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The Hallowed Hunt, by Lois McMaster Bujold - This is good, because it's Bujold, but I don't think it's up to her usual sky-high standards. It took me two tries to even get into the book, and the middle - where all the characters are sitting around waiting - was a bit dull. Just okay.

The Book of Lost Things, by John Connolly - Unbelievably fabulous. As I read this, my heart would literally start racing because I was so excited to find out what would happen next. It's a fractured fairy tale world - and these tales are very creepy and dark, even compared to Grimm or some of the other original roots of fairy tales. The ending was a little weak - he spent too much time tying up loose ends, even ones that didn't need tying. And there was one chapter that did not fit - I think his editor told him, "You need a chapter that explains more about your villain" and he did too much - everything that's ever gone wrong in the entire universe was blamed on this guy, and that felt too *extreme*. Also, the tone/voice in that chapter was all wrong and didn't fit - too much telling, not enough showing. Other than that bit of awkwardness, it was really awesome otherwise. Highly recommended for anyone who likes fairy tales, or dark-n-creepy.

One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, by Rebecca Mead - I saw this in an about-the-writer blurb in a magazine, and was just struck by the title. I really enjoyed this - it's an examination of the wedding industry and "bridezilla" culture. Mead posits that the wedding industry is a vicious cycle - bridal magazines tell women that they NEED all this stuff, or these new "traditions"... and people go for it. A line I liked pointed out that if you tell brides that an average wedding costs $28,000, then that becomes an expectation, a mark to achieve - it's just a check you write, like your rent check. There's talk about Disney weddings, and about people going into debt for weddings, and how we no longer live near our extended families so Aunt Gertrude isn't available to do the flowers, so we hire someone, and we no longer live near our childhood minister-rabbi-priest, so we have to hire someone for that too....... (Which just gets me thinking about my wedding - my mother was not entirely happy with the plainness/informality of my wedding, but we were paying for it, so there wasn't much she could do. But afterwards, she said to me, "You know, that really was the perfect wedding for you guys." And she still says that to me, sometimes.) Anyway. A fascinating and interesting book.

What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, by Dave Eggers - This is our book club selection for the month of May. Achak was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan - refugees from the Second Sudanese Civil War. He walked across southern Sudan along with thousands of other young boys, lived for years in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, and was eventually resettled in the U.S. It was sometimes hard to make myself pick this up, because of the ongoing horrifying nature of the subject material. But there are flashes of humor that relieve some of the gloom, and the narrative voice is very compelling. A very good read.

The Mistress's Daughter, by A.M. Homes - I intially heard about this memoir on NPR, and thought it sounded really interesting. I literally read this book in about 2 hours yesterday. It starts off with the author being contacted by her birth mother, which inspires her to contact her birth father as well. The first half of the book traces her difficult relationships with both of them. Her birth mother is very needy and grabby; her birth father is very distant and demonstrates a lot of push-pull mixed messages. Neither of the birth parents are very nice (as seen here) - and neither one seems to be thinking at all about A.M. or her needs. After her birth mother dies, her birth father cuts her off. Eventually, she gets into genealogy - I found it fascinating that she traces both her biological and adoptive families' history - and talks a lot about understanding where she came from, and how those ancestors shaped both the people who birthed and raised her (I really liked this part). There are some parts of the second half that work better than others - the faux-deposition of her birth father was just weird, and the imaginary plotline of her birth parents' affair made me uncomfortable. All the people seen here - parents and author - clearly have/had a lot of baggage to work through, and there's plenty of that on display. But there's a lot of honesty and wit and interesting observations too.

ETA: Here's a post I made the other day to