The thing is that I did read a lot this month. But half of them were books for the Certified Archivist test I took last week. So it’s not like most of it was FUN reading. Especially the one on Automated Access from 1981. Ridiculous.

Books Read: 37

Books Partially Read: 6 (one of them was Automated Access. Who would read all of that? Punch cards! Groan.)

Books Bought: 5

Money Spent: $25

Books Borrowed: 18

Books Given: 1

Books Re-read: 5

Money made (from selling books): 0

Books on To-Be-Read Shelf: I don’t want to say. Sigh. 48.

Favorite Books: Naamah’s Blessing by Jacqueline Carey, Queen of the Dead by Stacey Kade, The Cat Club by Esther Averill, and Henrietta’s War by Joyce Dennys.

The Naamah was the final one in that trilogy so it’s possible my liking it was partially due to its being over. But I also liked it! I am suspicious who Carey will write a series about next though. Please don’t let it be the little girl. Please. The first Kushiel trilogy remains her best. None of her other characters can beat Phedre for wonderfulness. But I did really love the first Naamah one (proof) and I did enjoy the conclusion to it.

Queen of the Dead is the sequel to The Ghost and the Goth which I also liked. It’s about a teenage girl who gets run over by a bus, comes back, makes friends with the boy who can see ghosts, sort of become an item. Blah blah, YA romance, yo. In this one though there’s some more stuff happening with ghost-seeing group, more powers, and the delightful epithet, “Casper-lover”.

The Cat Club is something I read as a kid and still completely and absolutely love. It’s about a little black cat named Jenny whose owner is a crusty sea captain who knits her a red scarf and her adventures with the neighborhood cat club. So adorable.

Henrietta’s War was written in the 40s and is an epistolary novel from a middle-aged-ish woman to her childhood friend at the war-front. It’s all from her letters and is about the happenings in a small town in Britain with a bunch of other middle-aged to old people and their home-front war efforts. You wouldn’t think it would be as fabulous as it is for a novel from someone you’ve never heard of but it’s great. Also there’s a sequel which I just borrowed from Kris and will get to eventually after this piles of library books goes down a little.

Least Favorite Books: I mean, let’s be honest here. Automated Access, OBVIOUSLY. I was also not raving about the new Kody Keplinger–Shut Out–(which I was maybe TOO excited about anyway after D.U.F.F.) and the newest Mary Janice Davidson about the vampire queen, Betsy (Undead and Undermined). Because seriously WTF is happening with those? It’s like she’s on acid.

Other things I liked all right: Arabel’s Raven by Joan Aiken, Bumped by Megan McCafferty, Phedre by Jean Racine, Candida by George Bernard Shaw, Red Moon Rising by Peter Moore, Here There Be Monsters by Meljean Brook, Wildefire by Karsten Knight, and Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives by Kate Theimer.