Vacation Books

I'm back from Europe!

I only managed to read a few books on the various planes and trains, since we were busy sightseeing the rest of the time! I read:

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
I read this on the plane to London since we were going to visit Bath and I've actually never read this Austen book. It wasn't quite as enjoyable as say Pride & Prejudice, but still, it is Jane Austen. (Also, Bath was quite wonderful.)




Piece of Cake by Swati Kaushal
I came across this book in an article (I think the NYT Book Review) about international chick lit. It's about a single (of course!) young businesswoman trying to get ahead in her career and find a man. Yes, it's typical chick lit, but with the Indian locale as a twist. I enjoyed it.



I also finally got around to reading Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep.
During the late 1980s, fourteen-year-old Lee Fiora leaves behind her close-knit, middle-class Indiana family to enroll in an elite co-ed boarding school in Massachusetts, becoming a shrewd observer of, and eventually a participant in, their rituals and customs.
(Her new book, The Man of My Dreams, will be released on May 16.)


I also started an ARC copy of Sequence by Lori Andrews.
A geneticist with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), Alexandra Blake uses her expertise to investigate a serial killer plaguing military bases across the country, but when an another murder hits all too close to home, Alex, her AFIP colleagues, and her boyfriend, a Texas congressman, find all their lives in danger. Due out in June.


And I had a nice pile of books waiting for me when I returned...

Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach
A novel exploring the effects of autism on a young family explains a mother's determination to help her autistic child, taking on the experts and her own family to teach her child to become as "normal" as possible.





Adverbs by Daniel Handler
Is romance "A Series of Unfortunate Events"? Ask Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket, who here returns to adult fiction with criss-crossing tales of star-crossed love.





Memoirs of a Muse by Laura Vapnyar
Obsessed by Dostoyevsky and the woman who became his muse, Tanya emigrates to New York City from the former Soviet Union and falls in with Mark Schneider, a writer for whom she is determined to be all things--lover, source of inspiration, and more--if only she can persuade him to spend less time at the shrink, the gym, and literary soirees.


By a Lady: Being the Adventures of an Enlightened American in Jane Austen's England by Amanda Elyot
During an audition for a play about Jane Austen, New York actress C. J. Welles is transported back in time to Bath, England, at the turn of the nineteenth century, where she is befriended by the eccentric Lady Euphoria Dalrymple, falls for Owen Percival, the Earl of Darlington, the cousin of Jane Austen, and finds herself torn between two different eras.

The Sand Cafe by Neil MacFarquhar
Set in Saudi Arabia during the buildup to the first Gulf War, this debut from veteran foreign correspondent MacFarquhar is a scathing satire of the news business.




Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas
When a Parisian town crier receives anonymous, ominous messages warning of an imminent outbreak of the Black Death, genius detective Commissaire Adamsberg and his straight-edged sidekick, Danglard, begin to suspect that the predictions are linked to strange marks that have appeared on doorways, a mystery that is complicated by a suspicious death.