Adventures in the Mouse House

I am so far behind with this.

45. The Golden Age: The Spanish Empire of Charles V by Hugh Thomas

The second part of Thomas' history of the Spanish empire. Where Rivers of Gold was dense but fascinating, this was just dense. This was a surprise - as I mentioned in my review of Rivers of Gold, I've read some of his earlier books and they've always been readable.

Somehow he made the discovery and conquest of Peru not that exciting, ditto the first voyage down the Amazon.

I struggled with this till the end because it was full of things I wanted to know, but it just got too bogged down in names and backgrounds in Spain of all the characters. Also it doesn't help that my stupid brain has to pronounce all the Spanish words in Spanish, but unlike French (which happens in the lizard brain), this makes me slow right down.

I learned a lot, it was just hard. Now I'm sitting here eyeing the last volume with suspicion - I got the first two from the library, but as they didn't have the third one yet I bought it.

46. In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami

No, not the cool Murakami (who I went off some years ago, law of diminishing returns and all that, but who is at least sound in principle). Last month's bibliogoths book.

It was short and easy to read, but nothing about it appealed to me. If he was making any statements about Japanese society he was doing it with a sledgehammer. I've already read a lot about Japan's lost decade in the 90s, so it wasn't even like I was learning anything. It rambles and doesn't make sense.


47. Exploring Old Highway Number 1 West: Canada's Route 66 by J Clark Saunders

Bought this in the gift shop of the Moose Jaw tunnels mainly for the photos, which are superb. I feel like a bad Canadian, but I didn't know what a recent creation the Trans Canada Highway is, and that it's changed its route over the years. This book is a lovely nostalgia trip from the Ontario/Manitoba border to Victoria, BC. I've been on all of it over the years, but only as a means to an end. I now want to do it as a longer road trip taking time to see all the really nifty things along the way (which you sort of forget are really pretty or really cool because you live there, and because you have standard Prairie memories of your dad shoving the whole family in the car and driving for 12 hours, so that if you did see something cool, it's not like you ever would have been allowed to stop and look).

I highly recommend this book. The photos, as I said, are gorgeous, and the text is evocative of a Western Canada which I am barely old enough to have known.

48. The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

I bought the third volume when Jasper was speaking earlier this year. He was a guest at BristolCon in October so I grabbed the first and second books off the Forbidden Planet stall so I could get him to sign them (so I could tell him how much I love the line "honour is what happens when you weaponise manners".

I know they're aimed at the lower end of the YA spectrum, but I love these books so much. They are very funny, there is adventure and peril and some quite dark moments too.

49. The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse

Of Mosse's previous work, I thought Labyrinth and Citadel are OK, and I loved Sepulchre and The Winter Ghosts, so I got this one from the library just in case.

I really rated this one. It's set in Sussex in 1912. The title character lives in isolation with her father, who used to be a famous taxidermist, but taxidermy has gone out of fashion and there's little work any more. She had a head injury when she was 12 and can't remember anything about her life before they moved to Fishbourne. Then the past catches up with them.

The actual plot and back story are OK, but nothing to write home about. However, the atmosphere is something else. It's low-level creepy right from the beginning and the suspenseful bit are well written, and the storm and floods which are the climax of the book are incredibly real. Maybe because we just lived through a winter of similar floods, but still. Also it was really easy going and I finished it really quickly. Definitely recommended.

69. The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse

This is more of a novella than a novel, about a young man who gets stranded in the Pyrenees in 1928, and, when invited to a village celebration in the place he is stranded, stumbles upon an entirely different village celebration, straight out of the 14th century.

It's set in one of my favourite places in the world, the Ariège valley.  It starts in a place I know well, Tarascon-sur-Ariège.  I've not been in winter, but her sense of place is quite wonderful.

I was less keen on the main character.  He's a man who was too young to fight in WWI, who lost his brother and has never got over this loss, and has spent a lot of time in psychiatric hospitals.  He's kind of annoying, even though he redeems himself at the end.
The theme is supposed to be that he's that way because his brother was the only person who ever loved him, his parents having been distant, so that Repression is Bad, MMmkay.  Yes, we know that, can we move on.  

Overall more good than bad, but really I'm just waiting for Citadel, the final instalment of the trilogy started with Labyrinth to come out.