The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

Bertie Wooster is an upper-class twit, and Jeeves is his genius butler. There is a silver cow creamer, a stolen policeman's hat, and several quasi-romantic misunderstandings. Wooster has a very verbose style with plenty of unexpected metaphors that I enjoyed. This book was an Agatha Christie, without the mystery, crossed with a Monte Python sketch.

-Amy

Confessions of a Teen Sleuth

Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, by Chelsea Cain is a parody of sorts. Nancy Drew claims that the story of her life was told less factually than it was actually lived. In "Confessions" we get snippets of cases that explain and follow Nancy's life until her death in the mid 1990s.

All in all, it is a fun read, even for someone who has never read a single sentence of a Nancy Drew story.

-Jeff

The Face of Trespass by Ruth Rendall

An English mystery, with very little blood and gore and lots of psychological twists. Her books also have a smattering of literary references but not so many that it makes you read slowly, so you can read a brain-candy mystery and still pretend that it's making you smart. If you like Agatha Christie, you will probably like this book.

-Amy

Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary

This was a good book. It was about Ramona the Pest going to kindergarten. She was kind of bad. My favorite part was when she dressed up like a witch on Halloween, because I like witches.

-Zoe

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

The Queen accidentally reads a novel and becomes obsessed with reading, much to the annoyance of her staff and family. A short, amusing tale of the dangers of loving books.

-Amy

The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass: We meet Lyra in an alternate universe, where everyone has a daemon (a physical, animal, manifestation of one's soul). There's darkness and magic and militaristic polar bears, and scenes of pure childhood joy and scenes of pure childhood terror. The Hero's Journey begins!

The Subtle Knife: Arguably the coolest of the three tools, but messy and breakable. We meet Will, from our version of Earth, and he meets Lyra, and they travel through realities.

The Amber Spyglass. Lyra and Will finish out the trilogy. We learn about "Dust", traumatic upheavals, allegory, angels, daemons, love, death, new beginnings.

-Jeff

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta

An annoying born-again-Christian and a slightly less annoying sex ed teacher have problems that keep on making you want to go and kick some of the characters in the shins. Despite the frustration that you cannot actually harm fictional characters, it is a strangely compelling read, a book that you have to pick up whenever you can sneak five minutes to yourself.

-Amy

The Dead Fathers Club by Matt Haig

The plot is Hamlet. The first-person narrator is an 11-year-old boy whose father just died in a car wreck, and who believes his father's ghost has come back to tell him to kill his uncle. It is seriously creepy. There is an annoying lack of apostrophes that you can get used to. I recommend it for when you want something scary to read.

- Amy

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano

A fairy tale, a graphic novel, a picture book for adults. It is a retold Japanese tale of a fox that falls in love with a monk, and how she tries to save him when an evil magician attempts to kill him through his dreams. A beautiful little story. I think the best line is, "I shall seek the Buddha...but first I shall seek revenge."

- Amy

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

Chelsea Cain is a weekly columnist for the Oregonian. We like to read her pieces because they are about family stuff, things that we can relate to. Sometimes her columns are a little sad.

Heartsick, her second novel, is not sad, and it is not about families. It is gruesome, and thrilling. Not much blood, but plenty of gore and rotting flesh, and bad craziness. I liked it a lot and would recommend it.

-Jeff

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Run-of-the-mill Terry Pratchett, which means that it is a very fun read with parts you feel compelled to read out loud to whoever is in the room with you. The guy who was in the Post Office ("Going Postal") stars in this one, so it's very sequelish (well, I suppose they all are, but this one is more so). There's a few golems and some Unseen University scenes, but not much with the Watch. If you are a Discworld fan, of course you must read it. If you are not a Discworld fan, then you need to start reading Terry Pratchett's books, but not with this one.

Amy and Jeff (and soon to be Travis, who kept on trying to steal the book every time we put it down)

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I tried to read this years ago, perhaps when I was still in high school. I remember getting through about a chapter and then putting it away because it was so incredibly boring. This winter I decided to try again, because I always felt guilty about not reading it since it is one of THE CLASSIC AMERICAN NOVELS.

The result? I really enjoyed it. Lots of exciting scenes, short chapters, hints of modern novel writing (like chapters written as soliloquies or mini-plays that did not involve the narrator), and many lines that begged to be memorized and quoted at appropriate times (don't worry, I didn't). There were times when I was almost late for work because I wanted to finish a chapter. The things that seem horribly boring in high school (an entire chapter, "Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales," devoted to which ancient scientists/artists/philosophers got things right) seem entirely readable now. And everyone on the ship is really crazy, not just Ahab, because when you hunt a whale it is you, in a rowboat, with a sharp stick, trying to kill something that is 100 feet long and weighs 50 tons. It's ridiculous.

I highly recommend it.

Amy

2007 stats

Zoe read 22 books in 2007, counting only chapter books. Her favorite was Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We read the whole series this year, but this was her favorite.

Amy read 111 books in 2007. The most interesting one was The Omnivore's Dilemma, and she recommends that everyone read it.

Jeff read 43 books in 2007. Postcards from Ed by Edward Abbey, edited by David Peterson was his favorite this year.