Books, more books, some comics, some library books…
I appear to have bought six books in the last two days. This is a bit unfortunate. It’s getting to the point where books are going into crates and being put in storage until we move somewhere bigger. Here I am, trying to read the huge backlog of bought-but-not-read books, and suddenly it’s got worse than ever.
Anyway, this is what I got.
Off a Leather Lane market stall in my lunch hour, taking advantage of a “three thrillers for four quid” special offer:
- LA Requiem – Robert Crais: “Karen Garcia is missing and her father doesn’t trust the cops – he wants someone he knows on the case. His call brings private detectives Elvis Cole and Joe Pike head-to-head with the investigating officers of the Robbery-Homicide division of the LAPD. Karen proves to be the latest victim of a distinctive serial killer…” Hoping the private detectives and the LA connection means a nice little noir tale. Unfortunately I seem to have come in a good way through a series, but I’m trying not to be so uptight about that. Author’s website: http://www.robertcrais.com
- The Simple Truth – David Baldacci: “The heart-stopping story of an evil conspiracy at the heart of the American legal system… As a young conscripted soldier, Rufus Harms was jailed for the brutal killing of a schoolgirl. Yet, after twenty-five hard years of incarceration, a stray letter from the US army reveals new facts about the night of the murder – and the evil secret shared by some of Washington’s most powerful men. Fearful for his life, Harms seizes his one chance to escape. But within hours the people wo knew about the appeal have been hunted down and eliminated…” Irresistible. However, it says “No 1 International Bestseller” on the cover, and I’m hoping I’m not embarking on a journey deep into Tom Clancy land. Still, what’s life without a little risk?
- The Bone Vault – Linda Farstein: “The glitzy reception at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art should have been a welcome evening off for the Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper. But the occasion is overshadowed by a gruesome discovery: in an ancient sarcophagus bound for a show abroad, customs officials have found the body of a young woman…” The author, according to the blurb in the front, is “a former prosecutor and America’s foremost expert on sex crimes.” Hmmm. It’s as much as I can do to watch Law and Order: SVU so that’s not a good sign. Again I’ve come in part of the way through a series but if you worried too much about this stuff you’d never read anything. And I love the premise…
From Borders in the local Big Shopping Metropolis (not a three-for-two for once)
- The Sandman Companion – Hy Bender: I’ve only read one of the collected editions of Neil Gaiman’s masterpiece comic book series The Sandman and I consider this an oversight that needs to be urgently rectified. That was volume three – Dream Country and, while it confirmed my impression that this was something I urgently needed to read, it left me struggling as to what was actually going on (I understand that it is far from typical of the series as a whole). Every time I try to buy volume one, Preludes and Nocturnes, I find it out of stock, to the point where it is starting to feel like a conspiracy. I know that browsing on an actual bookshop shelf is hopelessly old-fashioned these days, but still… So I’m admitting to the fact that I am intimidated and starting with this companion volume instead, which I have been hankering after for a while anyway.
- The Corfu Trilogy – Gerald Durrell: Well, who knew that the wonderful My Family and Other Animals was the first part of a trilogy? I read this book for a first-year English assignment at school and, despite that, have never since fallen out of love with it. I think it is among my favourite books. It is incredibly informative and a tribute to the author’s lifelong obsession with natural history as well as being laugh-out-loud funny and character-driven (the family of the title). Now, it turns out, there are two more volumes and Penguin have just put them all out in a collected edition. This is a miracle (as long as they live up to the promise of the first, otherwise it could prove quite upsetting).
- London Noir: Capital Crime Fiction – ed. Cathi Unsworth: This was another upsetting book. I already own a book by the title of London Noir, also a short story collection, put out by the same publisher (albeit with a different editor, Maxim Jakubowski, of Murder One fame). It was sitting by the Borders check-out, staring me in the eye, so I had to make a quick decision. I leafed through it, saw nothing I recognised, and bought it. Having got it home I discover that it has nothing in common with my pre-existing London Noir and can only assume that there is a series thing going on. The cover blurb says: “This is a London it’s best to read about, rather than experience at first hand.” Excellent. Looking forward to it already.
Oh, and that’s not counting the two Angel comics that came in the post on Thursday (Surrogates and Strange Bedfellows, for the curious.)
And a bunch of reservations turned up at the library. Book two of Alan Moore’s Tomorrow Stories – I, apparently in the minority, quite enjoyed book one and so did Mr Random. Also I had a hankering to re-read some John Wyndham, which I remember greatly enjoying as a teenager so I’ve got The Chrysalids and Trouble with Lichen on loan. Also outstanding is Robert Rankin’s The Antipope but it’s a bit too soon after The Greatest Show off Earth to attempt that at the moment – anyway, Rankin’s really arrived now; I see his new one’s being advertised on Tube station posters at the moment. Am also most of the way through Not Abba: the real story of the 1970s by Manchester DJ Dave Haslam and have just started on the second part of Don Quixote.
Go on, make sense of that lot, because I’m not sure I can…