Bargain Books – Page 14

Novels in Letters

I love reading epistolary novels — once in a while, it’s really quite refreshing to read narrative that’s broken down into pieces of interesting text (e.g. letters, reports, memos, etc.) rather than plod through long chapters. There’s also the wicked fun of reading other people’s correspondence and attempting to piece together a story based on them.

My favorite epistolary novels include Dracula by Bram Stoker, Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock, Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, and even Meg Cabot’s Every Boy’s Got One. I read a couple more recently: Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman, and Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn.

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The Air Up There (Picture Book Roundup #13)

Some of my favorite book have themes of flight — The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois; Tuesday by David Wiesner; and Peter Pan. Maybe it’s because my zodiac’s an air sign, or maybe i just like the carefree, leisurely feeling that flying themes generate.

This month’s picture book roundup covers books dealing with flight, clouds, and other above-ground subject matter: The Flying Locomotive by William Pene du Bois; The Little Cloud by Eric Carle; Night of the Gargoyles by Eve Bunting, illustrated by David Wiesner; Sadako by Eleanor Coerr, illustrated by Ed Young; and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz commemorative pop-up by L. Frank Baum, engineered by Robert Sabuda.

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Love gone awry

Since I joined the A-Z Challenge, I’ve crossed out three names on the list already. I first crossed off Trenton Lee Stewart with the first two books of the Mysterious Benedict Society, which I enjoyed tremendously. I managed to cross off two more: Emile Zola with For a Night of Love (Z); and F. Scott Fitzgerald with The Rich Boy (F).

The two books are published by Hesperus Press, a sophisticated imprint I’m growing fond of (I have Jonathan Swift’s Directions to Servants and a couple other books from Hesperus Press). Hesperus specializes in hard to find novellas and short stories of famous authors, with each book running to only 100 pages or so. I got a bunch of them on sale last year, and while I don’t normally like mass market paperbacks, Hesperus books are a welcome addition to my library — I love the concept behind the imprint and the elegance of the book design.

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The last of the 2009 backlog

After a month and a half of moaning and groaning, I’ve finally reached the end of my backlog — the last four books I read in 2009, for a grand total of 244.

I realize the problem now– reading the 244 books is easy; reviewing every one of them is another matter. I’d be happy if I can blog half as fast as I read, but try as I might, it’s a tall order. I can multi-task reading, but blogging about them takes my full attention, and I try to squeeze it in when I have time to spare, a luxury I haven’t had much of since the year started. I’m definitely not complaining; blogging has its own rewards, and I’ve enjoyed a whole year of blogging about the books I’ve read; but I think I’ll have to strategize better to achieve my next goal: to catch up on blogging my January and February readings by March.

Here are the last four books for 2009 (and a big sigh of relief from me!), all of them comic in nature. As you may have noticed, I steered clear of text-heavy books towards the end of the year, and this is the last batch of them: Chas Addams’ Half Baked Cookbook by Charles Addams; Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya (leftover from the October 24-hour readathon); and the first two volumes of the detective Conan manga, Case Closed 1 and 2 by Gosho Aoyama.

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Trivia, trivia #2

A few months back, I did a review of a series of trivia books and I’ve finished a bunch more since then. I have a habitual vice of poring into tomes of useless information, especially when I’m too stressed to read continuously, or when I need a break from long narratives.

This time around, I have another set of four trivia books on a variety of subjects, from general information to language to etiquette and combat: Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze? and 114 Other Questions edited by Mick O’ Hare; Red Herrings and White Elephants: The Origins of the Phrases We Use Everyday by Albert Jack (illustrated by Ama Page); Directions to Servants by Jonathan Swift; and The Action Heroine’s Handbook by Jennifer Worick and Joe Borgenicht (books 237-240 of 2009).

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