Robert Hellenga, Snakewoman of Little Egypt ** 1/2

This novel has an intriguing premise, with a middle-aged academic at a crossroads in his life renting his extra room to a woman just released from prison for shooting her husband, a snake-handling minister. They are drawn to each other despite their very different backgrounds.

My major complaint is that the woman, Sunny, doesn't seem to come from a different background at all. Her ideas, her interests, and her manner of expressing herself all give the impression of a slightly naive middle-class college student. Her young life in rural Illinois as the straying wife of a pastor seems not to have shaped her world view at all. The man, Jackson, doesn't fare much better as a believable character. He has some mysterious rough edges in the first chapter, but after that he's a two-dimensional anthropology professor. His existential crisis doesn't last beyond the first two pages.

Jackson and Sunny find themselves drawn not only to each other, but each to the other's former life too. Over the course of the book, it's almost as if each of them is taking over the expected future of the other. That would be an interesting development if I cared about either character.

Gavin Pretor-Pinney, The Cloudspotter's Guide **** 1/2

A beautifully packaged, engagingly written introduction to "the science, history, and culture of clouds." I learned a lot about how clouds form and what types of clouds there are, but just as importantly I learned about the seedy world of sixteenth-century cloud pornography and about William Rankin, the only man to have personal experience of the interior of a cumulonimbus cloud (aka a thunderhead).

There is a cloud identification quiz in the middle of the book, and it asks you to differentiate between cirrus and stratus clouds, but it also identifies one cloud as "an Abominable Snowman who is upset that his pet seahorse is ignoring him." Very enjoyable and informative all around.

Dan Chaon, You Remind Me of Me ****

It surely says something about me that I enjoy books whose protagonists struggle to keep their regrets and disappointments at bay. I like to think of myself as having a fairly optimistic outlook, but my literary tastes suggest an undercurrent of dissatisfaction.

You Remind Me of Me alternates between three characters who suspect their lives could have been better. The relationship between them is revealed gradually: a young mother and her two sons, one of whom she gave up for adoption. The most interesting character is Jonah, the son who stayed with his mother. As a young adult, he tracks down his adopted half-brother in the hopes of learning how his life might have turned out.

I discovered the author Dan Chaon a couple of years ago when Evelyn gave me his most recent novel, Await Your Reply, for Christmas. Like You Remind Me of Me, Await Your Reply is concerned with questions of personal identity. The books are similarly constructed too, with separate stories that slowly come together. (Chaon started as a story writer.)

Chaon's writing style is quietly vivid and his characterizations nicely subtle. His books will stand up to re-reading, because the complexity of the characters is more important than the surprises of the plot.

Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder ****

The Age of Wonder is a history of the Romantic period in England, which Holmes defines as the period between Captain Cook's first voyage in 1768 and Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle in 1831. Conventional wisdom says that the Romantic poets staged a rebellion against science — a view I most recently encountered in The Master and His Emissary — but Holmes aims to show that Romantic literature and science developed together.

He states his thesis in the Introduction, then leaves it implicit during the rest of the book. The main characters are the major natural philosophers of the period: Joseph Banks, William Herschel, and especially Humphrey Davy. The Romantic writers Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats make prominent appearances as well. The scientists write poetry and the poets add scientific footnotes to their poems.

An enjoyable read and a fine corrective to the simplified vision of the period.