All Things Books

I have, on this blog, pledged to do all sorts of book related things and have not delivered. Sigh. I am not the world's best blogger. I believe that I am two months behind on the Book of the Month challenge, so I'll start there.
February's theme was "heart." I read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. The book is set sometime in the future about 70 years after earth has been attacked by an alien race identified only as the "buggers." The main character is Ender, an enormously bright and empathetic child who is recruited into an elite battle school at the tender age of 6. I read this book when I was in junior high or high school, but I found it to be a completely different experience as an adult. Being the mom of a 5 year will definitely change your perspective. What does this have to do with "heart?" Well, the book, in a nutshell, revolves not only around Ender's extraordinary intelligence, but his equally extraordinary capacity for empathy, i.e. his heart. See how I pulled that altogether? Aren't I clever.
March's theme was "craft." I read Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. This was a hum-dinger of a book with a whopper of a twist at the end. The main character is Blue VanMeer, a 17 year old girl in her senior year of high school. She gets involved with an odd group of kids an a nuts-o teacher and an intricately plotted mystery unfolds. The book's prose is snappy and littered with literary references that constantly made me wish I had paid just a little bit more attention in college. How does this relate to "craft"? This was one of the most well-crafted mysteries I have read in quite some time (ha!).
So, by now you might be thinking that instead of choosing a book to fit the Book of the Month theme and then reading it, I read whatever I want and make it fit the theme. And you would be right. I feel a little bit bad about that and am considering reforming my ways for April. Although April is almost over and I don't know what April's theme is. So maybe I'll reform in May.
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I've also been remiss on the Short Stack reports. This is partly because the Washington Post has not produced list topics to which I can easily relate and I was too busy/lazy come up with my own. But! This week they had a good one: Books to Climb Into. These are the books that created a world you didn't want to leave, or you felt like you were part of, or pulled you into an intense reading experience. I liked the editor's list, and I'd recommend checking it out.
For my own list:
(1) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle. I loved this world and Meg's family. When I was younger, I wanted to be Meg's mother when I grew up. She could do chemistry and cook dinner at the same time. I also wanted to hang out with Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace, they are my kind of people and I know we would have been tight.
(2) The Farseer, Liveship Traders, and Tawny Man trilogies by Robin Hobb. These books created an intricate, detailed world that I found fascinating and totally enjoyed. They were some of the first fantasy books that I read of my own initiative (after Moses sucked me in by getting me to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy).
(3) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This is on the Washington Post list, so I feel like a dork for including it on mine, but what can I say, this is a book I've wanted to climb into, so here it is.
(4) Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. This book is big enough that you could almost literally climb into it. Okay, not literally, but less figuratively than the other books. This book jumps between World War II cryptographers and modern day computer hacks (for lack of a better term) and was so complicated that I can't really remember the plot but I know I liked it. I can't say that the worlds in this book creates are ones I'd actually want to live in, but this book delivers that sort of absorbing, suck-you-in-until-you-can't-find-your-way-out reading experience that I think qualifies it for this list.
(5) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Also not a world that I want to live in so much as one that was totally real to me while I was reading this book.
So, time to give it up--what's on your "Books to Climb Into" list?