Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[MickeyC]

Just finished Natchez Burning by Greg Iles and what a riviting read!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Dream Killer

I confess I skimmed this after the first half. Not very well written, not great characterisation, and not a believable setup. I didn't believe the resolution either. I should have abandoned it.

Next up: Inside Job by Connie Willis. From the latest Humble Bundle.

[Luffy]

Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener (Agatha Raisin #3)
by M.C. Beaton - 4/5

What makes the Potted Gardener a teensy weensy memorable read are the leanness of its storytelling and the timing of its progress. The discovery of the culprit was too cut and dried but that's not a real complaint, because in these days where everything looks to have been thought of, how can we criticize a book for not indulging in cliches?

Being a very short book, The Potted Gardener is a sizable improvement over the book that preceded it, where everything that its successor achieves, it failed to accomplish. So, kudos to M.C. Beaton for being inspired and for giving us a murder mystery where there are not too many suspects, where the real culprit had been suspected by Agatha, where the police is not completely clueless, and where the unrelated ongoing minutiae of the life in the village is interesting. Add to that the reserved and slightly untapped revelations about the victim's past and the very speedy developments of the case, and we find ourselves pleased with a book that had little scope for ambition to begin with. After rejecting a couple of highfalutin books that were unreadable to me, The Potted Gardener looks like an antidote.

Sometimes choosing small books seem like cheating in the annual reading challenge, but it can work wonders with the total number of pages for the year. I have realized that, for me, big books can't be taken in oversize bites. IMHO, books over 800 pages can rarely sustain the interest of this reader over one day. OTOH, small books like The Potted Gardener, packed with action (of the kind totally alien to the term understood by some Hollywood movies) can be read without the time appearing to be dragging on. This put a new spin on things, and I duly will consider marathoning M.C. Beaton's books, as I'm currently not impressed with my pages total for the month. Writing this review has been as useful as reading the book has been as enjoyable. Now I'm off reading more of the same author.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: Inside Job by Connie Willis. From the latest Humble Bundle.

Which was an enjoyable novelette. Now for another book from the same source: Jacaranda by Cherie Priest.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Finished reading Ben Aaronovitch's Foxglove Summer. This is book #5 in his wonderful Rivers of London series. I enjoyed the heck out of it, and can't wait for more.

I just finished reading the first of the Matt Scudder books by Lawrence Block, The Sins of the Fathers.. A quick and enjoyable read. I had read this originally while living in NYC in the 70's. I had since completely forgotten everything except the ridiculous amount of alcohol consumed by the main character. Something that I found quite annoying then, but which I find easier to ignore now since I know Scudder later addresses it.

Next up: West with the Night, by Beryl Markham. This is one of the all time great books of the English language (regardless of who actually wrote it), and it's been >10 years since I last read it, so time for another read.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Next up: West with the Night, by Beryl Markham. This is one of the all time great books of the English language (regardless of who actually wrote it), and it's been >10 years since I last read it, so time for another read.

I think Errol Trzebinski made an excellent case; at least she persuaded me.

[CRussel]

She persuaded me as well, but honestly, it matters not. The story is Beryl's, and the writing is wonderful. And if you can ever manage to get your hands on a copy of the Books on Tape version of this, read by Donada Peters, you are in for a real treat. (Sadly, I'm not enamored of the currently available readings. Anna Fields has a totally inappropriate American accent, and the other one didn't grab me like the Donada Peters one. ) I actually have the BoT copy here, but it's on cassette and I no longer have a cassette player of any kind.

Errol Trzebinski's book did, I think, place rather more emphasis on the aspects of Beryl's life in East Africa that are not in West with the Night. In reading West with the Night you would have absolutely no clue about the promiscuousness that appears to have been the norm of the Europeans in Kenya, but I found Beryl's account none-the-less accurate and compelling.

[issybird]

I'm a sucker for Happy Valley accounts, so Trzebinski was just more grist for the mill (I'd recommend her Finch Hatton biography also).

Peters of course is marvelous and I'll see if I can locate a copy of her Markham audio; maybe a library has one. I'm pretty sure my mother still has a boom box that plays cassettes.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'm a sucker for Happy Valley accounts, so Trzebinski was just more grist for the mill (I'd recommend her Finch Hatton biography also).

Peters of course is marvelous and I'll see if I can locate a copy of her Markham audio; maybe a library has one. I'm pretty sure my mother still has a boom box that plays cassettes.

If you should manage to come up with a copy, and can get it into MP3 format, I'd very much like a copy. (And lest anyone complain, I actually have the cassettes sitting here in my office, paid for. But no current way to get them into MP3 myself.)

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Jacaranda by Cherie Priest.

Which was, unfortunately, a fairly pedestrian horror story with the occasional miracle thrown in. Not my cup of tea.

Next up: The Ape's Wife by Caitlin R. Kiernan, another from the humble bundle.

[Luffy]

Death of an Outsider (Hamish Macbeth #3)
by M.C. Beaton - 5/5

I have nothing but effusive, gushing and rapturous praise for M.C. Beaton. Will she keep that form all the way to her latest books? Who cares? For now I'm in heaven. Wonderful book! Brilliant! I'll be lucky if I get a better one to read this year. I've never, ever read about the (a more acerbic version of) equivalent of Lestrade/Japp try to

Spoiler:

imitate the hero of the book and try to grill the suspects till one of them confessed! So original! Took my breath away! And then with perfect timing, Hamish comes in and says : - All of you can go away. Except for x. He's the murderer.'

I mean, I have never seen such ideas in my entire life before. The Agatha Raisin books are quite nice, but Hamish eclipsing them is a small tour de force. I'm delighted to have found another super writer. I can't discount being disappointed. That may happen. But I'll be eternally grateful to the author for what I read today.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Luffy

I have nothing but effusive, gushing and rapturous praise for M.C. Beaton.

Hmmm... I think I have the first Agatha Raisin in my calibre library, perhaps I ought to read it sooner rather than later.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by Luffy

Death of an Outsider (Hamish Macbeth #3)
by M.C. Beaton - 5/5

I have nothing but effusive, gushing and rapturous praise for M.C. Beaton. Will she keep that form all the way to her latest books? Who cares? For now I'm in heaven. Wonderful book! Brilliant! I'll be lucky if I get a better one to read this year. I've never, ever read about the (a more acerbic version of) equivalent of Lestrade/Japp try to

Spoiler:

imitate the hero of the book and try to grill the suspects till one of them confessed! So original! Took my breath away! And then with perfect timing, Hamish comes in and says : - All of you can go away. Except for x. He's the murderer.'

I mean, I have never seen such ideas in my entire life before. The Agatha Raisin books are quite nice, but Hamish eclipsing them is a small tour de force. I'm delighted to have found another super writer. I can't discount being disappointed. That may happen. But I'll be eternally grateful to the author for what I read today.

On the strength of this recommendation, I have just downloaded Death of a Gossip, the first in the series, from Amazon Prime Lending Library .

[Luffy]

Guys, I don't know for certain how much you'll like the series, but I've read a lot of mysteries and the Hamish and Agatha Raisin ones just seem better than most. IMHO.

[Stitchawl]

Originally Posted by orlok

On the strength of this recommendation, I have just downloaded Death of a Gossip, the first in the series, from Amazon Prime Lending Library .

Originally Posted by Luffy

Guys, I don't know for certain how much you'll like the series, but I've read a lot of mysteries and the Hamish and Agatha Raisin ones just seem better than most. IMHO.

The Hamish books were great, and the TV series made from them just as good. From the books I had a very different mental image of Hamish, but the TV series Hamish carried it off well.


Stitchawl