Trinity Rising by Elspeth Cooper

This book seems in many ways to change from the previous one: it spends most of its time following a new character, Teia, who has a lot of the Talent and sees only bloodshed and death on her clan's current warlike path. From that story, we get inconsistent jumps to about three other places: Gair going on a journey with Alderan, Tanith trying to get the White Court involved, and a woman trying to become a knight. I can definitely see how the series is still in the "get a bunch of balls in the air, to be juggled into submission later" phase, but this book still hasn't persuaded me that the stakes of the story are as important as it thinks they are.

An Imperfect Spy by Amanda Cross

This mystery starts with Kate and her husband Reed taking a sabbatical to teach at Schuyler Law School, where they quickly find that the Old Boys Club is still in full swing and that all is not well at the school--and maybe not in their marriage either. The mysteries play out without a lot of suspense: the heart of the story is about the state of their marriage (at least it seemed to me). So, like many of Cross's books, this one is not a conventional murder mystery. But I still enjoyed it, mostly for watching Kate be a detective.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynn Truss

This book makes an impassioned plea for the continued importance of punctuation as marker of clarity and style. It consists of several essays (some longer and some shorter) on different punctuation marks including the comma, the dash, the semi-colon, the colon, the apostrophe, the hyphen, the question mark, the exclamation point, and even the emoticon. I agree strongly with some of its observations, and disagree just as strenuously about others (although the latter is hardly surprising as the author punctuates according to British conventions, and I find some of them, especially regarding the location of terminal punctuation marks and closing quotation marks, entirely unsettling). But I applaud her two most important theses: punctuation matters, and some rules about punctuation should be strictly observed, while others are matter of style and taste. The essays themselves cover a wide swath of ground: the history of punctuation, humorous observations on why punctuation is important and why those who care about punctuation are so-self important, and some rules and guidelines to effective (British) English punctuation. If you're just looking for a style guide, there are better places to go. If you're looking for entertainment and someone who cares deeply about language, you've come to the right place, in addition to helpful observations about style.

Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn

I really enjoyed listening to this book, which is a heist-story set between the first two Star Wars movies. Han Solo and Chewbacca have lost all their reward money, and are looking for a way to get Jabba the Hutt off their backs. Enter Eanjer, who's recently been wounded in a disfiguring way during a robbery, and who is looking for revenge (and a large payout). Eanjer convinces Han to assemble a team of eleven scoundrels to steal back his money from one of the most secure safes in the galaxy, located in the home of a Black Sun sector chief. Winter, Kell Tainer, and Lando Calrissian are all part of the team (in addition to a variety of new players). I thought the story was fantastic--there are multiple layers of plots as everyone on the team is not always on the same page at the same time. While there are clear limits on the story because we know a lot about what happens to many characters later, there's still plenty of room for surprises. The audiobook was great: like Mercy Kill, the production involves a lot of music and sound effects, which I felt really added to my enjoyment of the story. Finally, there's a plot twist in the last few seconds of the story which I didn't see coming but added a whole new layer of pleasure and meaning to the experience. I highly recommend this book to Star Wars fans.

The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus

This book is Andreas Capellanus's guide to courtly love. Capellanus was chaplain at the court of Marie of Champagne, and supposedly wrote the book at her request to portray conditions at the court of Eleanor of Aquitane, who was Marie's mother. The first book describes what love is (pain--and, by the way, it can't be experienced between a husband and wife) and how to woo a lady (with descriptions giving sample conversations between eight different couples of different social statuses); the second book describes how to retain love once you've wooed someone; and the third book is a palinode that suggests rejecting love in favor of religion. The book reminded me a lot of Machiavelli's The Prince in genre and style (and perhaps even in content at times). There were some really lovely allegories scattered throughout the book, which added interest to its narrative.

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

The Time Monks are at it again, in this novel: they've sent Sam Vimes back to the beginning of his career just before the birth of his first child. And Sam realizes that he can't go home until he deals with the criminal who came back with him, lest time be altered too much and his home, family, and career disappear. I thought this book was a time travel story at its best: it pushes the imagination to figure out how all the parts work together, but in the end I was satisfied with how all the parts worked together. I thought the time travel device also worked really well in allowing the series to fill in some great backstory to both the Night Watch and the city's political structure. This book is a great entry in the Discworld series.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

I enjoyed listening to this book, which is about the way that an environmental anomaly makes a woman reconsider her life and the choices and options available to her. Dellarobia Turnbow, who lives on a farm in rural Tennessee with her husband and two children, wants something more than she has. At the point the story opens, she imagines this something more only in terms of a different man. But everything changes when she suddenly sees monarch butterflies on the family property. Now Dellarobia can see that what she wants might not just be a different husband, but a different life entirely--one where she can put her intelligence to use. At times I found Dellarobia to be an extremely frustrating character, but I did enjoy the path of self-discovery her character took. Barbara Kingsolver read the book herself, and she really brought the book's lyricism to life.