📘 Crossing them off the list….

It looks like I spent an awful lot of time with my nose in a book this past month – well you’d be sort of right…..but the truth is most of these (apart from one) were fairly short, easy to read or ‘gallop through the pages’ page turners

Starting with a Seasonal Read, followed by Travel – Crime – Passion.
All of them published a while ago

Spring in September – Ursula Bloom 1983
Timeless Classics Collection
* When Janet meets a fascinating older man, she thinks he is the answer to all her problems. But they are only just beginning

What you might call a ‘sweet read’ following along as young Janet – just finished her final term at boarding school with her life opening up in front of her – finds out that all is not as it appears when our ‘grown up’ ideas don’t pan out the way they should have…..a coming of age story with a happy ending

The Accidental Tourist – Anne Tyler 1985
* How does a man addicted to routine – a man who flosses his teeth before love-making – cope with the chaos of everyday life

A twisty turny humourous tale – my first Anne Tyler read – which I thoroughly enjoyed

Death of an Airman. – Christopher St. John Sprigg 1934/2015
* In full view of a half dozen witnesses, the flying instructor of the Baston Aero Club goes into a tail spin, crashes, and is killed.

I usually enjoy these old ‘golden age’ crime novels but this one was a slog. The first few chapters flowed along nicely but then it seemed like too much was going on and the reader ( me) became quite confused – once an international drug smuggling operation entered the plot it got even more confusing so that in the end I never really cared how George Furnace came to die ( because it wasn’t the way it seemed in the beginning)

Harnessing Peacocks – Mary Wesley 1985
* Living happily alone in a seaside town in Cornwall, lovely Hebe supports her son at an expensive boarding school by cooking and discreetly making love for profit, until the unexpected happens

Witty and unconventional is how I’d describe Mary Wesley’s writing – never fails to please me. The 1993 ‘made for TV film’ (John Mills) is based on the novel…..similar but not the same.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harnessing_Peacocks

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Then onto ‘the next instalment’ which reignited my completist leanings……I’m determined to finish those series I’ve begun – recent ones as well as those begun a few years ago and left floundering in the TBR spreadsheet (of which there are quite a few!)

I had a serving of tartan noir last month (Stuart MacBride) – this month I’ve been bingeing on outback noir…….continuing with more from Garry Disher’s ‘Hirsch’ series featuring Constable Paul Hirschhausen’s life in a one-man station in a small, dusty South Australian town where amongst the ordinary day to day some very extraordinary can appear. If you can find them – pick up and enjoy.

📘Peace
Hirsch #2
📘Consolation
Hirsch #3
📘Days End
Hirsch #4

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My next was one of those elusive books, the ones you look for but can never find – the first of a series I began quite a few years ago now. A surprise find at the library when I popped in to pick up a reservation. What’s the betting all the others turn up now – I read somewhere recently they are all now available online so that might be my next move

• Kakadu Sunset – Annie Seaton 2015
  The Porter Sisters #1

And to be able to finish another Australian series, I’ve just begun the last of Jane Harper’s books featuring Aaron Falk. Unlike many in my ‘reading group’ I didn’t exactly rave about the first two so I’m hoping to find this one holds my interest.

• Exiles – Jane Harper
  Aaron Falk #3

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And this 👇has been my thoughts over the past few weeks

Do you ever feel that way?

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