What are you reading the week of February 5, 2012?

jeebus it weighs a ton. Nightly bed reading is limited to how long I can hold it.

I listened to the audiobook and really enjoyed it. My wife listened to it and found it somehow lacking. She's not a big Stephen King fan, and we chalked her attitude up to that. After she was done with it, she began asking questions about the book. After a while, it became clear that she skipped the first (of six) parts of the audio book. Funny, with a 1200 page book, you can miss a few hundred pages and just not be sure whether or not you actually missed it.

When you're done with this one, read 11-22-63. I really liked that one. I can't say I've really enjoyed any of the movies made from Stephen King's novels, but I would like to see someone give this one a try.

It was that that got me interested in Stephen King again. I'd stopped reading him after 'Christine'.

book is the first in a series of 3. Great for early film history buffs, westerns fans. The writer is from Canada and I think I read about him and the series in Book Page, a monthly freebie from the library.

The next in order in the Kincaid series.

on the end of the Roman Republic. I've been at it since New Years and still have a ways to go.

Been through 100 pages or so of boring conversation. I hope they stop talking and being repetitive soon. I'll finish the book, but it's not up to the others in adventuresome detective work...







my book 10

by Kim Stanley Robinson. I just finished it , and I am re-reading Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut while I await the arrival of the other California books .

I've read and enjoyed all of his Solomon vs. Lord books, as well as several stand alone novels he's written. I decided to start the Jake Lassiter series from the beginning: "To Speak for the Dead." I finished that last night and really enjoyed it, so I'll move on to "Night Vision" next.

After those two behemoths I figured I needed some lighter reading. So.....about halfway into The Appeal by (do I really have to mention WHO?). Fun, swift reading. And corporate polluters and the Christian Right are the bad guys. What more could ya ask?

I finished up Alice In Wonderland last week (for the first time) and am now on TTLG.
I never knew these were two separate books, I just thought TTLG was a subtitle for AIW.

"Speak harshly to your little boy,
and beat him when he sneezes. . . ."
to my sons when they were young. Imagine his surprise when my oldest recently read those books and discovered I hadn't simply made up the rhyme!

in Minneapolis), they're running European mystery programs every night except Thursday, and they're going to rerun Irene Huss some time in March, I think.

there was a TV series on Inspector Huss....z

which is the story of a sociopath told in reverse chronological order, starting with the crime that leads to the perpetrator's capture and working back to the person's adolescence and childhood. (Book 1 is The Four Last Things and Book 2 is The Judgement of Strangers.)

the sequel to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which I read a couple of months ago.

First in a series of two, so far.

Tony Caruso, a private investigator working out of his home-office in an old Ford pickup, with his German-trained bomb-sniffing dog Panzer, a Giant Schnauzer, in Bend, Oregon

It's in paperback, but a larger size. Also at Amazon Kindle for .99



Book 11 of 2012

I read "Drifting Back" by Trevor Scott and thought it got off to a great start, but I was much less impressed by the end.

Tony sure isn't celibate, jes' let'n you know.....

Not the best book I ever read by any means (nor the worst), but I liked it...

I just downloaded 3 today; a free one, a $0.99 one, and the 3rd Jake Lassiter book by Paul Levine for $2.99. I'll add Boom Town to my list.

It takes place in Saudi Arabia, as does her previous book, Finding Nouf.

The author is an American who lived there for several years when she was married to a Saudi. I like both books immensely.

This is the very first book of the Detroit series featuring Amos Walker, PI. Amos' speech and thoughts are entrenched in a mobster-based language that takes some getting used to...almost like reading a book by a foreign author
Lots of goofy characters and action after bit of a slow start, and it's moving along at a fast pace.

Reminds me of an old 40's movie with Bogart, etc.

I'll get the next one soon...

Oh, the picture of the author on the back cover - if they ever make a movie about Estleman, I think Johnny Depp would be perfect for the part.

I read the series in the '80s when I worked in a library, so the early ones are buried deep in the memory banks somewhere. I love the little Detroit tidbits he throws in throughout the books, though; stuff like the Purple Gang running booze across the river (in cars!) during Prohibition, or the goings-on in the old Detroit PD HQ at 1300.

He also has a great trilogy of Detroit through the years, including the glory days of the automotive industry and the time of the riots in the 60s. I think some of the names are Edsel and Stress.

When the British led by I forget-who, with Indians, attacked it and marched down the street - Detroit surrendered...the only city to ever have done that....

I was thinking of putting in the "post something memorable" thread but was too lazy....

Maybe before I take the book back, I'll do it....

This book was about the gangster with the voice box who had Amos look for his charge (after her parents died) and Amos found her...doing all the things you'd expect and more...(she was a bad guy)...

He's a prolific author, but this is the first of his that I've picked up. A dystopian America ca 2038, 23 years into the jobless recovery, as one character observes. All hell has broken loose, and the country is governed, if that's the word, by Japanese federal advisors. Weird, so far. Not sure if I'll continue.

Also, Mission Canyon, by Meg Gardiner. Far fetched mystery/crime/whatever. Her first book in this series was also far-fetched and more than a little annoying, and, yet, I'm back. I prefer her Jo Becket series.

Also, just finished Preston & Childs' latest, Gideon's Corpse. You want far-fetched, you got it in spades here - 5 miles down grade V rapids with no raft, no problem; commandeering an Army Viper (?) vehicle and outrunning the bad guys; breaking into, and out of, top secret installations; you get the idea. But I like Gideon, so I forgive P&C their transgressions.

Also just finished The Fear Index by Robert Harris. Also falls into the far-fetched category, or not, depending on your affinity for tin-foil hat perspectives. Basically, algorithm stock trading gone wild. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Also listening to The Corpse in the Koryo, the first in a series by James Church. It's a little too much of an Americanized version, if that makes any sense, of North Korea. The story's okay, but the characters aren't behaving as I think North Koreans would behave. Of course, who does? In this category, I also finished, a couple of weeks ago, The Orphan Master's Son, which I found a little more true to how I think North Korean's would behave. But even then, I'm just not sure. I'm also reading a couple of non-fictions books about North Korea, and I just don't see North Koreans behaving as the characters in these two books are behaving.

It was a fun book, typically of hers.

Next on my Kindle is the new Deborah Crombie book "No Mark Upon Her".