Chaz Brenchley (
David Palmer, Emergence. Written long before V. Secret Diaries. Had similar diary/telegraphy style. As result, kept thinking, "Still last one alive. Apocalypse v. annoying. Still prettiest," etc., similar snark early on. Main character annoying. Secondary characters not much better except bird. Plot took off eventually.
Simon Schama, Citizens. The book that ate my fortnight. Definitely worth it. I think
I'm finding that one of the disadvantages of reading about...well, countries that aren't Finland, basically...is winnowing. A book like Citizens makes me want to read more about the French Revolution, but there's too much more out there to read it all. This is not nearly so true of books about Finnish history, myth, and culture available in English. I won't go so far as to say I've read all the stuff there is, but I've read a pretty large percentage of it -- not quite everything I can get, because we have access to the University of Minnesota library now, but even a large percentage of that. There just isn't much out there. In the understatement of the century (
Noel Streatfeild, Movie Shoes. May have had a more sensible British title; some of them do. Anyway, one of the parts I found interesting about this reread of this childhood favorite is that Streatfeild was fairly aware of how much her characters tended to be types. Posy Fossil, a character from an earlier book now grown, exclaims to one of the children that she is just like Posy's sister Pauline. And indeed she is.
And that's it. Oof.