Chapter Forty-Six: Bellwether

Bellwether by Connie Willis is one of my all-time favorite novels!  I love it every time I read it: the fun characters, the ridiculous workplace, the little tidbits of history about various fads--all these elements combine to make an engaging story about two researchers at an absurd corporation who combine projects with fantastic results.  It's not quite science-fiction from an author most known for that genre, but it is fun fiction about scientists!  I heartily recommend this heartwarming story to anyone who wants to restore their faith in humanity and in life in general.

Chapter Forty-Five: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci

I saw this series by Diana Wynne Jones (one of my favorite authors) on the shelves countless times as a kid, but I somehow never read them until a friend of mine sent them to me when she learned of my love of Jones's books.  They are fantastically fun, marvelously magical books!  There are seven in total: Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, The Wizards of Caprona, Witch Week, Conrad's Fate, The Pinhoe Egg, and Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci.  As you'll quickly find out, Chrestomanci is a title for a government official who is in charge of controlling magic in several series of related worlds (our own being one of them, but not the primary focus of these stories), and the Chrestomanci is chosen for one important quality: he is a (human) enchanter with nine lives (like a cat, but he's a human).  These are really fun tales of magic running amok and being put back to rights, peppered with Jones's typical humor and delightful characters.  I highly recommend them if you enjoy fantasy novels and having fun!

Chapter Forty-Four: The Mitford Series, The Father Tim Series

Let me begin by saying that I just love these series of books, which are so related to each other that I'm writing about them in one post.  Both series follow the adventures of Father Tim, a middle-aged to elderly Episcopalian priest and his life and work in the hamlet of Mitford, North Carolina (and occasionally his adventures as he travels elsewhere, either for work or pleasure).  The plot is rather thin on the ground in these books, focusing as they do on one man's everyday life; however, this does not make the books any less enjoyable in my eyes.  I definitely wouldn't recommend it if you want fast-paced or intense reading: these books are, however, light reading at their best.  The characters are realistic and delightful; it is the characters that keep me reading this series.  It's a fun, light read.

Chapter Forty-Three: All the Wrong Questions

This book is the first in a new series by Lemony Snicket, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events, a.k.a. Daniel Handler if you've read any of his work for adults.  I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I enjoyed Unfortunate--it's a little too enigmatic at times, even for my taste.  However, I love Snicket's style, and the plot is intriguing.  If you like mysteries and strangeness and Snicket, check it out.

Chapter Forty-Two: A Sudden Wild Magic

I'm so glad that my local branch of the Boston Public Library has a really solid collection of books by Diana Wynne Jones!  I really enjoy her, but I've had trouble finding a good selection of her numerous works in bookstores and at other libraries.  So now that I have access, watch out for more of her books on my blog in the near future!  Anyway, I'm glad I had the chance to check out this book of hers that I haven't read.  I quite enjoyed it, in large part because of her flair for the odd and her generous helpings of humor.  Moreover,  A Sudden Wild Magic provides a complex plot with many threads that all weave together to form into a fascinating whole.  This book is on the long side, and it's definitely worth the effort to read it in its entirety.  I heartily enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone looking for a funky, funny fantasy.

Chapter Forty-One: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Now that I've finally had time to join the Boston Public Library, I've been making good use of my local branch to check out some new books.  I was intrigued by the title of this novel by Aimee Bender--what would make lemon cake sad?--and then I was drawn in by the original premise for this story: when she eats food, the protagonist can taste in it the emotions of the person who prepared it.  This book reads quickly, and a feeling of mystery that pervades the plot makes it hard to put this book down until the very end.  The only aspect that I disliked is Bender's proclivity for peppering her otherwise pleasant prose with sentence fragments; this rubbed me the wrong way.  However, overall I enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an interesting read.

Chapter Forty: Tales of the Willows Trilogy

This trilogy (The Willows in Winter, Toad Triumphant, and The Willows and Beyond) by William Horwood is a great extension of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows.  He stays true to Grahame's Rat, Mole, Toad, Badger, and Otter, and his additional characters and expansion of Portly are delightful.  He also does a pretty good job of staying stylistically close to Grahame's prose in The Wind in the Willows, although a careful reader might notice some differences, and occasionally I detected a whiff of satire in Horwood's prose, although this was not necessarily a problem.  I absolutely love the additional adventures Horwood has created for these characters and the added emotional depth they assume over the course of this trilogy; I almost cried at points during the last book.  These are a great read for anyone who loves The Wind in the Willows and who wonders what might have happened to Ratty, Mole, Badger, Otter, and--of course--Toad after the end of Grahame's classic.