Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan

This collection of short stories, mostly set in the fictional neighborhood of Tims Creek, North Carolina, delights with its beauty, humor, and meta-fictional commentary. The stories feature a wide range of protagonists, and gradually set out a depiction of a community with memorable characters. I particularly loved "Clarence and the Dead (and What do they tell you, Clarene? and The Dead Speak to Clarence)," "Things of This World ; or, Angels Unawares," and "Let the Dead Bury Their Dead; Being the Annotated Oral History of the Former Maroon Society called Snatchit and then Tearshirt and later the Town of Tims Creek, North Carolina [circa 1854-1985]." The stories show the magic inherent in everyday life and satirize academic attempts to interpret or explain the community.

Who Could That Be At This Hour? by Lemony Snicket

I think this book is probably aimed at a much younger audience--and while it may work for that audience, it's less entertaining for adults to read. Its young protagonist, who has deliberately apprenticed himself to the worst chaperone to give himself more freedom to follow through on his own (still somewhat mysterious) plot, realizes that the mystery he is solving is hardly the mystery he thought it was. There's lots of humor, many ridiculous adults, and a spattering of difficult words with definitions worked in, so many children will enjoy this book. I didn't find it as well done as the author's previous series, A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman

This book tells the story of the first meeting between the Texan balloonist Lee Scoresby and the armored bear Iorek Byrnison. They find themselves on the same side of a fight against an oil magnate in Novy Odense. This book illustrates just how much there is to love about both of these characters, and has a good measure of action and adventure thrown in to. I'd recommend it to people familiar with the main His Dark Materials trilogy--it probably wouldn't be the best place to start, though.

NW by Zadie Smith

I suspect I missed some of the formal playfulness of this novel because I listened to the audiobook version (which had two excellent narrators). The story is as much about life in northwest London generally as it is about the three protagonists: Leah Hanwell, her childhood friend Natalie (then known as Keisha), and Felix Cooper, whose presence in the book both demonstrates how tightly-knit the community is and how wide the gulfs between its people are. While the end of the book culminates in an engaging and satisfying plot, the story meanders on its way there--it's as much about exploring the characters and their relationships, their aspirations and their limitations as it is about telling a specific story. I found the book beautiful and lyric.

Victorian Literature and the Victorian State: Character and Governance in a Liberal Society by Lauren Goodlad

This book argues that many of the contradictions on topics such as social welfare, poverty, and the government's ideal role in society inherent in Victorian viewpoints come from the fact that "Victorian Britain was a liberal society"--and that this liberalism cut in two ways to both promote freedom and to insist on state aid as a means of achieving social health (vii). While Goodlad sees a Foucauldian perspective as useful in untangling the different strains of thought in Victorian Society, she finds later Foucault more useful than the genealogical approach of Discipline and Punish. Many of Goodlad's readings focus on pastorship--that is, someone (usually middle class) guiding the poor to better character and better living. She reads Dickens (Oliver Twist, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend), Frances Trollope, Anthony Trollope, George Gissing, and H.G. Wells among others. These readings arrive in conjunction with a careful social history: Goodlad does a nice job of showing the relationship between the literature, its authors' opinions, and the culture in which it was produced. I found her reading of the educational system in Our Mutual Friend particularly helpful. While this book is out of my field (and out of my usual mode of theoretical approach), I found its argument to be cogent and reasonably well supported.

Beautiful Redemption by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

This book still suffers from some of the problems that plague earlier books in the series: clunky Southern accents, fake-sounding Latin, a magic system that is difficult to parse, and (although this might be new I can't remember) bad poetry supposedly written by one of the protagonists. However, I thought the plot worked really well--it had a nice shape and I finally understood what was at stake in the Caster world. I wish we had seen more of the power structure and understood more of what goes on in the Far Keep earlier. I found starting with Ethan in a between-place after death refreshing, and I liked that the story forced its characters to make sacrifices and suffer the consequences of their choices. I think I would have liked this series better if I could have read the books one right after the other instead of each as they were being published, so the fact that they're all out now should be a boon for future readers.

Finale by Becca Fitzpatrick

This book more or less allowed Nora to grow up and start taking charge of her own life--although a lot of it seems improbable. For example, she's supposedly broken up with Patch--and in reality trying to hide their relationship from the Nephilim--and yet, every other scene she's hanging out at his apartment. The pacing also felt off: the story developed slowly in the beginning (lots of training sessions) and then when things started happening they just flew by in the last few chapters. Finally, I thought the devilcraft part of the plot was underplayed: supposedly Nora's addicted to the stuff, and yet, once she finally takes the antidote, she suffers no ill effects. And maybe that leads into my main criticism of the series as a whole: while using varieties of angels as immortal creatures feels original (more so than vampires, for example), the god for whom these angels are supposedly working (as well as the devil himself) seems conspicuously absent. Even that might be alright, but it's not explored or interesting in these books. They do get better as they develop, but I'm not sure that the series as a whole stands out.