Some recent reading

 

No I haven't gulped all of these down in the six days since I ditched the poster; only one of them, and the other two were finished before that. 

I've not previously been a fan of Karin Slaughter who I find a bit on the gruesome side and who writes a lot about violence perpetrated on women by men. This one came via a friend and I wasn't sure if I had read it before. By the time I was far enough in to realise I hadn't, I was hooked on the story. Slaughter writes well, has plausible plots and believable characters, although she has created, in one of her minor recurring characters, one of the most irritating female cops in the annals of crime fiction. But if you can get past the gory bits, worth a go and  I shall now be looking out for more of her books.

I documented my surprise a while back  at how much I had enjoyed  the Val MacDiarmid  Carol Jordan/Tony Hill books also given to me by a friend and took the opportunity when down in Glasgow recently to buy the next one in the series. Well up to scratch and with a shocking twist at the end. I don't know where she went from there but I'll be getting hold of the next one to find out as soon as I can. 

I approached the Clytemnestra with some trepidation, on the once bitten twice shy principle.  The bad news is that Casati is no Madeline Miller or Natalie Haynes, lacking the lyrical prose skills of the first and the sardonic edge of the other. The good news is that thankfully she's no Clare Heywood or Jennifer Saint either and the book was very enjoyable. Clytemnestra was never cuddly in this book; well, she was brought up in Sparta after all, but Casati is excellent at showing how little by little all the softer feelings she does have are stamped out of her as she experiences betrayal after betrayal by various members of her family. Mostly the men, but her alcoholic mother is complicit in a lot of it, and her brat  of a little sister is as infuriating as she is in every other book I've read that she appears in. When (spoiler) she finally murders her unspeakable husband the reader is cheering her on. 

I also read the first book in my complete Susan Cooper The Dark is Rising volume. It was written for a much younger audience than me and read a bit like Enid Blyton on steroids in places, but I'm looking forward to getting around to the next one which was aimed at older readers.

Finally the book that broke me as far as the poster went was Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. This had all the things I normally look for in a book; a wide cast of differentiated and credible characters, a plot (somewhat scattered, but still recognisably linear!), some interesting ideas behind its construction and subject matter, and excellent writing. It was to all intents and purposes a Good Book, I could see why it won the Booker, I understand why people hailed Rushdie as a brilliant prospect when it was first published and - it bored me to tears. I didn't want to finish it, and I didn't. I put it in the charity shop box at the same time as I put the poster in the bin. I think I'm done with 'improving reading' at least for a while. I'm going to wallow in detective, fantasy and historical fiction for the foreseeable. As the late great Barry Norman probably used to say 'And why not?'