Notes from Mt. Bookpile

This has been a banner quarter! Here's what descended from Mt. Bookpile to join The Collection (per Doug's request, one-line reviews are now included).

Biography

• Vita's Other World; Jane Brown Skirts her affairs and love life to concentrate on the gardening; too bad there weren’t more plans and colour photos
• So Many Books, So Little Time; Sara Nelson If you’re a reader, you’ll know why this book hits home. If not...
• Girl Sleuth; Melanie Rehak Interesting “biography” of Nancy Drew

Children's/YA

• Folk Keeper; Franny Billingsley Reasonably good selkie story
• The Steps; Rachel Cohn Girl learns it's ok to have a blended family. In Oz, no less.
• The Opal Deception ; Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl regains his memory and helps the LEP in their lastest adventure together.
• The Door To Time; Beth Dunfey Another "what's behind the door of the old mansion" book; average writing but as a series kids might like it.
• The Greenstone Grail; Amanda Hemingway A good variation on the Grail theme, and not a bad first book to an apparent trilogy.
  
• The Vacation; Polly Horvath Not a bad version of the road-trip genre
• Open Ice; Pat Hughes Boys will like this one, but it's just not quite right for an MS library
• How to Behave and Why and Manners Can Be Fun; Munro Leaf
• Amazing Adventures from Zoom's Academy; Jason Lethcoe Not as good as Sky High or The Lightning Thief
• Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg; Gail Carson Levine A rare "bad book" from the author.
• Drowned Wednesday and Sir Thursday; Garth Nix Arthur survives two more Days in the Kingdom, one at sea and the other in the army
  
• Steel Magic; Andre Norton I wasn't that impressed with this one
• Giant Surprise; Hiawyn Oram The surprise is that the publishers think anyone will view this as a Narnia book; otherwise, the story isn't bad (according to my K-4 classes)
• The Kingdom Keepers; Ridley Pearson Can't tell the advert for Disney from the plot sometimes.
• The Penultimate Peril ; Lemony Snicket Rehashes a lot of plot and characters on the way to what I can only assume will be called The Fatale Finale.
• Under the Persimmon Tree; Suzanne Fisher Staples Takes place in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 'nuff said.
• The Great Good Thing; Roderick Townley Who can resist a book that comes to life?
• The Bone Collector's Son; Paul Yee Interesting historical fiction topic but nothing special otherwise.

Fantasy

• Thud! ; Terry Pratchett The Balkans, Discworld-style.
  
• The Warlock in Spite of Himself; Christopher Stasheff No desire to read the rest of this series.
  

Fiction/Literature

• Tales of Manhattan; Louis Auchincloss An old-fashioned look at an old-fashioned world
• Dead Air; Iain Banks Not sure why this isn't available Over Here, but it's definitely worth reading (lad lit done way better than Nick Hornby does it)
• Staring At the Sun; Julian Barnes I'd read a phone book if Barnes did it
• Mysteries of Pittsburgh; Michael Chabon Not so sure if this qualifies as a "brilliant first novel" but not bad.
• The Bookshop; Penelope Fitzgerald Small-town claustrophobia, UK style. Very nicely done.
• Never Let Me Go; Kazuo Ishiguro Pretty good dystopian literature; sort of reminded me of James' The Children of Men
• The Late George Apley; John P. Marquand Hard slog but, like Auchincloss, a nice period piece.
• Changing Faces; Kimberla Lawson Roby Complete waste of paper and time.
• Prep; Curtis Sittenfeld I can almost identify, but mine was single-sex.
• A Complicated Kindness; Miriam Toews Vaguely disturbing coming-of-age as a Mennonite.

History

• The Amber Room; Adrian Levy; Catherine Scott-Clark I admit, I've always wondered what happend to the room and it looks like now we know
  

Mystery

• Case Histories; Kate Atkinson Nicely interwoven tales, but the linkages were telegraphed way too early.
• Belle Ruin; Martha Grimes Only three books in, and Emma Graham's story is growing tired.
• The Lighthouse; P. D. James Seemed vaguely like a retread of other Dalgliesh's, but still well worth the read.
• The Haunted Bookshop; Christopher Morley Another nice period piece, set in Brooklyn during WWI. Interesting tie-in to today in some respects.
• Knots and Crosses, Hide and Seek, and Strip Jack; Ian Rankin Yes, I'm catching up on my Inspector Rebus mysteries. Just wish I remembered more about my time in Edinburgh!

Non-Fiction

• Every Book Its Reader; Nicholas A. Basbanes Another good book about, well, it should be obvious
  
• Not-a-Tame Lion; Bruce L. Edwards Not-a-great-read-about Narnia, either.
• The Unprejudiced Palate; Angelo M. Pellegrini Surprisingly good food writing (particularly loved the episode with the girlfriend's family)
• The New Brain; Richard M. Restak What's going on neurologically with the NextGen kids: are we doing more harm than good?
• The Primal Teen; Barbara Strauch Explains, without judging or offering fixes, what seems to be going on in the American teenage mind.
• The Heart of Narnia; Thomas M. Williams Might be about the Heart, but written without soul.

Travel

• Imagined London; Anna Quindlen I imagined a better book. Oh well.