Kasey Cox

This last column of 2008 is my chance to give you an overview of a few books that touched me this past year. While I was able to review many for you in the Marketplace, there’s only so much time and space. The following books draw us forward and onward, with ties to the past, and more to give in the coming year.

Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illness in Your Twenties and Thirties – by Laurie Edwards. Wow, do I wish I knew about this book when I wrote my mental health book review back in January 2008, nearly one year ago. Even more, I really wish this book was around for me in my twenties, when I was trying to learn how to live a normal life despite the setbacks and isolation the come to anyone struggling with a chronic illness, but especially so to those who are young. Young people don’t get sick. Young people deal with other problems – like surviving college, or their first apartment, or getting engaged, or their first professional job. But what if you’re trying to do those things, on top of being in and out of the hospital, adjusting to medication changes, or filling out tons of insurance paperwork? Laurie Edwards shows the way and provides sympathy without pity. Better than anything the doctor could have ordered.

Houses of Stone – this is one of the lesser-known mystery novels by Barbara Michaels (pen name for Barbara Mertz, who also writes as Elizabeth Peters). As the Elizabeth Peters’ Egyptology mysteries grew more popular, many of the Barbara Michaels’ novels were dropped from circulation and are only lately being brought back into print. In my teens, I read “Houses” when it was first published, and I never forgot it. Cleverly structured – a book about a book, a gothic novel within a gothic novel, “Houses” follows a young literature professor who has discovered a manuscript that may be the earliest gothic novel written in America. The manuscript appears to be written by a mysterious contemporary of Emily Bronte or Jane Austen, who wrote under the pen name Ismene, and disappeared without a trace. The professor’s race to discover Ismene’s historical identity, to transcribe the manuscript and claim it as her own discovery before other academics beat her to it becomes as exciting, romantic, and deadly a story as the one in Ismene’s novel. Well-written, and a real gift to mystery lovers who also love history and the stories behind books, this one returns to print as a mass-market paperback in February 2009.

As I mentioned in my column on Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, sometimes the superlatives fail us. Too many times in the fantasy genre, people who want to sell books, or who can’t think of anything original to say, compare some new author to Tolkien, or to J.K. Rowling. Rothfuss is at once in the same class, and in a class of his own. Both a wonderful storyteller and a technically skilled writer, this author is one to watch. Luckily for us, the second book – The Wise Man’s Fear – in this series is due out in April 2009.

And, winding up the year, is a hilarious children’s book we discovered just in time for Christmas gifting, and one I intend to recommend a lot this next year for kids to giggle over with friends and family – I Stink! by Kate & Jim McMullan. An adorably-drawn, smiling, hungry, and stinky garbage truck tells readers all about his job, and leads them through an alphabet of the garbage he eats every day. Available as a board book for the littlest kids as well as a larger paperback to share with the whole family or classroom.

As always, we try to give you a fun cross-section of books to choose from, be they new or old, for children or most decidedly not, niche-market or general audience. If variety is the spice of life, may our column always be on your table, alongside a large pile of books.

Hobo says, “Have a happy, healthy New Year, and may old books never be forgot” Miss a past column? Dig it up at www.frommyshelf.blogspot.com. Be sure to look for Hobo’s ball to drop, in Times Square, New Year’s Eve, as he counts down the top books of 2008.