I’m a steady reader since I have a commute by metro to work and also need to read before I can fall asleep at night, so it was hard to pick only a few books I enjoyed this year. I blogged on Mary Shelley’s birthday about Passion by Jude Morgan, and I can’t wait to read his next one, Symphony, about the love affair between Berlioz and Harriet Smithson (hint to nearest and dearest–it’s on my Amazon wishlist). I also loved The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James whom the Riskies interviewed earlier this month.

OK, first, let’s get the literary crack out of the way. Read this hilarious spoof by the Smart Bitches and you’ll know what I mean–I find JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series immensely entertaining, embarrassingly addictive, and I just about still respect myself in the morning. I can give them up any time I wahnt (a joke, not a typo). Same with Anne Stuart’s Ice books, where–what’s not to love–phenomenally good looking male operatives are trained to be so good at sex that they can make women do anything. And they do. Terrific escapist fun, both series.

My friend Robin L. Rotham published her first book Alien Overnight this year–it’s funny, sexy, and very well-written and has a hilariously over the top cover. Carry a big stick, har har. How’s this for a killer opening sentence: “Notice the slight emergence of the male’s accessory sexual organ, or what the Garathani refer to as a breeding spur.”

Well, what can I say. I’m in love with another species myself. I pooh-poohed the idea of dragons in the Napoleonic wars when Megan blogged about them last year, but I read all four of Naomi Novik’s fabulous Temeraire books in less than two weeks. I take it all back. These are a brilliant blend of fact with fantasy, and I’m absolutely in love with both Temeraire the dragon (whose neck fringes are infinitely better than Gerard Butler’s and everything is much much bigger) and the wonderful, gentlemanly Captain Laurence.

I also enjoyed new books by two favorites–Making Money by Terry Pratchett (check out the macroeconomic model in the basement of the bank) and Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next–First Among Sequels. If you don’t know these two writers you’re in for a treat; Pratchett writes (sort of) satirical sci-fi; Fforde writes about an investigator for the Department of Jurisfiction in an alternative literary England. I’d suggest trying to read them in order, although Pratchett has a huge amount of books in print.

I was also thrilled that Jennifer Crusie and Bob Meyer’s second collaboration, Agnes and the Hitman, was right on the money; great, funny stuff, although I still can’t get used to the idea of Jennifer Crusie writing about the mafia. Maybe Bob wrote those bits. You really can’t tell, with such a seamless collaboration.

I discovered a new author, Fiona Neill, whose book Slummy Mummy is about that most hideous phenomenon, London yuppies in reproductive mode. As well as the obvious jokes involving high-powered women putting their formidable talents into child-rearing, this book had a lot of heart and wisdom. I recommend it highly.

I finally got around to a 2006 release, Mozart’s Women, about the women he loved and the music he wrote for them, and I desperately want the gown Nannerle his sister is wearing on the cover. Also in nonfiction, London in the Nineteenth Century by Jerry White, which was excellent, although disappointing in only very brief mentions of servants and the black population. I don’t think it’s available yet in the US.

And finally, The Elements of Internet Style for anyone who’s interested in literacy, books, the web, and where everything online and in print seems to be going. It’s entertaining and smart, and I wrote a section of it.

Have you read any of these? What’s on your wishlist?

All contests all the time. Check out what Pam Rosenthal is giving away in her contest; read an alternate ending to The Rules of Gentility and enter to win a prize at janetmullany.com.

This week is devoted to our favorites of the year — and I’ve decided to add a movie to mine. (I’m not sure if this is breaking the rules, but I have Blogger at my fingertips and I’ve gone mad with power!)

There were lots of great books this year, both by my fellow Riskies (who, as we all know, are fabulous writers) and by other folks…but end-of-year time-crunch panic has set in for me (Todd is sick again and I’m picking up the slack with my hey-wait-I’m-lazy-why-are-we-working hands), so I’m just going to talk about a few of them: one book series, and one movie.

My friend Heather (book pusher extraordinaire) turned me on to Megan Whalen Turner’s Attolia books. And — wow.

First off: no spoilers! This is one set of books where spoilers are especially spoiling!

Second off: these are high fantasy, though the kind without huge amounts of magic. The world is sort of Greece, a ways in the past. The hero of the first book is a clever, vain, lazy, charming thief who has more heart than he likes to let on. I’m not going to say who the later books are about, because that would be spoilage!

Anyway, there are three books in the series so far:

1) THE THIEF
2) THE QUEEN OF ATTOLIA
3) THE KING OF ATTOLIA

And because this is a romance blog, I’ll just mention that at least one of the books involves a really well-done romance — and one that’s so unusual, I can’t think of anything similar I’ve seen in any book. The characters and relationship have been in my head ever since, and I think about them a lot.

So, in short, I’m saying: read these books — and avoid any spoilers (including back-cover blurbs, jacket synopses, or reviews on Amazon) while doing so!

We’ve previously talked about the movie AMAZING GRACE, with Ioan Gruffud as Wilberforce, so I won’t repeat what’s been said.

But it just a really interesting, very enjoyable, and gorgeous to look at movie. (And all the gorgeous actors in it don’t hurt.)

Well, there you have it…my abbreviated “I have to exchange those books then wrap them then mail them then mail the other things then wrap those others and do my cards and then OOPS I was also going to do this and this and that” list of favorites of 2007…

Cara
who has nothing clever to say in her sig line today

You have won a copy of JANE AUSTEN’S WORLD by Maggie Lane, courtesy of Amanda. Please email riskies@yahoo.com to claim your prize.

Thanks to all who helped us celebrate the divine Jane’s birthday!

For the past week here in Oklahoma, we’ve been having rather unpleasant weather. Ice, snow, rain, and no sun. My TV and Internet were down, the pets huddled in their fleece beds by the heating vents, but I’ve had a lovely time re-reading Persuasion. It was Austen’s last novel, published after her death, and it’s my favorite of all the books. With Pride and Prejudice a very close second, and all the others tied for 3rd. Or maybe Mansfield Park is 4th. Janet is right–it is literary Big Girl Panties. Though I would a thousand times rather read it again than read, say, Moby Dick.

Anyway, Persuasion. What a beautiful book. If MP is big girl panties, and Moby Dick is fried liver and onions, Persuasion is rich, dark hot chocolate on a cold night. In college, I once wrote a paper contrasting Persuasion and MP, and Anne Elliot and Fanny Price. I’m always struck by how different the two books are, in tone and theme as well as character. Anne shares Fanny’s dutifulness and loneliness, but has a warmth and sweetness, a hidden spirit, Fanny lacks. (Anne also doesn’t go around lecturing people and ruining their fun, even when they richly deserve it!). Fanny ‘wins’ by not changing, by upholding the status quo; Anne wins by doing the exact opposite.

But let’s start at the beginning. Persuasion is about, well, love. Real, lasting love and what it means. About self-deception, the messes families make, narcissism and the unknowability of other people. Communication and the lack thereof. Snobbery and honor. The importance of not jumping off walls. Aging, the passing of time, change and regret.

Anne Elliot is on the shelf. She is in her mid to late 20s, living an invisible life with her insufferable family. Her father, Sir Walter Elliot, “was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage…he could read his own history with an interest which never failed–this was the page at which the favorite volume was always opened: ‘Elliot of Kellynch-Hall’.” He is only interested in himself and what reflects him. His daughter Elizabeth is “very like himself”, and Mary has “acquired a little artificial importance” because she is married. But Anne, “with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister: her word had no weight…she was just Anne.” Her father “had never indulged much hope, he had none now, of ever reading her name in any other page of his favorite work”–to not be in the book was simply not to be, and thus Anne doesn’t really exist. But his profligacy has driven the family into near bankruptcy, and they’re forced to rent out Kellynch-Hall and retreat to Bath, which Anne, like her author Austen, does not like.

Her friend and surrogate mother, Lady Russell, is a “benevolent, charitable, good woman, and capable of strong attachments,” but she also holds “a value for rank and consequence, which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them.” It is mainly she who persuaded Anne, years ago, to refuse the offer of the young naval officer Wentworth, something Anne has regretted ever since. But they will soon meet again.

Regret and the passing of time, of course, are a big theme in Persuasion. I once read an essay that compared Persuasion to Shakespeare’s late romances (Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Cymbeline), and this seems apt. They both share a bittersweetness, an ‘autumnal’ quality of poignancy and sadness, and the dream of second chances. The story begins in “summer 1814” (the only Austen book set in a specific time). It is “more than seven years…since the little history of sorrowful interest reached its close.” It is a big turning point for England as well as Anne. She had “been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older.” Like Anne, everything is in a condition of change. All the old stabilities (family, parents, social rank and property, respected names) are called into question. New values are rising to take their place, and change Anne’s life. Nominal gentlemen (like Sir Walter and the odious Mr. Elliot) are shown to be, well, not very gentlemanly at all. Not compared to men like Wentworth and Admiral Croft.

At Lyme, Louisa Musgrove is “convinced of sailors having more worth than any other set of men in England; that they only knew how to live, and they only deserved to be respected and loved.” (Aside from the youthful hyperbole, Anne would agree–“She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others”).

By the end, of course, wrongs are righted, miscommunications (of which there have been many) are cleared, and Anne and Wentworth are united at last (“There they exchanged again those feelings and those promised which had once before seemed to secure every thing, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into the past more exquisitely happy…than when it had been first projected”). But unlike previous Austen marriages (the Darcys with Pemberley, Fanny Price and Mansfield, Emma and her two houses), endless stability is not on the horizon for the Wentworths. War is threatened; the new values, not secured by property and conventional society, will be tested. “She (Anne) gloried in being a sailor’s wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than its national importance.” We have to trust in their own constancy and emotional stability to see them through.

What do you think of Persuasion, of Anne and Wentworth and their brave new world? We’re so glad you’ve joined is for our Austen Week! It’s been so much fun to share our love of these books.

Be sure and comment for a chance to win a copy of Maggie Lane’s Jane Austen’s World! (One of those books I ordered not realizing I already had a copy. Oops!). And keep up with these special events and giveaways by signing on for our newsletter at riskies@yahoo.com .