Best Books of '07

Most of the romance I read this year, was middling, with a few exceptions:




I'm a little behind in my Loretta Chase reading, but as that means I still have books of hers to read (plus she has another coming out next summer) - that's a good thing. I finally read Lord Perfect this year and loved it despite the hideoso cover. I won't go on at length about my Loretta Chase love except to say that I bought the reissued Lord of Scoundrels even though I already owned it. Oh, and thanks, Avon, for making covers that don't make our eyes bleed.




This one surprised me; Till the Stars Fall is an out-of-print contemporary (I almost never read contemporaries) about, and I'm not kidding, a romance between an average woman and a rock star. Not finding the average rock star lifestyle (heroin? huge egos? rare bathing? constant travel? sex with strangers? heroin?) remotely romantic, I went into this book a big cynic and came out a believer. Seidel, who has never (to anyone's knowledge) been a rock star, manages to humanize even these bizarre people... at least, well enough to pull the wool over the eyes of the rest of us who haven't been rock stars.

In the non-romance front:




The Girls Who Went Away - The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe vs. Wade is told mostly in the form of oral history, with stories told in the words of the women themselves. These are women who came of age in the 1940's and 1950's, so sheltered by the prevailing sexual attitudes of the time that some of them, even after having sex, literally had no idea how babies were made or born. As abortion was illegal and single motherhood nearly impossible as well as shameful, most of these girls simply gave up their children for adoption, usually at the insistence of their mothers. Their stories of how such a decision - mostly taken away from them and made to seem like no decision at all - reverberated through the rest of their lives is not for the faint of heart. Anyone with adoption in their family history should read this. Bring tissues.




Dan Simmons single-handedly creates his own genre - the historical horror - in The Terror, a novel recounting the doomed Franklin Expedition of the 1840's.

(OK, so you don't have to go on Wikipedia - the Franklin Expedition sailed from England in 1843 in search of the Northwest Passage. It consisted of two giant, state-of-the-art ships, Erebus and Terror, 123 men, and enough food to last an estimated six years if needed. None of it was ever seen again. All that has ever been found of the expedition are three graves, a few bone fragments, a few scattered skeletons, and a letter intimating unimaginable suffering, starvation, death, and a planned desperate effort to seek help overland. Why yes, I am morbidly well-informed about the Franklin Expedition. Why do you ask?)

The reality of the Franklin Expedition must have been bad enough; Simmons not only unflinchingly reimagines it, he adds extra torment in the form of a deadly beast stalking the men through the arctic ice. It's grim, it's gory, it's doomed, it's unbelievably researched, and it gave me nightmares for a week. Still gives me chills.




If you love Rebecca (and I sooooo do) try Rebecca's Tale. It's twenty years after Manderley has burned down, and someone is sending mysterious packages, containing Rebecca's belongings, to the remaining players of the tale. A younger generation, too, is still haunted by the eternal mystery at Manderley. This book is seriously satisfying for those readers (hi) who thought Maxim de Winter and his second wife were pale personalities next to the intriguing, and apparently bewitching, Rebecca. She's revealed in depth here, and I think the story does her justice. The book does meander a bit - there are a lot of scenes with people looking out at the rain, or walking through woods, or sitting on trains looking out windows - but for those of us who love good gothics (hi again) it's the best kind of book. Oh, and the writing is really, really good.




Apparently there was some grumbling about historical inaccuracies in Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death. Twenty pages into this book, if you give two farts about that, this book is not for you. It's a medieval mystery about a woman doctor (she's from Italy, apparently they had them there) who specializes in reading the bodies of the dead. She's called to England to investigate a serial killer of children, whose crimes have the county so up-in-arms (as the locals are blaming the Jews) it's affecting the King's tax intake. It's a great read, with good characters and a well-structured plot. It's a bit baffling, though, that though the plot is a straightforward murder mystery, it's unmistakably packaged as a Historian-type literary historical. It ain't. It's good, though.

I had a terrific reading year this year. On to 08!

Quote of the Day

"Writing fiction makes me feel completely and totally free. I relish my other obligations - mothering my children, being a good friend - but this is the place where nobody tells me what to do."

-Toni Morrison

Bitchin'

Over the last little while, I've been tempted to blog about the following topics:

1. Winter sucks
2. That book I just read sucked
3. Rejections SUCK
4. The writing business is crazy and frequently sucks
5. The internet sometimes sucks

And on, and on. But, yanno (oh - Miss Snark retiring also sucks) I thought maybe folks wouldn't want to hear too much of that.

So here is my official list of things that are really great right now.

1. Clementine oranges
2. Christmas lights
3. My resolution to go to a conference in '08 (not Nationals, something cheaper. I haven't picked which one yet)
4. Finding the perfect gift for someone
5. Nadia Cornier's new blog
6. Regular paychecks (thanks, day job)
7. Men who shovel snow (like mine)
8. Library Thing (I would marry it if I could)
9. All the great books and movies I saw this year (list in the works)
10. All the awesome people I've met on the 'net
11. Anyone who has ever commented on this blog
12. Whole wheat pasta
13. Clive Owen
14. Go Fug Yourself
15. Housecats (I have three of the best)
16. Internet shopping
17. Tiramisu

And this:

Stuff, mostly incidental

First, I'm really annoyed by the idea of "wip" as a word. You hear writers use it when they're talking about their "work in progress." "I might try that idea in my wip." "I'm having serious problems with my wip." Ugh. Not a word, people.

Second - can we please, just for a little while, lay off the historical writers? Maybe readers could spend a little time gutting contemporaries featuring cops that sleep with suspects/witnesses/victims/anything that moves, cops that let oh-so-sexy complete strangers into crime scenes and ask for their assistance in cases, doctors that never doctor, "successful entrepreneurs" who never work, chefs who never cook, restauranteurs who never restaurant, actors who never act, web designers who never design, and marketing executives who never market, though everyone owns a big house in a small town? Really, you can go back to beating up the historical writers later. Just give them five minutes, OK?

On to more important things:

American Gangster is an excellent movie - I could go on and on about the writing and the filmmaking and all the awesome themes in it, but I won't. Instead, I will lament how utterly horrid the clothes were in the 1970s, so awful it's amazing the human race managed to propagate itself into the 1980's. This isn't so bad for Denzel Washington, who somehow managed to look good. Russell Crowe, however, despite the promise of the poster:




always looked something like this:





Actually, that was probably his best-looking scene. It was a crying shame. In one scene he wore some kind of baseball (?) shirt that made his torso look comically bigger than his legs. I had to close my eyes during that part. Russell Crowe should not look that bad, ever, even in the 1970's.

Mr. Crowe, please make another Western. You looked awesome in a cowboy hat.

Another fine movie, also unsatisfying on certain fronts, was The Golden Compass. Sure, the story was interesting, the effects were good, and the girl who played Lyra was amazing. But it needed more Eva Green. And what's wrong with this picture?




Spotted it right away, didn't you? That's right - Daniel Craig is wearing far, far too many clothes. I'm not sure what he got paid for this movie, but he 1) set up some of the plot, 2) got captured by somebody, 3) shaved. All wearing scads of clothing. Wrong, just wrong.

Mr. Craig, please pack your bathing suit for the next Bond movie. We liked it.