Category Archives: silly nonsense

My Life as a Book 2011

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It’s ‘my life as a book’ time of year again, thanks to Pop Culture Nerd for this year’s meme, the concept of which is to share some personal insights into your life using titles of books you’ve read this year. Do play along if you want to and check out the comments at Pop Culture Nerd’s post for links to loads more fun lists

  • One time at band/summer school camp, I (saw): Naked Cruelty (Colleen McCullough)
  • Weekends at my house are: Pandaemonioum (Christopher Brookmyre)
  • My neighbour is: Beyond Fear (Jaye Ford) (seriously my neighbour is strange, house is locked up tighter than a military facility…don’t know what kind of trouble she is expecting…this really is just suburbia)
  • My boss is: Our Kind of Traitor (John le Carre)
  • My ex was: Rotten to the Core (Shelia Connelly)
  • My superhero secret identity is: The Woodcutter (Reginald Hill) (all the best super powers are taken but I’m your gal if you need firewood in a hurry :) )
  • You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry because: (I engage in) The Torment of Others (Val McDermid)
  • I’d win a gold medal in: Telling Tales (Ann Cleeves)
  • I’d pay good money for: What Was Lost (Catherine O’Flynn)
  • If I were president Prime Minister, I would: Simmer Down (Jessica Conant-Park & Susan Conant)
  • When I don’t have good books, I: Meltdown (Ben Elton)
  • Loud talkers at the movies should be: Bound (Vanda Symon) then Burned (Thomas Enger) (I really hate those loud talkers)

My life as a book in 2009 and 2010. Once again I make a mental note to myself to read more books without death, dying and blood in the title.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: W is for Walking the Dog (and other clichés)

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I have logged a lot of kilometres with one dog or another over my 43 and a half years and have never once stumbled across a dead body but in crime fiction it happens with alarming regularity. I know that bodies have to be found somehow and it must be difficult to come up with new ways for a body that has been unceremoniously dumped outdoors to be found, but by now any time I even get the hint of a dog I’m mentally jumping ahead to the body discovery moment.

Just in books I’ve read this year I’ve come across several ‘dog walker discovers body’ scenarios and I’ve noticed the phenomenon is world-wide:

  • In Leighton Gage’s Blood of the Wicked a dog called Snoopy finds a body which has been dumped in the Brazilian countryside.
  • In Simon Brett’s Body on the Beach a fussy retired woman called Carole is taking her routine walk with Gulliver on an English beach one morning when they stumble across a body (which then disappears)
  • In Katherine Howell’s Cold Justice a teenager walking the family dog Wally finds the body of a fellow school student in suburban Sydney but it takes 20 years for the case to be solved.
  • In Jon Loomis’ High Season a dog called Molly finds one of the several dead bodies littering a small Cape Cod summer resort town
  • In Denise Mina’s Scottish noir tale Exile an un-named pooch finds a body in a story that someone tells as part of the book

I don’t let the phenomenon bother me too much (there’s one 5-star and two 4.5 star books in that list) but it does make me giggle.

Do you notice the ‘dog walker discovers body’ cliché in your crime fiction reading? Or is there another cliché that’s on your personal radar? What’s the best (non-dog related) body discovery method you’ve come across in your reading?

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting the crime fiction alphabet meme which requires the posting of an article relating to the letter of the week. Do join in the fun by reading the posts and/or contributing one of your own. You don’t have to write every week.

An upside to spam?

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Even on my tiny little corner of the internet I have attracted nearly 8,000 pieces of spam that, until today, I never looked at thanks to the excellent filter that WordPress uses. But I accidentally clicked on the wrong button in my blog’s dashboard and am now thinking I might be missing out on something good. I mean, these spammers are so nice, and clearly of discerning character as can be seen by some of the lovely things they’ve had to say just today:

Wow! This can be one particular of the most beneficial blogs We have ever arrive across on this subject. Basically Magnificent

You are a very intelligent person!

The web site style is perfect, the articles is really nice

This important is just a tremendously nicely structured post, just the critical info I was looking just for. I praise you

I spent last 2 hours reading your content and must say: awesome site

I know it seems like these people are just buttering me up so I’ll click on their evil links and/or allow my computer to become a robot for their nefarious schemes but in 25 years in the workforce no one has ever told me that I am basically magnificent or awesome or any of these other nice things. Most days I just count myself lucky no one spits on me (some days aren’t even that good) (and yes I am being literal). So I’m seriously considering turning off the spam filter and wallowing in the love :)

My Life In Books – Redux

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Last year I participated in a fun meme to describe my life in terms of the books I read during the year. Now Pop Culture Nerd has created a 2010 version of the meme with new sentences. I couldn’t resist taking part once again, using only books I’ve read so far this year.

In high school I was: On Edge (Barbara Fister)

People might be surprised I’m: Evil Under the Sun (Agatha Christie)

I will never be: Under Orders (Dick Francis)

My fantasy job is: Mistress of the Art of Death (Ariana Franklin)

At the end of a long day I need: The Way Home (George Pelecanos)

I hate it when: The Prophet Murders (Mehmet Murat Somer)

Wish I had: Bold Blood (Lindy Kelly)

My family reunions are: Company of Liars (Karen Maitland)

At a party you’d find me with: A Few Right Thinking Men (Sulari Gentill)

I’ve never been to: The Coffin Trail (Martin Edwards)

A happy day includes: Awakening (SJ Bolton)

Motto I live by: Let the Dead Lie (Malla Nunn)

On my bucket list: Slay Ride (Chris Grabenstein)

In my next life, I want to be: The Railway Detective (Edward Marston)

Once again I found this a difficult task as so many of the books I’ve read include words like death and blood in their titles but it is a fun meme so feel free to play along.

The good, the bad and the ugly of reading slumps

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The good (great even)

I loved Adrian Hyland’s Gunshot Road and feel very privileged to have read it. I have already told you all to read it but it warrants repeating.

Read it. Now. All of you. Yes even you over there in the corner.

The Bad

Since finishing it a week ago I have started 4 books and finished none of them; leaving them all lying about the place in various states of non-completion. I am quite sure that none of them are especially bad and one or two of them might even be excellent. But special books like Gunshot Road are as rare as honest politicians and it seems the price one pays for discovering them is a few days (weeks?) of dull reading where things pale in comparison.

Don’t get me wrong though: the price is worth paying.

The Ugly

My reading slump is not being helped by having suffered the mental trauma of watching our country’s former prime minister’s sex life writ large on our television screens on the weekend. In both a dramatised tele-movie and the interview with the man himself which followed it, Bob Hawke’s contribution to Australian public life was boiled down to the fact that he liked to bonk someone other than his wife. A lot. Regardless of who was in the bathroom next door trying desperately not to listen. Although a Rhodes Scholar in his younger days Hawke apparently never got as far as D in the dictionary because neither discretion nor decorum are concepts he is familiar with. Oh how I long for the days when the only acceptable topics of conversation for Australian men in public were the prospects for one’s footy team and the likelihood of rain.

Bob & Blanche (you can't see her botox but trust me it's there)

How can a girl concentrate on reading when images of these two at it like rabbits are running through her brain?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

So today I undertook the kind of therapy that any self-respecting book addict would endure to get herself out of a reading slump. I toddled off to an actual bookstore (something I do only once or twice a year since discovering online shopping) and bought a book I know absolutely nothing about.

It’s fairly large and heavy. If reading it doesn’t work at least I can beat myself in the head to stop the continuous loop of images of Bob and Blanche bonking.

Game, Sets and Matches

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How is it that I’m too busy to wash my filthy windows or finish the report that has to be done by Friday but managed to find the time to ponder Maxine from Petrona’s latest challenge to arrange one’s books in ‘sets’? All these books are either sitting in the TBR book case or waiting in the TBR playlist on my iPod. I only used each title once and only used the fiction titles (almost all of which are crime fiction). Frankly all I’ve proven is that I’m easily distracted and acquire too many books (the 85 listed below equal only slightly more than half of my total unread books, many of which appear in this photo). But I had fun.

HOW YA FEELIN’?

  • Evil Intent, Kate Charles
  • Above Suspicion, Lynda La Plante
  • The Torment of Others, Val McDermid
  • Morality for Beautiful Girls, Alexander McCall Smith
  • Terror on Tuesday, Ann Purser
  • Hurting Distance, Sophie Hannah
  • The Righteous Men, Sam Bourne
  • Shame, Karin Alvtegen
  • One Good Turn, Kate Atkinson
  • The Betrayal, Gillian Slovo
  • Flawed, Jo Bannister

FAMILY TIES

  • The Grass Widow, Teri Holbrook
  • The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, Kim Edwards
  • The 19th Wife, David Ebershoff
  • First family, David Baldacci

GET A JOB

  • The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
  • The Cleaner, Brett Battles
  • Shaman Pass, Stan Jones
  • The Laughing Policeman, Maj Sjowall & Per Whaloo
  • The Bishop Goes to University, Andrew M Greeley

HEAVEN OR HELL

  • A Prayer for the Damned : A Mystery of Ancient Ireland, Peter Tremayne
  • When the Devil Holds the Candle, Karin Fossum
  • The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud, Julia Navarro
  • Dark Angel, Karen Harper
  • Hell Hole, Chris Grabenstein
  • Sanctum, Denise Mina

LET’S EAT

  • One Bad Apple, Sheila Connelly
  • Crime Brulee, Nancy Fairbanks
  • Eggs Benedict, Laura Childs
  • Candy Apple Dead, Sammi Carter

AND THE THIGH BONE’S CONNECTED TO….

  • Little Face, Sophie Hannah
  • A Nail Through the Heart, Timothy Hallinan
  • Boneyard, Michelle Gagnon
  • Bleeding Hearts, Lindy Cameron
  • The Mind’s Eye, Hakan Nesser
  • The Body on the Beach, Simon Brett
  • The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

IT’S ALL OVER WHEN IT’S OVER

  • Kiss of Death, P D Martin
  • The Dead House, Maria Simms
  • And Hope to Die, J. M. Calder
  • Deadset, Emma Tom
  • The Bloomsday Dead, Adrian McKinty
  • Death at La Fenice, Donna Leon
  • No Cure for Death, Hazel Holt
  • Scent to Her Grave, India Ink

WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO TODAY?

  • A Death in Tuscany, Michele Giuttari
  • Mrs Di Silva’s Detective Instincts and the Shaitan of Calcutta, Glen Peters
  • The Kalahari Typing School for Men, Alexander McCall Smith
  • The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff
  • The Quiet American, Graham Greene
  • The Irish Village Murder, Dicey Deere

WANNA PLAY?

  • The Wishing Game, Patrick Redmond
  • Slay Ride, Chris Grabenstein
  • The Curse of the Golden Yo Yo, Robin Bowles

WHAT DID YOU SAY YOUR NAME WAS?

  • The disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi. Marele Day
  • Maxwell’s Grave, M J Trow
  • Mrs Malory and the Delay of Execution, Hazel Holt
  • Roseanna, Maj Sjowall & Per Whaloo
  • Detective Inspector Huss, Helene Tursten

I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO WORK AT THE ZOO

  • Redback, Lindy Cameron
  • In Sheep’s Clothing, Rett MacPherson
  • The Last Camel Died at Noon, Elizabeth Peters
  • The Redbreast, Jo Nesbo
  • A Carrion Death, Michael Stanley
  • The White Lioness, Henning Mankell
  • Imago, Eva-Marie Liffner
  • Death and the Easter Bunny, Linda Berry
  • Murder Bird, Joanna Hines
  • Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

IT’S A ZEN THING

  • The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
  • The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  • The Fire Baby, Jim Kelly
  • Still Waters, John Moss

HEY BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE (I had loads more of these but have been devouring them during our long hot summer)

  • A Colder Kind of Death, Gail Bowen
  • Before the Frost, Henning Mankell
  • Storm Peak, John Flanagan

And a couple of duos to finish off

BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK (this set too would have been much more impressive if I hadn’t read 2 different books called Black Ice and 1 each of The Black Monastery, Blackout and The Black Path in the past 12 months or so)

  • Blackwater, Kerstin Ekman
  • Black Seconds, Karin Fossum

THAT’S JUST SPOOKY

  • The Ghostway, Tony Hillerman
  • The Ghost, Robert Harris

And last, but not least, the old stalwart of crime fiction

WHAT A BLOODY MESS

  • Purity of Blood, Arturo Perez-Reverte
  • The Colour of Blood, Declan Hughes
  • Blood from a Stone, Donna Leon
  • Bold Blood, Lindy Kelly
  • Blood Guilt, Lindy Cameron
  • Blood Born, Kathryn Fox

Now…if only I had something to read

My life according to the books I’ve read this year

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A fun meme doing the rounds that I first spotted at Petrona is

Using only books you have read this year (2009), cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title.

If you want to  check that I haven’t cheated you can see all my 2009 reads by clicking on the 2009 tag in the cloud to the right. I’ve read 83 books this year so far. As I said when commenting on the post at Petrona I should read some more upbeat titles once in a while to avoid looking like a troubled soul when doing this sort of thing. I was going to write some explanations for my choices but decided against it. Make of them what you will.

Describe Yourself: Careless in Red

How do you feel: Alone

Describe where you currently live: The Tin Roof Blowdown

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Valley of the Lost

Your favorite form of transport: The Night Ferry

Your best friend is: The Girl Who Played with Fire

You and your friends are: The Sweetness of Life

What’s the weather like: Dead Cold

Favourite time of day: The Darkest Hour

If your life was a: Devil’s Game

What is life to you: Trick or Treat

Your fear: Pandemic

What is the best advice you have to give: Search the Dark

Thought for the Day: Murder will Travel

How I would like to die: Death by Sudoku

My soul’s present condition: State of the Onion

Quick Question: which book to read?

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You’d think that being on holidays I would have increased reading time (not to mention blog tidying time) but my overseas visitors seem to have occupied all that spare time I imagined having. Oh well, it’s always great to see family.

But on to my dilemma…

My face to face book club is meeting on Sunday week (August 23) and I have a choice of two books to read. I don’t own either, haven’t had a chance to get near a library and don’t know the first thing about either book. I will need to buy one of them and take it with me to Melbourne this Friday (for some unfathomable reason we are taking the train so I will have oodles of reading time then).

First choice is Lisa Gardner’s The Neighbour. I don’t know a thing about it but I haven’t had a huge amount of success with Gardner’s  books. The last one I read, Alone, was really only worthy of the one word review: meh.

My other choice is Lee Child’s Gone Tomorrow. I’ve never read any of Child’s books before and am frankly a l  little daunted by starting a series on book 13. Also I was underwhelmed by the panel’s discussion about the book  on last week’s episode of the First Tuesday Book Club (a panel-style TV book show in Australia) in which not one of  the 5 panelists had anything terribly positive to say about the book.

So if you’ve read either book or have an opinion about which one I should read let me know. Staring at them both in bookshops hasn’t helped me make a decision so I’m hoping someone will say something that makes me more decisive.

Mid-Year Report

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Yes folks it’s graphs and charts time again. I did a quarterly report in March and I’m sure you’ve all been holding your breath to see how things are faring.

09Q2-Books Read

I’ve read 63 books so far this year whicb means I’m well on track to reach my target of 100+. The vast bulk have been crime fiction. I used to fairly regularly intersperse some other genres amongst the murder and mayhem but these days I’ve got so many good recommendations in my preferred genre I don’t seem to find time for much else. I’m pleased with the amount of new authors I’m continuing to read (slightly more than half of my total) but I’d like to read more Aussie authors.

This next graph is more troubling as 09Q2 - Books owned & TBRit indicates how poorly I am doing with respect to reducing the size of my collection (if you can’t read the teeny print the larger bars indicate my total number of books owned and the smaller ones deal with the number of books I have that are unread). I have given myself a good talking to with respect to both of these issues and hope to address them in the remaining half of the year.

Other random, useless facts

  • I read 6 audio books this quarter (only 1 in the previous quarter). This is a direct consequence of trying to get more physically active (which in turn is a direct consequence of my hatred of public transport). I adore audio books.
  • I have give six books a 5-star rating (one was a non-crime so doesn’t appear below), though only two of those this quarter. However 37 of my 63 books have rated 3.5 or above which is a very pleasing figure as these are all books I would happily recommend to other readers.
  • Of the 82 (gulp) books I’ve acquired the majority were mooched or from other free sources (but I did buy 38 so I’m not leaving authors completely hanging in the wind).

Picking my top ten for the year so far has been difficult. I’m reading more than ever now (as my TV turns into a piece of art rather than something I bother to watch) and generally the quality is better (since I rely more on recommendations from people I trust rather than the drones who stock the shelves at my local chain stores). Largely the list is based on my rating scale although I did some weeding-out based on the book’s level of ‘stickinmymindness’ which is calculated from the length of time I can remember the important details combined with the number of times I bang on about it to friends and family after finishing it (a highly scientific process I assure you).

The list is in alphabetical order:

4-Play

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I am generally a bad blogger in that I don’t respond to memes and/or challenges. Mostly it’s because I keep this blog on topic (a personal challenge requiring enormous restraint some days) and partly it’s because some of them remind me ever so vaguely of the chain letters that ruined a perfectly good teenage friendship.

However I’ve been tagged by Kerrie, one of the people who inspired me to start my own blog (though she may not know that) and , with a bit of tweaking, I can keep it on topic.

4 places I’ve lived:

Adelaide, Australia (setting for Kirsty Brooks’ The Vodka Dialogue featuring a sassy PI and a must read for chic lit fans)

Jerusalem, Israel (setting for one of Jonathan Kellerman’s standalone novels and a great read: The Butcher’s Theatre)

Katoomba, Australia (setting for one of my all time favourite traditional house-party mysteries called Grim Pickings by Jennifer Rowe)

Sydney, Australia (setting for a top-notch PI novel called Dry Dock by Cathy Cole)

4 places I’ve visited

The Nile, Egypt which I sailed down on a felucca and drank cocktails at the hotel that was featured in the movie of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile

Chicago, America where I made my own walking tour of sites from Sara Paretsky’s V I Warshawski novels

London (and other bits), England, where I bored my then boyfriend to tears by dragging him on a tour of Sherlock Holmes related sites (for the record he returned the favour by making me trudge across the country to see what he says was Hadrian’s wall and I say was a pile of rubble)

California, America where a friend and fellow Sue Grafton fan and I did a driving tour of the area of all the places that surround the fictional Santa Teresa in which the alphabet novels are set

4 places I want to go to

Alaska (home of Dana Stabenow’s spiffy Kate Shugak series)

Botswana (home of Alexander McCall Smith’s No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series)

Russia (I rather fell in love with Tom Rob Smith’s Leo Demidov this year and have always loved Doctor Zhivago)

…Egypt (again) (for an Elizabeth Peters inspired tour of course)(plus it is my favourite place on the planet)

4 Australian authors I recommend

Leah Giarratano(picture me doing a happy dance due to her new novel’s imminent publication) (reviewed here and here)

Kerry Greenwood (reviewed here and here)

Adrian Hyland (reviewed here)

Felicity Young (reviewed here and here)

The top 4 books I’ve read this year

I’ve got 5 books rated 5 so far this year, but here are the 4 crime fiction ones

Leah Giarratano, Voodoo Doll

Adrian Hyland, Diamond Dove (a.k.a Moonlight Downs)

Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire

Johan Theorin, Echoes from the Dead

4 blogs I watch daily

I’ve deliberately chosen non book-related blogs here – I can’t think of any of those that haven’t already been mentioned by other responders and I do have other interests (shock horror),

Roz Savage, Ocean Rower(a 40+ year old English woman is rowing solo across the Pacific to bring attention to what’s ailing our poor planet and she’s blogging and podcasting the entire adventure, she’s funny and inspirational too)

The Scott Adams Blog (he writes what I already think but more succinctly and funnier and he makes me view the world differently)

Unleashed (ABC Australia’s opinion & essay blog – exposing myself to a load of different ideas keeps me, hopefully, from becoming too set in my thinking)

Graph Jam (blame Maxine, it makes me laugh every day)

And because everyone else seems to have added and subtracted their own categories I’m going to add my own, inspired by a tiresome week

4 things I would remove from my world if I had a magic wand

Alzheimer’s (no reading tie in but an old family friend is suffering from this hideous disease and it’s just awful for all concerned)

Celebrities (I am sick of reading about them and their mindless doings every time I pick up a newspaper)

Politicians (Ditto)

WHO (their daft definition of pandemic has made my working days a drudgery)

I’m not tagging anyone for this but if you should want to participate in the comments below or on your own blog, have at it.