What are you currently reading?

[QualityBookReviews]

An open discussion on what everyone is currently reading. Make recommendations to others, discuss what is new, hot, bestsellers, anything and everything related to books and the authors.

[Harley Sachs]

Recently read "Sisters" which was well done until I realized it was a fictional take on the Kennedy Assasination. There is a remote possibility that the assasination had to do with the face-down with the Soviets over the Cuban missile crisis but we have a propensity to get carried away with conspiracy theories. I suppose one of the ultimate conspiracy theories is The Protocols of Zion which purports that a cabal of 300 Jews rules tghe world. Anone who knows anything about Judaism knows the book is bunko, but one must read it first.
I bought a Kindle which died in only four days. They call it failure out of the box. Anybody else have a similar problem with the Kindle? I uploaded 12 of my books to it, but the Kindle doesn't handle illustrations, so my collecion of cartoons is a bust and I don'tknow how to take it down. Ah, technololgy!

[I. J. Parker]

I'm reading Paul Murray's SKIPPY DIES, a novel (not a mystery) about youngsters in an Irish Catholic boys' school. It's an excellent book, but of the literary variety. My guess is that it disproves all the charges brought against literary books on our forum. It certainly has a plot and it does no navel gazing that I can detect.

[Linda Lee]

Have recently finished Lee Childs "Worth Dying For" which for me has been the best Reacher novel yet. I am now 1/4 way through "The Surrogate" by Tania Carver, whom I recently discovered is none other than Martyn Waites!

[I. J. Parker]

Good to know there's a strong Reacher novel in the offing. Carver/Waites is a puzzle: a male author also writing under a female pseudonym? Why? The female market?

[Kemosabe]

Why not. Maybe it is the female in there trying to get out.

[Harley Sachs]

As an unknown author, I don't give away books, but I love writing them. Having been a free lance writer since 1957, I've done a lot of publishing, but the books came only after I retired in 1986. Yes, once you are an author you read differenly than when you were just a spectator. Same goes for theater. Once you have acted in plays, you see plays through different eyes, as stage manager, scene builder, director, etc. But though one is critical in a new way, it is not less satisfying. It is more educated. I joke that I will be a famous posthumous writer. Itg sue cuts back on the paparazzi and groupies. www.hu.mtu.edu/~hlsachs now with 12 books on Kindle.

[Suzanne]

I'm back. I took a break from mysteries and read four of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novels. God, he's good! His books are so fresh, with such a joy of life. Every twenty pages or so, there's something which makes me laugh out loud. For example, he describes a vegetarian's expression as "permanently apologetic." Another: "According to him he could never understand the sense of a contest in which the two adversaries have agreed upon the rules." Just wonderful stuff.

Now back to mysteries, with fresh eyes. Read A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE, by Malla Nunn, about a police detective in apartheid-era South Africa, not too good -- more polemics than policework.

Am now reading two good ones:
It's always a treat when Peter Robinson writes another. BAD BOY is his latest.
TH1RTE3N is the latest book of Richard K. Morgan. I never thought I could stomach science fiction, but this author is exceptional. ALTERED CARBON was his first, and the book is really a noirish detective thriller. There were four books in that series and TH1RTE3N is the start of a new series, about a bio-enhanced UN-hired killer who is just plain tired of the life. Give his books a try; you'll be surprised.

Every two weeks or so, Amazon sends me an email with ten new mysteries/thrillers. I almost never find anything I would read. I have better luck finding things on the UK Amazon page. Funny.

[Caroline Trippe]

four of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novels.

Wow, Suzanne---You make me want to re-read him! I read GGM years ago---but find that when a lot of time has passed, it's very worthwhile to re-read, and often it's as though I've never read the book at all. I'll bet "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is hiding somewhere on my bookshelves! :)

On the strength of your recommendation will have to check out Peter Robinson too . Have I read any of his before? I'm not sure...

[Caroline Trippe]

It's always a treat when Peter Robinson writes another. BAD BOY is his latest.

As a matter of fact, I HAVE read a number of his mysteries--a couple years ago maybe. I remember they really WERE good. I googled him, and immediately recognized some of the titles. I had forgotten his name---maybe I got him confused with somebody else. So glad you mentioned him.

[Suzanne]

His series is an exception to the rule that a writer runs out of steam after so many books.

[I. J. Parker]

Well, but the books are getting longer and slower. I don't understand that. Nobody is getting paid by the word.

[Jacqui Horwood]

i love gabriel garcia marquez. 'love in the time of cholera' is one of my all-time faves. enjoy your reading.