Six Recommendations

I decided this morning that I wanted to make a list of ten books I’ve covered in this blog that I would wholeheartedly recommend. Not my favorites, because there are a lot of books — Tracy Park, for one — that I love too much to be able to think about them objectively. I’m not totally sure I’m looking at these objectively, but I do think they’re good, and I can’t see any reason why people shouldn’t still be reading them. I’m a little bit sad that I was only able to come up with six, though. Keep in mind that my standards, as usual, are incredibly inconsistent.

Happy House

I read Jane Abbott’s Happy House for the first time in May. It’s different from the other Abbott books I’ve read in that it’s aimed at a slightly older audience, and also in that…well, it seems a bit more formulaic. But I like it a lot.

The main character is a girl who has just graduated from college. Her name is Anne Leavitt, and so is that of her best friend, but the protagonist is usually called Nancy. The two Anne Leavitts, along with their other best friend, Claire, are packing when a porter arrives with a letter addressed to one of the Annes — they’re not sure which. After reading the invitation from Sabrina Leavitt to her niece, they conclude that it belongs to Anne, not Nancy, but Anne is just about to leave for Russia to do something vaguely humanitarian, so she persuades Nancy to go in her place.

I kind of thought I’d posted this last week, but apparently not: Red-Robin

After finding Keineth so wonderful, I immediately started two more Jane Abbott books: Larkspur on my computer and Red-Robin on my Kindle. Red-Robin is the one I finished first — I don’t know whether that was because I was reading it on the more portable machine or because it was kind of awesome.

Somehow, Red-Robin seemed a lot older than it was, which I think might be because the storyline reminded me a lot of a Mary Jane Holmes novel. But even though Jane Abbott uses the same plotlines so many other people use, she brings a sort of freshness to them. Things that you expect to happen because you know how the story goes do happen, but they happen more naturally and spontaneously than you would believe possible.

Keineth

I should be writing about Graustark, by George Barr McCutcheon, which is probably the book the phrase “Ruritanian romance” was invented for, but I just finished Jane Abbott’s Keineth this morning, so I’m not in the mood for talking about Grenfall Lorry’s supposed heroics.

Jane Abbott was recommended to me by frequent commenter Elizabeth, who has far better taste in girls’ books than I do, and I started with Keineth because it was one of the only ones available on Project Gutenberg. I have trouble imagining that I’ll like any of Abbott’s other books better, though.