Mirage (Book #39)

Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt (Nina Burleigh, 2007) covers much the same ground as Juan Cole's Napoleon's Egypt. Burleigh's is the more accessible of the two--shorter and more conversational in tone--and it's more focused on straight history than on drawing parallels to current events. (Which is not to say such parallels are ignored entirely.)

I came out of this book liking Napoleon even less than I did before, but full of admiration for the brave young scientists who kept exploring and drawing and measuring in the face of direst adversity.

Mystic Horseman (Book #38)

Mystic Horseman (Kathleen Eagle, 2008) is a follow-up to last year's Ride a Painted Pony. Dillon Black, a Lakota rancher/cowboy/part-time casino worker who wants to start a horse camp for at-risk Lakota youth, gets help from his ex-wife, who uses her TV connections to bring a reality show team in to build the facility. As always, Eagle brings Indian Country authentically to life (at least, it feels authentic to me as an outsider, but one who tries to pay attention to these things). But this particular book had so many character arcs and plot threads going that I never fully connected to any of them--old loves, new loves, coming to terms with possibly fatal illnesses and one's children's sexual orientation, etc. It would've taken a much longer book to do all the conflicts justice, IMHO.

1 Dead in Attic (Book #37)

1 Dead in Attic (Chris Rose, 2006) is a collection of the post-Katrina columns Chris Rose wrote for the Times-Picayune in 2005. And it made me alternately tear up and laugh aloud on the city bus these past few days.

I'm appalled all over again at the sheer level of incompetence and negligence in the government's response to the storm. This is the best my country can do? Really? But I'm pulling hard for New Orleans. It's not my city--I've never even been there, and I'm too much a creature of mountains and cool weather to imagine making it my home. But I completely understand the fierce love its people feel for it, because there's no place like it on earth, and the world would be poorer without it. And I'm fierce myself about Seattle and Philadelphia and London, so I know what it means to have a place in your blood.

Wellington - Commander (Book #36)

Yes, yes, it's another Wellington book. Am I obsessed? Maybe a little. But Wellington plays a key role in my alternative history WIP, so I have to learn everything I can about the man.

Wellington - Commander: The Iron Duke's Generalship (Paddy Griffith, ed., 1986) is a series of essays that got its start at a symposium in the Waterloo Room at Apsley House (the Duke's London home). I'm jealous--I wanna go to Apsley House and schmooze with military historians! (I'm such a geek. SUCH a geek.)

Anyway, I didn't get startling new revelations from this book, but the variety of perspectives on what made Wellington tick made for intriguing reading. I'm going to look for Correlli Barnett's bio of Napoleon. His essay claimed that Napoleon's behavior in the Waterloo campaign wasn't that out-of-character--that he made similar mistakes in earlier campaigns and was bailed out by a combination of luck, failure of nerve and breakdown of alliances among his enemies, and the fact none of the generals he faced before were of Wellington's caliber. That's definitely a revisionist view, but this armchair military historian has never been able to figure out why Napoleon is supposed to be the best EVAH, so I'd love to read a historian who agrees with me!

Which ones would you marry?

Earlier today a discussion board I frequent was talking about the new Sense and Sensibility adaptation that just aired on PBS. There was general agreement that Elinor gets the short end of the stick compared to Marianne, because Colonel Brandon is more of a prize than Edward Ferrars. I can't really argue with that, though it kinda gives me the creeps that Col. Brandon is so much older than Marianne and that he apparently falls for her because she's so much like his childhood sweetheart. On the whole, though I love the book, I don't envy Elinor or Marianne. Neither Edward or Brandon is the Austen husband I would choose.

Whom would I choose, you may ask? Well, I'm happy to tell you...

1. Captain Wentworth from Persuasion. He's a self-made man who won his fortune through courage and initiative as a naval officer. And that's sexy--both the self-made part and the naval part. In real life I'm glad my husband is a civilian, because who knows how many Iraq deployments he would've had by now otherwise? But if I'm picking imaginary husbands from 200 years ago, I'm free to indulge my love of men in uniform.

2. Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey. He's intelligent, witty, and has a well-developed sense of the ridiculous, a valuable quality in a husband whatever the era.

3. Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. As Elizabeth ultimately concludes, sure, he's proud, but he has a right to be. He's brainy, ethical, and generous, and when he realizes he needs to change, he's capable of doing it.

And those are the only Austen men I'd marry. I'm not nice enough for Mr. Bingley--I think his sunny disposition would exhaust me. Edmund Bertram is a prig. Edward Ferrars, though I admire his principles, always strikes me as a nonentity. As for Mr. Knightley and Col. Brandon, I'm fine with age differences when the parties meet as adults on more or less equal ground, but that's not the case for Mr. Knightley and Emma or Marianne and Brandon, so I can't see either man as any kind of romantic ideal.

What about you? Which Austen men would you wed?

Breathe My Name (Book #35)

Breathe My Name (RA Nelson, 2007) is another of my occasional forays into YA fiction. The narrator/heroine Frances comes from as traumatic a past as one could imagine--her mentally unbalanced mother murdered her younger sisters and tried to kill her too. Frances was adopted by normal, if overprotective parents, and almost a decade later is trying to live a normal, anonymous life as a high school junior in a small town. But then she learns her mother has been released to a lower-security mental institution and may be looking for Frances so she can finish what she started. There's the requisite strong-willed best friend and sensitive, quirky boyfriend to help Frances sort out her past and stay safe in the present. It's well-written and kept me turning the pages, though I thought the resolution was possibly a little too tidy.

A Lady's Secret (Book #34)

Not much time to do a review of A Lady's Secret (Jo Beverley, 2008) because I'm tired, tired, tired. But suffice it to say I read it earlier than I'd planned because I spotted the book distributor stocking it at my local QFC yesterday. I was there buying food because I'm recovering from a nasty bug and have been home sick for days, and I really wanted a book that I knew I could trust to be well-written and lovely to curl up on the couch with while I rested. And Jo Beverley delivered as always. It's one of her Georgian romances in the Malloren world, but with a bit of a different feel--it's a road romance, set largely in France, with a rakish hero and a heroine with a checkered past and an uncertain future.