August 2005 Archives

Prime holiday reading - I always associate Aurelio Zen with Walton on the Naze, a suitably watery landscape even if it's not quite the same as his home town of Venice, where I first met him in Ratking. Hmm, I'm sure I've read more than just three of this series by Michael Dibdin...

A Long Finish was swiftly polished off on holiday at Forty Acres. Set in northern Italy, wine making, truffle hunting and villagers with long memories come together to produce another good crime and an equally good resolution by Aurelio Zen, with his usual scant regard for police protocol (such as there is in Italy).

Buy it: Amazon link

Disappointing, given that I'd added this to my Wishlist (albeit as a library option) after rave reviews in the Guardian's books of the year round up for 2004.... I only managed the first two chapters before abandoning ship in favour of a A Long Finish.

Pourquoi? I found the American sisters who are the lead characters just too annoying for words, the french characters were all clich

I'd not realised that Susan Howatch had progressed to producing religious reads set in the present day City of London, and if I'd not known that she was the author, then I would never have guessed. I read a lot of her historical novels as a teenager, and although these modern descendents are just as blockbuster-y in size, they are much less sweeping in scope in terms of timescale and cast.

Phil's mum lent us this novel because of its Barbican setting, and it was interesting to compare Susan Howatch's descriptions of the place where we live, and similarly for the wider City context in which I work. Having the main character living in a flat in a ficticious fourth tower was a bit of a let down, but given that it wound up being haunted (or did it...?) she probably felt obliged to.

The early sections of the book, telling of the work-life (im)balance of City lawyers rang true, but as I'm not a very religious reader, I did find the Christian message that emerged in the later parts a bit heavy going in places. That said, it was balanced by aetheist arguments and psychoanalysis. The details on the spectral plane, the occult and spiritualist sects were all rather unnerving for late night reading in the eerie silence of rural Herefordshire.

Buy it: Amazon link

Part of the Frinton haul, this hardback copy travelled to Herefordshire to be the first of my holiday reads.

It covers some of the events in Dr Kay Scarpetta's life story prior to those I've read before. It was good to get some of the key background, in particular the emergence of The Last Precinct, and Dr Scarpetta's departure from her beloved role as Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner.

Lots of murders to explain, and emotional angst on the part of Kay and those close to her as she has to extricate herself from position as prime suspect. I wasn't so keen on Jaime Berger, the high powered NY District Attorney, but on the other hand we do get a lot more detail on la famille Chandonne, and Rocky, Pete Marino's black sheep son.

I do think that it would have been better to have read its immediate predecessor, Black Notice, first however. That said, I've yet to read the episode in which Benton dies...

Amazon.co.uk link: The Last Precinct - Patricia Cornwell
Amazon.co.uk list: Kay Scarpetta Collection (in order)

Finished this off this morning, after starting it last weekend - it's been sitting on the bookshelf in the Gyford Family caravan ever since I've had the joy to go there. A gem of a travel book - partly because I'd not appreciated how inhabited Siberia is, partly because the region is so vast, partly because of the heavy-handed impact relatively recent history has had on the long-standing cultures and societies that had developed there, and partly because Colin Thubron makes the effort to engage and to be engaging as he travels through Siberia eastwards from Russia to the Pacific, mostly by train, but also by bus and car, boat and aeroplane.

Having been busy satisfying my desire to visit Central Asia via litery stand-ins, these tales from the lands to the north of the 'Stans, Mongolia and China show just how artifical political borders are for the societies that have always lived there, and yet how intrusive, restrictive and destructive the political and powerful can be. The book is full of fascinating facts, and a cast of characters whose lifestories post-Thubron I'd love to learn.

Buy it: Amazon link

I'd lugged my PM course books all the way out to Walton (intending to revise for my ISEB oral at the end of the month), with Star of the Sea for 'light relief' (seeking brownie points for perseverence), but a haul of second hand delights courtesy of the Hospice charity shop in Frinton included this even lighter relief. It ended up elbowing out all my good intentions, occupying my rainy reading time it was gone in a day.

Nothing spectacular - a nice chicklit bonkbuster-lite, with the added twist of an update to the Cinderella story questioning the values of weight/looks-obsessed metropolitan Belles and Beaux. I quite liked the only-slightly-heavy-handed sections on 'how to use the internet', 'chatroom etiquette' and 'email smileys' - they may appear dated now, but in 1998 I can imagine the references were rather rad.

Buy it: Amazon link

Not great if I'm to be honest, and I suspect that I only stuck it out to the end for want of anything better to read (yes, Star of the Sea still lurks unfinished on my bedside table).

The characters aren't as loveable as Fiona Walker's more recent Oddlode cast, and the story seemed to stretch thin to cover the mutual love in/obsession between trendy London restaurants and trend-setting media celebs, and the less conventional tales of Sussex (?) country folk. Oh with unrequited love/obsession and love triangles too numerous to mention.

Buy it: Amazon link