Do you ever have one of those days where all you want to do is stay cozied up in bed with a book? That’s me today and that’s what I’m actually doing. It’s just me and a copy of Dreams and Shadows by C. Robert Cargill. Monsters, wizards, djinn, and fairies all acting badly. So good. Yay for a lazy Sunday afternoon and a good book.
Happy Sunday. Enjoy whatever you’re doing, wherever you are.
I used to read a lot of Sherlock Holmes stories. Of course, this was years ago and I think I must have overdid it because I avoided Conan Doyle for years. Like the plague. Then I came across a few short stories when purging the shelves and thought it would be nice to take a look again, and it turns out, I still like me a bit of Sherlock and his handy sidekick, Doctor Watson. Feeling confident, I downloaded The Sign of Four from The Gutenberg Project and decided I would get re-acquainted with the duo. Not so much joy ensued.
Here’s the general overview: a man has gone missing, a treasure has been misplaced, and Sherlock is asked to stick his nose in and sort out the conflicting mess. It’s wildly more complicated than that but I’ll be honest, I couldn’t get into this one and barely trudged to the end. The mystery was bland to me and this is supposed to be one his most revered Sherlockian works. People supposedly love this one and to a high degree I might add.
I may not have had much interest in the actual mystery but what I did find interesting in this story was the drug use. Yep, right at the start Sherlock is getting high on cocaine (I have so little opportunity to quote the Grateful Dead let me revel in it!). It made me wonder why anyone would hire someone who seemed, at least here, to be mildly stoned for most of the day to solve a mystery. Also of interest, we get to meet the future Mrs. Watson.
I want to tell you more but I fear that my boredom with the story will cause me to give too much away. Besides, there are many favorable reviews of this book out there that if you like Sherlock, google it then read it. It might do wonders for you. If I may though, I’d recommend The Hound of the Baskervilles. It’s still my favorite.
The Sign of Four
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Gutenberg Project Ebook
I read this book many weeks ago (months really). Why the long wait for the review? I didn’t know how to talk about this book. I started this post a few times and wanted this review to be more than just me blabbing on about how good it is. And still here I am one more time, and sadly, I think that’s what it’s going to come down to. So, I’ll get it out of the way now — if you’re not reading Tana French you should be. Go, now. Buy her books.
Detective Cassie Maddox is working domestic abuse, a department she’d rather not be assigned to, but after her last case went bad, it was her best, and some would say, only option if she wanted to remain on the force. When a body turns up in an abandoned cottage in the countryside, it leaves her, and her fellow detectives, stunned. The dead woman in a ringer for Cassie — every detail is exactly the same even down to an alias Cassie once used as part of an undercover case. She is, as far as anyone can tell, a dead Cassie Maddox. Cassie’s old boss from undercover wants to send her back under as the dead woman, and when Cassie agrees, that’s when the fun starts.
If you want a book that will lull you off into a pleasant sleep, this isn’t that book. If you want a story that will feel like it’s got an iron grip on your throat for over 400 pages, this is that book. Holy crap is French good at the tension. There isn’t one chapter of this book where you don’t feel it. One thing that helps, her characters are so real you never even stop to wonder if there’s anything wrong with them because, on the surface, there isn’t anything off. She hides the flaws so well you don’t even see anything coming, and when it does, it hits hard.
As usual, I read ahead. I couldn’t take the stress. It’s good stress though; stress that keeps you reading, unable to stop even when you know sleep would be the right move. French doesn’t skimp on words or details. Her books are heavy — the details of the characters’ lives are so wonderfully splayed out across the pages you feel you know these people so intimately that by the end of the book you end up worried about them. And Cassie is an incredibly likable character which made the ending so much more difficult. Relax, that’s not a spoiler.
While French’s books aren’t a true series, they do follow some of the same characters and I like that I get to see old characters in new situations. I liked getting reacquainted with Cassie Maddox and while I know she doesn’t appear again, I’m all right with that because I know that no matter what happens, the next French book will keep me up late. I’m looking forward to that.
The Likeness
By Tana French
Penguin Books
ISBN: 9780143115625
PS – I borrowed and devoured French’s third book, Faithful Place. Again, wow. A review soon, I promise.
Right now, I should be writing a piece for a class I’m taking. Obviously, that’s not happening because I’m clearly writing this instead.
I should get on posting a whole load of reviews that I’m saving for what I can only determine is a very special event.
I would like to finish reading Tana French’s Faithful Place. I also want to start Dreams and Shadows by C. Robert Cargill which came in the mail the other days and looks so good. That might actually happen since I’m obviously all about procrastinating on the writing efforts today. And really, the way I see it, finishing a book is always an accomplishment.
Maybe some tea and a nice warm breakfast will help me think. Yes, I’m sure that’s what I’m missing. Pancakes it is. And, no, this is not procrastination this is following dietary guidelines that say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Yea, whatever, I know exactly what I’m doing.
Read any good books this week? February is turning out to be slow reading month for me but that’s not surprising with everything else I threw on my plate this month.
It happens. A person leaves a comment and it leaves me thinking.
Recently, I wrote this about not liking a particular character (Emma Woodhouse from Jane Austen’s Emma if you’re curious) and how this dislike stopped me from finishing the book. The comment:
It made me wonder, do I need to finish a book even though I don’t like a character, plot, setting, whatever?
The short answer is no.
There is a longer version, which still amounts to a no, but let me go on…
The majority of reviews on this blog are positive; I don’t come right out and say it anywhere or qualify it, but it’s true. The reason? I read these books on my own time, my personal time, time I’m NOT paid for. I like talking about books I read and enjoyed and that translates to what gets posted. When I stop reading a book, usually because I’m not enjoying it or it’s not working for me on some level, I usually (almost always) don’t talk about it. It might get a mention as a DNF but I tend not to talk about it because, not having read the book, I don’t feel I can comment on it in a meaningful way. In the rare occasions I do talk about a book I didn’t finish, it’s because I want to hear what others thought and sometimes that leads me to try the book again. Good or bad, that’s mostly what happens. So, what that means is that there are not many negative reviews here (a few do exist).
But that doesn’t mean there are books I don’t like. There are. Loads of them. But when I come across one and I decide I can’t finish it, I just walk away. There are too many other books on my list, at the bookstore, and at the library that I can turn to for entertainment.
Yes, there is the argument for negative reviews and the idea that reviews of the negative variety can be helpful to readers and even authors. I agree that when a person finishes a book and doesn’t like it, writing about it honestly provides a valuable service. In fact, we should all be doing this but that’s another post for another day. And, sometimes, I do feel it’s refreshing to not like a book. Not all books are good fits.
So, where am I going with this? It’s okay to not like a book. It’s okay to stop reading a book. If you want, it’s okay to write a negative review of said book.
Well, the comment may not have answered my question but it got me writing so I guess in a way it did bring me an answer, sort of.
Thanks for the inspiration, Elizabeth.
I’m going to confess right up front — I read the ending of this book first. That happens often with me but I’m religious about reading the ending of a thriller before even getting 20 pages in. It’s my thing. This isn’t my first McMahon book and she has a way of creeping me out early on so I need to find that strand of sanity to hold onto while she pulls me through the story with my eyes half closed. Knowing the ending didn’t make this any less exciting. McMahon doesn’t take a straight path to the end, and even knowing still made it nerve wracking.
Reggie Dufrane’s life has never been easy. Born to a former beauty queen, she always idolized her mother, wondering at her beauty but never really knowing the woman beneath the veneer she created for her daughter. Having lost her ear when she was attacked by a dog at a very young age, Reggie grew up with one real ear and one fake one, never to be the beauty her mother was. In the summer of 1985, a serial killer begins terrifying the residents of Brighton Falls, Connecticut. When the severed hands of the victims begin appearing on the front steps of the police station, every resident in town waits, waits for the body to appear next. And each time a hand appeared, a body soon followed. When Reggie’s mother disappears, she knows the killer, dubbed Neptune by the local press, must have her. When her mother’s hand, recognizable by the scars she suffered rescuing Reggie from the dog attack, everyone waits for the body. It never appears. Days pass and months go by but the body of Vera Dufrane never appears.
Making the most out of an opportunity to start over, Reggie moves far away from Brighton Falls and puts as much distance as possible between her future and her past. A well-known architect, she celebrated in her industry but she’s never escaped Neptune and he haunts her till the day her mother re-appears — alive.
I knew how this was going to end but I still wanted to have every light on in the room I was sitting in and all the doors locked in the house. With most thrillers, I love the crazy ride, and you do get that here, but there’s the psychological element that McMahon does so well. It’s the cruel way she plays around with the characters letting you see every picked scab and dirty secret long-held onto in the dark.
Reggie is damaged goods, both mentally and physically. Her mother, a woman more damaged than her, is not one to look up to but she’s all Reggie ever had. The summer of her disappearance and supposed murder becomes an eye opener to Reggie who learns that her mother and the woman known as Vera Dufrane are two very different people.
McMahon doesn’t let anyone off easy and sometimes I did long for one person without any crazy skeletons in the closet beyond the embarrassing moments in high school that we all have. Those people don’t exist in her books and that’s what makes them so readable and difficult to read at the same time. Her characters are so flawed they become believable and unbelievable all at once and because of that you can’t stop reading. By the time you want out, you’re too far in and you need to know how it’s all going to turn out — good or bad.
In addition to this blog, I also do reviews for The Book Reporter website. The above review was done for the Book Reporter which can be found here. The book was provided to me by the publisher.
The One I Left Behind
Jennifer McMahon
William Morrow
ISBN: 9780062122551
Someone on Pinterest posted photos of a fridge that was painted to look just like the TARDIS. I wanted this so much. My husband wanted nothing to do with this. So instead, this is what I have done.
You go, River Song.
Happy Sunday.
There’s that saying that you can’t pick your family. You know the one and have probably marveled at its truthfulness at one family event or another over the years. You know, when that weird cousin brings a stripper to a wedding and no one can stop staring.* Anyway, that’s sort of the point of The History of Us. It’s all about family, and all the great and annoying qualities you wouldn’t trade for the world mostly because those defining moments in life become great blog fodder. Yes, that.
Eloise Hemple is a newly minted college professor when she receives a call informing her that her sister and brother-in-law have died in an accident. She rushes home and somehow never leaves; staying to raise children that aren’t hers but children she can’t live without — the only part of her sister she has left. Life veers into the unfamiliar and instead of writing well-received research papers on her topic of choice, she’s struggling to pay the heating bills, ballet lessons, and save for college for three children that were not part of the future she imaged, and so carefully planned, for herself.
I wanted to feel sorry for Eloise but I couldn’t because she wouldn’t let you. She knew from the moment she took that call that her life would never be what she thought, and hoped, it would be. Her three children (and they are her children), Theo, Josh, and Claire, are a different story though. Her niece Theo is a self-righteous, annoying person who thinks she’s been slighted her whole life. Yes, she lost parents but Eloise went out of her way to ensure she never lacked for anything giving up any hope of a life she might have had for Theo’s sake. When Eloise finally starts to want a life of her own after raising the three siblings, Theo balks and does everything she can to blame her for any bit of unhappiness she feels or has ever felt. Josh, well, he copes like he always does. Claire throws every plan on its head with a decision no one saw coming. All in all, life in most families.
There are the ones you feel sad for, the ones you get annoyed by, and the ones you just like no matter what. Stewart manages all the personalities well and doesn’t let you like or dislike anyone of these characters too much. It’s a heartwarming story and if you happen to like family drama, I’d give this one a try. You’ll be annoyed, you’ll possibly want to yell at a character or two, then you’ll finish the book, grab a glass of wine and head back in that room with your family knowing it will all work out somehow. Or at the very least, you’ll come out of it with a story to tell.
* Stripper at wedding is a true family story. I kid you not.
The History of Us
By Leah Stewart
Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9781451672626
Just Book Reading 