The Drop
by Michael Connelly
2011/ Audio
read by Peter Giles
rating 7 (very good for a detective novel)
Reading three Connelle books virtually back-to-back is amazing. I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. I did take a break after the first two but then dug right into the third, The Drop. I did >>>> MORE >>>>
Salvage the Bones
by Jesmyn Ward
2011 – 272 pages
Rating 1
Okay – I really disliked the book – actively. I should go answer the questions about why people finish books. I guess I finished because I was curious about Katrina but by the time I got to that part >>>> MORE >>>>
The Reversal
by Michael Connelly
audio – 2010
detective – rating 7
When Mickey Haller, defense attorney, gets a call to join the prosecution and retry an old murder case he is doubtful. But as he joins his ex-wife on the other side of the aisle he finds reinvestigation not so easy. Enter Harry Bosch, a detective with a seriously arrogant side to his style.
This is a hard one, the old witnesses are dead or gone, the old evidence is sometimes inadmissible and the perpetrator has spent many years in prison concocting his story.
Nine Dragons
Michael Connelly
detective fiction
2010 – audio
rating 7 ( high for detective)
Harry Bosch strikes again (for the umpteenth time). This time he’s after a man who shot and killed a small grocery owner but who might be part of a much larger Chinese gang. A man is arrested but the gang sends him a photo of his own daughter, living in Hong Kong with her mother, and this freaks Bosch out. This book is very good – Connelly at his best. One issue is that after one plot thread ended I expected the book to end but it hadn’t finished with the original crime yet – the missing girl thread was so exciting the rest of it was kind of anti-climactic.
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution
by Eric Foner
1988 (2003) – 736 pages
Rating 9.5
Wow – what a definitive book – more about Reconstruction and that era than I really thought I ever wanted to know. It’s good though – thorough – very good. The only downside is that it reads like a textbook but if that doesn’t bother you I’d say go for it!
I was always more interested in the other issues of the post-Civil War era – the Gilded Age, Westward expansion, the Women’s movement – but right in the middle of all of that was Reconstruction and the Revolution that wanted to be >>>>> MORE >>>>>
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution
by Eric Foner
1988 / 690 pages
I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time. Now I am – it may take awhile though – a week or two. I’d like to just take notes for awhile – no rating, no review >>>>>>>>MORE (the notes)>>>>>>>>>>
The same is true for Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson. Great book but that will take even longer. I’m up to Chapter 7 but I want to read Reconstruction first because of a group read and if I read them both at the same time I’m likely to get confused. >>>>>>>>MORE (the notes)>>>>>>>>>>
When the Emperor Was Divine
by Julie Otsuka
2003 – 148 pgs – Kindle
rating 9.25
“When the Emperor Was Divine” starts with the day of the Japanese departure for the camps and ends several years later. It’s every bit as good as TBitA and it’s very powerful, but it didn’t overwhelm me like TBitA. I didn’t expect it to, but I just couldn’t take >>>>> MORE >>>>>
The Quickening Maze
by Adam Foulds
2009 / 259 pages
Rating 9.5 (upped that on second reading)
Fascinating fiction dealing with Alfred Lord Tennyson’s relationship with Doctor Matthew Allen and his sanitorium in Epping Fields where John Clare stayed, among others and including Tennyson’s brother. The book is divided into 6 sections starting with Fall and continuing through about 18 months, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter again. This would be in the 1840s, after Tennyson had published but before he was famous, and when John Clare was having his troubles. >>>> MORE >>>>
Catch Me
by Lisa Gardner
narrated by Kristen Potter
2012 / 13h. 8m.
rating 6.5
A woman strongly suspects that she will be killed in 4 days – she prepares. Her main reason for believing this is her 2 best girlfriends were killed on that exact date one year apart and her turn is next. Her job is as >>>> MORE >>>>
The New Life
by Orhan Pamuk
1993/ 297 pages
Rating 8
One day Osman, a young man in Turkey, reads a book which changes his life. He then falls in love with Janan, the woman who introduced him to the book and together they board a bus to see Turkey. After many bus accidents and road mishaps Janan leads Osman to >>>>> MORE >>>>
The Stranger’s Child
by Alan Hollinghurst
2011 Kindle 435 pgs
rating – 8.5
I was really enjoying this book up to about midway and then it just seemed like nothing was really happening. There are too many parties, too many remembrances, too many side-wise glances. And everything is so unsure it’s “almost,” and “somewhat.” >>>> MORE >>>>
The Angel Esemralda
by Don DeLillo
2011 / 211 pages (Kindle)
Rating – 9.5
Oh my, I have hit a jackpot lately with these incredible books to read! I love Don DeLillo anyway and have followed him since Underworld (1997) going back to pick up on a few books and always forward with whatever is new. I did miss a few short stories though and this is a collection of shorts from 1979 to 2011. I’d read only 2 of them but reread them now because they are sooo fine – especially the story “The Angel Esmeralda.” >>>>> MORE >>>>>
The Buddha in the Attic
by Julie Osaga
2011/129 pages (Kindle)
rating – 9.5
I don’t cry over sad books, and now I can’t say that anymore. I live in a town unmentioned in the book, but in the middle of many towns which are. I know some personal names and I saw some faces as I read. The book is immensely powerful and it’s the saddest book I’ve ever read >>> MORE >>>>
The Swerve
by Steven Greenblatt
2011 / 363 pages
Rating – 9.5
This is the story of how Gian Poggio, a scholar of the 14th century, came to find an ancient manuscript, “On the Nature of Things” written by Lucretius probably around 60BC. Lucretius’ work is a treatise on Epicurean philosophy from the Roman >>>> MORE >>>>
by Dashiell Hammett
1930 224 pages
read by William Dufris 7h. 9m.
rating 6
This is a rather twisted tale of a missing woman, an apparent murder, a missing statue, etc. It’s told in the old narrative style of hard-boiled detective – I guess thinking >>>> MORE >>>>
Jamrach’s Menagerie
by Carol Birch
2011 / 304 pages
rating 8.5
What do I mean when I say a book has a Dickensian flavor? Oh – it’s about 19th century lower class London, uses lots of dialogue and dialect, there are children or very young adults in it. >>>>MORE >>>>
Gorky Park
by Martin Cruz
read by Henry Stroltzer
1988 14h. 53m.
rating 6
It’s still in print -that says something. And it’s pretty good book – three men found dead by one gun but the same killer? Not >>> MORE >>>>
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