*** Favorites in July-Sep

Believe it or not, it is (almost) October.

What were your favorite books in the last 3 months?
Did you meet a new author that you really liked?
And does anyone know where did this year go? It was January yesterday... :)

That's an easy question to answer. My favorites of the last quarter were No Ordinary Time and The House of Mirth. The House of Mirth was my first Edith Wharton book and I'm sure it won't be my last!

I had several excellent reads recently:

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh - A re-read and just as good second time around.

Speaking from Among the Bones : A Flavia de Luce novel by Alan C. Bradley - One of the authors that has me counting days until his next book comes out.

Queen Salote and Her Kingdom by Sir Harry Luke - A heartwarming biography of the Queen of Tonga, written in the fifties.

A conspiracy of crowns : the true story of the Duke of Windsor and the murder of Sir Harry Oakes by Alfred de Marigny - a surprisingly good read.

Old Filth by Jane Gardam - I hope the rest in the series are as good as this one.

I do not know where this year went!

But, let's see, my favorite books from the last three months... Or, rather, my highest-rated books (4.5 or 5 stars), because that's a lot easier to pick out:

I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente
Zone One by Colson Whitehead
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Although I read a lot of other very enjoyable books this quarter, really. It's entirely possible those ones were rated higher more because I was in exactly the right mood for them than because they're clearly better than all the rest. Well, except for the Neil Gaiman one. That obviously belongs on the list.

I think both my favorite book and newly discovered author would be The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier.

I read some new favorites this quarter.

Possession by A.S. Byatt
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Summer Book by Tove Janssen

Also very much liked:
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
and C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake historical mystery series

Absolutely detested:
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

Alan C. Bradley - One of the authors that has me counting days until his next book comes out

Okay, I REALLY have to get to his first book. Thanks for the push. So many books, so little time . . .

Here are my favs:

5 star: The Children's Book, by AS Byatt

4.5 stars:
What a Carve Up!, Jonathan Coe
Case Histories, Kate Atkinson
Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee
Shame, Jasvinder Sanghera

and an honourable mention to Hawksmoor, by Peter Ackroyd, which I gave only 4 stars, but it's really stuck with me.

5 stars:
   A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
   The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
   What We Talk About When We Talk About the Tube: The District Line by John Lanchester

4½ stars:
   The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal
   Harvest by Jim Crace
   The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah
   Mind the Child: The Victoria Line by Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company
   TransAtlantic by Colum McCann

Darryl - I just bought a bunch of those Tube books from the Book Depository. I guess I need to go back and order Mind the Child: the Victoria Line too.

Joyce, I purchased three Kindle e-books that each contained four of the Penguin Underground Lines books: East-West: Penguin Underground Lines, North-South: Penguin Underground Lines, and Circles and Diagonals: Penguin Underground Lines. I've read half of the dozen books so far. I liked the two I mentioned above, but I strongly disliked two of them (the ones on the Piccadilly Line and the Hammersmith & City Line), and was lukewarm about the other two (the Northern Line and the Central Line books). Each of these three books cost $9.99 US, so they were far cheaper than the individual e-books or print editions.

That's a good deal. I've bought about 6 of the print editions at $7-something each. They're nice books though, and will go nicely in my bookshelf with my Penguin English Journeys and Penguin Food series that I've already collected.

Here are the highlights (and lowlights) of the quarter. There were a few stretches of no great books, but overall it was a good reading quarter. I'm having a very busy week, but I may come back later and add a line or two about each of my favorites.

Favorite Fiction
The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwartz-Bart
Onitsha by J. M. G. Le Clezio
The Laughing Man by Victor Hugo
Morality Play by Barry Unsworth
Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou
The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laâbi
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset
The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

Best Nonfiction
Dersu the Trapper by V. K. Arseniev

Most Disappointing
(This is a category for books I had higher hopes for, not books I went into with low expectations.)
Red Spectres edited by Muireann Maguire
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz

The third quarter was another good one for me.

I had 3 five star reads:
No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Seeking Palestine by Penny Johnson (Author, Editor) , Raja Shehadeh (Editor)
The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

Followed closely with 4 1/2 stars by The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

There were several 4's and 31/2's, and no disappointments.

I had previously only read The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, which I really enjoyed. But it wasn't until this past quarter that I realized how good she really was.

I like Shakespeare but more in performance than on paper. Maybe that is why I am reluctant to put Much Ado About Nothing on this list.

I have a great deal of respect for The Garden of Evening Mists, and I enjoyed it.

The Mystery of Existence summarized very well what is thought about the question of why there is something rather than nothing, although it was entertaining only in an extended sense.

Boomer might have been the high point of my reading for the quarter. Or the high point might have been Hiking Through. I can't fail to mention the latter even though I know it disqualifies itself from a lot of people's reading lists and even from their respect. Both books capture what it is to have a transformative experience, and not a trivial one.

Robert

I had a bit of a reading trough in July-Sept, but one outstanding read: Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics.

Others worth noting:
- Jane Austen's Emma
- the Locke & Key series of horror comics
- the horrifying but well-written Brodeck's Report (the reverberations of people's wartime behaviour in a village in Alsace)
- Florence & Giles (a Gothic thriller)
- The Party (non-fiction, about the Chinese Communist Party and its role and reach in modern China).

Hmm, what a very strange and eclectic selection!

I really loved The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.

Go With Me by Castle Freeman, Jr. was also well worth my time.