The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was a fun, quirky story of a dysfunctional English family and the 11-year-old, precocious heroine who likes to snoop and specializes in poison. The post-WWII setting was appealing and the characters were certainly entertaining. I could tell […]
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The Wind-up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi My rating: 1 of 5 stars I was truly disappointed in this book after reading the rave reviews. The plot looked fascinating and many people obviously loved it. But once I began, I realized how bleak the story truly is. One down. The writing itself is very descriptive and
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Aztec 3. City of Spies by Simon Levack My rating: 4 of 5 stars One of my favorite series, simply because it is so different. Yaotl is a down-on-his-luck Aztec slave who is good at logistical problems and has an disfunctional, extended family. His cohorts are interesting and entertaining, in most cases, and the life-and-death
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Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card My rating: 2 of 5 stars Interesting but very slow going. This book is simply an introduction, but I expected (and wanted) a little more story instead of all backstory. The alternate American frontier is only slightly different from the real past, so it’s not a strange, new world
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Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron by Stephanie Barron My rating: 3 of 5 stars A truly sad beginning mars this otherwise typical Jane Austin mystery, as a major character from the series dies. But there is no dearth of other acquaintances (and suspects) to fill the story with soap-opera angst and over-the-top aristocratic
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A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very good Victorian mystery, flawed by patches of mundane domesticity. The protagonist is simply not very interesting, although he is certainly a good man, and has a fine supporting cast. What kept me going were the intricacies of the mystery itself,
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A Dog About Town by J.F. Englert My rating: 2 of 5 stars Entertainingly narrated by a canine companion whose mind is uncommonly like a human sleuth’s. Fun, but too outrageous a story even for animal lovers. Amazon.com link: A Dog About Town © Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves
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I really have no clue why I find these so interesting, except that they combine adventure, archaeology and anthropology, chutzpah and nature — perhaps a combination I find irresistible. My favorite adventures in history from recent reads: A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza De Vaca, The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who
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