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Saturday 14 May 2011

Can you tell?

My e-reader has needed charging twice this week.  It's supposed to have a battery life of 10 days, but being in bed has given me so much time to read that I'm making excessive demands.  I can only hope my Kobo won't turn on me. 

Recently, I've read mysteries, biographies and a stunningly bad non-fiction work called In the Garden of Beasts by Eric Larson, whose work The Devil in the White City I really enjoyed.  I read Beasts anyway, hoping for redemption right till the end but a really unworthy book and its never-ending Notes and insider-thanks ended with a tribute to his late dog.  Can you tell I'm resentful?

I read a charming book about a 14 year old woman meeting accidentally with a retired Sherlock Holmes, and amazing him with her powers of observation and deduction.  I was encouraged to look for other work by the author Laurie R. King, and found that somewhere in the series, the leading character marries the aged sleuth.  Can you tell I'm repulsed?

I read a very, very bad Jodi Picoult, for which I'm taking full responsibility---I read the little blurb about the story but bought the book anyway.  Authors don't get it right every time.  Can you tell I'm not the least bit ashamed for that condescending thought?

I read a good Julia Spencer-Churchill whose books about an American woman who is both a helicopter pilot who gets called up from the Reserve and an Episcopalian priest have had me enthralled for years.  I found it the first day it was available on Kobo and felt like I'd won the equivalent of the Academy Award. Can you tell that I need to get out more?

I've read books I only know I read because they say "finished" in my e-library; I'm presently reading The Help, which I'm tearing through but I don't know if it's the story or the writing that's captured me.  Or maybe there's something about being in the fourth week of spending every couple of days in bed....  Can you tell that in spite of my penchant for reading, I'll never be a literary critic?

4 comments:

  1. :D i loved the help, both writing and story.

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  2. :) I wonder if you can get a more powerful battery?

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  3. After coughing all night on Friday and all day yesterday, we finally abducted Cuppa to the ER last evening. They gave her cough medicine, and she slept last night ... and so far this morning.

    So, there's a new Clare Ferguson out -- still just in hard cover, no doubt?

    I've found two series that I think may interest you. There's another series in New England that involves the wife of of priest/minister -- Faith Fairchild series by Katherine Hall Page. There's also Lucie Montgomery [sic] in the Wine Country Mysteries by Ellen Crosby. They are probably worth a try, at least.

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  4. I haven't succumbed to buying a e-reader so I don't know what to tell you. I read lots of mysteries -- mostly the hard-boiled kind.

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