October 2006: What Are You Reading?

What are you reading these days? Seems to be a lot of activity at Gather.com around the Book it to Bermuda Cruise, sponsored by PRBS and Gather, and for the book review contest that's part of it all. But I do want to write a bit about what's been featured on the airwaves these days.

 Public radio folks have lately been reading Alexander McCall Smith's new book The Right Attitude to Rain. The author is well into his newer series staring a single, serious and inquisitive character named Isabel Dalhousie (and don't forget her maid Grace). Smith's previous No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series was so readable and enjoyable and I might also say listen-able. These stories make great audio books for long car or airplane rides, and I can highly recommend them in this format. It's interesting how thriller or detective stories reflect "place" in a particular way that plays out in the plot or characters involved. In a way they're almost like a travelogue, you get such a sharp sense of locale. Shanghai born Qiu Xiaolong's English-language gritty detective novels, set on the streets of his home town, are gaining a faithful following as much for their whodunit storylines as for their portrait of China in transition.

I finished Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. I would say it was 94% really very good with only an occasional cliché or clunky passage. My goodness, what a sad book. They say the ending manages to be so uplifting but I wouldn't call it uplifting per se. I would say Atkinson got herself through all the intertwined characters and plot lines with great skill – you know she went somewhere with the whole if it by the end, but I still thought it was a melancholy book. She does draw you in very quickly as a writer and now I must decide if to go back to her previous book or wait for the release, this month I think, of One Good Turn. Atkinson readers, advise me please!

Now before I stop I want to change directions a little and mention Tracey Ullman's book on knitting. Yes the comedienne and actress has co-written a book on knitting that was featured on Morning Edition a few days ago called Knit 2 Together. It sounds like fun, looks like fun, and the thing that popped out for me was the description that "Ullman provides the contagious zeal of a recent knitting convert". And that's just what I am about to become.

So my friends, what are you reading?