52 book challenge? oh, yeah!

Well, Timothy has inspired me to take up the 52 book challenge for the National Year of Reading.
Or, more accurately to blog about all the books I read this year towards my goal. I used to keep track of my reading in a little journal, then I started using goodreads.com and then I started setting myself a challenge, which I failed to make last year because trying to average 4 books a week was silly.
Now, one book a week is a seemly number, I must admit…. and yet I am not a seemly person.
Three books a week is about right, so I shall see your challenge, Timothy, but for my own evil purposes multiple it by three (I wanted to say I would cube it, because it sounds cooler, but that would be 140,608 books, which is just ridiculous).

Anyway, the reviewing of said books is the real point, and the books that I read in January, in no particular order, were:

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders
Oh, this was so much fun. I have read other books about “great” Victorian murders, and I was inspired to read this one after writing about severed heads here on book coasters, as one does, but what I really enjoyed about this book was the way the author showed the influence on the stage productions and literary works of the time and subsequently. My old pal, Dickens, and his old pal Wilkie Collins, are all over this book like a rash. If you have a macabre turn of mind and relish the literary conventions of Victorian Gothic and Melodrama, then you really should read this book.

Kick-Ass by Mike Millar
Ah, graphic novels – they are such rich seams for movie producers to mine. I haven’t seen the adaptation of this comic,but if it is even one third as violent as the comic then it must be very, very violent indeed. Showing how an excellent origin story and some degree of actual skill makes for a more effective vigilante, this comic also asks a question that I’m surprised has not been asked more – “Why do people want to be Paris Hilton and nobody wants to be Spiderman?”

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos
I read a review of this new teen-aimed novel late last year, which said it was the best things since ever. I’m not going that far, partly because it can’t quite decide if it’s a coming-of-age memoir, a comedic historical novel, a murder mystery, or all three. It’s certainly quirky, with feisty senior citizens galore, and some genuine laugh out loud moments, but I found some of the underlying historical American politics obscure, with all the hearkening back to the founding of Norvelt, under the wing of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the better, arguably more socialist, days that the town had seen.

Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles by Kim Newman
This recent release is a very clever, very amusing playing with the Holmes canon, combining them with other literary references and allowing the reader insight into the objectionable viewpoint of delightful anti-hero Colonel Sebastian “Basher” Moran – who fills the rather more violently active role of Dr Watson to Professor Moriarty’s Holmes. The framing story, and the academic footnotes, are enjoyable in their own right. Anyone with a fondness for Holmes should try this one, but, as the title implies, be ready for witty literary references galore.

Temptation by Nora Roberts
Some things don’t change at all – i.e. the core plot for romance novels – and other things instantly date a story. For example, the complete lack of mobile phones in this 1987 romance amused me, because several of the pivotal plots points to throw the hero and heroine together required the heroine to go chasing off after an overprivileged teenager, which would have been rather lost if she’d been able to text her. All the same, Roberts does her usual great job of conjuring believable characters in a place that feels real.

Married by Morning by Lisa Kleypas
This is the fourth book in the Hathaways series, and I was a little surprised to realise I have read the first three. And there’s another one, for the last of the siblings. And I have no doubt, whatsoever, she will also find love. The Hathaway’s are an unconventional lot (neatly sidelining the need for too much historical accuracy in their language or behaviour) and, while there are no surprises in the plot, or its inevitable outcome, this is a romance that does just what it says on the package….

Super-cute Felt by Laura Howard and Weird Wabbit and Friends: How to make cool stuff from felt by Vasanti Unka
Well, I have these crafty moments…. and felt is such a satisfying medium…. and these are, as they say on the covers both super cute and weird. Although they are neither as cute nor as weird as my felt zombies book… but if you happen to like crafting things out of matted wool, they’re well worth a look.

The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman
Did I read this all those years ago when it came out? I was sure I had, but when I borrowed it I realised that, in actual fact, I had only read Book III, illustrated by Charles Vess, before. And it’s worth reading for that book alone, because Vess and Gaiman work so well together, especially when they are playing in Faerieland. The story does have a bit of a sweeping, DC Universe (TM) Ghosts of Christmas past, present and future feel to it (if you were to add in a ghost for Faerie), and a classic bildungsroman structure for young Timothy Hunter’s introduction to the existence of magic courtesy of the Trenchcoat Brigade.

Rotters and Squatters 1820-1850 by Jackie French
Why do the histories of other countries always seem more exciting than our own? This is a neat little book, aimed squarely at the youth market for whom the Horrible Histories are compulsive reading (I have a 9 year old son – I know this thing of which I speak). It certainly makes Australian history more accessible for kids, breaking it down into little digestible chunks – or as digestible as the transition from penal colony to free settlement can be. Maybe they would also benefit from a close reading of A.D. Hope’s Australia, which includes this delightful piece:

And her five cities, like five teeming sores,
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state
Where second-hand Europeans pullulate
Timidly on the edge of alien shores.

Pullulate! We just don’t use words like that often enough.

The Girl in the Steel Corset (Steampunk Chronicles, #1) by Kady Cross
I like the idea of Steampunk, but I don’t think I’ve read enough to really know the genre. Now, does that make it my fault when reading this book I had the impression that characters were being sketched in and I was supposed to just nod and read on, inserting appropriate genre stereotype? Hmmmm. Yes, it is a YA/teen book, but I’ve never thought that was an excuse to skimp on characterisation or depth of setting. Am I being too harsh? There are certainly plenty of very positive reviews for this book online = many, many cups of teas. One review, by Kat on bookthingo, however, manages to understand my difficulty with the characters immediately – for underworld figure Jack Dandy I should insert Captain Jack Sparrow, and for angst-ridden, part-mechanised Sam just substitute Wolverine. It all makes so much more sense!

The Dreaming, Vol. 1, 2 and 3 by Queenie Chan
Queenie Chan is one of the authors coming to Literati on the Gold Coast in May, and I thought I would start reading some of the author’s books with Queenie’s impressive three-part Gothic Manga. With echoes of classic Australian story Picnic at Hanging Rock, this macabre tale of a haunted boarding school, isolated by its bush location, and seething with rumours and superstitions is genuinely creepy. I’m not the hugest fan of the manga style, but here its more caricutured moments are toned down, and the tension is allowed to build to a very satisfying conclusion. Despite a few shaky plot points, this is good atmospheric horror.

So that’s 12 books for January, unless I count the graphic novels as separate books – but since they were published in one volume, it would be cheating to do that…
February, then. Read on Macduff, and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! Enough’!