The following books were read in May 2006. (I’m still catching up on the backlog.)
His Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novik: Dragons in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The main character being a Royal Navy officer, Laurence, who stumbles across an egg of a rare Chinese breed, originally promised to Napoleon himself, and finds himself [...]
The following books were read from January to March 2006.
Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding: I’ve seen Bridget Jones referenced obliquely so many times—in magazine articles, in the Very Secret Diaries, in passing conversations—that reading the actual book was somewhat of an anticlimax. I suppose it also didn’t help that I had watched the movie [...]
The Merlin Conspiracy, by Diana Wynne Jones: The themes that repeat in DWJ’s fiction—many worlds, time travel, memory—are all present here, but in yet another new and original permutation. I’m always amazed by how many worlds she invents and how no two of them are ever alike. The Merlin Conspiracy isn’t the most evenly structured [...]