What are you reading the week of Sunday, April 12, 2015?
I finished the first Cordelia Gray novel, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by PD James, early last week. Then I started on Cordelia Gray #2, The Skull Beneath the Skin, which I had also already read some years ago.
Unfortunately, I left it behind on the counter at the pharmacy last Friday - d'oh! I had a prescription to pick up and knew it was going to be a bit of a wait, so I had the book along to read while I waited. I have no idea how I managed to leave without it, except that it had been a long week and I was tired and my brain was apparently no longer functioning. They're closed all weekend, so I have to wait until tomorrow to call and make sure they have it so I can pick it up after work. And I had just gotten to the discovery of the dead body, too! Damn!
In the meantime, I started on the other PD James book I had on hand, Innocent Blood - which I had not read before. It's a stand-alone, not part of any series, but I'm finding it sort of weird and not much fun to read. I'll plod along with it until I can retrieve the other Cordelia Gray book, and then I think I'll just skim through to the end and be done with it.
Because... I'd gone ahead and ordered the first five books of Rhys Bowen's Constable Evan Evans series (there are 10 in all), and was able to pick up three of them on Friday, including #1 of the series. Hopefully the rest of the five will come in this week so I don't have to read them out of order.
I ought to give proper credit to whomever brought this series up in a couple of these "What are you reading" threads sometime back, but I can't remember who it was. So, my apologies, unnamed recommender! I'll certainly post my thoughts once I've gotten going on the series.
And still I wait for the newest Fossum, Indriðason, Nesbø, Cleeves, Sundstøl, Cotterill, Läckberg, Kjell Eriksson, etc. to finally come in...
So, what are you reading this week?
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as I will occasionally do to read a biography or memoir. Last night, I just began reading Watch Me - by Anjelica Huston. Not quite entranced by it yet but, as always, I'll give it a chance to grow on me. (I rarely return a book without finishing it unless it's really, really awful and I just can't.)
At the same time, I also picked up Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth on the recommendation of Enthusiast, but it's a much larger book, and there are holds on the other, so I need to be able to finish it first as I won't be able to renew it if I don't.
Hope the pharmacy still has your book so you can get back to it, sw. 
I mean, imagine having John Huston for a father! 
I hope the book ends up proving to be worthwhile.
Even though Enthusiast has spoken highly of Sacred Hunger, I had already decided to take a pass on that particular book from the first time he brought it up. I'm just not emotionally up to reading about the slave trade at this time. I applaud you for being willing to take it on.
I hope the pharmacy has my book, too - thanks! It was maddening to have left off in the story where I did, even if I had already read it before, years ago.
it's really terrible, actually. So far it's just a laundry list of the self indulgent life of the rich and famous, lots of name dropping. Worse is that it reads very much like a laundry list, almost as if she whipped out old calenders and just transferred what she found into paragraph form: first we did this, then we went there and did that, with these people, and on and on and on. Can't even seem to work up any emotion in the retelling of her relationship with Jack Nicholson, which so far takes up much of the narrative.
Very flat, dry and boring, no depth or charm yet to be found at all. 
Unfortunate, but maybe not all that surprising. In my (waaay) younger days I was involved in theater and got to know quite a few actors. I discovered that however deeply and intensely they could play a character, the majority of them of turned out to be extraordinarily shallow and insipid as their "real" selves. Quite a disappointment, especially with the dark, handsome ones. 
Had hoped for your sake that maybe Angelica might have been different - but apparently I ought to have known better.
At least you've got another book to get into if you decide to give Ms. Huston's up as a bad job.
didn't see any improvement. I get it that she was young and most of us were pretty superficial and into partying, but she isn't as she writes this book, so I really expected more.
I've a lot to do this week getting ready for a weekend event, so I'll probably just continue using it as a sleep aid this week rather than get into the heavier reading right now.
Glad to hear your own book was returned to you.
I'm totally out of new recommendations, myself - although you might give a thought to At Play in the Fields of the Lord, if you're in the mood for something heavy. It really is an excellent, but dark, novel.
While re-reading the two Cordelia Gray novels has been pleasant enough, they certainly aren't of a caliber that would inspire me to say, "You've GOT to read this!" Yes, I do hope I can get my book back, too. An astonishing lapse of consciousness, there! 
I'm hoping I'll enjoy the Evan Evans books. I'm assuming they'll be pleasantly amusing British cozy types - which is fine, but not really my favorite genre. Just something to hold me over until one of my preferred Scandinavian books finally comes in.
I ordered a used copy online.
I have many books to choose from in the meantime. Maybe Randy Wayne White or James Lee Burke. Nope. Steve Hamilton it will be.
We both had a sort of respiratory infection. We felt it had affected our thinking. We were certainly not as sharp as usual. Not good. We are mostly getting over it now. Maybe you had a similar affliction causing you to forget your book.
generally sound too bloody for me. As I've mentioned many times, I am no longer willing to read books that feature serial killers. Also, I'm just not much into American authors, unless they've written something particularly outstanding. Maybe I'm a Euro-snob? 
Regarding respiratory infections, I've had two major bouts over the past few months, but that wasn't my problem on Friday. Just general end-of-the-work-week mental burnout. Plus, I'm old.
We all have our individual taste when it comes to novels.
When I first read the books by Steve Hamilton they struck a chord. There was something there that I connected with. When his central character wanted Canadian Molson's beer from his bartender, not American Molson's beer, I knew exactly what he was talking about. Apparently Steve Hamilton and I speak the same language even though it is nothing on a profound level.
It can be so very hard to read some of it, since it's very real, factual historical events and circumstances into which he weaves the lives of his fictional characters. I can't even begin to imagine what drives the desire to destroy another human life because of a simple disagreement such as what one chooses to believe. It takes nothing short of a very sick and pathological mind to even conceive its necessity.
Or to even begin to think that such atrocities would influence anyone to truly and willingly embrace one's own deeply held religious beliefs. I'm certain, as witnessed by the Inquisition as only one example of the many, that they really don't care if they do or merely take it on out of fear, as long as it's the law of the land, and they hold the reigns of power. The attitudes and behaviors of the powerful towards the vanquished rarely ever improve, not even over time, no matter how much they appear to accept and adopt what's been foisted on them.
I have to believe that the majority of people everywhere wish nothing more than to lead a peaceful existence, and would do just fine living side by side with all they actually share in common, without the unreal perception that a different belief system is somehow an insult to themselves, or that arbitrary and artificial borders make them so very different. I honestly really don't care what someone's personal religious beliefs are, nor do I think very many others do either, as long as it's not used it to harm anyone or is forcefully imposed upon the unwilling.
Authors such as Michener, with his very accurate research into historical events, his very deep and rich depictions of the lives and deaths of the staggering numbers of very real people affected by them, have done what they could in an attempt to bridge divides and bring about understanding. Yet the pathologically power driven minority, with the support of those too weak and fearful to think and act for themselves, have made, and still make, all of this violence possible. So it's always been and, unfortunately, so it's always likely to remain. 
Doesn't pay to get me started, does it?
The pathologically power driven minority certainly have the upper hand. Those short periods of peace and prosperity we have experienced now seem to be more an aberration than the rule.
I really don't care what someone's personal religious beliefs are either. Except when they use them as an excuse to interfere with my life or use them to justify wrong headed foreign policy.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I remember the Watergate days quite well. Back then, my husband and I didn't have a TV, nor did most of our hippie friends, so there was a whole group of us who would troop down to the local bar every day to watch the hearings. We lived in a hippie enclave on the West Bank of Minneapolis, and - of course - we all HATED Nixon.
Fun times. 
the almost 600-page Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Whew. This is getting to be quite the story. Certain things I wasn't expecting, being it is so hugely popular. 
One thing is nagging at me. Now, I'm no detective but it seems like they should take a little more interest in who sends the flowers. I know, no return address and no finger prints. BUT, with the list of suspects why not just check to see who was in the different countries. Too simple? I won't be happy if that end is left hanging but I gotta feeling it's all going to be wrapped up nicely. After all, there's still almost 300 pages to go.
Amazing book.
Hope you got your book back, scarletwoman, and that you enjoy Evan. Cozy, yes. Light reading, in spite of all the dead bodies.
Yeah, it's quite the story. I don't remember many details anymore - just bits and pieces - but I do remember being totally caught up in the story, and being amazed.
I hope you will read all three books - as near as I can remember, most things were fairly well tied up by the end of the third book. I think they might merit a re-read one of these days, since they were my first introduction to Nordic Noir back when I first read them.
So, it was YOU who brought up the Evan Evans books? I just started on the first one today, and I have to say it's quite fun so far - dead bodies notwithstanding.
Called there first thing this morning, and picked it up after I got off work - bookmark still in place where the dead body was discovered.
It's a small town pharmacy, I've been going there for years, and I think they pretty much assumed that the person who left the book behind would show up for it. They're all very nice people.
One of the pharmacists even commented that she thought it looked like an interesting book.
Thank you so much! 