You can find the first part of my May reads here. On to the last four books;

• The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith: I love this series. These are comfort books for me; a chance to experience a slower simpler lifestyle, to immerse myself in the deep calm still thoughts of a middle-aged African woman. I love being transported to a land of dry and wet seasons, of red bush tea and charming store names, a land both exotic and familiar.
• The Ruling Sea by Robert V.S. Redick: The sequel to The Red Wolf Conspiracy finds our young heroes, tarboy Pazel and ambassador’s daughter Thasha, still very much in danger. The machinations of the Arquali empire to provoke war and theambitions of dark mage Arunis only suffered a setback at the end of the previous book. In this sequel, as the enormous Chathrand sets off into the Ruling Sea for her date with destiny, the youngsters try to find allies to help stop the conspiracy. It’s hard to compress the various convoluted subplots into this short review, but if you like sprawling multi-layered plots, you’ll like this series. My biggest complaint about this book is that the main characters didn’t do much more than react for a large part of the book (after Thasha’s spectacular deception at the very beginnning). I also have conceived a passionate loathing of Sander Ott and at this point mere death is too good for him. Grrr. Horrible man.
• Smith by Leon Garfield: Backstory on how I came to acquire this book in the first place: When I was a kid one of my favorite books was this fat volume full of excerpts from somebody’s list of great (Bristish) children’s literature. Since the Internet was unheard of at the time, and the state of libraries in Pakistan is dismal (ie: there are no public libraries—I had access to the meager collections at my school and the British Council libraries, and my mom had a membership to a privately owned library that mostly had romance books), this volume was my ticket to books I wanted to read. It introduced me to Joan Aikin’s Midnight is a Place, Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow and Margaret Mahy’s The Haunting (“Barnaby’s dead, Barnaby’s dead. I’m going to be very lonely”–never fails to send a shiver down my back). It also included the first chapter-ish of Smith, in which a child pickpocket in eighteenth century London witnesses the murder and search of a man who he has just divested of an important document—that he can’t read. I never forgot that excerpt, nor my desire to know what happened next, even though I was never able to find the book. Fast forward to a couple months ago and I was reminiscing to my husband about the books I read as a child and mentioned Smith as the one that got away. He was obviously taking notes, because he tracked a copy of the book (it’s out of print) for my birthday (he is so wonderful!). It was weird reading this book, because it kept tugging me back to my childhood memories of poring over that volume, but cool, too! Hang in there, my ten-year-old self–you will get to read this book when you’re 30!
• Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson: This, along with Warbreaker, was another one of my birthday presents. David obviously feels that we need to own and read every book Sanderson has written (with the exception of the Wheel of Time ones). Very different from his adult fantasy, like Lemony Snicket, but more upbeat. It certainly makes me giggle to think that ninja Librarians secretly run the world, but I suppose I have been deluded and brainwashed like the rest of the Hushlanders. I’ll have fun sharing this one with the kids when they’re older.

Whoa. I read eight books in May and reviewed none of them. I’m going to add my (hopefully) brief comments in a two-part May reads series. The first four books I finished last month were:

• A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin: This book brought out my Goldilocks complex. It was a shade too epic, too gritty, too populated. In the end, while I was pulled into the story and the characters, I hated that some characters were Too Noble to Live (ie: they died for being naive enough to think that others were honorable like them), and that Martin could make me care enough about them to feel horrible when bad things happened to them. Plus, this is supposed to be a seven-volume epic that is not yet complete with lots more death along the way. My nerves will not take it, so I end with the first volume.
• Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene: Ah, I finally finished this rather academic and densely-written book. It was certainly interesting, but I wish it could’ve been lighter on the technical jargon. The term “occipito-temporal” will forever be branded in my brain.
• For all the Tea in China by Sarah Rose: This was a very accessible and quick read. It chronicles one the earliest incidents of industrial espionage, when Great Britain stole both tea plants and the knowledge of tea making from China in order to bring both to their Indian colonies and break the Chinese monopoly on tea. Fascinating, and duly filed away for future inspiration for a story!
• Fire by Kristin Cashore: This companion novel to Graceling takes us to the eastern lands, beyond the mountains. Here, instead of graces, you have monsters—beautiful captivating creatures. Fire is the last of the human monsters, able to read minds, with a beauty that everyone desires. She is caught up the political turmoil of the kingdom–fomented in large part by her monster father–to help the young king keep his throne. Fire struggles to understand her own role in the kingdom’s future, to put limits on her power, to find love and acceptance and belonging. The novel got off to a slow start, but Cashore conveys the desperation and danger and tension very well. So many of the characters—the king, his commander and brother, Fire herself–were so heartbreakingly young (in their twenties at most) that it made their story–the bold plans, the military slogs, the battles–all the more poignant. All these kids taking on the roles of adults! I think being 30 has started to affect me.