SusannaG - Confessions of a Crazy Cat Lady
Just another GR refugee. Other than that, I had a stroke in 2004, and read almost anything I can get my hands on, though I have a particular weakness for history, mystery, and historical fiction.
Currently reading
Best Reads of 2013
The Five-Star Reads:
How to Create the Perfect Wife - a wealthy lunatic obsessed with the educational theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau kidnaps two orphans from the Foundling Hospital to raise one of them to be his wife. Hilarity ensues.
North and South - a novel by Mrs. Gaskell, and written at about the same time Dickens was also taking on industrialization, which she tackles here.
March - Geraldine Brooks tackles the American Civil War by looking at the absent father of the March girls in Little Women.
Salt, Sugar, Fat - you do not want to know how much of these substances the packaged food industry is stuffing into their products. Really, you don't. The science was fascinating, the ethics appalling.
Dominion - In a 1952 where Hitler won, Britain is fascist, and a power struggle is expected in Germany, where Hitler is believed to be dying. Meanwhile in England, a man working for the Resistance at the Dominions Office has terrible choices to make.
Maddaddam - the final volume of Margaret Atwood's dystopian trilogy.
To Kill a Mockingbird - a reread. I picked this up for the first time in about 30 years, and it held up beautifully. I had forgotten how funny it was.
Honorable Mention:
The Revenant of Thraxton Hall (a paranormal historical mystery)
The Pericles Commission (a historical mystery set in ancient Athens)
Elizabeth of York (biography of Mrs. Henry VII)
Winter King (not quite a bio, not quite a study of the whole reign, but it's about Henry VII)
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (a Flavia de Luce, and a very strong one)
The Man in the High Castle (the book that made Philip K. Dick's reputation)
The Disappearing Spoon (the periodic table is fun)
The Age of Wonder (the Romantics discover science)
The Time-Traveler's Guide to Medieval England (the Elizabethan one is good, but this is better)
The Endurance (I should have read it in July, this book is so cold.)
Justice Hall (And several others in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, which are nearly as strong.)
And only a couple of real turkeys! A very good year, all told.
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