Just a few notes to end the week on things catching my eye lately and my weekend (hopeful) reading.
I am nearing the end of M is for Malice, which is yet another great Sue Grafton Kinsey Millhone story. What should have been a simple search for a "missing" man named as a beneficiary in a family will turns out to be murder for Kinsey. There is something bittersweet about this story since Kinsey becomes attached (not quite the right word) to the murdered man and there is a sense of an almost ghostlike presence--maybe more a matter of unfinished business and a life cut too short. I have N is for Noose already waiting but I have been interspersing my Kinsey stories with some other crime novel or mystery. I'll have a little peek at what is sitting on the top of my mystery/crime novel piles for a little palate cleanser.
I also hope to make progress and get closer to finishing last month's reading prompt ("something borrowed"--in this case a library copy of the book), which is Agatha Christie's Miss Marple case of The Mirror Crack'd. I saw a movie adaptation of this many years ago and vaguely remember it and think I know the plot twist, but am still enjoying the unraveling of the story. This is one of Miss Marple's post-war stories that sees her aging and the community growing and expanding in interesting ways.
For this month's prompt ("swinging sixties") I am rereading (though it has been so very long the story is fresh and like I am reading it for the first time) Elizabeth Berg's Durable Goods. It is a slim paperback with easy to read print and I am flying through it and expect to finish it this weekend as well. It is the first of three novels that follows the same character and I would like to revisit all three (a heartbreaking story of adolescence--at least in this first book), but I may first pick up another book from my list of reading possibilities since there are so many tempting choices.
I have started reading Sarah Perry's Melmoth for RIP 14. I have heard so many good things about her and am intrigued by the plot. I like how it feels like a story within a story and the atmosphere Perry creates. Melmoth is a she, and I was thinking it might be a Golem story (what with the story being set in Prague), but the blurb describes Melmoth as a "dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore". She is a hunter through the ages "damning her prey to itinerant solitude"! One of the characters writes about his childhood and how he saw a farmer who had a habit of leaving a seat or chair of some sort in his field yet never appeared to actually sit in it. He asked the farmer what it was for and the man replies--"Why, it is for she of course". There is a spookiness and a feeling of the unknown, which makes me feel uncertain yet compels me to keep reading!
Needless to say I want to find some sunny spot this weekend where I can curl up with my books and lose myself in these stories for a long afternoon or two.
*****
And now for some other reading that I want to do and maybe some of these will pique your curiosity, too.
The Giller Prize Longlist was announced (Margaret Atwood's book is, not surprisingly, on the list. I will have to check out the books as many of them are new to me.
Are you going to read Margaret Atwood's Testaments? I suspect I will get to it eventually but so far am just in line at the library for a copy. A little glitch (?) meant that some readers got their copy early despite a release date of September 10 for the book. Seems very sloppy to me and while I totally understand the impatience for a much anticipated book, it's pretty shoddy of Amazon to allow this when smaller brick stores play by the rules.
One of my own much anticipated books, The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott, I just got from the library a few days ago and if I want to actually manage to read it before the due date I need to get going on it now! I have only heard very good things about it!
I came across this during the week, and what perfect timing for my ongoing reading project: The Many Literary Landscapes of Tokyo. This is an excerpt from Anna Sherman's The Bells of Old Tokyo: Meditations on Time and a City, which I have out from the library (and may have to invest in a copy for my own shelves).
You know I am a great fan of both novels with and about strong female leads and spy stories, so here is a list that combines the two!
I am, I am, I am going to read Attica Locke this year. Maybe one of her books will be the next crime story I pick up after I finish letter M. For now, here is her most interesting By the Book answers from the NYT series.
I want to read this On Dark Tourism article about Australia.
Let me end with this (something to look forward to when it comes out next week!). Want to see what my most recent purchase is? This is right up my alley!