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Books to Start Off 2018 |
Best Mystery
✱A Murder of Magpies - Judith Flanders
Samantha Clair, British book editor, gets involved in murder. I love this book. I actually read the second in the series first and ran right out to the library to get this one. Sam has that funny self-deprecating English voice and the characters are distinctive. And you get to see inside book publishing.
Best Urban Fantasy
✱ One Damned Thing After Another - Jodi Taylor
Addicting, absolutely addicting. What if time travel was real. And a bunch of academics controlled it? Maybe sort of dull? Hah!
Best Non Fiction
✱Grandma Gatewood's Walk - Ben Montgomery
Best How-To
✱Making an Impression - Gennine Zlatkis
How to make stamps and then stamp them on everything. I follow her on Instagram. I love her work and her pictures of life in New Mexico. It's a lovely antidote to the scenery here in the Pacific Northwest. And her art is fabulous.
Mystery
Fantasy
✱ The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett
Fiction
✱ Vinegar Girl - Anne Tyler
✱ Gold of Our Fathers - Kwei Quartey
Police procedural set in Ghana. Chief Inspector Darko Dawson
solves murders in the gold mining region of Ghana. Love the sense of place and
the different cultures.
✱A Strange Scottish Shore - Juliana Gray
Don't you love finding a new author? Emmeline Truelove travels through time to Orkney to save her true love (see what I did there?) Lord Silverton. Second in the series.
Fantasy
✱ A Green and Ancient Light - Frederic S. Durbin
Fantasy set in WWII English countryside. A little boy is sent to
his grandmother's during the Blitz. Mythology and humanity intersect in this
lovely tale. My only complaint is there are no chapters, just one narrative
making it hard to find that stopping place when reading in bed.
✱ The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett
I had never read this, though I've heard about it and how great Terry Prachett is. I tried one of the Disc world books and just couldn't get into it. But this book is terrific. Little blue men in kilts!
Fiction
✱ Vinegar Girl - Anne Tyler
I read her first book, If
Morning Ever Comes, when I was
a teenager. She has a distinctive voice that makes me feel slightly
disconnected from the characters. She writes cool. Nevertheless, I find her
compulsively readable. This is her take on The Taming of the Shrew. I read
it in one sitting.
✱ The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr a novel -
Frances Maynard
Young woman who has never lived on her own learns how to cope
after her mother falls and goes into care. Excellent book. Builds slowly,
revealing the process of learning to remake childhood assumptions with adult
eyes. And the terrible things we do in the name of protecting those we love.
Non Fiction
✱The Earth Moved - Amy Stewart
I have had two worm bins. I loved my worms. Now we have curbside
food waste pick-up. Who knew earthworms were so fascinating? Charle Darwin for
one. And who knew all our earthworms are invaders from Europe? And that
they cause problems in native forests? An absolutely wonderful read.