I had today all slotted for my post on W. Somerset Maugham's extremely beautiful and eloquent The Painted Veil. I'm afraid I ran out of steam this past weekend, however, and never managed to get a post started (or better yet written) and I'm fairly worthless at writing serious posts during the work week, so I've bumped it up yet another week. By the time I have the energy to write about it, It'll have started to go hazy in my mind. I can always rattle on about books in general, though, which is why I save 'reading notes' posts for moments like this.
My reading at the moment is (as usual) all over the place, but I'm quite pleased to pick up any number of books that I have going. Somehow my night table piles have grown over the last few weeks, just when I was contemplating how I could get them under control (how often do I say this? Someday I really will stop worrying about it). Not starting new books would be the obvious answer, but where's the fun in that?
I've started reading Carol Ann Lee's The Winter of the World for Caroline's Literature and War Readalong. I'm very much enjoying it but will be curious to see what the others who have been reading along will make of it. The story seems to essentially be a love triangle set against and influenced by WWI. Interestingly the woman/love interest in question is a nurse who works with soldiers who have been not only horribly wounded but permanently disfigured. I have read about this before, but I still find it interesting to think of the surgeons who tried to repair their faces. Often, though, the most they could do was make some sort of prosthetic for the men to wear. If you're curious, discussion is still several weeks away, April 29.
I've been reading a number of very good crime novels and mysteries as well. Not too long ago Camilla Läckberg's The Ice Princess was sitting atop this pile of books. I had to have it the moment it came out in paperback (UK edition mind you) and then let it sit so long that her third book has now been translated into English and published in the UK. We're straggling a bit behind here in the US as her second, The Preacher, is only being released late this month. Apparently Läckberg is hugely popular in her native Sweden, and I can only imagine that competition must be stiff with so many popular crime writers coming out of Scandinavia these days.
For something a little cozier (did I mention the murder in The Ice Princess is a body found in a bathtub in a house so cold the water in the tub has turned into a thin sheet of ice?) I have been reading Deanna Raybourn's Silent on the Moor, also found in said pile of unread books. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Lady Julia Grey? Raybourn's books are a hybrid of both romance and mystery. I'm not sure they fall squarely into one category over the other. They are fun, enjoyable and undemanding reads and I won't complain that Lady Julia's love interest reminds me an awful lot of Richard Armitage. That is, of course, not why I read the books, though I certainly am not complaining. I have Dark Road to Darjeeling lined up next. And all this because I just recently loaded Raybourn's forthcoming The Dark Enquiry onto my Nook from Netgalley. I can't read them out of order, can I?
Since I'm on the topic of my Nook, I've also been reading Elizabeth Speller's The Return of Captain of John Emmett, which is another post-WWI mystery. I like it so much I am already thinking about her forthcoming (forthcoming in the UK that is) The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton. Also loaded onto my ereader is These Dark Things by Jan Weiss. I've yet to do more than read a page or two to get a little sample, but as it has an Italian setting I hope to get to it soon. It is the first novel in a new series set in Naples featuring Captain Natalia Monte of the Carabinieri. Setting is such a big draw for me when it comes to books. I should really go back and pick up where I left off with Donna Leon, but I can't help but be curious about the shiny new books that are soon to be published.
And to round things out, I'm still working on Thomas Mullen's The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, which I suppose is not a straightforward crime novel, but since it is about criminals, perhaps I can count it? I like it's quirkiness and the fact that it's not like anything else I normally read.
I seem to have all the bases covered--a historical mystery, a Swedish crime novel, and a cozy. Am I missing something good? You know I have no qualms for picking up another good book to read...