Sunday Salon: Books Read in May, 2010

Children and YA Fiction:
To Come and Go Like Magic by Katie Pickard Fawcett. Semicolon review here.
The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone. Magical miniature rooms in a Chicago museum. Semicolon review here.
The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork (the same author who wrote Marcelo in the Real World). Semicolon review here.
The Batboy by Mike Lupica.
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Semicolon review here.
Akimbo and the Elephants by Alexander McCall Smith.
The White Giraffe by Lauren St. John.

Adult Fiction:
Greenmantle by John Buchan. Lots of rather obscure historical references and geographical details and early twentieth century slang, but it’s still a thrilling ride worth persisting.
Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute. Semicolon review here. Shute also wrote A Town Called Alice and On the Beach.
The Pact by Jodi Piccoult. I decided to give Ms. Piccoult another try, and although this one was much better than the one I read a few months ago, it still had some issues. Piccoult writes problem novels, and in this one the problem is teen suicide. Interspersed thorughout are details about various characters’ sex lives that were vivid and gratuitous. At least, I thought they were gratuitous since I could see no reason that we needed to know. I’m kind of old-fashioned that way: I think sex, even fictional sex, should be private unless it serves some purpose to advance the plot or theme or characterizations in the novel. The book itself was a page turner, and I read to the end to see what would happen. Pay your money and you’ll take your chances.
The Far Country by Nevil Shute. Not as good as Trustee or the other two mentioned above, but it does have some lovely descriptive passages extolling the beauty of the Australian countryside.

Nonfiction:
National Geographic Mysteries of History by Robert Stewart. Basic stuff: Stonehenge, King Arthur, The Hindenburg, etc.
Plan B by Pete Wilson.
Disrupting Grace: A Story of Relinquishment and Healing by Kristen Richburg.
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett.

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