Tuesday, September 6, 2011

August reading

Four Seasons in Rome [Anthony Doerr] - saw this in a bookshop and had to have it. A writer and his family (wife and 6 month old twin boys) head to Rome on a study grant, and this book follows their 12 month stay and discovery of the city. Loved it! Want to live it!

Fleshmarket Close [Ian Rankin] - borrowed from my mother. An Inspector Rebus murder mystery/crime novel. A lot of threads happening simultaneously - some fairly predictable, others with interesting twists.

The Final Judgement [Richard North Patterson] - bought from a fete, as part of a Readers Digest Select Editions book containing four edited novels. And therein lies the problem, I think. While they were easy enough to read, I was left with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, and I suspect it was because some detail of the original novels was edited out. None of them were the sort of books that I feel compelled to now read the original to compare, so I guess I'll never know for sure, but I probably won't bother with another of these compilations, even if it did only cost me 50c. This one was about a US judge caught up in a murder investigation/trial of a family member.

Icebound [Dean Koontz] - as above. A group of scientists isolated on an iceberg, split from the main mass by an earthquake/tsunami. And a hell of a lot of explosives set to go off in a very short time, right under them.

That Camden Summer [LaVyrle Spencer] - as above. 1916, and a divorced woman (the scandal!) comes back to her hometown with her three daughters and upsets the status quo. Things get nasty, but they all live happily ever after in the end (except the bad people, which is how it should be).

Wildfire [Susan Geason] - as above. This one was interesting as it was set (mostly) in Sydney, against a background of the 1994 bushfires. I was there, heard the news reports, saw the fires, breathed the smoke, and this novel brought that back very clearly.

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