[books 2013] One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I read so little in April, you'd think I'd have found the time to write it up. But anyway, here goes. The usual line that I had some thoughts at the time which escape me now applies.

21. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

April's Bibliogoths selection. I hadn't read it before. I was pleasantly surprised - it was neither as hard going, nor as unpleasant, as I'd expected. A lot of the gallows humour is laugh-out-loud funny. I found that I really liked the narrator, Chief Broom.

It generated lots of discussion: Is McMurphy nuts? If so, how? Is it the system that made these men dysfunctional? Is it really about mental illness, or about society and conforming?

I'm glad I read it and do recommend it.

[books 2013] Falco again - get used to it.

22. Poseidon's Gold by Lindsey Davis

The fifth Falco mystery. I thought I'd got to the end of the books that had been dramatised on Radio 4, but I was wrong - I've listened to this one too.

Falco returns from Germany to find that his family is being shaken down by some of his late brother's army pals for a rather large sum he supposedly owes them. This leads to Falco getting involved in the antiquities trade, and to teaming up with his estranged father to get to the bottom of it. Geminus has all too much fun with this for Falco's liking, referring to them as "the Didius boys", especially when they've just roughed someone up. I found that bit hilarious (and how I could have forgotten that I'd heard this one on the radio I don't know, because that line was delivered in a particularly excellent way in the radio play).

In it we find out that Falco's brother wasn't exactly the hero he was described as in earlier books, and why Falco is always so broke - he supports his mother and his brother's girlfriend and child (OK, this is Falco, the child might be his). It also turns out his father wasn't so estranged to the rest of the family.

I love this one slightly less than The Iron Hand of Mars, because you can't beat a good lost legion and sacred grove mystery, but I still highly enjoyed every page of it.

[books 2013] A VI Warshawski mystery

23. Body Work by Sara Paretsky

One of the newest in the series about the female hard-boiled PI set in Chicago. (Some day I want to do a mashup of Warshawski and Harry Drescent).

Warshawski's cousin is working in a club where the "body artist" performs - she goes on stage more or less naked, covered in primer, and invites members of the audience to paint on her. Two weird things - there's an older, unpleasant, man who writes a series of letters and numbers; and then there's a woman who draws a really beautiful picture that sets off an Iraq veteran with PTSD. The cousin asks Warshawski to see what's up, and before you know it, the woman who does the pictures is shot in the club's parking lot, and the disturbed veteran is arrested for the crime. His family hire Warshawski to clear his name. In an awful January with lots of snowstorms.

I'm not describing it very well, but I basically couldn't put it down.

[books 2013] The Converstion of Scandinavia

24. The Conversion of Scandinavia by Anders Winroth

I got this for my birthday last year, but as it looked quite specialist I read The Hammer and the Cross and The Norsemen in the Viking Age first. It turns out I needn't have bothered because there's a good general introduction which actually takes up about half the book.

Thus, the answer to my original question, "is there really enough extant material to write a whole book about it?" is no.

There were things that I didn't already know in the general bits, most pertinently how much evidence there is for halls as described in Beowulf in the pre-Christian era.

The point of this book is that while some of the Vikings' neighbours, such as the Saxons, were forcibly converted, in Scandinavia the situation was reversed - when they travelled and raided into the rest of Europe, they saw how the more advanced, and wealthier, states were set up and that this was based around Christianity, so it was more a case of wanting to convert so as to join the mainstream of European states - The Scandinavian countries start to look something like states rather than chiefdoms about the time they start to convert.

There's also a good analysis of how we can't trust most of the conversion narrative that does exist.

So, not as exciting as I was hoping, but a really good solid book on the subject.

Note to self (again) - do not need *another* MA in Viking History and certainly do not need a PhD in said subject.

[books 2013] Margaret Atwood

25. Bluebeard's Egg by Margaret Atwood

An early collection of short stories from the mid-80s. The sort of thing, if it weren't Atwood, I'd write off as "women's issues stuff". These are not her best work, but even so, I charged through the whole thing in 3 days. Her writing just sucks me into the narrative and I want to know what happens next, even though that often isn't much.

Some of the stories are set in the Toronto art world of the 80s, and I recognise so many of the character types in it. The lefty actors whose troupe performs plays for striking workers and who were always being accused of being anti-Semitic, or not Jewish enough, etc made me laugh out loud - I went to Trent with people exactly like that.

My favourites as the semi-autobiographical ones set up in Northern Ontario with eccentric family members.

[books 2013] Moon Over Soho

26. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Second in the PC Peter Grant series featuring the apprentice wizard with the Metropolitan Police. Or, what I did at the weekend.

Most books that take this little time to read are disposable and not actually terribly good. These are. They are so very London - this one is set in the dodgy clubs of Soho as Grant investigates the deaths of several jazz musicians. There are good one-liners and some thought-provoking bits. And lots of laughs.

Can't wait till volume 4 comes out in July.

April reading

6 books total, 1 non-fiction.
1 borrowed from friends, 3 from the library. So only knocked two out of the two-read pile. Which I cannot remember if I added to or not.