The Readin Roos

I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog, and I do mean a lot. I've been off for a few months doing a number of things, and now I'm back in school working on my Master's, so I have lost tough with the phrase "spare time." Anyway, in the months before starting school, I read a load of books. Here are a few.

I tend to read a lot of chick fic as well as vampire lore, so naturally I was drawn to the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. Holy cow, what a great bunch of fun! I've read the first ... lemme count ... carry the two ...

Peter Grant is back on the case when a body turns up at the morgue and the coroner can hear the song "Body and Soul" when he gets close to it. This one was almost as good as Midnight Riot, but it does have a trope (which I can't describe without giving away the ending) that gets on my nerves a bit. Why don't fictional characters ever take my sage advice when I tell them not to do something?

The characters are still great, but there's something about their dynamic that is slighly less satisfying than it was in the first novel.

The new Harry Dresden novel finally came out! Hooray! I got to pick up my copy at an author event. Double hooray!!

I love this series and this is an excellent installment. It answers almost all of the questions I had left over from Changes and opens up a number of new possibilities for the next book. This isn' t the kind of series that lends itself to readers picking up the books randomly (like I have done with the Discworld novels). It wouldn't make much sense being read out of order.

I had a really good time reading this book! It starts with a Probationary Constable in London watching over a crime scene in the wee hours, but his shift and his life get a lot more interesting when a ghost comes up to him and claims to have seen the murder happen. It turns out that there's a lot more out there than just ghosts and Peter Grant is going to be one of the few investigating the spooky side.

Although there is a riot at midnight in this book, it doesn't occur for quite a while, so the American title is kind of confusing for most of the book.

This book is definitely a page-turner! As horrifying as some of the scenes in it are, I could hardly put it down. Often, when I read a book that has gotten a lot of buzz, I'm left disappointed. This novel, however, lived up to and exceeded my expectations. It's not always a pleasant read, but dang it's good.

I guess I'll just have to read the other Millennium books and watch the movies, too.

Elizabeth Peters is probably best know for her novels featuring Amelia Peabody, a strong-willed and liberated Victorian woman with a passion for Egyptology. In this novel, Peters gives us woman cast in a similar mold. Jacqueline Kirby, Assistant Head Librarian at Coldwater College, Nebraska, needs to escape from the tedium of life at the small midwestern college, she registers for a writers' conference. (Can you say, "Tax deduction?") She finds one in New York City (the hustle and bustle of the city is what her soul craves): The Historial Romance Writers of the World.

You may have figured out by now I'm a sucker for supernatural mysteries. I love them dearly and while they by no means comprise my entire reading list, they make for a great majority of it.

This is the first book in what is so far a trilogy, but I suspect there will be more.

Former teacher Sadie Novak has left the classroom in favor of the world of gory crime scenes.

Another great story from Steve Hockensmith! The Black Dove was a top-notch mystery and I didn't figure out the end until it was told to me. I usually like to have a few more clues thrown my way so I can figure out the puzzle with the detectives, but in this case, it took them almost as much by surprise as it did me.

The Black Dove was a bit of a departure from the style of the first two books in the series. Instead of roaming the wide open spaces out west, this time there's big trouble in little Chinatown.

Ignatius Perrish has problems. One year after his girlfriend is brutally raped and murdered, he wakes up one morning to find horns growing out of his head. And if that isn't bad enough, whenever he's around people those people have a strong desire to confide him in their deepest, darkest secrets. To make things worse, most in the town believe he was guilty of killing his girlfriend and used connections to get off. So he gets to hear that over and over again as he tries to figure out what to do in his situation.

Not at all a bad collection of mysteries from the Crime Writers' Association. I picked it up because there's a story from one of my British serialists, Catherine Aird. Her work has really grown on me and I've come to love her characters.

I love O. Henry-esque twists, which add a delightful layer to many short stories. A few that captured the idea well in this collection: "This Way Nobody Gets the Blame," by Lesley Grant-Adamson and "Disposing of Mrs. Cronk," to name two.