In books read on May 17, 2008
I read a couple of Catherine Aird's books a few years back and seemed to remember liking them so I picked this up off the library shelf. I love having my archives to look back through though - they are so much better than my memory! I had liked the first one I read: "Short and sweet, but really pretty well executed." but the second one seemed a bit too similar.
This one contained the same compact storytelling but with a gap of several years since the last book I enjoyed it for much the same reasons. Economical with words but full of plot. This one is about a fire in a dilapidated stately home at the centre of a new housing development. It might be the only crime novel I've read in years without a murder. I had a good idea where the story was going and was mostly right. The quick ending meant that I felt that at least one thread of the story was left swinging in the air.
Mostly good.
Borrowed.
In googlereader on May 17, 2008
In googlereader on May 16, 2008
In delicious on May 14, 2008
good for searching wikipedia
on May 14, 2008 by kirsty
In delicious on May 13, 2008
In delicious on May 13, 2008
cool; google reader’s one of my favourite things to browse on my phone.
In delicious on May 12, 2008
i’m not quite sure why it needs a shortlist, or even really what the point in a "best of" is anyway. but then i’m not sure what the point of picking a winner every year is when all i’m after is a list of a few good books to read.
In books read on May 11, 2008
This was the book of Fitzgerald's that I really wanted to read and I really liked it when I got it. It seems that she wrote a number of novels that were basically about bits of her life. I've read her working at the BBC and running a bookshop books; this one is about living in a boat on the Thames in the 1960s.
Like her other books this one rather rambles around and doesn't have an obvious plot line; though ramble ought to be the wrong word for it as it's quite a short book. It's rather an intersection of characters; you'd struggle to decide which character was the main one. I was taken with the two young girls, especially the younger one Tilda.
All in all, it's difficult to put my finger on quite why I liked it so much as I did!
BookMooched.
In books read on May 9, 2008
I really enjoyed this once I got going with it. I found it hard to get started with as the first couple of chapters didn't grab me. But once it did grab me it was a keep reading until there's nothing left kind of read.
The story is told in a similar way to Hannah's first book Little Face; first person sections narrated by the main victim character intertwine with sections from the point of view of the police. The police characters are the same group as featured in the first book too; nice to see them again and to see them develop.
And again, as in the first book, the plot is totally blow me away fabulous. So many twists, turns and facades that I couldn't start to describe it without worrying about giving something away. This is an author and a series that I'm looking forward to reading for many years to come.
BookMooched.
nocto