[books 2010] holiday reading
May. 22nd, 2010 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro32.Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo
This is one of the books I bought in January at Smith's buy one get one half price sale. The front cover describes it as "Witness meets Fargo" and I couldn't resist.
It's a murder mystery (women are murdered in the exact same way that three women were killed in the area 16 years ago) set in a small town in Ohio where 1/3 of the population is Amish. The chief of police is a woman who was raised Amish but left the church as soon as she could.
I expected this to be trashy and disposable, but it's much better written than that. For instance, when the chief goes to tell the parents of the first victim that their daughter has been murdered, the heartbreak in the room just oozes off the page.
Apparently Castillo mostly writes romances, so I won't be checking those out, but there's a sequel to this which I most certainly will.
33. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd
I don't think I'd really heard of Boyd before, but he was on Radio 4 plugging this when we were in the car one day, and when he described the bit where the character kills and eats a gull while living rough on the Thames, Jason said "I want to read that book". That was his Christmas present sorted out. He liked it and passed it on to me.
It's about a young climate scientist who, due to what the book describes as a turn of fate but what I call abject stupidity, has to go on the run from the police and a hit man, giving up his identity and all his material possessions, and his adventures thereafter, and the lives of the other people involved in his situation, some indirectly. It's a bit slow to get started but after that I was reading 100 pages a day.
Boyd's written loads of books and I would probably check out more when (ha!) the to-read pile is more under control.
This is one of the books I bought in January at Smith's buy one get one half price sale. The front cover describes it as "Witness meets Fargo" and I couldn't resist.
It's a murder mystery (women are murdered in the exact same way that three women were killed in the area 16 years ago) set in a small town in Ohio where 1/3 of the population is Amish. The chief of police is a woman who was raised Amish but left the church as soon as she could.
I expected this to be trashy and disposable, but it's much better written than that. For instance, when the chief goes to tell the parents of the first victim that their daughter has been murdered, the heartbreak in the room just oozes off the page.
Apparently Castillo mostly writes romances, so I won't be checking those out, but there's a sequel to this which I most certainly will.
33. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd
I don't think I'd really heard of Boyd before, but he was on Radio 4 plugging this when we were in the car one day, and when he described the bit where the character kills and eats a gull while living rough on the Thames, Jason said "I want to read that book". That was his Christmas present sorted out. He liked it and passed it on to me.
It's about a young climate scientist who, due to what the book describes as a turn of fate but what I call abject stupidity, has to go on the run from the police and a hit man, giving up his identity and all his material possessions, and his adventures thereafter, and the lives of the other people involved in his situation, some indirectly. It's a bit slow to get started but after that I was reading 100 pages a day.
Boyd's written loads of books and I would probably check out more when (ha!) the to-read pile is more under control.
