Highlights (Booking Through Thursday)

From Booking Through Thursday:

It’s an old question, but a good one . . . What were your favorite books this year?

List as many as you like … fiction, non-fiction, mystery, romance, science-fiction, business, travel, cookbooks … whatever the category. But, really, we’re all dying to know. What books were the highlight of your reading year in 2007?

It was a good year, reading-wise. Here are my highlights, with links to my reviews.

The Ghost Writer by John Harwood

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer

The Cross (Kristin Lavransdatter 3) by Sigrid Undset

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (translated by Joel Carmichael)

Judgment in Stone by Ruth Rendell

And a few series:

Dave Duncan’s A Man of His Word and A Handful of Men

Megan Lindholm’s Ki and Vandien Quartet

The Ghost Writer by John Harwood

Synopsis:
Having grown up with a controlling, secret-keeping mother, a young man yearns to know his family’s history and meet his letter-writing lover in person, but his journey takes him face to face with madness and murder.

Review:
Thank you, thank you, thank you to Eva for recommending this book!

The Ghost Writer is a straight up Gothic tale, no revisionism here, thank you very much. It’s a tangled labyrinth of memories, letters, and unfinished stories that builds to a creepy, frightening climax that draws upon the best tropes of the genre without losing sight of the story being told. Continue reading