The loot so far.
THE CHRISTMAS MYSTERY - Jostein Gardner
I'll forgive him 'Sophie's World' if this turns out well. One and only chance, before I get seriously prejudiced, Gardner. Historical/Theological Mystery. New Genre.
MY SUMMER OF LOVE - Helen Cross
starring 15 year old Mona, a drinker, thief and fruit-machine addict, who meets well-endowed, posh Tamsin who has an acress mother and a sister who's died of starvation. black comedy expected.
BLOODY WOMEN, IRELAND'S FEMALE KILLERS - David M. Kiely
women murderers, my favourite yet being Kate Webster, the one who boiled the dismembered bits of her victim and tried to sell off the fat as 'the best dripping'.
PRINCE OF THE CLOUDS - Gianni Riotta
Supposedly "even more enchanting than 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin'". Promises post-WW2 Sicily, a battle scene and a beautiful Russian woman.
THE FALL - Joyce Carol Oates
My first Oates novel. Portrait of an American family in crisis, set in the mid-20th century. The plot is quite original, to say the least. Post a disastrous honeymoon night, a young woman's newly-minted husband throws himself into the Niagara. :-)
SMALL GODS - Terry Pratchett
The sight of this one among all those lurid lurve stories taught me what 'paralyzed with pleasure' means.
AH, SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE - Roald Dahl
Neither juvenile fiction, nor macabre short stories, this one is a side of the master i've yet to encounter. Here he writes of the eccentricities of rural life.
1066 AND ALL THAT - W.C.Sellar and R. J. Yeatman
The much-longed-for, never-expected-to-be-owned satire on textbook history.
UNDER THE EYE OF THE CLOCK - Christopher Nolan
The brilliant, handicapped young writer's autobiography, almost.
LONGITUDE - Dava Sobel
Beautiful, beautiful, hardback. Coincidentally, right when the kids and i are working on the 'imaginary lines' too.
GOODFELLAS - Nicholas Pileggi
A look into the career and machinations of Henry Hill, a New York mobster, turned Federal Witness, turned one of the most hunted men of our times.
TOMORROW - Graham Swift
An intimate story. A look at long-standing marriage, parenthood and the fabric of families.
THE TEENAGE WORRIER'S GUIDE TO LURVE - Ros Asquith
If this is anything like Adrian Mole, then i'm blessed to have found this, being surrounded as i am, by tiny people with hormones doing funny things to them.
MISS PURDY'S CLASS - Annie Murray
Young schoolmarm in the early 1900s in the poorest area of Birmingham, and all the troubled children she comes to know and love. Inspirational almost-chick-lit. Got a nagging feeling the Hollywood factory has already moviefied this.
OPEN - Lisa Moore
Getting compared to Annie Proulx is no mean achievement. A collection of 10 stories.
THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE - Stephen Fry/Alan Davies
If a book says 'George Washington's teeth previously belonged to a hippopotamus', i've discovered i'll buy it.
101 THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU'RE OLD AND BORING - Richard Horne and Helen Szirtes
I guess a frog-in-the well provincial could be bettered by some armchair inspiration.
ROAD RAGE - Ruth Rendell
She, and she alone knows how to make a whodunnit moving, literate, insightful and thrilling. The best there is.
E IS FOR EVIDENCE - Sue Grafton
Kinsey Millhone, my favorite kick-ass sleuth, in another of her adventures.
if i needed any more evidence of approaching senility, this is it. more non-fiction here than fiction.
Notice:
Amoeba, Stuts, B, Gunji;
I will NOT share. Unless, of course, you buy a few and share with me first.
Hyper-critical, Reader-on-a-Mission Sailor Man;
keep your comments to yourself.
