The State of the Card
Week 3 was spent mostly on vacation at the Pacific City, on the Oregon Coast. It is a very beautiful place, and there was a lot of walking on the beach, craft beer, visiting tide pools with my kids, and playing ball with my 16 month old Golden Retriever pup, Gus. There was, also, plenty of time for reading!
I finished several books:
- Falling Star by Patricia Moyes for the Vintage Mystery square: this was the 5th book in the Inspector Henry Tibbets series. It was first published in 1964, but was only a mediocre installment. The solution to the mystery was a bit too clever, and it was told in a first-person narration through a thoroughly unlikeable narrator. I think he was supposed to be a bit of a Bertie Wooster type, but he was just ugh.
- My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart for Romantic Suspense: Mary Stewart is a longtime favorite author. Her books were released for the kindle a few years ago now, very inexpensively. I bought them all and have been parceling them out bit-by-bit rather than just going on a binge. I always love her beautifully rendered settings, and this was no exception, being set in Greece.
- Relic by Preston & Childs for the Free square: I bought this book for my husband years ago, and hadn’t read it. I was hoping that it would fit my Relics & Curiosities square, but it really didn’t – title notwithstanding – so I dropped it into the Free Square. I could juggle my squares a bit and move some things around to put this one in Dem Bones, but I think I’m just going to leave it be.
- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman for Dem Bones: This book was a lot of fun. It’s been sort of everywhere recently, and I understand why. I also read that it has been optioned by Spielberg – as I was reading it, I was imagining what a wonderful movie it would make.
- Why Kings Confess by C.S. Harris for Darkest London: I started reading Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscolo for this square, but DNF’d at about 20% because it really wasn’t working for me at all. I’ve been reading this historical mystery series for years, and am still about five books behind!
- Wildwood Whispers by Willa Reece for Southern Gothic: This was one of my anticipated Halloween Bingo reads, partially because of the gorgeous cover. It was good, but not great – I felt like it was trying to do too any things all at once. I liked the story about the town and the wisewomen and the magical realism, but when it came to the murder mystery and the cartoon villains, I was very meh.
And that’s it for the vacation week! Fifteen books done, ten to go!