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Book Review Year 4 No 10
Jan. 12th, 2019 04:56 pmThis is a slightly belated final book review for 2018. I spent a lot of the Christmas break reading, and therefore my Goodreads total ended up at 51.
Crimson Snow (Winter Mysteries) edited by Martin Edwards
I do enjoy a winter mystery at Christmas, and this was a good collection. There's even a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, with all the trademark Holmes' comments and a young female client called, inevitably, Violet. Nothing very taxing, but a good Christmas read.
A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh
The first of the Roderick Alleyn novels. It came in a collection of three, so I have two more to read. I've been listening to the Alleyn stories on CD in my car during the autumn, so I had to wait until I was having a break, so I didn't get the plot confused. I wasn't sure whether I'd enjoy reading the story, having listened to so many, but it happily passed the time.
Utopia by Thomas More
I signed up for the FutureLearn course Literature of the English Country House and they provided a reading list. It's not compulsary, and I've read some of them, but I thought if there was anything reasonably short I could borrow from the library I would do so. Utopia was one of those. It's a slightly odd book, being a description of the people of the island of Utopia as apparently told by a visitor to their land. It says a lot about More's beliefs in how society could best be ordered, and although some of it was enlightened, there was a significant amount of state control. Not something I would have read had it not been for the course, but from a historical point of view it was interesting. I finished it at one hour before midnight, New Year's Eve.
Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
I didn't finish this until New Year's Day, but I'm counting it in last year's books. Unpopular opinion: I didn't enjoy it. For me J K Rowling continues to write far more than is necessary for the story. I got very tired of Cormoran Strike's problems with his prosthetic leg and Robin Ellacott's marriage difficulties and could happily have done without both. And I felt the ending was contrived. Most people really like the book though.
So, into 2019, with the added bonus of LJ's Book Bingo
Crimson Snow (Winter Mysteries) edited by Martin Edwards
I do enjoy a winter mystery at Christmas, and this was a good collection. There's even a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, with all the trademark Holmes' comments and a young female client called, inevitably, Violet. Nothing very taxing, but a good Christmas read.
A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh
The first of the Roderick Alleyn novels. It came in a collection of three, so I have two more to read. I've been listening to the Alleyn stories on CD in my car during the autumn, so I had to wait until I was having a break, so I didn't get the plot confused. I wasn't sure whether I'd enjoy reading the story, having listened to so many, but it happily passed the time.
Utopia by Thomas More
I signed up for the FutureLearn course Literature of the English Country House and they provided a reading list. It's not compulsary, and I've read some of them, but I thought if there was anything reasonably short I could borrow from the library I would do so. Utopia was one of those. It's a slightly odd book, being a description of the people of the island of Utopia as apparently told by a visitor to their land. It says a lot about More's beliefs in how society could best be ordered, and although some of it was enlightened, there was a significant amount of state control. Not something I would have read had it not been for the course, but from a historical point of view it was interesting. I finished it at one hour before midnight, New Year's Eve.
Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
I didn't finish this until New Year's Day, but I'm counting it in last year's books. Unpopular opinion: I didn't enjoy it. For me J K Rowling continues to write far more than is necessary for the story. I got very tired of Cormoran Strike's problems with his prosthetic leg and Robin Ellacott's marriage difficulties and could happily have done without both. And I felt the ending was contrived. Most people really like the book though.
So, into 2019, with the added bonus of LJ's Book Bingo
