Here’s my list of books read in the month of May. Twenty-six books, coming in at 7,456 pages. A nice mix of genre and interests, I think . . . a good reading month!

1. DRAGONSONG by Anne McCaffrey (175 p.) In McCaffrey’s world of Pern, Menolly is a sensitive, misunderstood teenager (never seen one of them before, huh?) Then, denied permission to play her music, she impresses fire lizards, and doesn’t have a reason to go back….

2. DRAGONSINGER by Anne McCaffrey (240 p.) Now an apprentice at Harper Hall, Menolly tried so find her way through lessons and jealously caused by her fire lizards and her great talent, but with the help of her new friends, she manages.

3. DRAGONDRUMS by Anne McCaffrey (193 p.) Same series, but the focus shifts to Piemur, a boy soprano and Menolly’s oldest friend, whose voice changes and is sent to learn drum codes, used for communicating from hold to hold. This series takes place in one of my favorite sci-fi worlds, but focuses on younger readers–not that that changes the fact that they’re charming.

4. 97 WAYS TO MAKE A DOG SMILE by Jenny Langbehn (97 p.) Exactly what it sounds like–each page is a cute photo with a caption of something to do to have fun with your dog.

5. POSSESSION by A.S. Byatt (555 p.) A classic, really, and one I reread every couple of years–and, for some reason, the only of her books I’ve truly enjoyed. It’s half mystery, half love story . . . Modern day professors tracking a heretofore-unknown romance between two Victorian-era writers. It’s wonderfully written, with the story shifting back and forth as new clues arise. I admit that I skip past the “quoted” epic poetry, but the story is still just wonderful.

6. LYRE OF ORPHEUS by Robertson Davies (472 p.) The third of the Cornish Trilogy, but my favorite. (Also the first of his books I ever read). The Cornish Foundation backs a doctorate student who wants to complete ETA Hoffman’s opera about King Arthur–but not only to pay for the work, but to put it on the stage. Meanwhile, Simon is working on the biography of Francis Cornish, whose money started the foundation (and whose entire story is told in book two), piecing together his own mystery. And further, the story of King Arthur makes its own appearance among the characters . . . a unique book, multi-layered, and always a pleasure to read.

7. ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD by Russell Shorto (325 p.) A history book of the Dutch colony in Manhattan, back before the English took over. Apparently, some things never change–it was a multi-cultural melting pot with riotous living, which became the financial and shipping center of the new continent. Fascinating. And, somehow, it had never clicked with me before how this area of the country was known as the “Middle Colonies.” Once the English took over, we weren’t part of the original Virginia settlement, not part of New England–we had been the Dutch territory in the middle. Duh! Excellent book.

8. GAUDY NIGHT by Dorothy Sayers (501 p.) Harriet Vane attends her “reunion” at Shrewsbury College and gets involved in a series of incidents and anonymous threats.

9. TILT by Nicholas Shrady (161 p.) The story of the Tower of Pisa (true, non-fiction).

10. HOW TO BE LOST by Amanda Eyre Ward (290 p.) What would happen if your sister had disappeared when she was five, and then years later, your mother was convinced she had seen her in a photo in People magazine? Would you look for her? What would you do if you found her and she was somebody you didn’t care for? How would it affect the relationship you had with your other sister?

11. MYTH OF YOU AND ME by Leah Stewart (276 p.) Cameron, who works as an assistant to a 92-year old historian, gets a letter out of the blue from her old best friend, whom she has not spoken to in years. She chooses not to answer the letter, but when Oliver dies, he leaves a package for her to deliver to Sonia–does she track her down to deliver it? Or not? I really enjoyed this one.

12. SINGING BIRD by Roisin McAuley (312 p.) Twenty years ago, Lena and her husband adopted a baby girl. Now, suddenly, they get a phone call from the nun who arrangd the adoption, just “following up,” she says. But it makes Lena curious, so she heads to Ireland to try to discover her daughter’s birth parents.

13. WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLES by Hasuki Murakami (607 p.) This is a very good, but also very strange book. Not really to my taste, but it kept me reading to the end. Toru Okada first loses his cat, and then one night, his wife doesn’t come home. He hears from her distasteful, politician brother that she simply wants a divorce, but in his search for her, well, things get weird. There’s a psychic prostitute, for example. Long, rambling stories of things that have happened in the past–told matter of factly to this near-stranger. Lots of odd things, a little too disjointed for my taste, but there’s no denying that it’s an impressive book.

14. SUMMERS IN CASTLE AUBURN by Sharon Shinn (355 p.) A classic kind of fantasy book by an author I adore. Corie is an illegitimate daughter of a nobleman, who goes to spend each summer at the castle with her half-sister, who is engaged to Prince Bryan, adored by all the girls. But as she gets older, she begins to see signs that Bryan isn’t as admirable as he could be, that there is heartache and pain she hadn’t been aware of. And so, she applies some of the herb-lore she’s learned from her Wise Woman grandmother during the rest of the year . . .

15. LEARNING TO BOW by Bruce Feiler (312 p.) A look at modern Japan through the eyes of an American teacher contracted to spend a year helping Japanese middle-school students learn better English. Informative, interesting, amusing . . . excellent memoir. (Not only did I like the book, I loved the cover, too.)

16. THE OUTERMOST HOUSE by Henry Beston (218 p.) Also a memoir, but from several decades back, this is a classic account of Beston’s year spent in a tiny house on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Wonderfully, evocatively descriptive–exactly the reason I brought it along on my vacation this year.

17. ELLA MINNOW PEA by Mark Dunn (208 p.) Set on the fictional island of Nollop, which is named for the man who conceived that immortal sentence, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” But one day, the Z falls from the memorial in the center of town, and the town elders decide it’s a sign and ban it from use. But then the X falls. And the J . . . not only is this highly amusing, but a tour de force in terms of writing, since by the end of the book, the author doesn’t have that many letters available to him! Charming, each time I read it. (Much more readable than the similar “Avoid” by Georges Perec, which completely avoids the letter “E” throughout the entire book–which is even more impressive when you know it was written in French–with no E–and then translated into English, again, with no E. Kudos to the translator, too!)

18. BRUNELLESCHI’S DOME by Ross King (167 p.) The story of the famous dome in Florence, Italy, built in the 15th century using methods never before seen by Filippo Brunelleschi. A really interesting story, of architecture and personality. (Obviously, Italian architecture and I have gotten on well this month.) Did you know that there is no other masonry dome that’s bigger than this one? No domes bigger anywhere until they invented the steel technology that made things like the Astrodome possible? Not even the dome at St. Peter’s in Rome, or St. Paul’s in London, or the U.S. Capital building is bigger. Pretty impressive cutting-edge Renaissance technology there.

19. THE SEVEN TOWERS by Patricia Wrede (264 p.) An old fantasy I had tucked away in the closet. A lot of standard players (the self-effacing boy prince, the pretty, bubbly princess, the loyal but falsely-accused advisor), but it’s still an entertaining–if hard to find–little book. The apparently air-headed sorceress Amberglas alone is well worth the visit. She’s charming in her confusing, long-winded way. (Frankly, her manner of speaking reminds me of Eilonwy from Lloyd Alexander’s Pig-Keeper series.) Anyway, light, enjoyable, and a book I haven’t read in years.

20. BRIGHTLY BURNING by Mercedes Lackey. (406 p.) Another fantasy book, set in the world of Valdemar, where we find Lavan, a troubled teenager with a Gift for starting fires. Big fires.

21. INNOCENCE by Kathleen Tessaro (371 p.) The narrative for this novel alternates back and forth between 1986 (to start) and present-day, telling the story of Evie Garlick, who came to London to become an actress. She enrolled in an acting school and roomed with two girls, Imogene and Robbie, and met a musician named Jake . . . In the present, she’s a single mother of a four-year old boy, teaching acting in night school, and not exactly happy. But then, she starts seeing the ghost of her friend Robbie, who had been killed in a car accident years before, who basically tells her she’s thrown her talent away, and what is she going to do about it?

22. A LONG WAY DOWN by Nick Hornby (331 p.) New Year’s Eve, and four very different, troubled people accidentally meet at the top of a 15-story building in London, with the intent of jumping off. But, of course, once you meet three other people with the same plan, you just know things aren’t going to work out that way….

23. DON’T SHOOT THE DOG by Karen Pryor (183 p.) An excellent book about training–dog training specifically, but lots of other training too. Like, people, for example. It’s all about the positive reinforcement.

24. STRONG POISON by Dorothy L. Sayers (261 p.) A Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, where he meets the mystery writer, Harriet Vane, on trial for poisoning her boyfriend. It does come before “Gaudy Night” (number 8 on the list), but hey, you can’t read things in sequence ALL the time.

25. HAPPY ALL THE TIME by Laurie Colwin (214 p.) My favorite of her novels, telling the story of two couples–Guido and Holly, Vincent and Misty. She was such a good writer, and while her short stories are good, and her food essays (”Home Cooking,” anyone?) amazingly good . . . but this is one of my favorite novels. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve read it. Somewhere in the vicinity of ten times, I think. Love it. Sweet. Simple. Beautifully written.

26. AT MRS LIPPINCOTE’S by Elizabeth Taylor (215 p.) From 1945, Julia and her son Oliver are renting Mrs. Lippincote’s house in order to be close to her RAF husband, Roddy . . . but all is not perfect, there are problems in this marriage, not helped by his cousin Eleanor, staying with them and teaching at a local school . . . It’s a very quiet novel, with a completely different tempo than “modern” book–in feel, the writing reminds me of a somber Mary Stewart–but it’s really very good. (And no, she’s not that Elizabeth Taylor, although I think they designed the cover to evoke that.)

• Tags: Monthly Reading List, Reading • Permalink:Reading List from May //