Entry tags:

books

June books

Diane Duane, Dark Mirror
Peter Costello and Peter van de Kamp, Flann O'Brien: an illustrated biography
Diane Duane, The Wounded Sky (It's not that this one's bad in itself, it's just that irritation at Duane's recurring entropy-religion thing (and her only ever having done one conlang, reusing it for Darthene dragons, New York cat wizards, Romulans...) overcame my enjoyment. A pity, because if this had been the first book of hers I'd read, I think I'd really have liked it.)
Oliver Postgate, Seeing Things (lovely.)
Lawrence Watt-Evans, The Blood of a Dragon
Hazel Holt, No Cure for Death
Virginia Woolf, Granite and Rainbow
John M. Ford, Final Reflection
Margery Allingham, The Beckoning Lady
Martha Wells, Reliquary
Garth Nix, Across The Wall
Chris Wooding, The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray
John Thorne, The Pot On the Fire
Philip Pullman, Northern Lights
Georgette Heyer, The Toll-gate
Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass (I remember being disappointed with the ending last time I read this, but this time I thought it worked well. Dunno what's changed.)
Georgette Heyer, Cotillion
Dave Barry's Gift Guide
Rachel Bowlby, Carried Away: the invention of modern shopping
John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, The QI Book of Animals
Dave Barry Turns 40
Garth Nix, Lady Friday
Katherine Kurtz, Saint Patrick's Gargoyle (I was lent this. A reasonably interesting short story about an old man helping gargoyles defeat a demon, puffed up to book length with many lengthy infodumps about Dublin architecture and Catholic minutiae.)
Russell Ash and Brian Lake, Bizzarre Books (has one of those marvellous indexes you can just sink in to. As, for example,

• Dog, see Cancer; Shag
• Dollyland, War In, 170
• Dope, Careers in, 63
• Drudgery, Blessed Be, 169
• Dull Life, see Romance
• Dumps, 173
• Dung Fungi, 193
• Ear Rims, Hairy, 16
• Egglaying, see Helium)

Hillary Spurling, Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book
Paul Jennings, Next To Oddliness
Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need
Qiu Xiaolong, Red Mandarin Dress
A. Uderzo, Le Grand Fosse
Cleolinda Jones, Movies in Fifteen Minutes (genuinely laugh-out-loud. See m15m for examples.)