Carol Carnac, Crossed Skis. Kindle. Look, even for me this had a very large and not very differentiated cast. I like Carnac, who is also E.C.R. Lorac, and the skiing party mystery had its charms, but what I really want most out of mysteries is characterization, and this was more puzzle than characterization.
Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage. Kindle. This, on the other hand, was lots of vividly sketched (though not deep) characters in Miss Marple’s village running around being people at each other. I think it’s the last of hers that I haven’t read yet that the library has in digital form. It was a good one to go out on.
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose. Reread. Well, this was where I’d left it, more or less. This is the sort of book that’s absolutely why I only sort of behave as though stories should be written as short as they’ll go, I don’t actually believe it, because no one could possibly argue that the descriptions, the lists, or even the philosophical arguments couldn’t be trimmed a little, and yet it is the book it is because they weren’t. I do think that writing it in a substantially male-only setting set it up to age better than a lot of work of its era.
John M. Ford, Heat of Fusion and Other Stories. Reread. Every reread there are small details I’ve forgotten and large feelings I’ll have, though not always the same large feelings. This time “Erase/Record/Play” was the one that made me go off thinking a lot. Next time something different.
James Alistair Henry, Pagans. I loved this. It’s an alternate history mystery of the “cross-cultural pair of cops” format, like if Bon Cap Bad Cop was set in an England where the Norman Conquest never happened and Christianity’s toehold in Europe was fairly minimal. I hope he writes more like this, or more like something.
Gwyneth Jones, Big Cat and Other Stories. My favorite story here was from the Bold As Love universe, which remains far and away my favorite thing Jones has ever done.
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea (reread) and No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters. Kindle. The second volume was actually a great deal less of thinking about what matters than some of Le Guin’s other essay collections. This was mostly collected blog posts. Fine for that but not more. I hadn’t reread A Wizard of Earthsea in ages, but it continues to be like a Shaker chair, simple lines that do what they do admirably.
Ken Liu, The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories. I tend to like Ken’s long-form work better than his short-form work (do I want to reread his big fantasy series: yes absolutely), but the middle of this volume was so lovely, definitely worth having around.
Jenn Lyons, The Sky on Fire. If you’d like a ripping dragon adventure yarn, this is exactly that, with modern sensibilities so you don’t have to worry about the sexism (racism, homophobia, etc.) fairy showing up and making the fun evaporate. Several people I love are getting this for Christmas.
Val McDermid, 1979. Kindle. What an interesting structure for a mystery series. The detective is an investigative journalist, and the books are set ten years apart, with McDermid’s experiences as a young Scottish lesbian journalist informing the shape and texture of the entire thing.
Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz. Reread. Another one where setting it in a largely single-sex setting has probably improved how the book has aged. It’s not perfect, but it’s very readable prose and a good snapshot of an era. (Not the era of its setting, the anxieties of the era of its writing. But that’s a very useful thing for a book to do.) Post-apocalyptic monasticism develops around what limited resources people have.
Hope Mirrlees, Collected Poems. As much as I love Lud-in-the-Mist, these poems were very not for me–they were going in a direction of a kind of formality/formalism that I don’t much care for and away from the poetry of the time I liked a lot. Well, now we know.
P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane. Reread. This is like the children’s book equivalent of a novella: it’s probably a novelette in length, but unlike the Poppins books I remembered better, it was just one story, a Midsummer story, that was a jumble of previous characters and very much had the feel of Mary Poppins Helps Pamela Travers Pay Her Bills.
Anthony Trollope, The Small House at Allington. Kindle. This was one of the least offensive Trollope novels I’ve ever read, but of the ones that didn’t offend me enough to just stop reading them, it’s also not one of the more interesting. All sorts of things are summarized with the comment that he doesn’t have enough time to go into them here, but considering what he makes the time to go into, both here and elsewhere, this is not satisfying for me.
Patricia C. Wrede, Calling on Dragons. Reread, Kindle. This is very much a bridge book between the first two and the last one, not something I’d recommend reading as a stand-alone. Start at the beginning before you move on to the blue flying donkeys.
Jane Yolen, Sister Light, Sister Dark and White Jenna. Rereads, Kindle. I read these when they were new and I was small, and then not since, so my memories of them were very vague. I definitely did not remember the innuendo about the shadow sisters! I think it’s interesting that she handled the shadow sisters so precisely that there were a million possible questions about them but also utter clarity that that was not the story she was telling.