Violet Hour, Fearful Symmetry and plenty of butter

I enjoyed the Violet Hour, Judson has been likened to Ellroy or Raymond Chandler - Judson does misdirection well he also plays around with time a little bit to allow certain things to happen. Towards the end the body count soars and I did have a little voice in the back of my head saying that injuries sustained by one character would make it tough to do what he does but that's the writer in me talking. A few years ago it wouldn't have bothered me.

The Niffenegger - thankfully she hasn't tried to revisit TTW territory - this is not a sequel. It's dense and complex and as well written as time traveller so mark your calendars for September.

Also in bang goes my diet news. TKE has started selling mini's cupcakes one of those cross-promotional things we do with local first in Utah - oh they are soooo good!

The 5 million dollar book

The arc of Her Fearful Symetry - the new Audrey Niffenegger for which rumours say that she got a $5 million advance - landed in my box last night. I'm excited and pardon the pun a little fearful. I loved The Time Traveller's Wife and didn't think she was writing any more books.

Read and Reading

I finished Elegance of the Hedgehog partly because I've been laid out by some weird bug for the last 2 or 3 days. I really didn't like the ending but overall not bad. I liked Hammer, I thought Stockbridge's London very much like the one Holmes and Mary Russell inhabit and the book isn't too long either - under 300 pages. It doesn't give the conclusion I was expecting and that didn't bother me. The all-seeing narrator took a while to get used to. I gave the Rosner 50 pages but it didn't make me want to go any further - note to self I think I prefer my murders fictional - this is a non fiction account of the notorious Burke and Hare murders.

One arc - The Violet Hour by Daniel Judson - dropped in thanks to Minotaur. I have requested tons but they always seem to get lost in the system so this time as Sue suggested I asked them to send it home and that worked. Violet Hour is set from 'mischief night October 29th through the 'day of the dead' Nov 2nd and I'm well over 100 pages into it. I'm doing this now because I have bookclub tonight and tomorrow I'm going to take the laptop somewhere shady and just write.

Monday Roundup

I got a lot of comments about this last week so as long as I have a ton of stuff to read I'll do an MR post.
Pub = books already out
Arc = books coming in the next six months or so.

Pub
Elegance of the Hedgehog - have to have this finished by Sunday for book club.

Arc
Hammer - Sara Stockbridge - want to get this blurbed by Friday.
The Anatomy Murders - Lisa Rosner - will try it.
Reheated Cabbage - Irvine Welsh - no pressure to read this.
How to Rule the World from Your Counch - Laura Day - my final galley grab from atria.

Kindle versus real books IMHO

I've been watching the 'orwellian rumpus' surrounding Amazon's Kindle. There are several different versions of the story some of them flawed but the main point is this. Amazon giveth and Amazon can taketh away as well. I have a serious technology habit, Itunes, Skype, the latest and greatest is always on my radar but Kindle and its ilk just leave me cold. I can't dispute the portability and the ease of downloading as many titles as you can afford but when was the last time you couldn't finish that gripping novel because your book didn't have enough charge left, you dropped your book and the pages cracked. I like books, the physical feel of them, the way the paper feels against your fingers as you turn the page, the cover (ok sometimes I hate the cover), that new-book-smell. I love to look at the stacks of arcs I have to work my way through, and the pile of purchased books just waiting to be read and enjoyed. The biggest point is that I buy a book and it's mine the book police aren't going to come to my house and take it away because they feel I shouldn't be reading it. Buy a book on Kindle and you're only borrowing that title for as long as the company you bought it from sees fit to let you have it.

If you ever see me with a Kindle or any kind of electronic reader feel free to grab it off me and beat me around the head with it.

The Girl who played with Fire

The book has a laydown date of July 28th which means it can't be sold before then. But to whet your appetite...

In this riveting follow up to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Larsson reintroduces us to Lisbeth Salander. Now financially secure Lisbeth has been travelling, become fascinated by Fermat’s Theorem and is finally starting to put together a life for herself in readiness for her guardian Nils Bjurman to declare her mentally capable and then it all goes horribly wrong.

Lisbeth becomes the prime suspect in a triple murder and only journalist Mikael Blomkvist is convinced that she didn’t do it. The police are hunting her, the media paint her as a psychotic deranged killer. While Blomkvist begins his own investigation into the murders others are hunting Salander down, people from her past with secrets to hide and scores to settle. Its time for Lisbeth to confront her demons and they may well destroy her.

Stories from the Valley of the Kings

The last short story collection I read was Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman and this collection of Terrence Holt's is rivalling that. His fresh perspective on things that might seem tired in the hands of another writer keeps you reading. In places the language is almost poetic, subjects range through a world threatening plague to a sentient machine a deep space 'and then there were none' via a boy who keeps part of father in a jar.

Next I'll be reading the Sara Stockbridge book, her name was familiar but I couldn't place it until today. She was fashion designer Vivian Westwood's muse back in the 80's.

Three arcs and a tug at the line

I have three new arcs to read and blurb "In the Valley of the Kings" by Terrence Holt - a collection of short stories that I only read about yesterday and thought sounded interesting. We had the Norton rep in yesterday and if the first story in this collection is anything to go by this is going to be good. The others are "Hammer" by Sara Stockbridge and "Reheated Cabbage" by Irvine Welsh.

And in fishing parlance yesterday I had a nibble.....and then got thrown back.

Sweetness at the bottom of the pie

Alan Bradley's debut novel introduces the delightful and rather wicked 11 year old Flavia de Luce. In post war England her hobbies include, bike riding, snooping around and chemistry. How she loves cooking up poisons. A normal day in the de Luce household goes awry when their cook discovers a dead black bird with an orange stamp impaled on its beak lying on the kitchen step. That same night Flavia overhears an arguement and the following morning finds a dying man in their cucumber patch. Intrigued that a member of her family might be a killer and determined to prove otherwise the youngest de Luce marshals her test tubes in an attempt to solve the case before the police - who think that Flavia is only fit for organizing cups of tea!

Happiness is....

A bookseller armed with a gift card - I bought 2 more of Laurie Kings one Mary Russell and one is the Kate Martinelli book - the jacket blurb was what got me reading King in the first place. I also picked up a copy of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

The Monday Roundup

Finished the Kanon - this was a great story. I'll add Alibi, Good German and Los Alamos to my 'books to read on a plane list' I'm still in the middle of Vows of Silence, this is tighter, there are a lot more red herrings floating around and Hill is another writer who really puts her characters through emotional hoops especially Cat.

More rejection slips but I sent off another batch of queries this morning and one was quite cheeky. Well no one's going to toot my horn for me. One of Linda's comments after reading the first draft last year was that my writing was similar in style to Sue Grafton. I've just queried Sue Grafton's agent.

Stardust

Good so far - and I'm a sucker for 'old' Hollywood. Kanon does a wonderful job of sprinkling Stardust over the intrigue. This one comes out in November. I got my grubby little mitts on Vows of Silence by Hill as well so that's me set for the fourth of July weekend.

Stardust and a new Susan Hill

Tomorrow I am going to concentrate on writing so today I'm going to read as much of the Kanon as possible before I go into work. Cross your fingers that I can get that Susan Hill arc, I liked the last book but didn't love it. This one looks like an interesting premise I just have to get it assigned to me. Yesterday Rachel and I spent most of our shift building the new glasses display for TKE, bet you didn't know that being a bookseller involves construction skills. The instructions were hilarious, parts labelled one through eleven, five pictures with 8, 2, 3, 4 underneath not to mention the adgressive (sic) tape. The thing looked like a drunken dalek by the time we'd finished!