lunabee34

1. Sarah Waters Tipping the Velvet
This was an exquisite read. I mean, Victorian lesbians. I don't need much more than that to get excited about a book, but there happens to be quite a bit more going on here. The language is so gorgeous and evocative, and Waters walks so well that thin line of writing in the voice of the period with all its slang and colloquialisms and leaving the reader going, "Do what now?" In fact, I think anyone writing a period piece would do well to emulate her style; she explains when she needs to with no Giles-in-the-library info dump and trusts her readers to figure most things out for themselves through context. I love love love love the focus on drag in this novel. It's complex and complicated and, yes, hot. Go read!!

2. Diana Gabaldon Outlander
I may have started reading this yesterday and then stayed up all night to finish it. I didn't even realize it was that late until I closed the book with a satisfied smile and saw that it was nearly four. LOL This is very engaging and fun and remarkably close to the trajectory of most of my own personal fantasies--through some magical or scientifically improbable device, Lorraine gets deposited into the world of X and must make friends and fend for herself. I love the premise here (that Claire is thrust backwards in time and must learn to live in 18the century Scotland) and must not allow myself to borrow the next books in the series or I'll never finish slogging through Tennyson.

3. A.S. Byatt The Children's Book
*flaily hands* What to say about this that isn't just garbled and incoherent noises of utter joy? From the wonderfully twisty narrative and the tales-within-a-tale that twine through to the commentary on historical events and issues of the end of the Victorian era to the sleekly beautiful turns of phrase--this is a must read for everybody. And the end! Which I mustn't say anything about! But the end!

4. Ludmilla Petrushevskaya There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby
This is a collection of Russian short stories that deal with the supernatural--ghosts, apocalypses, fairy tales, the afterlife. I fear that in some cases the stories suffer from translation and that my reading suffers from my lack of familiarity with Russian folklore, but overall I greatly enjoyed this collection. So many of the stories are incredibly haunting and the style is so spare and stripped down. I particularly enjoy the apocalypse ones, even more so for the ambiguity that surrounds each situation. Why is the world ending and by whose hands and what's really to be done about it? These stories are bleak, but with an almost ambivalent hope that keeps them from being too dark to enjoy.