2010/83: The Mermaid Chair -- Sue Monk Kidd

The Mermaid Chair -- Sue Monk Kidd

We sat in a globe of light, the smell of burning everywhere, and no one considered how a fire blazing right there beside the water might affect a woman for whom fire and water meant nothing but tragedy and death, a woman who could not look seawater in the face, who'd boarded up her fireplace. We were blinded by nostalgia for the woman she'd been before all of that. It makes me weep now to think how hard Mother must have been trying that night. (p. 243)

( slightly spoilery review )

2010/84: The Crossing Places -- Elly Griffiths

The Crossing Places -- Elly Griffiths

"Marshland is very important in prehistory ... It's a kind of symbolic landscape. We think that it was important because it's a link between the land and the sea, or between life and death."
Nelson snorts. "Come again?" (p.24)

( non-spoilery review )

2010/85: The Amethyst Child -- Sarah Singleton

The Amethyst Child -- Sarah Singleton

"I shall tell you what Amethyst children are like ... and you tell me if this matches up. First of all, they feel out of place. They see the world in a different way to ordinary people and they are so acutely aware of the problems we face they want to be part of changing it. They are creative people who have difficulty fitting in with anyone else and they have different aspirations. They don't like conforming ... they have psychic and spiritual powers ..." (p.34-5)

( non-spoilery review )

Books 2010

I think I can safely say that I'm not going to read anything else this year: I haven't actually read a book since the end of November, and I've only read six since I came back from holiday. Ah well ...

This year I read 86 books: 63 by women, 21 by men, 1 anthology, 1 K J Parker <g>.
10 SF, 19 crime, 19 fantasy, 22 historical ... some tags overlap, some don't have any of these tags.
1 non-fiction (appalling! but I have read parts of many more non-fiction)

I did two self-challenges: first, A-Z of my unread books, then A-Z of women writers. Other than that I read what I liked, and I've had a couple of patches of not reading actual books at all. (Is what the interwebs are for.)

( all the books )

My top five:
2010/02: Ink and Steel -- Elizabeth Bear
2010/42: Locked Rooms -- Laurie R. King (my favourite of the Mary Russell books, which I discovered this year)
2010/58: Cycler -- Lauren McLaughlin
2010/76: The Children's Book -- A S Byatt
2010/81: Runemarks -- Joanne Harris