Earlier I finished Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin. We both enjoyed the John Rebus character and Edinburgh locale. So we have acquired the next three books.

I'm about to start The Black House by Peter May.

Mrs. Enthusiast loved The Black House by Peter May. She is consumed with reading, honestly. She is a cheap date.

She has started Deal Breaker by Harlan Coben. I think Mrs. Enthusiast will relate to the Myron Bolitar series as we are avid fans of professional football and basketball. Actually we are more college fans than pro, but still.

Scarletwoman, we liked Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child. Very unusual.

I'm glad to know you've already read The Snow Child, I'll look forward to sharing my thoughts about it with you once I've read it.

And I love your "cheap date" quip.

I like if very much. As hermetic posted last week it is a British spy novel written in the 1st person. The main character Serena is a voracious reader of fiction- able to gobble up whole paragraphs in a gulp (sounds like someone we know). She pursued a maths degree at Cambridge under pressure from her mother wishing instead to study English lit. Anyway she ends up a low level employee of MI5 and the story really begins there.

Quite a range of novels, plays, screenplays, and other stuff!

As for that herione of Sweet Tooth - nah, can't relate...

Can't wait to hear your impression when finished.

My reading has slowed down a bit. I was burning up vacation time prior to retiring. I am back at work for my final week and have been spending a lot of time going through the detritus of many years. I shredded 4 baskets of confidential documents, 4 baskets of trash. I've got my desk and storage cabinet pretty well done, but I know I have stuff in a couple of lockers that I need to go through.

I'm on page 200 out of 378 of the book so I might finish before "What are you reading Sunday March 1st?"

Jess Walters' The Financial Lives of the Poets, but not sure if I am going to stick with it. Downloaded a book by a woman named Mary Messer who is from near Waynesville, NC, an area that is near and dear to my heart. The book is Moonshiner's Daughter and I'm sure will be filled with poverty and despair.

I can see why you might not want to make it through the Jess Walter book - it sounds very odd.

Moonshiner's Daughter sounds interesting, though. Especially if you have a connection to the area she's writing about. I hope it turns out to be an enjoyable read for you.

Last edited Tue Feb 24, 2015, 02:03 PM - Edit history (1)

to the area aside, I can't stick with this one. I will probably use it for a "doctor's office book," where I can just read without trying to concentrate on plot.

Forgot to added that I read Peter Heller's book The Dog Stars last week, too and LOVED it. I loved the style of writing as well as the story. I think that someone who is a pilot and loves flying (and dogs) would swoon over this one. I look forward to reading more of Peter Heller.

I did give up on the Jess Walter book, but I might pick it back up at a later time. I downloaded Oryx & Crake and hope it is as good as all the other Margaret Atwood books I've read and loved.

The good thing about being (newly) retired is that, in spite of the crappy weather, I can read all day without getting stir crazy.

I looked up Dog Stars on GoodReads, and I can see that it would be interesting for some. Not for me, I'm totally not into post-apocalyptic novels, but it was highly praised in a number of the reader reviews.

Just wondering, do you do all your reading electronically?

eye surgeries that left one of my eyes a bit weakened, so it's much easier to read large print, esp. at night. It's much easier to download from the library than to drive 30 mi. round-trip to town.

It's wonderful that you have that option!

Thanks!

Ick. Disappointing. First, it wasn't an Inspector Rebus book. My pathetic library only has 3 Ian Rankins so I figured it would be okay. Instead, it was brutal, gory, super soldier kind of stuff. With a blah ending. A shame because it started out with great potential: uncovering powerful information about a huge corporation. Then it veered off elsewhere, leaving many dead bodies behind, and no decent resolution, much like real life.

Went to the library yesterday and got Rankins The Naming of the Dead, which IS a Rebus so I'm looking forward to that. Blood Hunt left me with such a foul feeling though, I decided to read Rhys Bowen 's Evan Help Us first. I wanted something lighter and Evan's life in a small village in Wales makes for a fun read, plus a bit of mystery.

I've not read any of Rankin's non-Rebus novels except for the two Malcolm Fox books, which were part of the same Rebus universe. I notice that Blood Hunt is the third of a 3-book Jack Harvey series published between 1993-1995. I would guess that it was maybe a series that never really took off.

Does your library offer an inter-library lending service? That's actually how I get most of my books. If I had to depend solely on what was actually on the shelves of my tiny small town library, I'd be stuck with nothing but romance novels and cookbooks.

Rhys Bowen's Evan Evans series looks like fun. I like the fact that they're located in Wales. I've done a lot of Scotland and Ireland - maybe I'll have to give Wales a try one of these days.