scarf

good reader

Just listened to Dear American Airlines, 2009, by Jonathan Miles and really enjoyed it. It supposed to be a letter from a disgruntled passenger Bennie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet turned translator who is waiting in O'Hare airport forever, trying to get to his daughter's wedding. A grumpy, believable, funny, very flawed characater that you are routing for and it's a well written story. The reader did a great job.

Mark Billingham's latest is good too; From the Dead, 2010.

Chet the dog

Listened to the second and third books featuring Chet, the dog; Thereby Hangs a Tail: A Chet and Bernie Mystery and To Fetch a Thief, by Spencer Quinn. Enjoyed them both, Chet is a faithful hound and good dog detective.


I'm about to give up on Cities of Refuge by Michael Helm, 2010. 3/4 of the way through and it is just not holding me. The writing is good but the story is dull, don't care what happens.

But, I am really liking World and Town by Gish Jen, 2010. Really good writing, interesting novel. Hattie is half Chinese, half American and restarting her live in a small town. She's lost her best friend and her husband. A Cambodian family moves in next door, and an ex-lover moves to town.
As the review on Amazon says....
"What Hattie makes of this situation is at the center of a novel that asks deep and absorbing questions about religion, home, America, what neighbors are, what love is, and, in the largest sense, what “worlds” we make of the world."

And I'm half way through and really enjoying Kate Atkinson's latest, Started Early, Took My Dog, 2010. Features the retired cop Jackson Daley as a PI and another retired cop, Tracy and an past-it actor. Interesting characters. There is a dog of course, rescued by Jackson early in the book.