Soooo....

.... what have I been reading ...

I read a book about children and bilinguality, which was very interesting: Barn med flera språk by Gunilla Ladberg.  I've always been bilingual, and so have many of my friends, so for me it was an easy decision to try to keep it up with my kids. My mother was quite committed to making us kids bilingual. For the time it was a bit avant-garde in Sweden. Of course, the advantage of having English as a second language is that people can understand that it might be "useful", so they accept it and think it's okay. If you're speaking something unbelieeeevably foreign to your kids you just haven't accepted that you live in Sweden now, you know. Anyway, what I learnt about bilinguality growing up was that you had to be very strict about sticking to the one language with your child, so they wouldn't get confused and start mixing languages. Mixing languages was bad. In this book the author writes about newer research saying that it is so not a problem when we mix - to the immense relief of us bilinguals who have always mixed with merry abandon. She also stresses that Sweden is extremely monolingual, if you adopt a global perspective, and we have a tendency to automatically think that oh learning another language is sooo hard whereas in other places on the planet people just do it without working themselves up about it because sure how else are you going to talk to anyone? So very interesting subject, everyone should read up on it.

I read a Jeffrey Deaver novel called A Maiden's Grave. I have no patience with this writing anymore. God, I used to be entertained by it, but I have evolved. It is shallow and boring. This one is about sign language and hostage rescue. A decided meh. But ok for a train ride if you skim a little.

I just read a  Kathy Reichs too (I got it and the Deaver second-hand somewhere thinking they'd be good summer reads) and feel a bit the same about it as toward the Deaver. The woman's writing style annoys me now something awful. Building up to monumental cliff hanger phrasing at the end of every chapter (what's with the Dickens complex?) that turn out to be NOTHING at the beginning of the next. Yet still more entertaining than the Deaver. Oh, it was Flash and Bones and was about ricin poison and Nascar.

There was something else, but I'm forgetting at the moment... Finished reading Bilbo for my son. When we'd read three quarters of the book he looked at how much we had left and said: "Mammy! We're nearly done! Then we never have to read this ever again!"

So... not a fan then.

Jeffery Deaver: The Broken Window

I haven't, according to the blog, read a novel by Jeffery Deaver since 2006. (I have also misspelled the label - "Jeffrey" -  so I may try to fix that now). I had a bit of a phase then and was quite taken with him. Now, the saying is that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but in the case of revisiting formely pet writers this is not necessarily true. Reading The Broken Window I was more annoyed than I remember being before at how repetitive Deaver is when he fills the new readers in how background info, like that Rhymes is paralysed. And that he peppers the text with cliffhangers. It also felt obvious when he led us to red herring assumptions into who the killer really was - so obvious that I realised it must be someone else that we'd never thought of.

Nevertheless Deaver is a very skilled thriller writer who puts together an entertaining read. When I spotted this brand new paperback at the library (I was the first reader! The spine will never be the same) I was happy to pick it up. The theme of this book is that we, in our new computerized society, sprinkle small bits of information about ourselves all over the place, and that the people who can access all this information have, potentially, enormous power. In this case a serial killer uses the information to stalk victims and frame innocents as their murderers. He knows his victim's interests and can disarm them by liking the same things, he knows what brands the would-be murderer favours and can plant evidence at their house. I have to confess that I am ignorant and am  not sure if there really is a private company that collects ALL such information about us so they potentially can sell a complete dossier on us to anyone, but sure, there might be. It's a sobering thought. Although I can't help feeling a little incredulous about it, since my first reaction is "why would anyone bother?". Except perhaps (a plot in the plot) the government looking for terrorist affiliations. But on the whole I'm not into conspiracy theories - well, I mean I'd read about them as fiction, but I don't believe them to be true.

Perfect book to read when travelling. Just long and engrossing enough, but not too complex.

I is working really hard

Edmund Crispin: The Glimpses of the Moon

I've read all the Crispin novels the library has to offer, and I need to remember that. I keep borrowing them thinking that I haven't, but I have. I have I have I have. And this one is the one with the pig's head - to help me remember. Not that they're not pleasant, it's just such a downer to think you have a virgin book and instead be left with... hang on, that was a bad metaphore getting worse. Forget it.

TGOTM has a cover proclaiming it to be "his first novel for over twenty years" and "well worth waiting for". It was published in -77, and must have been eagerly anticipated by his fans. Crispin has a very special (I was going to put "very unique", which would have been ironic as that is precisely the type of phrase that a Crispin book would take the piss out of, as something is either unique or not, right? so I changed my mind) style, very funny and literary, as the reviewers sometimes put it. For example:

[...]"Gobbo!" the Major rapped out in an army voice. "Answer the question, please!"

Luckily Gobbo had never been in the forces, so this worked. "Ur," he said. The current had reversed course, and he was coming back inshore again. "Ur. Ur, ur." All at once a spasm of energy seized him. "Er never," he began recapitulating, doppio movimento, accelerando. "Er never killed en. And I'll tell 'ee fer why. Cuz," he coda-ed triumphantly, allegro assai, "I wer talkin' to en."

I think this is hilarious. This is in the very beginning, and I giggled so hard I decided that the book had to be re-read. It's a good start, and we're thrown right in to the story, in which Gervase Fen, our professor and hero, has borrowed a cottage in a small village to get underway with his book on 20th century novelists. The murders interfere. They are actually incredibly gruesome, with decapitated and mutilated bodies, but they are covered with a sheet of Wodehouse-esque humour (I'm not claiming the humour is Wodehouse-esque. The Swedish library review on the inside cover is. I've never read Wodehouse, always been something unappealing about it to my mind. And now I want to even less, because I suspect the more Wodehouse in this Crispin, the less fun for me. It deteriorates into separate humouristic episodes that barely hang together. It's like reading one of those authors who is obviously desperate for his/her book to be filmed, and has the entire dialogue written in funny one-liners).

Let's see, what other notes did I make... From this book I learnt the names of the cow's four stomachs in English! Rumen, honeycomb, manyplies and abomasum. How odd are they??? I had some other potential quotes, but cannot be arsed. Must move on.

Michael Innes: The Ampersand Papers and Appleby's Answer

I randomly chose two Innes books too. They have in common some incredibly ignorant and hilariously funny (therefore) nobility, FYI. The Ampersand Papers is about possibly valuable literary manuscripts being stored in a delapidated castle tower for a lark, and Appleby's Answer is about a lady writer of detective fiction who provides a madman with a plot for murder - or not. I like Innes style, they are funny, literary (again, ha ha), and make you feel a bit smart, even though they aren't really a difficult read. The latter book also, possibly, contains a veiled P.D. James, as he writes about a woman who is considered the queen of detective fiction and used to work at the Foreign Office. A-ha, as Piglet tried to say.

Carter Dickson: The Ten Teacups

Carter Dickson is the same fella as John Dickson Carr, the master of the locked-room mystery. This is one such mystery, and a good one, if one knows about cricket pitching. He helpfully provides you with notes on where the clues to the solution where during the dénouement, which I find endearing.

Jeffrey Deaver: The Cold Moon

I was sort of watching the film version of The Bone Collector on the telly while I was reading this, and I was struck by how simple the film was compared to a Deaver novel, which will contain subplots in scores and red herrings in large quantities. In this one a serial killer appears called the Watchmaker - but of course all is not that simple, and I really don't want to say too much, as the transition from classic serial killer novel to a different kind of thriller is quite surprising and should be read if you enjoy this sort of thing.

But I will say this: it was OBVIOUS all along that Sachs wasn't going to quit cophood. God.

Jeffery Deaver: The Twelfth Card

A teenage girl from Harlem, researching some family history in a library, is attacked and narrowly escapes being killed. The scene is set to look like an attempted rape, but doesn't add up. Rhyme and Sachs start unravelling the different clues, while the girl's life is still in danger.

This is one of Deaver's best, IMO. Quite riveting, and full of false leads that trick the reader into making presumptions about where the story is going. It does have weaknesses, however. Deaver tends to just tie up all the loose ends towards the last quarter or fifth of the novel, without much consideration for the literary flow of the novel. He repeats previous things that have occurred in the Rhymes/Sachs timeline, to keep the uninitiated reader up-to-date, but for the rest of us it becomes repetitive. He also does his research into the underlying theme of the novel, in this case black culture, Harlem and its history, African-American Vernacular English (abbreviated AAVE, as he is careful to point out), and tends to go on about this at some length - sometimes fitting it into the story nicely, other times breaking the flow of the narrative to lecture us, the readers. Now, to me, it's very interesting to learn all this about Harlem... but it does ruin the literary aspect of the novel a little. It remains very obvious that Deaver is a white man writing about a black man's world - on the other hand, and to be fair to him, it's not like he tries to hide it, really.

Fun detail in this one: Deaver hints that Amelia Sachs may be related to the German police officer we became accquainted with in Garden of Beasts. Less fun detail: a clumsy line about what Parker Kincaid and Margaret Lukas (from The Devil's Teardrop) are up to now (not as well worked into the flow of the book as the German connection above).

ETA: almost forgot to mention one of the most interesting aspects of the book! Deaver uses the novel to speak out against the dehumanisation inflicted by the death penalty. I don't want to give away too much of the plotline, so suffice it to say that his method works quite well. Now I have to go off and have dinner. :-P

Deaver and Davis

Jeffery Deaver, The Devil's Teardrop: I'm on a bit of a Deaver-kick at the moment. Unfortunately I think the library may have run out of books now... Anyway, I merrily picked up two non-Rhyme/Sachs novels lately. I didn't really want to, because one gets very attached to an author's detectives you know, but I wasn't disappointed. Anyway, in this one Rhyme has a small cameo, which was nice.

Storyline: a man hides a silenced machine gun in a bag, and fires wildly in a crowd, killing several. The police get a note from someone else, wanting money to stop the shooter. The only lead is the note, so Parker Kincaid, former FBI document expert, is asked to come back to help find the man behind the scheme. Kincaid is a nice hero, I was pleased to make his acquaintance. He is a single father, who has promised to give up his police career in order to gain custody of his children and protect them from a selfish, alcoholic mother. However, he can't help but get involved in the case when the shooter kills children. Juxtaposed with him is Margaret Lukas, a tough-as-nails federal agent. They make a good pair.

The best thing with this book is that it really did fool me. There are several false leads, and I was sucked in and fooled, I admit it. Original yet credible plot, definitely well worth reading! Recommended!

Deaver, Garden of Beasts: For a change, this is an historical novel, set in Berlin during the Olympic games of -36. A New York professional killer (a button man), is covertly hired by the US government to kill the mastermind behind Germany's rearmament scheme. In exchange he's going to get a clean slate and a fresh start. Once in Berlin our hitman, Paul Schumann, can't help but get a little too personally involved as he discovers what fear and oppression people are living under.

I really wouldn't want to give away too much of the plot, because just as with The Devil's Teardrop it was pleasantly complicated and had me fooled. The ending is perhaps a little too sentimental, but I wouldn't want to let that colour my perception of the whole book. On the whole it's very enjoyable, and cleverly explores questions of good and evil, morality and immorality.

The book is marred a tiny bit by Deaver's over-eagerness in showing us that he's done his research well. There are a few too many explanations into German expressions and a few too many dropping of brand names of the times. In my opinion a lot of writers fall into this trap when they are writing about an era or a country not perfectly familiar to them - for example all these American writers who write detective novels set in England; on the whole people drink just a few too many cups of teas, and they're referred to as cuppas just a little too much. If you see what I mean.

Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised an impressed by this one. Obviously a story he was eager to tell. I'd have to say well done!

Lindsey Davis, See Delphi and Die: Another Falco novel! His wife's (Helena's) brother, Aulus, has beensent to Greece to study law. Almost immediately the family receives a letter from him, teling about a murder that has occurred within a group of tourists he came across. His mother becomes worried that her eldest son will be in danger, so sends Falco off to investigate.

As I think I've previously said, I love the characters and historical detail of these books, even though the writing style is really too choppy and disjointed to be perfect. They would have been so much better with better editing, in my opinion. Nevertheless it's charming how Davis manages to insert a modern phenomenon as tourism into Ancient Greece and get away with it. The ending of this one leaves a lot to be desired. It's very abrupt and it almost seems as though she were fed up with the story.

Jeffery Deaver: The Vanished Man

In this one an illusionist baffles Rhyme and Sachs (but not for long) by committing gruesome murders. A good plot, well paced on the whole, better than The Empty Chair I'd have to say. The magician theme was interesting since Carol O'Connell has done it too, also set in NY, in her series on Mallory the beautiful foundling cop. A series I kind of like, and then don't.

Not a book to waffle on about though.

Jeffery Deaver: The Empty Chair

In this one Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs go to North Carolina, because Rhyme is booked in for some experimental surgery that may make him more mobile (or less). Once there they get asked for help from the local police. A local teen has kidnapped two girls, and nobody knows where he's keeping them.

This book is just too much. Starts off fine, plot tootles along no problem. It's quite exciting, well-paced, not badly written. But then 2/3 through it's becoming time to tie the bag together, and then it all just starts happening. Conspiracies galore, the usual Southern clichés seem to abound, everybody who's "kin" is in on it together. There are about five "false endings" - and it's not even a film! Yet. They might not get Denzel and Angelina for this one, but I'm sure that won't be for want of trying.

If these conspiracies and plot twists were properly hinted at throughout the book, thus giving us the readers a fair chance of working it out - actually, even as I'm typing this I'm starting to think that maybe they are, and I have myself to blame for not seeing them, so maybe the problem is rather that there are too many instances of Rhyme pulling a conclusion out of his hat in a Deus ex machina way.

Anyway - it was good enough and not a complete waste of time. I'm going to borrow some more of Deaver's.

Jeffery Deaver: I samlarens spår/The Bone Collector AND Alexander McCall Smith: The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom

Read this (in Swedish) while at my inlaws over Christmas. Quite good - heaps better than the film, a lot more complicated relationships and all. Translation not bad either. Must pick up some more sometime.

The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom is a collection of the three Professor Igelfeld novels. They are absolutely charming, although Mma Ramotswe is still my fave. My husband got me this for Christmas, because he is lovely and he knows what I like.... This is one to read and reread.