Monica Dickens' Mariana Penguin, 1961 (1940); Persephone Books, 1999 Persephone No. 2 Monica Dickens is an author I thought of as a children's author first; I read her World's End books and Follyfoot stories as a girl, repeatedly. Not as compulsively as I read and re-read other stories, and I
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's The Shadow Speaker Hyperion 2007 Yes, it was only two weeks ago that I was G is for Gushing about Hiromi Goto's Half World. And part of me is inclined to apologize because I'm about to Gush again, but the bigger part of me remains unapologetic: I just
Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal (2008) McClelland & Stewart, 2010 I felt like a teenager when I started reading this novel. I'd switched purses seasonally and forgot to transfer my housekeys, so I ended up sitting on the front porch for a few hours waiting for Mr. BIP to come home.
Hiromi Goto's Half World Penguin Books, 2009 I hope you're not disappointed to see another instance of Spelling It Out here, so soon after that on Sarah Waters, but I have fallen under yet another BookSpell. I admit, I do tend to respond positively to an author's work when I
Jean Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear Bantam Books, 1980 I had started high school when I read Jean Auel's first novel in the Earth's Children series, but I don't know if it was the 9th grade or the 13th. It was my grandmother's copy -- she bought a
