Fiction
Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid (2014)
The Austen Project, in which Jane Austen was retold by 21st-century authors, was commissioned (I assume) by HarperCollins, and here Northanger Abbey is reimagined in modern-day Scotland during the Edinburgh Festival, which sounds like so much fun. Young Catherine Morland is obsessed with Twilight and imagines everyone is a vampire, which seemed an inspired tribute to the original character’s gothic imaginings.
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (2001)
I don’t usually do whimsical or capers so I resisted this book when Sessalee Hensley gave me a copy nearly twenty years ago, but eventually read and enjoyed it with my book group. The heroine is a literary detective trying to preserve Jane Eyre and her misadventures are witty and amusing and confusing.
Suspense
The Secret Place by Tana French (2014)
This is the fifth Dublin Murder Squad book and is written from the perspective of Stephen Moran, an ambitious detective stuck on the Cold Case Squad. It is set at a girls’ private school where an unsolved murder took place the previous year.
Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie (2007) #11
As so often happens in crime fiction, the discovery of a dead body threatens to ruin the visit of Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James and their sons to Duncan’s family in Cheshire.
Where Memories Lie by Deborah Crombie (2008) #12
I love this series by Deborah Crombie and this is one of the best she has written. Detective Inspector Gemma James got friendly with Erika Rosenthal on an earlier case but in this book she learns about her friend’s past as a refugee from Nazi Germany and tries to solve the long-ago mysterious death of Erika’s husband.
Necessary as Blood by Deborah Crombie (2009) #13
While investigating a murder in Bethnal Green of a solicitor suspected in the disappearance of his wife, Gemma James becomes preoccupied by the wellbeing of his daughter.
A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming (2012)
This is a Le Carré-like contemporary thriller that starts with a disgraced spy recalled to find a former colleague who has mysteriously disappeared just as she is about to become the first woman head of British Military Intelligence Section. Since reading this one, I have enjoyed several other books by this understated author. One thing about Cumming, you get a sense of the tedium of espionage – no faux glamor at all.
City of Bones by Michael Connelly (2002) #12
A bone leads Harry Bosch to a shallow grave in the Hollywood hills, evidence of a murder committed more than twenty years earlier. It's one of the cold cases at which he is so skilled, but it stirs up Bosch's memories of his own childhood as a lonely orphan in the city.
Historical Fiction
This is the sequel to Trollope's more memorable Legacy of Love, and follows the descendants of Charlotte, the adventurous woman who followed her military husband to Afghanistan.
Memoir/Law
Bench Notes by Hon. Paul A. Chernoff (2012)
Judge Chernoff, formerly of the Massachusetts Appeals Court, started taking notes on the vignettes of his legal life and wrote this book for his grandchildren. It is full of quirky and poignant stories about his experience as a judge and the revelation that he memorizes Shakespeare’s sonnets during the downtime, waiting for the lawyers to get organized!
Young Adult
As I have mentioned elsewhere, Daisy Newman (who at some point anglicized her name) was an ardent Quaker and was the housemother of my mother’s dormitory at Radcliffe in the 50s. I met her just once when she came to tea. I had read some of her books but came across this unexpectedly at a book sale in DC. It’s about Winifred and Angus who have been WWII evacuees for five years in Belmont, Massachusetts, and the difficult but humorous adjustment all experience when they return to their parents in England. Fans of Back Home by Michelle Magorian will also enjoy this. I am a big fan of evacuation stories.
Scott at Furrowed Middlebrow also read and reviewed this book recently.
My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick (2012)
Samantha Reed is fascinated by the large, unruly family next door, observing them with fascination from a distance until the teenage boy her age ambles over and pulls her and her heart into their lives. However, that causes conflict with her politician mother who doesn't trust anyone she cannot control and doesn't seem to care that her daughter is lonely. Well, pride goes before fall, Mrs. Reed!
Overrated
I’ve liked her other books so maybe I just don’t appreciate unreliable narrators. It’s funny that Meg Rosoff wrote this mostly good New York Times review because I thought her book, How I Live Now (2004), was also extremely overrated!
Best Cover
The Winter Princess by Mary Treadgold (1962)
The story is about four children who win an essay competition, and part of the prize is tea with Lady Cannon at Hampton Court. Given that Hampton Court is one of my favorite places in the whole world, of course, I enjoyed the story, but it is the cover that was most memorable.
Favorite Reads of 2008
Favorite Reads of 2009
Favorite Reads of 2011
Favorite Reads of 2013
Favorite Reads of 2015
Favorite Reads of 2016
Favorite Reads of 2017
Favorite Reads of 2018
Favorite Reads of 2019
Favorite Reads of 2009
Favorite Reads of 2011
Favorite Reads of 2013
Favorite Reads of 2015
Favorite Reads of 2016
Favorite Reads of 2017
Favorite Reads of 2018
Favorite Reads of 2019
6 comments:
What a great idea to go back and look at your favorites for an earlier year. Was it hard to remember? I see that otherwise you have kept up with your annual picks. I think the last year I did a list of top picks was for 2016.
I enjoyed The Eyre Affair when I read it but it has been a long time. I read more of the books in that series. I just got a copy of The Secret Place by Tana French, which I hope to read this year. I liked A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming very very much. I have only read two of Michael Connelly's books but I have a lot of them on my TBR so I had better read more of them. I think I would like Now That April’s There.
I've only read the Val McDermid, I think it was the best of those Austen re-writes that I read. Edinburgh is crazy during the festival, you should give it a go sometime, when such things are allowed again. I know that I would love the evacuee book, it might be difficult for me to find but I hope to be able to track down the Puffin Treadgold.
If you like evacuation books you should try Kit Pearson's trilogy about 2 children who are evacuated to Toronto. The Sky is Falling is the first one. They're excellent. BTW, we met at the Betsy-Tacy convention in 2018.
Donna, of course, I remember you! It does not seem like two years ago we were having dinner together in Mankato, does it? I am a big Kit Pearson fan and I like that series. I was actually wondering last night where my copies are. The book I just finished made me think about the Guests of War trilogy because it is about a girl who is evacuated to Saskatoon with her mother and cousin, Uprooted by Lynne Reid Banks. Have you read it? Someone just recommended it to me recently. I own a copy of Banks' book, My Darling Villain, which is a favorite. She is better known for her series about the Indian in the Cupboard.
Tracy, I started keeping an Excel spreadsheet of what I had read about 2002, so I went back and looked at it and then at Goodreads. It seemed like I read a lot of mediocre books that year so the ones I liked stood out. My sister had been raving about Michael Connelly for years before I started reading them. Most have been done as audio so most of them I listened to in the car. I do think he is a great suspense writer and puts the pieces together so intricately.
I really enjoyed The Eyre Affair but felt I had "done" it, once completed. I don't necessarily yearn to read more in the series. Following the plot was exhausting, even though I liked it and thought the concept clever.
Katrina, I really want to return to Edinburgh, having only had 48 hours in a chilly November. I did notice there's a copy of the Daisy Neumann book in the National Library in Scotland. Do those books circulate or is it a depository like our own Library of Congress? My friend Nicky who is a librarian in London once told me that Interlibrary Loan is very energetic/effective in the UK. When I lived in New York, I gave up on it. Every branch library had different rules but most made me pay a dollar for a request not in the system and I was 99% sure they never processed my requests at all. I only got 1 in a 100. In Boston, it is much better organized and they respond with an email if they cannot locate the book at all. Before Susanna Kearsley was published here, they once got me a copy of a book from Canada which I did not expect but appreciated.
I had to write down The Eyre Affair, think I will like it. Also The Winter Princess for my granddaughter. I took the quiz and learned that I am Anne Elliot, fine with me as Persuasion is my favorite!
I will definitely try Uprooted. I've read several of Lynne Reid Banks' books, including Indian in the Cupboard but hadn't heard of this one.
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