The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett, a one-time Pinkerton detective, is the greatest creator of hard-boiled mysteries: his characters Sam Spade and the Continental Op are archetypical anti-heroes of the genre, and his novels regularly make mystery best-of lists (and Red Harvest was featured on TIME's list of the 100 best English novels written after 1923.) His style is spare and economical, free of long descriptive passages. What happens, happens in dialogue and in action. There's little there to distract from his plots--which are clever but never gimmicky, and are just twisted enough to merit a second read.

I forgot a couple characters up there, didn't I? But how could I forget them: Nick and Nora Charles, the married couple who drink their way through solving a mystery mostly for the fun of it, who banter wittily like no other, who were so popular in the film adaptation of the novel they were introduced in that five sequels were produced over the next thirteen years.

I didn't forget, of course. That would be really something, considering I just finished reading The Thin Man, and only just said my good-byes to Nick and Nora.

Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black

I've known that his book existed for a while but only last night did I start to read it--and finish it, at 5 in the morning, having gone through the whole thing in one sitting. Tithe went far beyond my expectations.

So what were those expectations? I knew that there were faeries and that it was supposed to be "edgy" and that there was some kind of romancin' going on. I'd seen a little fan-art online, of white-haired pretty-boys with pointy ears. In my head it was Twilight with elves, a slight fantasy with some mild romance.

Kaye Fierch is our plucky protag, though she resembles the typical teen heroine in he same way a griffin resembles an eagle. Part of hat archetype is there, but there's something else entirely grafted on. She feels like an outcast--par for the course--she's probably half-asian--okay--and her mother is a musician who she travels the States with, and she hasn't been to school in two years and she may have accidentally put some kind of love spell on her best (and only) friend's boyfriend. Things get interesting.