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.

[Rodney Wiethop]

Ive finished Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville, Double Exposure by Michael Lister, Mr. Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett & The Chill by Jason Starr

[Suzanne]

Finished Death Angels by Ake Edwardson, not bad but includes a diappointing deus ex machina.
Read Alexandria by Lindsey Davis. Her Falco stories always contain a few laughs out loud.
Starting Archer Mayor's The Ragman's Memory. This was written in 1996, one of a long series about a police officer in New Hampshire.

[Suzanne]

Make that Vermont

[Joy Calderwood]

All Marcia Muller:
A WILD AND LONELY PLACE -- especially fantastic for certain flying scenes. The characters provided me with such a delicious red herring that the solution was a total surprise.
LISTEN TO THE SILENCE -- I love it again. It renewed the grip on my gut that it took when I read it ten years ago.
DEAD MIDNIGHT is my current read, with numerous pauses even before the weekend started. The characters are just as interesting, but it feels padded enough to slow the pace down.

I'm building shelves in my front book room, and shifting mysteries around to clear space for another shelf. My collection of Penmans, van de Weterings, and Parkers have grabbed my eye. The problem is, I can't read them and the rest of my Mullers all at once.

[Harley Sachs]

Lucky you have the space for more shelves.
We have thousands of books in the old house, but will be forced by our own infirmities to sell as we have downsized to a mere studio apartment. Will have to say farewell to my lifelong friends--my books. This a very painful experience which I've started by giving away my nice collection of nautical references and most of the Judaica. One daughter has dibs on the classic sci-fi, but I still have many fine mysteries and most of le Carre.
Le Carre made a blunder with "A Most Wanted Man." The kid shows up in it with a gold bracelet having escaped from two prisons, one Turkish, one Swedish. You know that nobody's going to hand onto a gold bracelet when incarcerated. That stuff is confiscated or stolen immediately. Ah, well. If you'e going to pull a fast one on a reader, better do it in the first chapter.
Following le Carre's footsteps I'm writing a new novel starting in Moscow. Will see where it leads. Last summer's was "The Lollipop Murder" about authors and their publisher. Fun stuff.

[Joy Calderwood]

Harley, you have my deep sympathies in letting go of your old friends. I hope you find a storage method that lets you keep more than you think, now, that you have room for.

[Harley Sachs]

I just finished reading "The Irregulars" about British spies in Washington, DC during WW II. ANyone old enough to remember FDR, Truman, Wallace, and Lyndon Johnson will find the insider view of what went on in DC to be absorbing. This was a NY Times best seller. Johnson should be among the "Righteous Gentiles" for saving hundreds of Jews through a pipeline set up through the US embassy in Cuba. Ian Fleming and Dahl are primary figures in the book.

[doug anderson]

Sounds great. My type of book.

[Suzanne]

I finished Collaborator of Bethlehem, by Matt Beynon Rees. A good, thoughtful book.
I've started Marshall Browne's Inspector Anders and the Ship of Fools. This is the second, and I thnk
better, of his books. I must admit being drawn to a character who prefers older women.

[Joy Calderwood]

I finished Muller's VANISHING POINT (loved it), THE EVER-RUNNING MAN (exciting), and BURN OUT (loved it). About to start a reread of LOCKED IN. I would be sad that there are no more Mullers for me yet, except that I bought the new Kate Shugak when Dana Stabenow was in town.

[I. J. Parker]

Finally finished THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE by Stieg Larsson. I think it's better than THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (which drags horribly), but still no more than a competent thriller. You might want another take in today's "smatterings" by Sarah Weinman, where she calls one review the absolutely worst review ever written. In it, the author finds serious fault with the Larsson book, and lesser fault with Mankell's latest. It may be that she objects to the fact that the review is ostensibly about Mankell, but ends in a comparison of the two leading Swedish authors (Larsson, of course, outsells Mankell by considerable numbers). Needless to say, I'm with the guy (Shapiro) who wrote the review. :) I haven't read THE MAN FROM BEIJING, but what Shapiro dislikes about it is what I've disliked about a number of Mankell's novels and he's on the money about Larsson.
So, Mankell trails off into his political agenda, while Larsson has fun with sado-masochism, rape of minors, the sex trade, and assorted detailed acts of violence and mutilation. You see where the real money is.

[Allie]

My husband just bought me "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy for Valentine's Day. He said it's super sad and depressing. Hmm, so why get me a downer book? One of the most powerful books I've read, said his inscription. Ok, well I was sold by the picture of Viggo on the cover.

Thoughts?