Jane Austen, Emma

Jane Austen, Emma. Thought I'd give it another try, although I took such an intense dislike to Elizabeth Bennet when I was young that it leaked over to the rest of Austen. It's too bad, because she does write lovely novels. But Emma makes Elizabeth look like Marie Curie or Joan of Arc. And it's very hard to be interested in any of the lazy, stuck-up, country gentlefolk in this book. What a lot of totally useless people convinced of their own innate superiority and good breeding who do nothing but visit each other and eat food that other people make for them.

Agatha Christie, Postern of Fate

Agatha Christie, Postern of Fate. A Tommy and Tuppence mystery that I had never read, though I had looked for it - I thought it was called "The Laurels". Not the best mystery, but Tuppence attempting to sort old children's books and continually getting lost in them was adorable.

Lucia Nevai, Salvation

Lucia Nevai, Salvation. Crane and her siblings were born in a squatter's shack to the alcoholic trio of a hooker, a lunatic, and a pool-hustler/failed revival evangelist and were starved and left to fend for themselves for a decade or so. Crane was eventually adopted by a sweet childless couple and renamed Princess (she learned to read and became a talented young scientist). I was never quite able to suspend my disbelief and really enter into the story, fun as it was. Perhaps if it had been set anywhere other than Iowa - who could believe the neighbors minded their own business for eleven years?

Arthur Phillips, The Egyptologist

Arthur Phillips, The Egyptologist. A clever, tangled, and darkly humorous book about a man obsessed with immortality and a certain nebulously extant pharaoh famous for off-color hieroglyphs. I should have enjoyed it, but it made me feel a little sick; I couldn't stomach the grotesque unwinding of the plot.