Ny Pondus-bok! Nå har man jo riktignok lest alle stripene før, man abonnerer jo på bladet (vel, mannen gjør), men allikevel må man jo løpe og kjøpe. Det er ikke stort annet å si om denne enn at den burde være obligatorisk eie for enhver nordmann (og alle andre som kan lese norsk).
Forfatter: Mirthful
Det blod som spillts
Det er svært hyggelig å lese ny (for meg) krim som ikke irriterer mer enn den behager (ok, behager er et dårlig ord når det gjelder god krim, men det er det beste jeg kommer på akkurat nå). Åsa Larsson skriver meget godt og sikkert, og historien har akkurat så mye driv som den bør ha. Jeg har nettopp «måttet» lese ferdig de siste 10 sidene etter å ha ankommet jobb – det var vanskelig å legge fra seg boka i går kveld, i dag var det platt umulig.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
And so I finally got around to reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. About time, really, especially as it turned out to be just about as good as the hype claims, which was somewhat unexpected. So now I can cross off C on the list, which is good.
The Aubrey/Maturin series
No, I’m not dead. Neither am I «might has well have been dead», that is: Not reading. I just made the mistake of looking into The Final, Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey and, as is quite natural when it comes to O’Brian, simply had to reread the series. Which takes a while. It’s time well spent, though, and if you’ve still to read Master and Commander (just forget about the silly film and read the book, I tell you), then shame on you.
Thursday Afternoons
Aargh.
No.
I liked this until I realised how it was going to end and then I really didn’t want to read the rest but did anyway. I might stick to Dickens’ non-fiction from now on.
Abandonment
I was surprised to discover a book by Kate Atkinson that I hadn’t heard of before and promptly ordered it from Amazon. When it arrived I realised why I hadn’t heard of it, it’s a play. I had no idea Atkinson wrote plays, but since I rather enjoy reading playscripts it did not put me off (rather the opposite). Abandonment is an interesting little tale and can be recommended.
Nickle and Dimed: Undercover in Low-Wage America
Nickel and Dimed is chilling reading. Ehrenreich – as the title says – goes undercover and tries to find out how people survive in low-wage America. The answer is «barely». How so many people can live in such conditions beats belief, but on the other hand you see how staying alive would be so all-consuming that there is no time, and certainly no energy, left for even considering how to change the situation.
44 Scotland Street
44 Scotland Street is an odd book, due to its origin as a daily serialized newspaper novel, a form of writing which was all but dead until McCall Smith revived it. However, it reads very well in bound form, too, and paints a vivid, if not altogether pretty, picture of life in an Edinburgh block of flats. I, for one, am looking foreward to the next installment.
The Big Over Easy
Yet again I almost missed the new Jasper Fforde because nobody told me it was out. Well, no matter, a quick nip into town to get my hands on The Big Over Easy and a few happy hours reading and ah… Brilliant as usual, Fforde has a new hero this time, called Jack Spratt, head of the Nursery Crime Divison at Reading. Which is all good, both Spratt and his new partner Mary Mary (who isn’t so contrary as you might have expected, though she’s having a hard time ditching a guy called Arnold) are both interesting and I’m already looking forward to their next appearance. I just hope Fforde hasn’t gived up on Thursday Next entirely, as I’d at least like to se her get her husband back, but I am not going to moan, I realise authors need variety and if we all clamour too much for our favorites return they may end up doing drastic things, like killing them off (it been done several times in the past, you know). And as long as Ffforde keeps on turning out excellent stuff like this, I can’t see any real reason for complaint. Oh, and if you wondered: Yes, the literary references are flying thick and hard in this one, too, though I find I may need to brush up on the nursery literature, it’s been a while.
Case Histories
Yay! New Atkinson novel!
Case Histories is a kind of crime novel. At least there is a private investigator and a few mysteries needing to be solved. That makes it a crime novel, right? As usual, Atkinson is hard to classify (this is one of the reasons I like her work), and as usual it’s difficult to put the book down (and difficult to adjust to «reality» when you do).