mediocre book, good book, new square

Night Work by Steve Hamilton, 2006, was very mediocre. Don't know whether it was because I hated the reader or if it was the book. More the reader I think. It read like a ho-hum cop show, barely kept my interest. Thank god it was short.

The good book is by Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love, 2011. A non-fiction book about her husband's, Paul West, stroke. He loses all language, and she is going to help to bring that back but I have not got that far. Interesting book.

A good book and a not-so-good book

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova, 2011 is a very good book. It feels like you are inside the head of someone with left neglect. She writes well, researches well. A memorable book with a realisitic plot and good characters.

I gave up on Irma Voth - read 2/3 of it. Written by Miriam Toews in 2011, it just did not hold my interest. I liked her first two books; A Boy of Good Breeding and Summer of my Amazing Luck a lot, but didn't think much of the one that got all the attention; A Complicated Kindness. I really liked the book she wrote about her father, Swing Low. Irma Voth is just not engaging.

first square

a hat and some books

Hat designed by Kate Davies, of Needled. Love the pattern.



The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History by Jonathan Franzen, 2005, was interesting if a bit uneven. Beginning and ending are most interesting, middle a bit dull. He writes well. Interesting to read about his mother.

Finished listening to Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom, 2007. Sure wish that man used a more ruthless editor. It's a good mystery but too long, way too long. Set in London, Matthew Shardlake, the hunchbacked 16th-century attorney, returns in book 2 of a series. I'll probably read more, but read not listen so that I can skip bits.

Enjoyed Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda, 2010. Easy to read, believable characters and a realistic ending.

socks, shawl, hat - recent knitting projects

Friendly, Jerome, Rusty

ah, my childhood favs

It was posted on facebook, I had to copy it.







Just finished listening to John Lee reading John Banville's The Sea, 2006. My goodness, that man can write. Beautiful language. Not a happy-go-lucky writer though, it's pretty heavy going but it is a very good book. I may have to read it in print. Great reader but it goes by too fast.

finished Jane Urquhart's book too, Sanctuary Line, also a very good book. Very effective, the way she weaves memory, family, geography with the here and now.

And I'm almost finished another John Lawton book, Black Out. I do like this writer.

Poems as novel

Fishtailing by Wendy Philips, 2010 is a novel written in poems. The author is an English teacher in Richmond. Each character writes poems to create a sad but good story. She captures high school accurately. Very good book that stays with you.

Listened to Ian Rankin's The Complaints in my car even though I read it last year when it came out. I think I liked it better as an audiobook, or maybe it's just that enough time has gone by to separate more from Rebus and accept these new characters.

In the car right now is another mystery, translated from Swedish, Gallow's Bird by Camilla Lackberg, 2011. A woman is found dead, apparently the victim of a tragic car crash. It's the first in a spate of seemingly inexplicable accidents in Tanumshede for detective Patrik Hedstrom and his colleagues. It's a good mystery, likable characters, entertaining plot with lots of twists.

Jane Urquhart's Sancutary Line is good so far. As Amazon says ""...The cultivated landscape of this farm has decayed so completely now, it is difficult to believe that the fields and orchards ever existed outside my own memories, my own imagination... ". With these opening lines Liz Crane, forty-year old entomologist and the central voice in Jane Urquhart's new, engrossing and most personal novel invites us into her world and into her mind. Having recently returned to the old Butler homestead and studying monarch butterfly behaviour at the nearby Sanctuary Research Centre, Liz feels she needs to reconnect with all that is familiar from the past."