander series and feel desperate for more. Rumors had it that this would be the last, but as I was creeping within 100 pages of ending this over 800 page novel, she just kept adding more and more layers. This books is set both in 1980 Scotland and 1777 America and Scotland. It started out a bit slow with too much Lord John for me, but then really kicked up the pace. She's adding more characters and more story lines, and I found myself really liking them. It made me want to go and read more about the American Revolution. Lots of famous battles and names that I just had vague memories of from History class. I loved it - really hope she continues this and can't wait for the next!