Capsule Reviews of Books I Read Pre-, During, and Post-vacation

The World According to Garp, by John Irving

This was, I hate to admit it, my big reading accomplishment of the summer. The first 300 pages consisted of me putting the book down at intervals and conemplating hurling it off various Prince Edward Island cliffs. Then people started dying, pathetically and gruesomely, and losing various limbs and other appendages, and it actually became touching and moving and sad. But there was too much unnecessary dismembering and extramarital affairs for my liking, and for the effort and plot twists, I'd take Dickens or Eliot any day.

Tara Road, by Maeve Binchy

A complete gem of a book, sweet and knowing and wise and full of that irish lilt and yarn-spinning. I thought it was an excellent portrait of the changing economy of Ireland, the way we cope with tragedy, and the funny ways life has of healing us. As a portrait of tragic death and extramarital affairs, I'd honestly say that although not done in the same tour-de-force way as J.I, I was more affected and absorbed by Binchy's more conventional, gentle, fairy tale.

Five Little Pigs (aka murder in retrospect) by Agatha Christie

The Dame at her best. A hot-tempered artists, his long-suffering wife, his coterie of friends, his mistress, his art... and Hercule Poirot. Hot stuff.

The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery

Lucy Maudlin's only book written for an adult audience: it has a hint of scandalous gothic thriller a la Louisa May Alcott pre-Little Women, a strong dose of irreverent humor, some romance, and the rapturous descriptions of nature we know and love in our Lucy Maud.

Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, by L.M. Montgomery

The best re-re-re-re-re-read ever, excepting the Emily books.

The Happy Prince (story) and the Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

The first's a sweet, sad, sentimental, parable
The second we all know-- witty, surreal, morally dubious, and terribly clever. And I'm only halfway done because I've seen it put on as a play and I can't bring myself to move forward.

The Sunday Philosophy Club, Friends Lovers, Chocolate, and The Right Attitude to Rain (fothcoming, thanks for the Galley swvl) by A. McCall Smith

Isabel Dalhousie is a Scottish philosopher-ess, and the descriptions of Edinburgh, the moral quandaries therein, and the man-eating delicatessen owner, Cat, are all fantastic, clever, tender and amusing... a worthy euro-peer to Mma Ramotsowe...