Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Two: To Say Nothing of the Dog

So next in my Connie Willis series was To Say Nothing of the Dog, another time travel book, though only loosely related, so you could read this without having read Doomsday Book and be totally fine, though I think reading them consecutively really allows one to see the themes that connect both stories (and that also run through Blackout and All Clear, her subsequent time travel books, which I'm reading presently).
But to say nothing more of these extraneous details, I'll return to the book at hand, which is by far the most light-hearted of Willis's time travel books.  Set mainly in upper class Victorian England, this book is part comedy of manners, part romance, and a big part mystery.  I hadn't really thought of it as a mystery book until this time around, when it really hit me that the whole story is one big whodunnit: what happened to the Bishop's Bird Stump, and when, and how, and why? Our intrepid time travelers have been assigned to find out, and as they work frantically to track this hideous Victorian artifact through history, they also have some hilarious misadventures along the way involving cats and dogs, butlers and boats, and the side effects of too much time traveling (extreme sentimentality).
The title references Jerome K. Jerome's delightful Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and for those who have read that book, its influence is clear.  For those of you who haven't read it, I highly recommend it, as well as To Say Nothing of the Dog, which manages to be both funny and thought-provoking.

Chapter One Hundred Sixty-One: Doomsday Book

So to counter the gloom of February and to add to my tradition of reading Connie Willis's Blackout and All Clear during the third week of this short and dark month, I've decided to make the whole month Connie Willis month!  I like February better already.  So I started, naturally, with the first full-length book in her time traveling sequence, Doomsday Book.  I have read it and reviewed it here before, but since Connie Willis is one of my favorite under-appreciated authors, I'm more than pleased to review it again and I hope someone will decide to try it out.  I will say, Doomsday Book is not for the faint of heart: there are all sorts of illnesses, and a lot of characters to keep track of, and as the title suggests, there is plenty of doom.  Also, there's time travel, so you have to be open to that to enjoy this book, which is on the longer side.  But I think the rewards of the book more than outweigh these elements: the plot is original and intricate (well, intricate is a benefit as far as I'm concerned, anyway), the main characters feel very human and likable (with a few love-to-hate types thrown in for comedic relief), and the settings (mid-21st century Oxford and 14th century Oxfordshire) are certainly out of the ordinary, at least in terms of what I generally read.  (Maybe there are lots of books out there set in either or both of these places and I simply have yet to discover them...)  I find all of Connie Willis's novels to be absorbing, drawing me in and letting me forget it's February, at least while I'm reading them, so if you're open to time travel and enjoy long books with complicated plots (think Diana Wynne Jones, though I don't think she ever wrote about time travel), I would definitely recommend Connie Willis, and you may as well start from the beginning of her time travel sequence, which is the magnificent Doomsday Book.

Chapter One Hundred Sixty: Quiet

So Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking has been vaguely on my to-read list for some time, and then I learned recently that a young readers' edition aimed at middle and high school students is being published this year.  Being the kind of person I am, I figured I'd want to read the young readers' edition and I decided it would be even more interesting if I could compare it to the original edition for adults.  I found Quiet to be interesting and highly readable, integrating data from personality psychology and related fields with accounts of people who have used their introversion to great success and with a sort of cultural studies perspective on American society and its preference for extroversion, especially as seen in modern businesses (open floor plans) and educational systems (group projects).  Another of its strong points is Cain's repeated insistence that no one is purely an introvert or purely an extrovert (think of a spectrum) and that people do not act exactly the same all of the time in all situations everywhere without fail.  If you enjoy reading theories about what makes people tick, Quiet is a great option.  I suppose if you are an extrovert surrounded exclusively by other extroverts, there may not be much of interest in this book, but if you are yourself more on the introverted side of things, or if you have close relationships with introverts, this book is a fascinating read and a useful explanatory tool as well.

Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Nine: Lady of Magick

So Sylvia Izzo Hunter has finally published a sequel to The Midnight Queen, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!  She employs the same pseudo-Regency style of writing as in the first book and crafts another intricate plot set mostly in the same alternate-history Europe (this time focusing on Scotland, alias Alba) in which Roman gods are worshipped in Britain, which excludes Scotland but includes northwestern France.  I did find the pacing of Lady of Magick a bit slow through the first half or even two thirds of the novel, but when the action came at the end, there was plenty of it--almost feeling a bit rushed.  Even so, I had fun reading this sequel to The Midnight Queen, and I will read any further sequels Hunter may publish in the future.

Chapter One Hundred Fifty Eight: Year of the Griffin

So, after trying and failing to become interested in Bone Gap, which was this year's Printz award winner (for excellence in writing for young adults), I decided to give it up and read something I knew I'd enjoy, Year of the Griffin, sequel to Dark Lord of Derkholm which I reviewed only a few posts previously.  I have not yet gone wrong with a book by Diana Wynne Jones, and Year of the Griffin was no exception!  I enjoyed it at least as much as Dark Lord of Derkholm, and possibly more.  I was only sad that it ended so soon!  But enough in that vein.  As for the book itself, it takes place eight years after the events of Derkholm, focusing on Derk's youngest griffin daughter, Elda, now 18, in her first year at the Wizards' University, which is in financial and magical chaos due to poor (and somewhat corrupt) administration.  Elda and her friends at university add a good heap of excitement to the campus, intentionally and not, making this another novel in Jones's excellent tradition of stories with deliciously complex, multi-layered plots with lots of dynamic and slightly mysterious characters.  If you enjoy fantasy novels and complex plots, this is definitely the book for you--though do read Dark Lord of Derkholm first.

Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Seven: The Weight of Feathers

As per a suggestion, I went ahead and read The Weight of Feathers, by Anna-Marie McLemore.  This recent YA novel follows two teenagers, Cluck Corbeau and Lace Paloma, who belong to rival families (think Romeo and Juliet).  Unlike Shakespeare's play, this story shares the narration between our two star-crossed protagonists, with the quotation in French (Cluck) or Spanish (Lace) informing the reader which character is narrating the chapter ahead.  At first The Weight of Feathers felt a bit too much like Romeo and Juliet for my taste, and each family's internal reinforcing of the evils wrought by the other family was a bit tiresome and obviously untrue or inaccurate.  However, as the story unfolded, it felt less like a modern remake of the play and more like an original story, becoming more nuanced and enjoyable.  I found myself really caring about both protagonists and wanting to find out what would happen to them; by the midpoint I could hardly put the book down.  However, I wasn't a huge fan of this story's version of magical realism (I might not like magical realism that much ever, actually).  I tend to prefer either realism or fantasy straight up, and I found the few magical aspects of this story somewhat distracting since they were unexplained (as they tend to be in works of magical realism).  Even so, I found this to be a compelling read, and if you like teen novels, or magical realism, or love stories, or award-winners (it was a finalist for the YA Morris Award for best debut author this year), then I'd recommend The Weight of Feathers.

Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Six: Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans

So, inspired by an upcoming trip to New Orleans, I decided I wanted to read some current travel-ish writing on the city, which I've visited briefly once before (and whose literature I took a superb undergrad class on).  Perusing my library's catalog, I found this title by Roy Blount Jr., whose name I recognized from listening to Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me, so I decided to check it out.  Feet on the Street certainly engages in the kind of fetishization of New Orleans that so much of the writing on that city I've read also employs--it seems rather inevitable, but it isn't unpleasant once you've resigned yourself to it.  This is certainly a rambling book, but that seems to capture the flavor of the city as Blount depicts it: laid-back, meandering (or at least the Mississippi River is, but how can one separate river from city in this case?), not driven by a point or a goal but by a certain joie de vivre.  Much time is spent discussing oysters, but this is an interesting (and short!) slice of life in New Orleans as one outsider has experienced it on his numerous visits there.  Also, it's made me want to re-read A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and The Awakening by Kate Chopin...  If you like contemporary travel writing, or books about New Orleans, I'd suggest Feet on the Street.