Lindsay Gordon or Wolf Hall?

Well, what do you think I chose? Came across Val McDermid's Hostage to Murder which I hadn't read, and I do have a soft spot for Lindsay Gordon I do, so easy contest. This is the one in which Lindsay doesn't want to become a parent, goes to Russia and takes on the IRA.

And it's not great, is it. The prose -  not marvellous. No. But I like it anyway.

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.

Well.

So.

In my defence, such as it is, I haven't actually been reading much, only blogs. For a while I listened to the radio on my commute instead of reading (mostly Spanarna and På minuten, but also some Tendens - yes, Swedish radio only), but now I'm having this huge blog-enthusiasm thing going and I've actually read several newly discovered blogs back-to-back. So I'm going to have to update my links I think to stuff I actually am reading. I added heaps of things to my Google reader too in a fit of go-get-'em but I don't actually want to follow more than say half of it, so I'm going to have to delete quite a few things and was most piqued when I discovered that it wasn't just hey, delete, it was Tricky. Google really are quite shite with lay-out, aren't they? A lot of my new blog favourites are clothes and/or sewing blogs, mostly retro, because I discovered Looks Good From The Back first and was so inspired to have more fun with clothes - and let's face it, retro is where the fashion fun is, isn't it. Because there is feck all in the shops, at least here. So now I've worked my way to Gertie's blog for better sewing, and am feeling that urge I sometimes get that maybe I'd like to sew my own clothes? I should take a sewing class. There's no way I can learn on my own, I'm too thick. Also, I felt ashamed and inspired to take more of an interest in my OWN blog, and maybe post stuff? With pictures, to make it more interesting! But it's not going to happen until I get my own computer somehow, one I feel I can use whenever. Until then the blog is not going really work, because the phone blog thing is a bit rubbish. I could of course just take a picture of the book I've just finished and post that but. how. dull. My unfulfilled wish to blog about what I'm only after reading has just led me to owe the library about a week's worth of late fees, because I read Backman's Saker min son behöver veta om världen and thought I'd post about it and didn't and didn't return the book because I wanted to remember to post first and there we are. And ironically, the only thing I really wanted to say was that this book is not very great. It's not even a proper book, just blog entries put together. I hate that. I also wanted to say that when I read En man som heter Ove I wrote that I just knew he was going to be offered a film deal, and then I meant to write that in a comment on his blog to say that even though it's going to be tempting for them to cast Kjell Bergqvist as Ove I think they should think carefully about that because it's a little too obvious. But then didn't he beat me to the revelation and then there were 600 comments. Bleurgh. 

But anyway, last post was a LIE, because I got books for Christmas! They were just late to arrive to The English Bookshop, but my husband gave them to me this week. And they are not just any books, he REMEMBERED that I told him I like Cyril Hare!!! That's worth three exclamation points!!! He got me An English Murder and a collection of short stories - I took a rubbish photo but can't upload it from my work phone because it's a bizarre Samsung I don't understand. I've linked you to them instead, they are so gorgeous and I'm so psyched. He asked me today if I was enjoying the book but in all honesty I'm hesitant to get into them because I want to savour them. I was so in the mood for some vintage crime!

Oh, and I read a rather meh teen dystopic novel called Pure by Julianna Baggott that my eldest brought home - it's not terribly good, but a quick and so-so entertaining read, if you happen to be on a flight or something. The author is much too enamoured with her idea of the survivors of the explosions being fused to whatever object they happened to have been near to remember that story, plot and characterization have to come first. Also, she gets praise for her prose I notice when googling briskly, but myself I felt like it was a bit of a copy of Burgess' Bloodsong to be honest. To be fair though Maxima didn't agree with me at all. That reminds me that Mortal Engines also reminded me of Bloodsong and I kind of felt that people need to be un-inspired, you know?

Anyway. CYRIL HARE!

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.

En man som heter Ove

Fredrik Backmans bok lånades på biblioteket, vilket jag är rätt nöjd med, för i det långa loppet vill jag inte äga den. När den är som bäst är den fantastiskt rörande och empatisk, när den är som sämst är den skakig faktamässigt (har mycket svårt att se att brandmän står bredvid ett brinnande hus och utreder om det hör till deras kommun, samt har aldrig hört talas om att äldre tvångsintas på äldreboende - det brukar väl vara motsatsen som gäller) och lite för välbekant för den som läser Backmans blogg.

Men grattis till erbjudandet till filmmanus, som lär komma som ett brev på posten! Håll bara kontroll över projektet Fredrik, så de inte byter ut iranierna mot vilken utlänning som helst som råkar finnas i rullorna, och så vidare. First we take Trollhättan, then we just might take Hollywood om filmen blir bra och de vill göra en remake!

I övrigt har jag läst MYCKET, men jag ska se om jag hinner sammanfatta i ett blogginlägg innan året är slut.

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.

"Det går inte att tänka sig fram till ett människovärde.

Det måste erövras genom handling.Du är och blir - eller inte."

Han kan han, Kristian Lundberg. Läser uppföljaren till Yarden, Och allt skall vara kärlek.

Men ändå. När jag är på sidan 140 av drygt 170 och han återigen lovar mig att han ska berätta: ja snälla, gör det. För all del. Jag väntar.

Yashim the eunuch

I know I've read about this series somewhere before, but for the life of me I can't remember where. Anyway - pretty colourful covers caught my eye and I borrowed a few in a heap - The Janissary Tree (no 1), The Bellini Card (no 3) and An Evil Eye (no 4). They've won loads of awards and they're ever so exciting, say the reviews.

Frankly, they're a bit rubbish. I can't speak for the plots, because they end up not interesting me. What I can say is that orientalism is still alive and kicking. Although ... that is perhaps a little unfair. Goodwin limits his orientalism to womankind I think. What could you call that? They're all beautiful and lithe and so on and so on. In more than one place he lets Yashim reflect on how Westerners imagine the Sultan's harem to be like an orgy (if such a collective noun there be) of gorgeous females just lounging about half-naked, whereas in reality it's more like some sort of English boarding school (Yashim doesn't say that, but it's written somewhere else). Well, frankly Goodwin's descriptions all lie on the houri side of the spectrum more than anything else. Good Lord. Follow Austen's example and don't describe what you don't know.

Bonus for great descriptions of cooking and I like the Polish ambassador, the ambassador without a country. Otherwise more than a little meh. Although I did maybe learn about the Janissaries. Okay then.

A bit of Harris

I've been mostly re-reading Ngaoi Marshes, including library ones, but I also found the missing books from the Sookie Stackhouse series last time I was at said book temple so I got them. Including the first one, much to my pleasure, because it always does seem a little off to not read the first one in a series doesn't it. So now I've read Dead In The Family, Dead and Gone, Dead Until Dark, Dead As A Doornail. In one of them, well, Sookie meets vampires 'coz Bill comes to town, in one there's the fairy wars and she's tortured (pretty gruesomely), then one is the follow-up to that and she's with Eric and... well, to be honest all I remember off-hand is that she first doesn't get a kick out of sex the way she used to because, hey, torture but then she does and all is well and there's a load of sex, but there was most likely some sort of plot too. In one of them her telepath five-year-old little relation comes to stay together with her fairy cousin, and in one her sister-in-law gets crucified, in one the were-wolves come out of the closet, in one Tara's vampire boyfriend gambles her off to a vampire psycho, and in one Eric's maker comes with the Tsvarevitch of Russia.

Oh, they all run together. I remember first one best, because it is the best. The longer the books run the more unbelievable the Sookieverse becomes. The supernatural beings are so unable to be discreet that no-one can credit that they were ever hidden. I appreciate the plot changes made in the tv show - they most often were for the better. Tara is an incredibly lame and uninteresting character in the books, whereas Tara on the tellybox is pretty fabulous.

Still get a kick out of them. But nonetheless I shall prolly be sticking to my re-reads for a while, mostly because I don't have the computer access to blog mostly. This post was brought to you by four interruptions. FOUR. (One was admittedly my own, I had to bitch about something.)

Pithy quotes

I'm re-reading all my Ngaio Marshes, and the library's too (except the earliest ones that are a little crap). And in A Surfeit of Lampfreys I read the following:

Maternal anxiety, he thought, was the emotion that human beings most consistently misrepresent, degrading its passion into tenderness, its agony with pathos.

I done gone reflected then that this is perhaps the point of Majgull Axelsson's Moderspassion, that we read for the book club. But I still don't think it came across very well in that book.

yada yada yada

I have been reading, but mostly re-reading. I felt like loads of Laurie King, so I've re-read everything I had bar Touchstone which I wasn't that keen on, and borrowed whatever was at the library - not much, sadly, people read crime fiction when on their holidays, right? So I didn't get to read The Moor or Justice Hall... I put in a reservation for at least one though. We moved this summer, so I wasn't in the mood for new stuff, I wanted oldies and goodies. I don't think I ever blogged about To Play The Fool - but there seem to be several I never wrote about when I go back to check. Odd that. I think I've read them all bar the two newest ones and the collaborations and e-pubs. I also re-read some Jasper Fforde, and found one I hadn't read, One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing, which is too clever for its own good. When I compare it to the The Eyre Affair, The Fourth Bear (re-read) and Shades of Grey, that all manage to touch on real pain and human problems in between all the puns and jokes ... too much BookWorld is not a good thing.

I've been re-reading Laurie King

but now all our books are packed for the move. I might have to stop by the library.

The anachronistic bits are more noticeable when re-reading, but she's still my friend.

I read my sister's books and returned them

And checked and I'd missed writing anything about the Wil Wheaton ones. Well, she lent me Memories of the Future and  .... Just A Geek it was I believe.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first, and look forward very much to the rest of his Star Trek NG reviews. Surely he must do them all? Just A Geek was a little slower in bits, but I appreciate the honesty. I'm really pleased that he's carved a proper new career for himself. And apropos honesty ... he could do with being even grittier. Just saying fuck doesn't cut it. A bit deeper, a bit more introspective? He tries to protect his family, which is laudable, but to be a great writer you have to be able to get really private I think.

Note

Not one copy of Wuthering Heights will survive this purge.

Janet Evanovich

Found Plum Lucky at the library, it's the one about the leprechaun. One of the supernatural ones, with Diesel. Ok. And I forgot I'd read Plum Spooky so got that too, and read it for lack of anything else to do while lounging next to the playground.

Sue Grafton: V is for Vengeance

This is the one I forgot about the other week! And this is really the one that sort of re-awakened my fondness for characters I thought I'd stopped loving. I liked Kinsey in this one. I was also sort of amused by how made-for-80s-tv the main story was - the gangster-gone-good who falls in love with the mother of a young man his henchmen killed a few years ago. With the descriptions of clothes and all you could almost picture the screenshots. Nuff said.

Stephen Fry: The Liar

What is the point of this book I asked myself after reading a quarter of it, and considered not bothering with the rest. But I kept going, largely because I was in bed sick Wednesday (food poisoning probably, woe me) and ended up reluctantly reading the whole thing. But what was the point remains the focal question. He's put in a caveat on the first empty leaf thingie before the actual book (I forget the word for those empty pages): "Nothing here is true" it says or something to that effect. Having read the second part of his autobiography though I can see that the book echoes his life, so it's sort of true. But of course the book is called The Liar, and in his autobiography he writes how he's been afraid all his life of being discovered to be a fraud and trickster so ... I dunno. It doesn't grab me. The bits that are supposed to be more sincere are not. In a way, perhaps, it perfectly illustrates what Fry tries to say in his autobiography - that he isn't really terribly intelligent, he just has a good memory and is sort of a wit. Being able to see that automatically makes you of more than average intelligence of course. Ta-daa.

On the whole though? Dull. I just didn't enjoy it. Fittingly, it felt insincere and fake. But what's the point of that.

Majgull Axelsson: Moderspassion

Kort inlägg följer: det här var bokcirkelns senaste. Sist jag läste Majgull Axelsson måste varit i högstadiet eller gymnasiet möjligen, och det var nog Rosario är död. Jag minns det som en av de hemskaste böckerna jag läst, och det var nästan första gången det gick upp för mig att det fanns vuxna människor som gjorde barn så illa.

För mig är hon en barn- och ungdomsförfattare alltså (eftersom jag läste boken när jag var ungdom - dålig logik, men sån är jag) - så jag var alltså, i enlighet med Poängen med Bokcirkel, fullt beredd att omvärdera detta. Inledde med avsikten att låna boken på biblioteket, men den är konstant utlånad, så jag skulle köpa den online, men jag glömde, så med typ tre dagar på mig köpte jag den på Akademibokhandeln (som jag normalt inte vill handla i längre - vi saknar alla RIKTIGA LundeQ) för åttifem spänn - hutlöst. Men nåväl. Jag hann! Tur man har semester.

Boken är skriven huvudsakligen från Minnas synvinkel. Minna är ensamstående och föräldralös med en dotter i gymnasieåldern, och man förstår ganska raskt att något hänt denna dotter. Romanen äger rum, med vissa återblickar, under stormen år 2000 som översvämmade Arvika, och en skara människor samlas på Minnas vägkrog den natten och bevittnar den olycka som kommer att avslöja lögnen hon burit för sig själv under det senaste året. Minnas synvinkel är dock som sagt inte den enda, utan varje kapitel byter berättare. Det är ju helt okej. Ett problem är dock att det inte alltid känns så självklart vilka som fått vara berättare. Varför den men inte den. Varför inte dottern? Varför inte läkaren som utnyttjar dottern? Osv. Det finns fler aber, men det mynnar ut i en känsla av att boken blivit klar för snabbt, och inte bearbetats klart. Låt den ligga i byrålådan i fem år till, och ta fram den och skriv lite mer. Utveckla, jobba om. Det kunde blivit så. himla. bra. Nu är det okej. Bitvis väldigt gripande, men mer för att det ÄR det när det handlar om att barn dör än för att BOKEN blivit så fantastisk.

Nåväl, kul att läsa men inte riktigt värd 85 kr helt enkelt. Men jag är nöjd med läsandet.

Catchupcatchup

Janet Evanovich: Twelve Sharp
Refound my love for this series a little.

Lindsey Davis: Alexandria
Ditto. I liked how the big war in the great library is between weeders and non-weeders.

There was a third, but I can't find my note of this at the moment ... I had to return them all to the library you see.