I try to write down every book I read using
Goodreads, and this year I thought I'd make a point of adding a note to each title to try to remember it better. Luckily Christmas and my family were kind to me and I started the year with a nice tower of books to get through. Unless anyone objects, I think I'll start posting my list on Kolo too (more posts, what an idea!). In the meantime, here are my books read so far this January:
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Peril at End House, Agatha Christie ****
The usual twisty turny Poirot plot; a perfect page turner for New Year's eve and day.
The facsimile edition added an extra star to my review - imagine a light, six inch high hardback, old-fashioned type printed on sturdy vanilla stock. The book fits just right into your hands and reads gorgeously. If you like Agatha Christie, I absolutely recommend searching out these facsimile editions, they seem to be available in the UK and Germany. If you're an expat, check
The Bookdepository for the lowest prices and free shipping.
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Girls in Trucks, Katie Crouch ** 1/2
Living abroad, I'm plenty nostalgic for glimpses of my hometown and the area where I grew up and if I find a book that talks about South Carolina marshes, chances are I'll read it. Remembering Katie from our childhood choir and finding
Trucks on my sister's shelf turned this book into a definite addition to my reading list. For once, the details about Charleston and the lowcountry didn't disappoint and I was happy to discover that becoming a writer doesn't mean you must forget the mosquitos and stinky pluff mud that add that certain something to romantic river views.
About the book though - Girls in Trucks is marketed as a novel, but it feels more like a collection of short stories laid out in chronological order. The main characters spin in and out of the stories without resolution, the perspectives change, the language shifts - all frustrating in a novel but typical in a collection of stories. Katie is an apt short story writer too, and possesses the wit and ability to spin bon mots and endings which keep these stories satisfying and lodged in your memory.
Would I recommend
Girls in Trucks? If you'd like to dip into a few chapters, yes. If you want to read a novel about a developing set of characters (particularly the protagonist), maybe not. Most of the book, I couldn't bring myself to like the main character at all. I thought a pickier editor would have split her into two - she seems sharper and possibly more autobiographical in some chapters, and then hammered into a simpler and more frustratingly destructive and sterotypical shape in another. As the book ends, she resolves too swiftly upwards in a hockey stick curve that feels editor driven. I'd recommend keeping an eye on Katie as a writer though, and trying to catch her short stories as they appear.
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Sick Heart River, John Buchan ***1/2
Long descriptive passages often find me (im)patiently plodding through a page (or, hmm, just flipping right by it). John Buchan's descriptions are another story - he writes words into pictures with such clarity I read them again and again to enjoy the view along with the fast paced plots and characters I'd love to meet.
Buchan's last book,
Sick Heart River, has a slower plot pace and is much more introspective than the rest of his books. The painterly descriptions remain, and because of the slower pace, they stand out even more than usual as graceful, unusual images.
It is in many ways a final book - like most authors closing down their imagined world, Buchan spends a good bit of time tieing up shutters, and preparing his characters to set off toward a further shore. He even sends the protagonist, Sir Edward Leithen, north to a land that reminds me of the country Frodo sails to at the end of the Lord of the Rings. (Spoiler alert) But here Buchan does a curious thing - rather than setting Leithen to sea with a hero's farewell, he turns the tables and ends his writing world with a humane, counter fairy tale ending I found touching and unusual.
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The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, Agatha Christie ***
Another Agatha Christie facsimile edition, this time a collection of short stories.
The book begins with Poirot in the country enjoying an old fashioned Christmas, complete with turkey, Christmas pudding and a thick blanket of snow. The stories are enjoyable, and the mysteries somewhat easier to solve than most of her books because the clues arrive condensed. If you can hold out until next December, I'd recommend
Christmas pudding then - it's an ideal over-Christmas read for those nights when just one story will do.
