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.

[I. J. Parker]

I'm reading DEVIL'S STAR now.  Actually it's a re-read.  Quite right about the characters!  The plot is another matter.  I'm asking myself why I am so enthralled by alcoholic protagonists: Morse, Jack Taylor, and now Harry Hole.  Probably the fact that strong men may be very vulnerable.

[J W Nelson]

While on a pre-Xmas trip, I have been reading: THE NAKED AND THE DEAD

[Suzanne]

I'm reading INVOLUNTARY WITNESS by Gianrico Carofiglio.  This is a first book by an Italian judge who is

renowned for being tough on the Mafia.  It's in the first person, a lawyer.  He's like an Italian Mickey Haller.

Nice reading.  I miss reading Michael Dibdin, so the Italian setting was nice.

[I. J. Parker]

You might also like Camilleri.  I think he's great.

[I. J. Parker]

Benjamin Black, ELEGY FOR APRIL.  Benjamin Black is acclaimed literary writer John Banville, slumming in the mystery genre.  I have said elsewhere that I haven't found a great deal of difference between his "serious" novels and his mysteries. He writes both very well, meaning that his style is admirable. One can learn a lot from his elegantly turned phrase, the luminous passage of description, the use of physical attributes to reveal a character's personality. The mystery plot (yes, there is a mystery and a solution, a victim and a killer) moves at a fairly leisurely pace because there is a secondary story, that of a lonely man with an empty life and a serious drinking problem who tries to make amends to his daughter and to himself.  (As I said, it's also a "serious" novel).

[Suzanne]

In the current issue of Rolling Stone, there is a good article about Stieg Larsson.

 

Off the subject of books, there's also a wonderful interview with John Lennon, taped a day or two before he died.

I remember hearing of his death on the radio coming home from work.  I went into my living

room and sat in the dark and cried.  

[EDWARD C MORGAN]

Picked up Midnight Guardians by Jonathon King this week, and am looking forward to reading it. King doesn't get a lot of attention it seems, but he's a writer I truly enjoy.

[David DeLee]

For a change of pace from the  usual crime-mystery-thriller I'm reading GRAVE PERIL by Jim Butcher.

[Suzanne]

Jim Butcher is one of my guilty pleasures.  I enjoy his breezy, first-person narratives.  His wizard

must be the person he would like to be, if you know what I mean.  Wait a minute!  I've assumed

that GRAVE PERIL is from the wizard series and not his regular science fiction.  Which is it?

 

 

[David DeLee]

Yes, is book three in the Dresden File series. A lot of fun to read.

[Richard Krauss]

The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross Macdonald, a master of creating realistic characters.

[David DeLee]

Funny, I just re-read Macdonald's FIND A VICTIM a few months back. He was one of my all time favorites when I was a kid.

 

David