Did anyone start one yet?
Nope. Elendil’s Heir is not devoting sufficient time to his message board duties today!
Quite true, and mea culpa, fellow bibliophiles! Behold: Top Ten books you read in 2012 - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
I just finished Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C Gwynne. It was so good I then ordered and started The Comanche Empire (The Lamar Series in Western History) by Pekka Hamalainen. It’s a bit more scholarly and promises to be just as compelling. The thing is I live, drive through and vacation where all this took place, so it’s especially enjoyableto me both to know the landscape as i read the book and then be able to reflect back on a place’s history when I’m there. A fascinating and often horrific chapter in our westward expansion.
Coming up next are Killing Kennedy and then No Easy Day, both Christmas gifts.
I just finished reading it. The solution was a bit silly, but fortunately I didn’t think it was as silly on the same scale as “The Sign of Four” or “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, for example.
On New Year’s Day, I finished Rudyard Kipling’s autobiography, Something of Myself. It was only 120 pages, but it took me four days to read, I found that a lot of it really dragged. I did like the part about his wife hand-raising a lion cub, and it made me laugh in some places - like when he and his wife discovered that the house they bought many years ago and had been paying taxes on ever since actually belonged to someone else, and the only response they got was “You bought that from Steve, did you? Ah-ah, Steve! You hadn’t ought to ha’ bought from Steve.”
After that, I reread Magic’s Pawn by Mercedes Lackey. There are some pretty scathing reviews of this book, and I can’t really dispute what they say. There are indeed magical telepathic horses. It is rather contrived and cheesy. The protagonist is incredibly whiny and overflowing with angst, and he fits right into a lot of gay stereotypes. But what the hell, I still enjoyed it. It helps that the climax of the story is the protagonist finally pulling his head out of his ass, and he’s less unbearable in the rest of the series.
And today I started The Plague by Albert Camus. I couldn’t care less about existentialism, but I’m liking it so far anyway.
I got a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas! So I downloaded a couple of public-domain works like Huckleberry Finn.
Inspired by the movie, I’m reading Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (in English, of course). Also my sister-in-law gave me Wolf Hall which I’ve started, but I’ll probably not get much into it until I’ve finished Les Mis.
I also just finished Ken “Jeopardy Champ” Jenning’s book Because I Said So. He name drops Cecil Adams several times, as well as the Mythbusters crew.
That is awesome - now I want to re-read the book with the M-B type descriptions handy! 
Having grown up in a tourist town (tho not a terribly artsy one) - I definitely saw some familiar types among the denizens of Melancholy Cove. I honestly can’t remember what my first Moore book was - possibly Fluke, which explains my leaning towards his more message-laden novels.
I’ve started off 2013 with some non-fiction: ***Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power and Lies***by Ginger Strand. It reads a bit like a Sarah Vowell book - Strand explores the history and sociology of the Niagara Falls area, from Native American times to modern day. She covers its history of exploitation quite well - I was particularly fascinated by the struggle between the hydroelectric contingent and the nature lovers during the late 1800’s and their compromise. I wish there had been more info about Tesla’s involvement - tho I was surprised to learn that Frederick Law Olmstead played such a huge part in the development of Niagara Falls as a tourist location (and how much landscaping went into making it look so “natural”!)
And much like Vowell, Strand digs into the less savory elements of the area’s history - such as Love Canal, and the post Manhattan-Project radioactive dumping. She even veers off into a history of the Red Hat Club (they held a national convention at the Falls while Strand was there) as well as follows the remains of one of the original Niagara Falls tourist attractions - a museum of natural history - to its current owner in New York City. Strand puts a lot of herself into this book - discussing how she performed the research, as well as some of her own conclusions about the area’s current situation.
If you enjoy nonstandard place histories, where the author plays an active part in the narration (again, see Sarah Vowell), I can recommend this book.
I also read Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books by Aaron Lansky. This was an Amazon Kindle Daily Deal and I definitely got my $1.99 worth! Lansky provides some of his family background and his interest in the Yiddish language, which leads to saving the heritage of Yiddish literature before it disappears for good. Often, he and his volunteers literally went door to door, asking (usually aged) strangers for their books. This naturally took a lot of chutzpah - but the response was more often than not beyond positive. Lansky also discusses Yiddish authors and literature along the way, and piqued my interest in reading some of the books he mentions. It’s a very story-based book, wrapping up with the opening of the National Yiddish Book Center.
My knowledge/appreciation of Yiddish pretty much starts and ends with the likes of Mel Brooks and Fiddler on the Roof; but that didn’t affect my appreciation of Lansky’s efforts in the slightest. I think anyone with an interest in literary heritage and how culture is/is not transmitted to the next generation would find this book interesting. Recommended as a library read at least.
FWIW - it’s more than a “zombie romance novel” - tho the upcoming movie is being aggressively marketed that way! I reviewed it back in the Nov Whatcha Reading thread. It’s a very different take on zombies & YMMV, but I enjoyed it.
Yeah. The huge “paranormal romance” fad put me off it, but I was assured by someone who’s not usually into that that this is different. I’ve already promised to read it, so I’m stuck now, but I’m tentatively hopeful, especially since I’ve rarely encountered zombies in fiction, since I avoid horror (huge coward). So it’ll be new to me, if nothing else.
I should put that on my list. I read several of Sholem Aleichem’s book, which were the inspiration for Fiddler on the Roof, back in my early 20’s.
Finished Broken Blade and enjoyed it quite a bit. It is my favorite book of 2013 so far…
I have ordered the next in the series.
Started the latest Richard Castle - a gift for Christmas.
Finished The Narrows, by Michael Connelly. Excellent like the others. In this one, Connelly did an odd mix of first- and second-person viewpoints that worked – first person for Harry Bosch, second person for Rachel Walling and the villain. This is a very good series, and I’m plowing through it.
To that end, next up is Connelly’s next in the series: The Closers. In which Harry Bosch rejoins the LAPD as part of a special “cold case” squad.
I just finished John Dickson Carr’s The Hollow Man (sometimes titled ***The Three ***Coffins)- a locked-room murder mystery with a neat central puzzle but forgettable characters (including the sleuth Dr. Gideon Fell).
I’m now about 25% of the way into Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.
Finished the audiobook version of The Unseen Guest (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place #3) by Maryrose Wood, narrated by Katherine Kellgren. I’ll admit, I started this series basically because I adore Ms. Kellgren’s narrations, and the description of the first book in the series, The Mysterious Howling piqued my interest. However, it’s turning into quite an enjoyable series, with several overarching mysteries (What has happened to Miss Lumley’s parents? Why must she keep her hair dyed? Just what mysterious ailment does Lord Ashton suffer from?) along with strange occurrences within each volume. This time around, Lord Ashton’s widowed mother, Hortense, comes for a visit, along with her admirer/potential fiance, Admiral Faucet (pronounced Faw-SAY). The admiral’s racing ostrich, Bertha, gets loose, and the Incorrigible children are enlisted to assist in the search, as their previous residency in said woods and tracking skills are quite germane to the task. Along the way, Miss Lumley comes face to muzzle with Mama Woof, is involved in a seance to determine the late (?) Lord Ashton Sr’s wishes, and finds herself not-quite-pining for Simon Harley-Dickinson, the nice young man she met in London during the events of the previous book.
“Jane Eyre meets Lemony Snicket” seems somewhat apt (and stolen from another reviewer), but there’s even more fun with language and less doom and gloom than either of those. It may come off as too quirky and/or twee for some, but I’m finding this series quite delightful!
Remaining in the pseudo-Victorian vein and with wolfiness still very much in mind, I continued with Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series by reading Heartless, the 4th in the series. Lady Alexia Maccon despite prior vexations, is still determined to fulfill her role in the Shadow Cabinet of Queen Victoria. When she comes upon a threat against the Queen, she moves heaven and earth (and her remarkably gravid self) to track down the potential perpetrator. Will her preternatural abilities (along with her well-prepared parasol - the envy of any steampunk lady) and indomitable nature suffice to save the day? Will her research into the past be the undoing of her husband? And just how large is Lord Akeldama’s second best closet, anyways?
This is another series that has selective appeal - thankfully (IMHO) the bodice-ripping romantic elements have been toned down a bit from previous installments (possibly because Alexia is 8 months pregnant!) and the introduction of Madame Lefoux has upped the steampunk quotient - there’s a wonderful octomaton fighting machine that shows up in the last third of the novel. It’s a fun read with some novel (to me, at least) ideas about werewolf and vampire culture - we learn a bit more about the hives, for instance. There’s a multi-book story arc going on here as well; though some lingering questions from the previous volumes are answered.
I’d recommend both the above books to fans of historical urban fantasy - tho more “estate” fantasy in the case of the Incorrigible Children.
I started Robopocalypse yesterday, but I don’t think I’ll finish it, for the main and simple reason that I have four Joe Lansdale novels on deck. It’s like having to finish my okra before I can get to the chocolate cake! Anyway, it seems much like World War Z and I already read that. Points for a lovely cover.
I was too tired yesterday for Jared Diamond’s style of writing so I started Curses by Aaron Elkins.
The nice part of a short memory is I get to reread things after a couple years and it’s like reading the book new once more! 
Just finished Redemption Falls by Joseph O’Connor. It’s the second book in a projected trilogy but you don’t have to read the first (Star of the Sea) – and I didn’t, because I didn’t know until the author’s note at the end that there was an earlier book.
I almost dumped this one early on. It starts with a young woman, Eliza Mooney, trekking from Louisiana to Canada, searching for her younger brother. The Civil War has just ended. This first chapter is all impressions, not quite surreal but almost. I wanted something to happen, not descriptions of roads and trees and sky and rocks.
I’m so glad I kept reading. This will be an all-time top ten. The main characters are an Irish rebel who became a Union General, then Governor of a western territory; his estranged wife; an escaped slave; the searching Eliza; a cartographer in love with the governor’s wife; a particularly ferocious outlaw gang; and the young boy Eliza searches for. It’s told through newspaper articles, letters, trial transcripts and official reports, and journals.
It’s not about the war so much as the aftermath. It’s also about marriage and greed and relationships and destructive secrets. There’s a goodly amount of violence, so much that you wonder that anyone managed to survive those awful years.
Next up is Ross Poldark by Winston Graham. I just finished watching the series on Netflix, and I need more Cornwall.
I’ve been reading Warm Bodies all evening. Wow, it’s definitely unique. It just struck me that this is the first zombie fiction I’ve ever consumed, and so I’m not having to unlearn any tropes - I think from now on whenever I see/read about zombies, I’m going to be curious how they feel about what they are.
I finished Kevin Brownlow’s How It Happened Here, about the low-budget independent film he and another teenager filmed over the span of eight years, 1956-64, about a what-if German invasion of Great Britain during World War II, It Happened Here. Amazing story of determination and ingenuity.
I also skimmed James Bissland’s Blood, Tears & Glory, about Ohio’s role in the Civil War, for a speech I’ll be giving next month on Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. Not a bad book, but not a great one, either.
Next up: June Thomson’s latest collection of almost-as-good-as-Conan Doyle pastiches, The Secret Archives of Sherlock Holmes.