With my wonderful three-day readcation behind me, I have a lot of book review catch-up to do, so I'm gong to try to make these short and sweet.
Last week I finished:
I absolutely love the Kopp Sisters series, of which Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit is the fourth installment. In this one, Deputy Kopp is working covertly to help a sane woman who was committed to an insane asylum by her husband, but that help just might be a big hindrance to Sherriff Heath who is running for Congress. There's a very unexpected turn of events in this one that sets up a veer in the next books, as America is perched on the edge of World War II. It's every bit as good as the first three, and I hope Amy Stewart keeps with this series for a long, long time. My rating: 4.5 stars.
I've read a half dozen or so of Agatha Christie's mysteries, but I've just found my new favorite. In Dumb Witness, Miss Emily Arundell sends a cryptic letter to Detective Poirot, but it arrives weeks after her murder. There are several suspects, since Miss Emily, a spinster, was of sound resources, and her house was full of guests just prior to her taking ill. Who murdered Miss Arundell--her scheming niece? her immoral nephew? her elder niece who would do anything her husband told her to? her housekeeper who was set to inherit the entire fortune after a fall down the stairs which was made to look like an accident convinces Miss Arundell to change the beneficiaries in her will? her doctor? her cook? My suspicions were correct--at least partly, but I had a blast guessing. Also, the book features a dog who "speaks" to Poirot's friend, Hastings, who is along for the ride, and it's rather hilarious. My rating: 4.5 stars.
I haven't been watching the PBS Great American Read series, but when I bought the accompanying book, The Book of Books, for our library, I decided to read it throughout the month--not realizing the results would be reported this month. I finished just in time! The book features all 100 of the finalists for "America's 100 best-loved novels" with a page of pictures and a full-page narrative including a synopsis of the book and author information. I had a lot of fun with this book, and I plan to buy a copy of my own. I learned a lot about books I haven't read, and loved seeing how books I have read, and especially books I love, are presented. The synopses are well-written, if a bit slanted at times, and always gave enough information without giving too much. Every few books, there was an essay exploring the books in another way, which I found rather contrived and uninspired. My two complaints with the book are that they don't tell you how the 100 books were chosen (if you didn't see the PBS program, you're out of luck), and they don't tell you who the writer of the synopses is, what her credentials are, if she actually read all of the books, etc. There are quite a few books and authors in the list that I've never heard of, and I consider myself quite well and widely read. How did they get there but Middlemarch was absent? Some choices seemed terribly political. Still, overall, it was a very enjoyable ride. Any lover of books will enjoy it. My rating: 4 stars. P.S. If you like spoilers, here are the results.
I've been trying this year to read (or listen to) lots of books that are high profile or have won high profile awards. Enter Olive Kitteridge, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Although I'd read that the book was a series of interrelated short stories, I'd kind of forgotten it, and that was a big surprise. This is a hard book to listen to on audio because of that. I often wanted to "look back" and figure out who a certain character was, because I knew I'd met her before, but couldn't remember where. I finally decided I had no choice but to let it go and try to enjoy the book in spite of being in the dark, but that kind of defeated the purpose of having interrelated stories forming a novel. At any rate, I can see why many folks loved this novel. It wasn't poorly written, and the characters were unique. But this one just wasn't for me. There were only a few characters that I enjoyed, and one of them was decidedly not Olive Kitteridge. There was also an awful lot of swearing, which was only more pronounced on audio. So, I guess I'd say the book is worth your time if you want to read an award winner, but it really wasn't my cup of tea. My rating: 3 stars.
I just love Garrison Keillor's Good Poems anthologies, the third of which is Good Poems, American Places. While I'd thought this was my least favorite of the three, I'm not so sure they wouldn't score as a three-way tie, in retrospect. If anyone asked me for poetry book recommendations (no one ever does...), I'd hand them one of these wonderful anthologies and not give it another thought. There is nothing flashy or pretentious about the poetry Keillor chooses for his collections. The poems are solid and smart and sometimes funny, but never difficult for the sake of it--which is the thing most people, myself included, hold against poetry. This book collects around 400 poems about America, her various regions (Midwest, West, etc.), snow, the ocean, and the people you encounter along her highways. It's a wonderful collection, as good as his others. My rating: 4.5 stars.
I saw this sweet-looking book, Meet Yasmin, on Amazon while ordering children's book for our library's collection. I'm always interested in how authors are writing new female characters for children, so this piqued my interest. This is the starter book in a whole slew of Yasmin books that all came out on the same day this August. Yasmin is a Pakistani-American (though you don't know her nationality until the back of the book, as I remember) little girl who likes to explore, likes to be creative but has performance anxiety in art class, and loves to dress up in her mother's fancy clothes. Truth be told, this was a little younger than the children's books I tend to enjoy. I love a good picture book, and I love a good middle-grade reader, but chapter books just aren't my thing--there's not enough there to keep an adult interested, but then, that's not really the point. That was my only issue with the book. If you have a little girl who needs a new series, you might try the Yasmin books. My rating: 3 stars.
Next up:
We'll see if I stick with this one. I'm not sure James Patterson is really my kind of writer, and 500+ pages is a lot if I find that I don't love the writing.
Last week I began:
I've basically read the introduction for both Every Man a King (about American populists) and Ten Poems to Set You Free. I'll get further into these next week.
My new audiobook:
This is a wild card. I've heard Tana French's work is intense, and if it's too much so, I might jump ship.
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