Books 2007 Poppy Z Brite and Ian Rankin

[inulro]

I'm going to make more of an effort to tell y'all about the books I read this year. So far, I've finished two.

1. Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite
This one is for the Bibliogoth meeting on Sunday, so I won't take up much space discussing it here. Haven't read it since 1994. This was one I didn't expect to still like as much as I did the first time, but I did, probably for different reasons.

2. The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin
This is the latest (and second to last) Inspector Rebus novel. I am a huge fan. While this one is still head and shoulders above the output of any other crime writer (including those like PD James and Kathy Reichs who I really enjoy), it's not by any means one of the best. The mystery just didn't grab me the way that this series usually does. Although the whole point is that there's still murders and regular crime happening during the G8, I think it suffered from having too many things going on, and I found the complications added the by presence of the security services (again, part of Rankin's social commentary) detracted from the mystery at hand.

I still highly recommend it, but would advise you to read Dead Souls or, come to think of it, pretty much the rest of the series first if you haven't already.

I wouldn't have got to read this one for several months if it weren't for a new programme the Bristol Public Library has. There were 43 people ahead of me in the reservations queue for this book, but the library has some copies of new popular books set aside in the "fastback" collection - they can't be reserved so it's first-come first-served, but you can only have them for a week and can't renew them. Thankfully, it takes me an average of 3 days to read an Ian Rankin book so it's worked out very well.

Comments

[poppybat.livejournal.com]

P D James is opening the new extension at my workplace at the end of this month. I saw her a few years ago when she did a public lecture here, and to be honest she just freaked me out because she was so detached from the real world, and I wondered how such a little old lady comes up with these stories! Anyway, I'm doing the display for her visit, so she might get to see some of my work this time!

[inulro.livejournal.com]

She was on one of the Radio 4 morning shows a while ago - either Midweek or Start the Week. She's amazingly sharp & active for her age (which is, like, really old).