Top Ten Books of 2008, and a contest!

This was a tough one! I read so many great books this year, and I chose the top ten not on any official scale of literary quality but just on what lingered with me the longest — which books, when I scrolled back through the year’s reading list, evoked a reaction of “Yes! That one [...]

An Imperfect Librarian, by Elizabeth Murphy

Here’s another review that starts with a “yes, I know the author” disclaimer. I used to work for Elizabeth Murphy a few years ago, when I was in grad school. I was her research assistant.  She often talked, then, about the novel she was working on.  But she was so completely dedicated to and involved [...]

Searching for God Knows What, by Donald Miller

Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What begins with an anecdote that sums up some of what I like best and what I like least in his writing.  In this opening story, Miller goes to a  Christian writers’ workshop to get some tips on the novel he’s working on.  His analysis of the other conference [...]

The Rose of York trilogy by Sandra Worth

Reading two-thirds of Sandra Worth’s perfectly acceptable trilogy on the life of Richard III (I read the first two volumes: Love and War and Crown of Destiny) didn’t reveal anything that’s not already familiar to any good Ricardian.  Worth’s Richard III is strikingly different from Shakespeare’s hunchbacked villain, but familiar to many readers of twentieth-century [...]

Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden

Through Black Spruce, this year’s Giller Prize winner, is a powerful and moving novel, though I didn’t find it as earth-shattering as Boyden’s debut, Three Day Road.  Through Black Spruce is in some sense a sequel to Three Day Road; one of its two narrators is Will Bird, son of Xavier Bird from Three Day Road.  [...]

Hold on to Your Kids, by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate

After reading Gabor Mate’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, I was interested enough to seek out some of his other work.  As a parent, I was naturally drawn to Hold On To Your Kids, which he co-wrote with Dr. Gordon Neufeld, who in fact turned out to be the primary researcher behind this book.
 
Neufeld’s and [...]

The Lace Reader, by Brunonia Barry

The Lace Reader is one of those intriguing novels where revelations made near the end of the book make you question all the conclusions you’ve drawn while reading it.  But I really shouldn’t have been surprised, because we are warned from the beginning that Towner Whitney is going to be an unreliable narrator. Even her name, [...]

The Other Queen, by Philippa Gregory

The Other Queen tells the well-known story of Mary, Queen of Scots and her cousin Elizabeth I.  Gregory’s version focuses on the first years of Mary’s long imprisonment in England, and her relationship with her reluctant jailers, George, Earl of Shrewsbury and his strong-willed wife, Bess of Hardwick. 
 
The novel alternates points of view between [...]