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.

Books

Finished Room by Emma Donoghue, 2010 and it was a good read. I kept riding past my morning biking while reading it, so it was definitely holding my attention. They got out of the room fairly early in the book, thank goodness, so it was possible to keep going. She does a good job of capturing a 5-year-olds perspective on the world.

Listened to Peter Robinson's latest book, Bad Boy, 2010. A good mystery, I like reading about the same characters caught in different dilemmas. His characters are interesting and believable.

The City and the City by China Mieville, 2009. Well this is an interesting mystery, set in two cities that occupy the same land, where everyone learns to see and "unsee" whichever population they belong to. It's a Sci-Fi mystery where the two strangely named Eastern Europeaon cities are superimposed on one another. Good writer and excellent reader - same person who read the Benjamin Black mysteries.

knitting scarves

books

Listened to Pat Barker's book Border Crossing, 2002, and thought it was perceptive. Someone wrote that they thought it was her best non-Ghost-Road book and I agree. I haven't thought her books, other than that great triology, have been so good but this one tackles a child killer and the people around him and is very good. Interesting book.

Reading the The Room by Emma Donoghue, 2010, and it has been hard to make myself read it. It's hard to read about someone in such an abused and cloisted situation. Her kid perspective is great though. I will keep reading.

Really like What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn, 2008. Switching between 1984 and 2003, about a little girl who goes missing after starting up her own detective agency. It's set mostly in a huge mall, with very believable characters you want to get to know.

books

Listened to Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, 2010. The narrator was a bit grating and the story too long and the characters almost completely unlikable but he can write a good book. And timely, our planet heading into an overpopulated, polluted, navel-staring state - he brings it all in. Thank god my cats are indoor cats.

Per Petterson, I Curse the River of Time , 2010. I liked Out Stealing Horses a lot better, but this is a good book. His characters I like, he's gentle with his flawed people.

Curtains, Adventures in an Undertaker-in-Training, 2010 by Tom Jokinen is very good. It's a revelation, what happens to us in those places, and interesting to read about the state of the business. Good writer, very interesting book.