Skip to main content

Weekly Geeks 19: The Best of 2008

Here are the rules:

1. Compile your list of favorites. Please be sure that books you choose actually were published in 2008, or at the very earliest in the winter holiday season of 2007. Sometimes books that come out then are left out.
2. Come back and sign Mr Linky with the url to your top books of 2008 post.
3. If you happen to see any non-WG bloggers making similar lists, please grab the url and come put it in Mr Linky for them. Let them know you’re doing that, please, in case they have some sort of objection; if they do, they can ask me to remove their link. I’ve already seen a couple favorites of 2008 posts, which is another reason I wanted to get started early.
4. Feel free to make changes to your list if you read something new in the next few weeks. After about October 25, I can’t guarantee your changes will be reflected in the master list. We’ll probably start compiling lists around then.
5. Please consider whether you’d like to help me compile lists.

So here's my list (in reverse order of how I read them; all these books are reviewed on this blog; links to them can be found under the title of the blog):

The Glass of Time, by Michael Cox
Girl in a Blue Dress, by Gaynor Arnold (TBP in December)
The Sealed Letter, by Emma Donoghue
Company of Liars, by Karen Maitland
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Black Tower, by Louis Bayard
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale
Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon, by Andrea Di Robilant
The House at Riverton, by Kate Morton

The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte, by Laura Joh Rowland

Comments

Bookfool said…
I haven't read any of those -- and I just own one. Oh, the pain. My wish list is crying out in agony.
Icedream said…
I haven't read any of these either, although The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is on my wishlist. So many on your list look really good.
Kerrie said…
THE HOUSE AT RIVERTON was actually written by Kate Morton, also published as THE SHIFTING FOG, published in Australia in 2006, but probably in the UK in 2007, but possibly 2008
i haven't read any of the books on your list, although i do have The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society on my to-read list.
Kristi said…
Great list! I've heard a lot about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It's on many Geeks lists. On the wishlist it goes...sigh...getting bigger ;o).
The Potato book is all over the place. I suppose I should check it out!

Do check my short list
Terrific list - my wishlist is becoming unbearable :)
Very much looking forward to Company of Liars!!
Anonymous said…
I'm spreading good karma to start off the work week. Someone pats me on the shoulder on an award. Now I have to pass on the love. I have given you an award. :)

I'm off to finish Landing by Emma Donoghue. I grabbed The House at Riverton in Hong Kong back in spring. It's still sitting on my nightstand.
I haven't read any of those yet but have Potato Peel and Riverton on my TBR list!

~SmallWorld Reads, visiting from Weekly Geeks
Iliana said…
I haven't read any of these but some are on my TBR list!

I want to do Weekly Geeks but feel like there's still to much time left in the year to discover some favorites :)

Hopefully I'll get my act together and make a list.
Potato Peel is my upcoming book club book, I'm really looking forward to it. I have a feeling it'll end up on my list.

I just found out about The Sealed Letter last month - I love her books, so much research involved. And the House at Riverton is on my list, too.

I just looked it up and Company of Liars sounds quite extraordinary.

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars...

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m...