Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby.  I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book.  Here are my reads for November, 2013…

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt – Tartt’s highly anticipated, epic chunkster has been on my to-read list since before its release.  I was so excited to get it from the library, and it was just as fabulous as I expected it to be.  Theo Decker, Tartt’s protagonist, is a deeply troubled, flawed young man.  At the age of 13, Theo miraculously survived a terrorist attack that killed his mother in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Theo’s memories of his mother are tied to a small but ethereal Dutch master painting, The Goldfinch.  As Theo grows up, the painting draws him into a dangerous circle.  This was suspenseful, poignant and beautifully written.  My only criticism is that it was about 100 pages too long – but I didn’t even mind that, because I was so glad to spend more time in Theo’s dark, richly textured world.

The Pigeon Pie Mystery, by Julia Stuart – I loved Stuart’s previous book, The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise (see my review here), but I wasn’t as captivated by this one.  The characters were almost too quirky and the mystery – who poisoned a reviled member of the grace-and-favour community in Hampton Court Palace? – just didn’t grab me.  Still, it was a cute, fluffy read.

Sense and Sensibility, by Joanna Trollope – I keep reading Austen adaptations, hoping for something I’ll really enjoy, but I’ve never found it – until now.  Joanna Trollope’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility is spot-on, modern and compelling yet true to the spirit of the original.  Elinor Dashwood is a practical architecture student, Marianne a dreamy guitarist, their mother an artist with a flair for drama.  Trollope masterfully fiddles with the elements of Austen’s original that wouldn’t quite work today (explaining away the sisters’ disinheritance, for example) and weaves contemporary elements into the classic story.  This is Austen with iPods and Facebook, and it’s a hoot.

The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic, by Emily Croy Barker – I had been waiting and waiting and itching to get my hands on this, and… I was pretty disappointed.  This is the story of one Nora Fischer, an anxiety-ridden graduate student who stumbles into an alternate world, where she quickly falls in love and is married to a prince who turns out to be a monster.  After a terrifying encounter with her husband, Nora is rescued by the magician Aruendiel, and she soon finds that if she wants to survive in this treacherous world, she must learn to do magic too – because her mother-in-law, the fearsome Ilissa, will stop at nothing to get Nora back.  I thought this book would be a blast to read, but mostly, I was just bored.  Nora spends pages and pages doing things like mucking out horse stalls, peeling potatoes, and magically mending broken bowls.  Yawn.  Even when the action picked up toward the end of the book, I had no trouble putting down the book and walking away from the climactic scene.  And worse: despite the title of the book, Nora didn’t do much, or any, thinking – she was just a pawn in the war between Aruendiel and Ilissa, and a dull one at that.  The book desperately needed an editor’s red pen – if it had been about 250-300 pages shorter, it might have held my attention.  As it was… blah.

Poet’s Pub, by Eric Linklater – Saturday Keith is a terrible poet, but a terrific publican, as he discovers when his Oxford chum’s mother, Lady Mercy Cotton, asks him to manage the newest acquisition in her brewing and pub business.  Originally called The Downish Helican, Lady Mercy’s new property has long been known as “The Downy Pelican,” and when word gets out of its new landlord, it becomes simply “Poet’s Pub.”  The first half of the book is a slow and ponderous introduction to the Pelican and its residents, told through a series of vignettes.  Things pick up, though, with a theft and a kidnapping and a hilarious car chase involving a charabanc.  I’ve heard Poet’s Pub compared to a P.G. Wodehouse novel, and it’s easy to see parallels, although they have their differences.  This little-known classic made for some fantastic reading.

Royal Blood (Her Royal Spyness Mysteries #4), by Rhys Bowen – This installment of Lady Georgie’s adventures finds our heroine suddenly beset by the most unwelcome houseguests – her wishy-washy brother Binky and his odious wife Fig, who is expecting a new little Rannoch.  Georgie escapes via a convenient request by Queen Mary: represent the British Royal Family at the Transylvania wedding of Princess Maria Theresa of Romania and Prince Nicholas of Bulgaria.  The bride – who turns out to have been Georgie’s old school chum Moony Matty – has specially requested Georgie as a bridesmaid.  Georgie is relieved at the excuse to depart London, but when she arrives at Bran Castle, all is not as it should be.  The castle is terrifyingly gloomy and forbidding – even to one who grew up in the chilly environment of Rannoch Castle.  Strange visitors are popping out of paintings in Georgie’s room at midnight, the bride might be a vampire, Georgie has accidentally become engaged to Prince Siegfried (a.k.a. Fish-Face) and a reviled wedding guest is poisoned!  Georgie is going to need all her wits about her to dodge the descendants of Vlad the Impaler and catch the murderer before someone else is bumped off and the wedding is ruined!  A fun romp, as always – I love Georgie more and more with each adventure.

November was kind of a slow month for me, reading-wise.  I’ve had my attention pulled in a number of directions lately and I spent most of the month still in a bit of a reading rut.  Some of the books I picked up this month disappointed me, more so because I thought I’d love them.  But I did have some good reading moments – the second half of Poet’s Pub, in particular, and of course I always love a visit with Lady Georgiana.  December promises to be plenty of fun, as I’ve joined up with another of Beth’s readalongs – this one of Middlemarch, which I’ve been wanting to read for a long time.  Stay tuned for plenty of book chatter next month!