Charlaine Harris: Dead Ever After

The last of the Sookie Stackhouses, and talk about just wanting it to end. This is a terrible book.

Events are just piled on one another in a desperate attempt to get it over with so we can end the series. And the sex scene? THE sex scene between Sookie and Sam? Lolz. There is no heart in this book whatsoever.

Meredith Pierce: Den fjortonde bruden/The Dark Angel

There's this thing going around Facebook right now (and NO ONE has nominated me, the feckers) where you list your ten favourite books, and a friend of mine had this on her list; a list she'd modified to be "ten most influential books". And I just was so struck with the memory of it. I immediately went to see if the library had it. They did, but only in Swedish. As a matter of fact, I think I might have read this very edition as a child, the cover art is the very same. 

My daughter thought this was so so lame, by the way. Almost as lame as me speaking doge. 

It's not very good, but it's hard to say if it's also the translation doing it no favours. This is high fantasy, so the language is supposed to be saga-like and formal - something that seldom translates well unless you have a terrific translator, more of an interpreter. I realised for example that the word quest is translated to spaning which is just no. But even in English I suspect it's lacking in lasting quality. A bit if a mix of Tolkien (the names definitely), Ray Bradbury (location: the moon?), even some Ursula LeGuin if I'm not way off... But I just don't get into this secondary universe. There are hints of science fiction but without scientific explanations - instead everything is solved by magic. It's a bit of a cop-out. Wouldn't mind reading it in English if it falls into my lap, but I won't go out of my way for it. Fun to revisit all the same! 

stuff I read this summer or up until like september or so

When we went to Ireland I ploughed through my sister's Agatha Christies and some kids' books they had. And when I got home I was still on an Agatha Christie kick so I borrowed some more at the library and have also been watching Miss Marple on Netflix like some mad thing (the Joan Hickson ones, natch). I tried the Hercule Poirot too but that was just too camp; I couldn't take it. I can't believe they spent (or spend!) so much time and effort at all these Agatha Christie series and made them so shite. Those stiff actors who seem to be sitting on set just waiting for their lines, which they then deliver with the most obvious of acting cues, in manner of school play. I'm surprised they know what to do with their hands, I wouldn't raise an eyebrow if they stood there with their appendages dangling limply or with fingesrs laced together awkwardly over their crotch area, like true amateurs do. Really dire. But after a terrible first four or so episodes the Joan Hickson series does pick up a bit, and she is an excellent Marple. The best, the tops. However, what I like about vintage detective fiction is that there really is a lot of subtext and information about society at the time going on under a repetitive sort of over-structure , and I don't see why they ever pick up on this and play it up a bit when they film the stories. They could easily tweak them darker, or turn a spotlight just ever-so-slightly on the implied gay relationships (I'm not asking for new storylines to be added, thus corrupting the original story, mind, just more interesting bits), or just do anything instead of falling into that god-awful trap of going bananas over the costumes.  Costume away, my dear friends, but think Mad Men instead - script and eye candy. Also - please be period correct!  And a lot of information needed to understand the characters involved seems to go missing in the filming - understandable, because you don't want a scene with somebody reciting the biography of X, Y and Z, in the way you can in a novel, but at the same time it's worth pointing out that it is possible to shed light on the background and motivations of people in films too without voice-overs or recitals. Scripts people, they need work.

Now, I still can't say Christie's my favourite. My previous grumbles do stand, but I'm warming to her. She's uneven though, isn't she? I still find it difficult to guess the killer, which I put down to needing more information than what is given. I am probably in the wrong, since I admittedly don't read carefully enough. Anyway, brief notes below based on memory alone - I'm writing this post in mid-September and half the books were read in mid-August.

4.50 from Paddington is one of my favourites. A great suspenseful killing on a train, that is only witnessed by accident. Maybe I'm just a sucker for train anything after commuting for so long and having a son who was train mad as a youngster. I also like the general set-up, the crumbling grand house in the middle of a changing community, the clever young woman who helps miss Marple by taking a post as housekeeper. Pleasing.

A Pocket Full of Rye is a little less good. A little too fantastical. Also, one has to make a few imaginative jumps here to guess the killer, surely? It's not obvious just from the clues in the text, is it? Or am I stupid? (Don't answer that.)

The Princess Bride: OMG OMG OMG I've wanted to read this for soooo long, why haven't I? And there it was, in my niece's bookshelf!

I have, of course, loved the film since childhood, and I remember my cousin (who introduced me to it) saying that it was based on this book, and she'd heard that the ending was actually really sad and that the spells wore off so Wesley died and Buttercup returned to Humperdinck. I am very grateful that the ending isn't quite so sad. More ambiguous. This is funny, entertaining, and clever. I don't know what I'd have made of it as a child/teen, if I could have appreciated the way fact and fiction is melded; Goldman writes as though he's adapting an original novel, written by S. Morgenstern, and the book is riddled with notes on what Morgenstern's (boring) original is like, why Goldman is cutting those bits out, loads of commentary on Goldman's own private life (all lies), and this edition has the epilogue where Goldman is bypassed by Morgenstern's estate for the sequel in favour of Stephen King. It's just brilliant. I think I'd have swallowed all the lies, until clocking (being a European after all), that there are no such places as Florin and Guilder. The question is how long it would have taken me. I was confused even now, as an adult. Awesome.

A Wrinkle in Time: Why is this book a classic? One of the poorest works of fiction I've ever read. I am so confused. Not one proper character in the whole book.

Benny and Omar: This was fun to read, but I don't know if it's very good, really. It reads like Colfer went to Tunisia and thought he might make a book out of that, but not like a tonne of research went into it. It was funny to read while in Wexford and hearing the "syrupy accent", that the Tunisians fail to recognize as English, live.

Endless Night is an artsy Agatha Christie. Inside the mind of the killer and all that. Meh, really. Not badly written, just not interesting beyond the props.

Ask a Policeman was a bit of a disappointment. It's a collaboration between several members of The Detection Club:  Anthony Berkely, Milward Kennedy, Gladys Mitchell, John Rhode, Dorothy Sayers and Helen Simpson. Each writer (except Rhode who writes the general set-up first chapter and a concluding one if I remember correctly) wrote a chapter featuring another writer's favourite sleuth. This is a highly entertaining premise if you are accquainted with said sleuths already so you can appreciate the jokes even better - but sadly I am not. I've only read Mitchell and Sayers out of this lot (I borrowed the book because of Sayers, obviously). Frankly I was bored to tears by the end when Rhode worked through the "true" solution. Sayers's bit was very good though. It's worth reading the Goodread's reviews on the book, by the way. The preface in this edition is by Agatha Christie, but was originally written for a Soviet magazine or something so it's not book-specific. (Any mistakes in facts now are due to me having to return this book before writing any notes - someone had put in a reservation for it at the library. Imagine!)

I don't remember what this one is about at all. Let me google... Oh right! Now I remember!  There were bits of this that I quite liked, but I didn't like how everyone was perfectly okay with a child dying because he was "a horrid boy". So that's alright then, push him out the window. Right. Makes perfect sense. Put that in your Discovery channel documentary "What Made Britain a Sick Sick Place", thank you. It's all jolly good and I say and then KILL THE KIDS.

Ah, this was Christie being clever again, causing outrage among the readers I believe. She'd claim she's not breaking the whodunnit rules, but I don't know - she's definitely bending them. I was surprised at the solution but I don't know if I approve. Tut tut.







Aaannnnddd finally a Marian Keyes I picked up on a whim. This novel must have been written during her latest bout of depression. It's very sad in places, very moving. Unfortunately also a bit uneven. The story doesn't hang together all the way. I wonder why these aren't being filmed? If this was a Swedish writer in Sweden the film deals would have come so fast, you guys.

She should allow herself to not have to be funny, I think she could write a better book. That said, the depressing paint scheme of the missing singer's house is hilarious! I found a quote on Goodreads so I'm pasting it in here, since I don't have the book anymore: “He'd done his walls with paint from Holy Basil. God, I yearned for their colors. I hadn't been able to afford them myself but I knew their color chart like the back of my hand. His hall was done in Gangrene, his stairs in Agony and his living room--unless I was very much mistaken--in Dead Whale. Colors I personally very much approved of.”  Paint colours for the depressed! 

Diana Wynne Jones: Enchanted Glass and The Lives of Christopher Chant

I had a hankering to read some Diana Wynne Jones. Christ, what an imagination that woman had! So much that if I'm truthful the stories aren't even finished, they're tacked together at the end with more bits of fantastic events and creations peeking in that we hardly get to know. Always ending with the feeling that there could be more - just perfect for kids. I wish I'd read all of hers as a child.

The pictures crack me up. Underneath Enchanted Glass you see the heat wave phenomenon of Swimming Towel Drying on Balcony and my pajama legs and bare toes. Christopher Chant is held by a hand already busy holding a sports bra. I am just the BEST at snapshots.

Ondvinter av Anders Björkelid (plus Eldbärare och Förbundsbryterskan)

Såvitt jag förstår är Björkelid oöversatt, så vi tar det väl på svenska då va. För omväxlings skull.

Faktum är att en av döttrarna haft författaren som lärare de senaste tre åren (hon tog studenten i år, hipp hipp och allt det där, och om detta var en normal blogg hade jag skrivit något smart om det då). Hon säger att han var väldigt bra, så det är ju kul. ("Har du haft den här Anders Björkelid som lärare förresten?" "Men mamma! Ja, i TRE ÅR. Jag har pratat jättemycket om honom! Varför lyssnar du inte?")

Boken är sådär, den är inte dålig men jag är inte helt såld. Jag ska läsa nästa så får jag se om det tar sig. Problemet är att det inte känns som om så mycket händer, fast huvudpersonernas liv vänds på ända när deras mystiska far dör och de attackeras av professionella strypare och monsterhundar och tvingas fly ut i vinternatten. Jag tror problemet är att allt är så mystiskt och de inte får svar på några frågor, vilket gör att berättelsen stampar. Först på slutet får de veta allt, men då är det fortsättning följer. Det blir lite lajvmanus över det hela, roligare att spela än att läsa kanske?

Uppdatering 2014-06-27: Nu har jag läst de följande två, Eldbärare och Förbundsbryterskan. Rättare sagt, jag har skummat dem, speciellt den senare. Och nu är jag inte snäll längre. Det är i stort sett omöjligt att få flyt i läsningen. Efter en tag upptäckte jag att jag läser den med rösten från killen som leder Barda på SVT i huvudet - något som är en bekräftelse på att boken känns som en lajvmanual. 
För så här går det, hela böckerna igenom: Någonting händer, dvs författaren lägger upp en scen som ska föra handlingen vidare - folk som träffas, dialoger, ev slagsmål - och därefter pratar huvudpersonerna Sunia och Wolf om vad som precis hänt, antingen med varandra eller i en inre monolog. Eller både ock. Det är precis som ett Barda-avsnitt! Och enormt tråkigt.

Språket är genomgående stackatoartat och upphugget, vilket gör läsningen monoton, och eftersom handlingen tydligen inte kan föras framåt utan att man pratar om den är det väldigt mycket dialog, något som också bidrar till en hackig läsupplevelse. Jag klarar inte av att läsa böcker där ingen mening tillåts vara längre än tio ord, jag minns att samma stilistiska grepp drev mig till vansinne den enda gången jag läste Ken Bruen. Det ska väl vara sparsmakat antar jag? Spända meningar = automatiskt spännande text? (Fast nej.)

Redigeringen är slarvig; kursiv stil används för att markera t.ex. en drömsekvens, men ibland kursiveras även det normala skeendet när korrekturläsningen inte fungerat. Och rent generellt hade hälften varit nog, böckerna hade mått bra av en riktigt sträng redaktör. Jag lämnas också med ett intryck av ett torftigt och enahanda språk, vilket jag misstänker kan vara orättvist för när jag söker på nätet ser jag att många uppskattar böckerna just för språkets skull. Själv hakar jag upp mig på att huvudpersonerna hela tiden utbrister och ropar. Nej, detta är ingen författare som målar bilder med sitt språk som Selma Lagerlöf, eller till och med Astrid Lindgren (som i ärlighetens namn kan vara mer än lovligt tjatig ibland) gör. I princip hela Förbundsbryterskan utspelar sig i underjorden, hos vittror och annat knytt, med referenser till sagor och de regler som finns i sagor, det är blod och mörker och det BORDE vara bra, men det är sååå trååååkigt. 

Kommer INTE att läsa den sista. Däremot barnböckerna var skojiga! De lånade jag och högläser för sjuåringen, så de är helt ok.

Fire and Bitterblue by Kristen Cashore

The second and  third part of the Graceling  series had to be read of course. My eldest daughter lolled and lolled at the covers of Fire and Graceling, which show the silhouettes of beautiful lithe girls ready to shoot arrows or something. Pretty lame, and they don’t really do the books justice. Somewhere on the internet someone has written something intelligent about this pervasive image of strong girls with bows or crossbows - as in, without one you're not strong, and you can't be strong in any other way. I don’t think these books are fantastic by any means, but they are, on the whole, well written and imaginative, with a strong ambition to discuss more difficult subjects – like how to forgive people who have been coerced to commit terrible acts of violence under an oppressive regime, with definite nods to the South African truth commissions (Bitterblue), or if a person whose parent was violent and tyrannical has a duty to atone for said parent, or a right to atone (Fire). The covers, however, are just pretty and shallow and kick-ass; elements that exist in the books, but aren't the most important by any means. The stories are darker than you'd imagine, but in my opinion they could have gone a little darker yet, and more philosophical.

Anything else I wanted to say I've long forgotten (this is another overdue draft being finished). 

Eld, Nyckeln

Oh lookit here, another crooked photo. Let's do this in English like I did for the first one, since they're also popular abroad. I read these for the book club, borrowed both and read them quickly. Like before, the strength is in the description of the inner lives of the teens and smalltown Swedish life. The fantasy bits are a bit so so. It's being filmed now and they've released a picture of the cast, which is all new talent. I hope a lot of the rest is new talent too because for some of this novel I was fecking casting it in my head, it felt a little predictable... Anyway, now the read is documented. 

Jasper Fforde: The Song of the Quarkbeast

You know what? This post has been waiting to be written since the 28th of March, so the picture can just stay skew-ways. 

I do like a bit of Fforde, but I think I most often like the first book in a series - before he gets too clever. This is the second one of the Dragonslayer novels, I've already read the first. And well, the cleverness starts to take over sometimes and it gets a little masturbatory. Not literally omigod it's a kid's book. Come on. Anyway, that doesn't matter because it's a kid's book so it's not long enough for excessive punning and what have you, so I enjoyed it. That's all I remember. On to next draft, hey ho. 

Feed and Graceling

These are also from the list of the soon to be filmed. Quite popular books too, took a while for them to work their way down to me from other library aficionados, but then they showed up at the same time. 
Another cracking photo of my bed, I really do spoil my readers.

I quite liked Graceling. I didn't fall head over heels for the characters, but close. It lacked a little fleshing-out somehow. But it's a decent fantasy novel with a decent secondary universe, and towards the end when the plot was coming together it was genuinely exciting too. A good amount of violence, just there because the world is a violent place; a very excellent feminist theme and a great heroine. I put in reservations for the other two books in the not-really-a-series and am looking forward to it. Feed was not as much my cup of tea at all. I like that it's a zombie book without focusing on the zombie gore. Instead it's about how humans are living after the disaster. The medical side of it is well-crafted. Everyone is infected with the dormant virus and will reanimate after death or after being bitten/otherwise exposed to the live version. This is very realistic, a nice touch. I just found the whole thing a little too Aaron Sorkiny, it became a mix of The West Wing and Newsroom and just a bit too snappy. Despite every opportunity to make me care about the characters they faded into the background and became accessories to the one-liners and the technology. I don't think I'll read the others in the series, even though they apparently are better ( even better if you're a fan).

reservations

Update: this was written yonks ago, I just fixed the link and suddenly publication date changes? Don't understand why.

So I read this Buzzfeed list  and put a number of books on reservation because why the hell not, some YF always goes down. The first one to arrive was Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy, a book so lame (I assumed) that my teenagers showed zero interest in it (unlike that book Divergent which has a Hype). Well, it is quite lame. As nothing more than competent entertaining literature it's okay, just lacking in that certain something that can make even so-so books a bit more than average. It's always the characters that have to be so interesting that you want more of them. Somehow they have to be imbued with real traits and the at least hint of the complexity of actual people. Vampire Academy has none of that, sadly. Worse than that though is how sexist it is. Our main character, Rose, is a half human half vampire hybrid, who is gorgeous and curvy (unlike full-blood vampires) which makes her desirable to all men (no gay relationships in this book) at the vampire boarding school she attends together with the full-blood vampire Lissa that she has sworn to protect. However, exploring your sexuality and enjoying sex will brand you a slut and start some malicious gossip, as Rose soon discovers. After all, we can't have women uncrossing their legs all over the place, can we. She immediately accepts this and starts modifying her behaviour so people finally can respect her as an honourable woman. Oh I haven't the energy to even analyse this shit, but it's bad. Here's a picture instead.

I'm not reading The Magician King by the way

Noticed this post in my drafts since months. There's nothing more to say really so why I didn't post I don't know: I borrowed it and my eldest daughter started to read it, and she just went meh I don't want to. So I started to but she's right - meh. I just don't care. I don't care about the characters enough. If it were my own book I might get around to it some day but I don't think it's going to happen... Returned. Funny that, a one-book phenomenon.

Catherynne Valente: The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

After the glowing recommendation below

I promptly checked what the library had to offer and borrowed this (n.b. that I'm not naive enough to jump out and BUY it on any aul recommendation, no sirree):

 

So, oddly they only had the sequel, not the first book. They do have the first one, but as an audio book, and not only that, it seems to be a DAISY edition, which means it's specially made for blind people. Apart from these, I can only see that there's a school library in the boondocks that has her collection of norty sheksy short stories, Palimpsest. So I settled for this. It's a children's book, but I just might rather read that than erotic short stories anyway.

The recommendations are glowing. There are prizes that have been won, there are ecstatic reviews. "The kind of book you don't want to end" and so on.

 Me, I don't get it. I think there are certainly some original and sweet ideas in Valente's version of Fairyland, but she seems a little too enamoured with her ideas because every character our heroine, September, meets holds a long quirky speech for her in a manner that quickly gets old. I don't really see that children would like this. Adults who fancy that they are in touch with their inner child will love this. It's like blogger pics of cupcakes and bunting, a bit pastelly and very artfully posed. "I love children, see how I've made them cupcakes!" Each scene wraps you up in so many words that you never get a sense of or feel for what the words are describing and what is actually happening in the flesh and blood story. Valente will write that something was terrifying but I never feel it. Everything is pretty. Unlike Gaiman's children's books with similar themes that have actual gore, this only glosses. Too clever. Jasper Fforde does this as well, loves his clever ideas so much he murders his book. No-one wants to read 200 pages of wordplay, bro. Anyway, book one might be better and this might just be filler, but I'm not going to go looking for book one.

Damn, this makes a long stretch of boring books. Meh. 

Neil Gaiman: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

So, as my sister pointed out in the comments of my last post I have completely forgotten to write about the book that shall henceforth be known as Ocean because TOATEOTL is a pain to type. Although oddly pleasant to say. Also, sounds like Cthulhus lesser known and less sinister younger cousin. Since I borrowed it from her (and nagged her for it) she naturally has wotsit Reasons to Ask, if only to ever know if she can demand it back wot wot wot. So yes, I have read it.

In the novel a middle-aged author returns to the place where he lived as a child, and as he's walking around the changed neighborhood he comes across the Hempstock's farm, and suddenly remembers The cover of Ocean is best from the back - I just ambitiously attempted to take a picture but since it's dark now there was flash and it didn't work; also, it was hard to also not get my ratty pajama trousers, messy living room and thumb in the photo so I abandoned the project and my oft-spoken-of promise to make the blog more interesting by adding pictures. The front is a girl in water, but the back is a photo of Neil himself, as a child, half-way up (or down) the outside wall of a house, balancing on the pipes. And it's just perfect for the book, which is clearly based to some extent on childhood memories (in the acknowledgments he phrases it as a thank you to his family for letting him plunder the landscape of his childhood). The beginning of the book even reads like a genuine autobiography, to the point where I almost decided to put it down since I'm not that interested in Gaiman's writing to read his genuine childhood memoirs. The back blurb doesn't give much away and I hadn't read up on the book in advance. But I stuck with it for those few extra pages and soon it all swerved into more familiar fantasy territory. And then the strength of the book became the little boy's story and relationship with his family, with the fantasy story just a vehicle to explore how vulnerable children are, exposed to their parents' whims. (The scenes that stick with me are the ones where his parents, influenced by the Creature, completely betray him. This is the work of the Creature, but that's just in the story. In real life we know that kids are betrayed all the time - in fantasy we can pretend that some outside magical influence causes it so that the parents are not to blame, but that's just in fantasy. The escapist solution for tormented kids.)

Anyway, so the end goes on a bit and doesn't feel really - true? necessary? believable? Ha. But I  liked it, and it wasn't long, so yay. I'd like to re-read it sometime.

Lev Grossman: The Magicians

So I read about this in the paper, and decided that it sounded much to fun to miss. And it is fun, I really enjoyed it. It's so clearly and unashamedly influenced and inspired by boarding school books in general and Harry Potter especially, by Narnia, by every fantasy book like ever. It's pretty fantastic that Grossman holds it all together and really modernizes the genre without straying too far into urban fantasy (which he doesn't do, IMO).

The young magicians of the story have been taken from ordinary, mundane lives to go to Brakebills, a college of magic. It's old-fashioned, full of rigid rules, anglomanic. Classic boarding school stuff, complete with blazers and including a special made-up pseudo-British accent full of phrases like "hard cheese, old boy". However, being a magician doesn't not make you an adolescent/young adult. They drink, they have sex, they make stupid mistakes. And in the end, they go to another plane, another magical land, the one they've all read about as children and never imagined might be real, Fillory. It's a coming of age story, and a growing up story. It's honest and brutal and bloody, yet sweet. If it weren't for the fact that the final scenes has one of the women dressed in a leather bustier that she's spilling out of, while floating outside a skyscraper window, I'd be very impressed. Now I'm a little worried that Grossman is a shallow person writing for a dream screenplay. (If it is filmed, please God let it be good. Slow, a bit scruffy, with a lot of quiet. And take infinite care over the scene where the Beast comes from another plane and holds them all hostage, silently, in the classroom for hours. That is some good storytelling there.)

I've put in a reservation for the second book at the library.

Gregory the Overlander vs Wolf Hall

So far I'm not making stellar progress on my Christmas present, Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantle. I think I'm on chapter three maybe? don't frankly know because it's Monday morning and I cunningly forgot the book at work before leaving on Friday. To avoid the thing I've been immersing myself in blog reading and pod radio and haven't read for months. But I went to the library Saturday to borrow something for Minimus and his bedtime stories and saw book two of Suzanne Collins Gregory the Overlander series (The Prophecy of Bane) on the shelf, and since I've been so keen to see what they're like I picked that up too. It's just a kid's book, but it's good. Good story, good characters. Moral without being obvious and in-your-face-ish. I'm going to stalk them all. So far Gregory is winning over Thomas Cromwell and that contrived dialogue let me tell you. Give me a giant bat any day.

c'mon ketchup

And look at me forgetting to mention Christmas in my last post. On Christmas Day. Shabby! This year I got no books for Christmas, possibly because my poor husband is too down about me not reading the Hilary Mantle he got me for my birthday (Wolf Hall). I've read about two chapters and Am Not Keen. Maybe it picks up. I'll get there.

Anyway, I've read some Charlaine Harrises: Dead Reckoning and Deadlocked from the Sookie series, and see that she's writing the FINAL  novel now, due next year. I think this is a good move, it's gone far enough. I also read an Aurora Teagarden (A Bone To Pick) I managed to get a hold of, have been interested in that series for a while and can now understand why it's not more popular. Also read her free-standing novel about a rape/a serial rapist, A Secret Rage - not brilliant but clearly based on true experiences, which is, as I've said, why Harris's books work despite everything; the darkness is real (sorry for the dwama phrase but it is). She could definitely do with more analysing, better editing and more depth as a writer, but she pays her bills and I think she's pleased and works hard. Good for her.

I read an Elaine Viets mystery shopper novel which was fucking terrible, Murder With All The Trimmings. Skimmed it more like. Bloody awful, disjointed stuff. I thought they were a little fun before? What was I thinking? It wasn't even light entertainment. No excuse for sending this off to the printers. None.

I also read a HEAP ( a HAPE) of Patricia Wentworths. The Case Is Closed, Danger Point, The Chinese Shawl, The Clock Strikes Twelve, The Case of William Smith, The Catherine Wheel, The Brading Collection, Anna, Where Are You?, The Benevent Treasure and The Alington Inheritance.They're oh so formulaic, with Miss Silver's annoying cough, the convoluted plots that are not ashamed to include hidden passages and treasures, the strong men who grab their beloved by the wrists and say "don't be a damned little fool, can't you see I want you to stop working and take care of you!". Vomit vomit vomit. Yet I wish I had more. I was so in the mood for vintage crime. I started noticing how she often spends a lot of time describing what the women are wearing, so thought that this was worthy of an email to one of my favourite blogs, A Dress A Day. I probably won't get around to sending her the tip, but I'm going to try, There were at least two books in which the heroine worked as a fashion model for a designer, wearing fabulous clothes and displaying them with great effect so middle-aged frumpy women with more money than sense would be fooled into thinking that they, too, could look equally ethereal. It's really very interesting and revealing of the times. Ha.

I re-read some more Laurie King, and I read some Jim Butcher, Dresden Files. Death Masks and Changes. Another series which has gone a little too far, but we'll see. I also read Sacrifice, the latest Charlie Higson "zombie" book. He's beginning to go soft now because quite a lot of children survived, but hey I'm not complaining. Quite like how he's pulling it together.

I'm really really hoping I can start blogging more next year.

Books you can't read in public

Noticed the paperback covers on the novels by Markus Heitz (the dwarf stories).

Well.

I'd feel really conspicuous. I mean really.

A whole great load

Ages ago I read a book called Min pappa är snäll och min mamma är utlänning by Emmy Abrahamson. It's handy to note that down, because I suspect I might want to be able to tip someone off about it sometime. It's a book for teens about a girl whose mother is Polish and how this makes her feel like the world's greatest outsider - pretty funny, not bad at all. Absolutely no point at all in writing this in English, but I don't like mixing in the same post.

I've read Laurie King's short story Beekeeping for Beginners - honestly, wasn't that sold on it, felt a bit unfinished? I have a reserve on Pirate King at the library, so should get my hands on it in about SIX MONTHS. Longest queue ever, like. Not as long as Jonas Gardell's Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar mind, which I gave up on getting my hands on before my book club, so I merrily joined in the discussions sans a clue. But I will read it. (Just didn't want to buy it.) I read the short story collection  An Apple for the Creature, edited by Charlaine Harris, which was trivial but fun. I have no patience with most fantasy after Tolkien, but I seem to have more tolerance for urban fantasy. Odd that. I'm not saying it should win awards, but I can leaf through them on trips. You know. I also found as an ebook a bizarre science fiction tale marked "erotica" by a Randall Garrett - Pagan Passions. It's about the Greek gods returning to Earth. Some decades after their return society is completely different, all centrered around the needs and whims of the Gods. That bit is quite amusing, the descriptions of New York with temples to Athena and an orgy to honour Pan in Central Park. The "hero" of the story gets to be a stand-in for Bacchus and have loads of sex. Awful, but amusing. In an awful way. But I'm not starting an "erotica" tag... Oh and I got Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris at the library, which is the third latest Sookie Stackhouse, and I read it just after reading three Ngaio Marsh novels back to back, Dead Water and Death in Ecstasy and a re-read of Artists in Crime,  and I was struck by a similarity oddly enough, namely the obsession with politeness. LOL to me I said. Oh, in Death in Ecstasy I was tickled to bits by several references to detective stories. I'd quote for you if I could copy and paste but I can't. At the moment I'm reading a disturbing R. Austin Freeman novel, The Uttermost Farthing: A Savant's Vendetta. About some lunatic who believes in "physical anthropology" and goes on a vendetta to kill criminals (examples of degenerate humans) after his wife is murdered. It's all goes remarkably and disgustingly unchallenged, almost as if the author has an axe to grind, but I'm not finished with it yet. Yuck.

The other day I wrote a post on my phone...

... but the phone sorta ate it. You have to get it just right when blogging via the Blogger app, I'll have you know. It breaks down and just keeps asking you to switch accounts. Useless thing. Anyway, the post is gone, but what I wanted to tell you was that I went to a second-hand book shop and saw these super-darling paperback editions:

But at 50 kr apiece I'm not buying them, since I'm not, after all, very keen on Agatha Christie. But they were sweet. The next day I went to the Red Cross and checked out their selection and they had NOTHING. I was utterly disappointed.

I've read the new hit fantasy novel Cirkeln (it's being translated and will probably be called The Circle, right?) by Mats Strandberg and Sara Bergmark Elfgren - it's a breath of fresh air on the Swedish fantasy scene, but mostly for doing a great job on describing the kids that make up the coven of witches. The actual witchy bits are so-so really. But worth a read! Very exotic to foreigners I'm sure. Then for the book discussion club we read Sommarboken by Tove Jansson. It was okay. Didn't sing to me. Then I know I've read some other things that I've forgotten now. A shame that. Today I went to the library and I got a heap of paper-back crime fiction I hadn't read - I'll be back.

The Farseer Trilogy

My colleague, who is totally into fantasy and science fiction (more Star Wars than Star Trek, sadly), said I should read Robin Hobb. So why not, I said, borrowed the first Farseer book (Assassin's Apprentice) and really liked it. Then I wanted to read the rest, and they were lost in the library. Sigh. My little sister had them though, so I made her bring them to me. Win! Exstatic review can be found here. Myself, I shall confess to becoming a little bored. It went on and on towards the end. Props for a sad, melancholy ending, but it took longer than it should have. I lost the magic. I made my sister bring me the other books set in that universe, and now I'm not feeling so inclined to read them, which makes me feel bad. I'm a selfish, bad person. I'll make it up to her with chocolate pie on Easter Monday.