February Reading Round Up

 Well it had to come

The February book for the Crime Fiction Book Group was The Dry by Jane Harper. I had read this before many years ago ( possibly for the crime fiction group in Orkney? or maybe I just found it myself. It was long enough ago that I thought I had better re-read so that I had all the details to mind. Due to a mix up with the library catalogue system I ended up with a version on CD which was a bit annoying but finally prodded me into buying a new portable CD player that I could carry round the house. It was not as portable as all that and it isn't just a CD player which was all that I wanted but that's a story for another day. I listened to The Dry, and found it quite slow, a bit like the film version which I saw was on Sky the week after we had discussed the book. I recorded it and have so far managed to force myself through 20 minutes of it. I should delete from my recording list I know. Apart from that the ending is very tense if you haven't read it before, and not very tense if you have. 

My 'send me to sleep books' fr the month were Mick Herron's Bad Actors, a perennial favourite, and Agatha Christie's Nemesis. 

There were two detective novels; J D Kirk's latest which is A Killer of Influence and stretched credibility to its limit and then somewhere beyond. I still enjoyed it though. I really should read these in order but  it's too late now. The other was A Long Time Dead by J M Dalglish. People are always telling me how good he is. This is the first of a series set on Skye; I always like getting the first book of an established detective series because then you know that if you like it there is more enjoyment to come. I was ambivalent about this one. I didn't take to the lead character, it lacks Kirk's humour and I was able to spot the murderer quite early on. Maybe because there was a big spangly signpost over their head saying 'It Was Me'. That said it was a bit more complex than I had anticipated and the plot was well thought out. I'd sum it up as ;workmanlike and although I'm not rushing to the library to see what others they have I wouldn't rule out reading the next few at some time in the future.

I had a vague thought about working my way trough the sci fi and fantasy section at Stirling Library by picking books alphabetically by author, so one by someone with a surname beginning with A, then one for B and so on. So far I have only managed the A ( I don't get to the library that often!) and this was Tonight I Burn by Katherine J Adams. By borrowing this I unwittingly broke one of my own rules whihc is never to read Part 1 of a fantasy series if it it isn't finished ( the scars of GRR Martin and A Song of Ice and Fire run deep). In my defence I had seen a ( favourable) review of her most recent one called Tonight I Bleed and thought it was the last of three rather than the second. In the event it doesn't matter as I shan't be following up book 1. I enjoyed it but I wasn't sufficiently pulled in to care about what happens to the characters over another two tomes. The writing was good though and the plot set up and world building were well done. 

The there was Wintering by Katherine May. I can't describe this except to say it's the author's description of a winter in her life in which she tells somethign of what happens to her and also expands this into reflections on life, it's currents, the importance of resting and retiring from interaction to build up strength and motivation to go back into the world. It was done month by month and by the time we reached February I felt as though I had been reading it all winter long and it would never end. It didn't; teach me anything I didn't already know about the importance, and difficulty,  of finding a balance in your life between being out and in, or active and at rest, if you prefer that terminology. Her chapter on March was basically a long description of how she got into cold water swimming and there was far too much of it. My reaction to the whole book  basically was, what makes this woman think that anyone else if going to be interested in her wittering on about motherhood, her lost career, and the benefits of cold water bathing? Long time readers may recall I had a similar reaction many years ago to the work of Robert Macfarlane whihc I was forced to read by by my Ph D supervisor, possibly because he knew I would hate them, and I think the lesson is that this is just not my type of book. I had hoped for more psychology and rather less poor me really. 

And finally although I haven't read it from cover to cover I have been dipping into this 

because as previously mentioned we have booked a week's holiday in Tuscany and it's coming up quite fast.