It's been a good day today. I had a run this morning and finished a book afterwards. I'll provide my reviews of the two books I've finished since my last update. As well, I'll provide the synopses of the two books I'm starting next. I found a couple of books in my Little Free Library box outside the house so I'll also provide the synopses for those books.
Jo and I watched the Home Run Derby last night. It was lots of fun. What else have we enjoyed recently? Oh, PBS is showing the 4th season of Unforgotten, a favorite British mystery series of ours. We also watched the first episode of a new Crime series in the UK, Professor T. It was alright. It was based on a Belgium series and they are showing episodes of that on PBS too, so I taped the one that was on Sunday night. I haven't seen it yet.
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| Number 2 soon! |
Last night we had a yummy roast chicken dinner and today used some of the left over chicken for sandwiches today along with a great salad. Jo's cooking her beef ragout for dinner. I don't know how I managed to lose wait with these great meals but both Jo and I have had a fantastic year so far.
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| Semien, Hernandez, Bichette & Guerrero!! |
So besides a reading / new book update I'll continue with my look at Women authors whose books I've been enjoying. So let's Play Baseball!... er... Let's Talk Books!
New Books
"The proverbial phrase
'life's little ironies' was coined by Hardy for his third volume of
short stories. These tales and sketches possess all the power of his
novels: the wealth of description, the realistic portrayal of the quaint
lore of Wessex, the 'Chaucerian' humour and characterization, the
shrewd and critical psychology, the poignant estimate of human nature
and the brooding sense of wonder at the essential mystery of life.
The
tales which make up Life's Little Ironies tenderly re-create a rapidly
vanishing rural world and scrutinize the repressions of fin-de-siecle
bourgeois life. They share the many concerns of Hardy's last great
novels, such as the failure of modern marriage and the insidious effects
of social ambition on the family and community life. Ranging widely in
length and complexity, they are unified by Hardy's quintessential irony,
which embraces both the farcical and the tragic aspects of human
existence."
""I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," Graham Greene's narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous "Quiet American" of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas.As young Pyle's well-intentioned policies blunder into bloodshed, Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter, finds it impossible to stand safely aside as an observer. But Fowler's motives for intervening are suspect, both to the police and himself, for Pyle has stolen Fowler's beautiful Vietnamese mistress. Originally published in 1956 and twice adapted to film, The Quiet American remains a terrifying and prescient portrait of innocence at large."
Just Finished
"The Scar by China Miéville is the 2nd book in the New Crobuzon fantasy / SciFi series and the 2nd book by Mieville that I've enjoyed. I will say that it's a tome, just like the 1st book, Perdido Street Station, but a worthwhile, enjoyable, fascinating story.
The book is so hard to describe. Basically the major part is a letter being written by Bellis Coldwine. Bellis is escaping from New Crobuzon; the militia seems to be gathering in her friends and she needs to get away for a period of time. She books herself on a ship, the Terpsichoria, heading to the new colonies of Nova Esperium. There are the normal passengers as well as below decks, a number of prisoners who will make up the colonists. They consist of Remade people (their bodies have been reconstructed as punishment) and other prisoners; cactus people etc.
On their journey the ship is attacked and taken over by pirates of a floating city-state; Armada. Bellis will spend the rest of the story in Armada. In Perdido Street Station, Mieville creates the city of New Crobuzon, built under the bones of some giant creature. Armada is a city built of the carcasses of captured ships, even the ossified body of a dead whale. It's made up of various districts and people with so many amazing creatures and people; the Lovers (2 people who run the biggest district, whose bodies are scarred with similar patterns to display their weird love); the vampyr lead by the Broculet, Ulther Doul (a mysterious man with the Possibility Sword) who is the Lovers' right hand man, plus so many others.
The Lovers need to find a creature, the avanc, to raise him from another 'dimension' and attach it to Armada as a sort of propulsion to take them to The Scar. (Confused?). To do that they will have to go to the island of the mosquito people (scary!). Oh yes, there are also the mysterious (everybody is so mysterious) grindylow searching the seas for something.
The book is slow paced for the beginning portion, building up the main characters; Bellis, remade Tanner Sack, who turns more into a merman to help build the harness for the avanc; Shekel, a young boy who is Tanner's compatriot and in love with another remade person; Ulther Doul, (what does he really want?) and Silas Fennec, a New Crobuzon spy, trying to get back home, and plotting within Armada. The main character is Bellis, who desperately wants to return to New Crobuzon and who alternately helps Fennec and Doul. She is a closed book, hating but loving Armada, trusting bu not trusting the two men. Her only real friends are Shekel and a fellow librarian (that is the job Bellis is given, as well as a translator for the the Lovers)
The story builds slowly, then picks up so quickly for the last half it almost takes your breath away. Plots, sub - plots and more plots. Who can Bellis trust? Is she being used or using? Mieville creates such an interesting world; Armada is wonderful and rich and the people are just truly amazing. When the grindylow show up, it gets quite terrifying. The ending is somewhat anti-climatic but it leaves open possibilities for the future. There is a third and final book in the Bas-Lag (that's the planet BTW), the Iron Council, which probably is also quite different from the 1st two. If you don't mind a challenging, long book, you should try the series. I don't think it's necessary to read them in order but Perdido Street Station does create the world for you. (4 stars)"
"I have read a couple of other books by Rudyard Kipling previously and enjoyed his writing. Captains Courageous was excellent. Just So Stories is a collection of short stories for children, stories the author tells his daughter. They are quirky and entertaining.
The stories are a mix of story itself, poetry at the end of each chapter and drawings by Kipling himself, highlighting parts of the specific story. They are all quaint; How the Camel got his Hump, How the Leopard Got his Spots; The Elephant Child (aka, how the elephant got his trunk. :0)). The stories take place in faraway lands for the most part, Africa, Australia, Brazil, but the location isn't critical.
The stories for the most par were much of a muchness; this animal got spots, the kangaroo became a jumper, etc. I did enjoy them all, but I particularly enjoyed the two stories where neolithic man, Tegumai and his young daughter invent an alphabet. It all results because of a disaster where Taffy tries to send a message to her mother via drawings on birch bark and everything goes wrong. There are two chapters where they come up with ideas for creating an alphabet. It was especially fascinating.
All in all, the stories were most enjoyable. First published in 1902, I can see how they would be read to children at night, each a nice, tidy, little story, and encourage them to read more. (4 stars)"
Currently Reading
"Twelve hours after Kate
Sumner’s broken body is washed up on a deserted beach on the south coast
of England, her traumatized three-year-old daughter is discovered
twenty miles away walking the streets of Poole, alone. The police are
puzzled.
Why weren’t mother and daughter together? Why was Kate
killed and her daughter allowed to live? More curiously, why had Kate
boarded a boat – apparently willingly – when she was scared stiff of
drowning at sea? Who had tempted her to her death?
The police
suspect a young actor, a loner with an appetite for pornography, who
lies about his relationship with Kate and whose sailing boat, Crazy Daze, is moored just yards from where the toddler was found…
As
the investigation proceeds, the police discover a gaping hole in Kate’s
husband’s alibi. Was he really in Liverpool at a conference the night
she died? Was Kate the “respectable woman” he claims she was?
And why does their daughter scream in terror every time he tries to pick her up…?"
"Irene Huss is a former
Ju-Jitsu champion, a mother of twin teenage girls, the wife of a
successful chef, and a Detective Inspector with the Violent Crimes Unit
in Goteborg, Sweden. And now she’s back with a gripping follow-up to Detective Inspector Huss.
One
nurse lies dead and another vanishes after their hospital is hit by a
blackout. The only witness claims to have seen Nurse Tekla doing her
rounds, but Nurse Tekla died sixty years ago. Detective Inspector Irene
Huss of the Violent Crimes Unit has the challenge of disentangling
wandering ghosts and complex human relationships to get to the bottom of
this intriguing case."
Women Authors I'm Enjoying - R.E. Donald
Canadian mystery writer Ruth E. Donald is author of the Hunter Rayne mystery series. I've read the 1st book so far and liked that it's set in my province of BC. It's a neat premise. Rayne is a long haul truck driver who gets involved in mysteries. I have the 2nd and 3rd books on my book shelf. I'll take a look at the three of them to give you an idea of her stories.
R.E. Donald
"Disclaimer (I'll start this review by saying that the author sent me a copy because she thought it might suit my taste and asked for my comments when I read it).
Having said that, let's get into the book. Basically Slow Curve on the Coquihalla by R.E. Donald follows an ex-RCMP officer, Hunter Rayne, who has quit the force and now works as a long haul truck driver. A friend who owns a trucking company is found dead at the bottom of a ravine, possibly due to a driving accident or maybe due to murder? His daughter, Suzanne, asks for Hunter's help in finding out the cause of his death. That is the gist of the story.
What did I like about the story. Firstly, I liked the setting, the interior of British Columbia. While I live on Vancouver Island, it was still nicely close to home and I enjoyed the descriptions of the area and just the overall setting. I liked many of the characters. Hunter is interesting, trying to deal with his past, maintain contact with his teenage daughters (he's divorced) and not sure how to go about it. His boss, El, is a strong woman who works in the trucking industry; has her soft spots but also her tough side. Suzanne and her two girls, trying to cope with the death of her father and also to keep his trucking business working, is lovely and like Hunter, I wanted to protect her. Sorry, the ex biker and wild child, is fun and loud. Hunter likes him, uses him to help in his investigation but still doesn't quite trust him.
The dialogue was natural and the writing intelligent. Unlike many mysteries, we don't have to follow a trail of bodies, which is nice. We can get to know Hunter, his friends and the story is a well-crafted, interesting story. Even the ending was satisfying. There are other books in this series and I will check them out as well. (4 stars)"
"Ice on the Grapevine is a
traditional mystery featuring Hunter Rayne, a retired homicide
detective turned long haul truck driver. The story opens on a July
morning with the discovery of a frozen corpse at a brake check just
south of the Grapevine Pass in L.A. County. Hunter, who is in southern
California making a delivery, is persuaded by his irascible dispatcher,
Elspeth Watson, to help clear two fellow truck drivers who are arrested
for the murder. His job is made more difficult by the fact that the
suspects, a newlywed couple, won't speak up in their own defence.
The
circumstantial evidence is strong, and a rookie detective from the L.A.
County Sheriff's Department is eager to score a win. The investigation
crosses the Canada-U.S. border when the victim is identified as a second
rate musician from Vancouver, and it turns out there were more than a
few desperate people happy to see him dead, including the accused
couple. Hunter has to use all his investigative skills to uncover the
truth.
Hunter’s ex-wife maintains that by taking to the highway
Hunter is running away from his past, but he believes that the solitude
of days on the road is helping him to heal from guilt over the failure
of his marriage and the suicide of his best friend. His life gets more
complicated when he feels an unwelcome attraction for a lawyer
representing one of the accused.
Tangled relationships and
multiple suspects emerge throughout the novel, as Hunter butts heads
with more than one officer of the law to solve the crime."
"During what was
supposed to be a few days of skiing at the Whistler Mountain resort with
an attractive female acquaintance, former homicide detective Hunter
Rayne finds himself the prime suspect in the RCMP's hunt for "The
Chairlift Killer". Hunter has no choice but to get involved in the
investigation in order to clear his name.
Meanwhile, trucker
Hunter was scheduled to haul a load of freight to Northern California,
so he calls up his old friend, biker Dan Sorenson, to take his place
behind the wheel. What connects the badass biker from Yreka, California
to the most prolific female serial killer in US history? And what
happens when dispatcher El Watson ignores Hunter's warning and sends the
biker on a search for clues to the motive behind the murder?
In
the midst of the investigation, Hunter's life gets complicated when the
progress of his new relationship is hampered by the appearance of a
woman from his troubled past."
The complete listing of Donald's books can be found at this link.
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