I read this summer. I like to read. I don’t get to read much during the school year, at least not books. I can usually squeeze in a few thousand blogposts, but books take more brainpower than I have while teaching. Anyway, I’ve already written about some of the books I read on my trip…here’s what else I got through.
Jean M. Auel’s newest book in the Ayla and Jondalar series came out recently (and mom had already read it)…The Land of Painted Caves.
I requested it from the library, but wanted to read the others again first, because I hadn’t read them in 3,000 years (OK, not that long…). I’m not even sure I read the last one, Shelters of Stone…2002 wasn’t a great year for free time, from what I remember (finishing my masters AND my credential, and a minor matter of a divorce while student teaching kind of didn’t leave a lot of time for reading). Anyway, I had to get the first one from the library, which I did before we left for Sweden. I thought I would have time to read all the rest this summer (insert hysterical snorts of laughter here), but the last one came from the library like the day we got back…it’s got 300 holds on it, so I had 3 weeks to read it and get it back. So I skipped all the ones in between and read this one instead.
I was disappointed. I mean, I don’t think it was any different than the others until the end…she talks about all the herbal stuff and Ayla’s theories about how babies are made, and the part I always liked about trying to figure out how people lived back then and why the Neanderthals might have disappeared (or whatever). But there were so many repeats of the same stuff over and over again…I didn’t have the patience for it. And not to give anything away, but the stuff at the end about the son in the visions? AARGH. Wow. OK. Nope. That sucked. Anyway. Read it if you read the series and were into it. It’s still about Ayla and her family and her future, and that part’s fine…just know that you might find it frustrating.
I had been reading someone’s blog (sorry I can’t remember whose) and they recommended Deborah Harkness’ A Discovery of Witches.
This is witches and vampires and demons in kind of a love story that is supposed to be continued in a few more books in the future. I liked this one, although it was a little on the goopy romance side. It’s like Twilight for adults in some ways, not the deepest stuff around, but an interesting mystery in the middle of the romance. There’s time travel as well, which isn’t a problem for my little mind. I’m obviously just fine in fantasy world. I like the idea of a witch who refused to take on her own powers until she had no choice, and her falling in love with a vampire is cute (although it happened awfully quickly). Anyway, I’ll be reading the next in the series when it comes out.
My parents buy books more than I do, and then they loan them out to me. Dad’s been collecting Jeffery Deaver books, although I think I hooked him on them way back when. The first one I read was The Burning Wire.
I like Lincoln Rhyme, the paralyzed forensic detective, and I really liked this book because it focused on killing with electricity, which was kind of new and different. Deaver’s books are a bit formulaic, in that you know there will be a wild twist in the end, but it doesn’t stop your trying to guess who the killer is, all the while realizing you will be completely wrong.
Then I read Deaver’s The Broken Window, also from Dad’s stash.
This one was good too, but I think Deaver assumes we know nothing about the internet sometimes and he overexplains those aspects, as in one of the former Kathryn Dance novels, when he spends pages explaining social networks…but then maybe the majority of his readers are 60+ and don’t do Facebook? I don’t know. Anyway, there was a bit of that overexplaining in this book, so that was not great. This book is 3 years old. I can only assume Dad forgot to loan it to me way back when or he took that long to read it…who knows.
Since I had read the other Lord John Grey novel by Diana Gabaldon on the plane, I got the next two from the library in the last few weeks. First I read Lord John and the Private Matter and I just finished Lord John and The Hand of Devils, which is actually three novellas or two novellas and a short story…it’s hard to tell.
Both were enjoyable. Lord John is an interesting character and she has filled in some of the blanks about him in the Fraser backstory, which I enjoyed. There is a little of the fantastical (ghosts and succubi) in the novellas, but it’s not any different than some of the creepy fantasy stuff from her Outlanders books, with witches and power running through certain people. They were quick and easy to read (unlike the Outlander books, which take serious time to get through, enjoyable as they are), so that was nice over the last few weeks.
After reading the other two Tana French books on the trip, it made sense to pick up the next one, Faithful Place.
French has again picked one of the murder crew and based a story on their personal life. This story is about an Irishman from a poor background returning to a disappearance in his youth that has a huge influence on his entire life. It was a good read, although the end was a little hard to take in. I’ll be looking forward to more of French’s books in the future.
What do I have in front of me now? Well, don’t laugh, but I’m re-reading the 7th book of the Harry Potter series, now that I’ve seen the two films. I would have liked to have done that before seeing the films, but that wasn’t an option, so I’m doing it now. It’ll probably be all I can handle for a while, beyond magazines and blogs…I already have grading and school tasks piling up, and it’s only one week in. Depressing, that…but I have a few more books on order at the library (one came while I was in Sweden after 6 months, so it went back, because I wasn’t home to pick it up…I had to put my request back in and it’s still got another 200 + holds on it, so it will come in probably just after Christmas), so there will be reading…just not as nice as in the summer.
Kathy Nida 