Book Beginnings / Friday Finds: Gently Does It

The Hubs and I have gotten hooked on the BBC's Inspector George Gently series -- I love Martin Shaw who plays Gently in the series, and the 1950s-60s settings make it very appealing to old fogies such as us two. So of course I couldn't resist sampling one of the Alan Hunter novels the shows are based on. I decided to do it right this time, and started with book number one: Gently Does It, from 1955. Here's the opening paragraph:

Chief Inspector Gently, Central Office, CID, reached automatically into his pocket for another peppermint cream and fed it unconsciously into his mouth. Then he folded his large hands one over the other on the guard rail and peered into the inferno below him with a pleased expression, rather like a middle-aged god inspecting a new annex for the damned.

Initial thoughts:

Actually, my first thought was that the description reminded me of Tom Baker's Doctor Who and his jelly-babies.

But I digress. Sort of.

I loved the opening. Inspector Gently sounds like an interesting bloke -- someone I thought I'd enjoy getting to know. And I wasn't disappointed. In fact, this book kept me turning pages so quickly, I managed to finish it in just a few hours. And that's almost unheard of, for me. Now I want even more Gently -- and with over thirty books in the series, I shouldn't have any trouble fulfilling that desire!

Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays. As she says, the idea is to post the first sentence (or so) of the book you're currently reading, along with any first impressions or thoughts you have about the book, the author, etc.  It's a wonderful way of adding new books to your must-read list, and a chance to connect with other readers and bloggers.

This week I'm also linking up with Friday Finds, hosted by Jenn @ A Daily Rhythm. It's a chance to let everyone know about books you've discovered and added to your must-read list. And of course it's another great place to learn about new books and connect with fellow-bookworms.

Friday Finds: 21 August 2009

For some reason I don't have many new finds this week. Just two, really – one fiction and one nonfiction.

Fiction first. Selden Edwards' novel The Little Book isn't really new; it came out last year, but I'm just now hearing about it. The publisher's description calls it a story of a man's "dislocation in time." Sounds like part sci-fi and part mystery tale, which would make it a perfect book for me.

And my nonfiction find is Fred Kaplan's 1959: The Year Everything Changed, which was published earlier this summer. Kaplan argues that instead of focusing entirely on the cultural changes of the '60s, we should really look at 1959 as the year "that ushered in the wave of tremendous cultural, political, and scientific shifts that would play out in the turbulent decades that followed." Well, of course, the culture was beginning to change even before 1959, but it's an interesting theory and the book sounds like a great read. Especially for those of us who actually lived through the period. Yes, the codgers, to be more precise.


Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week - books you either want to add to your TBR list, or that you just heard about that sound interesting.

Friday Finds: 7 August 2009

This week I added four more books to my "new finds" list. Don't know that they'll all be going on my TBR pile, but they look like definite possibilities.

Two of the books have been out for a while, although they're new to me. Lisa Jackson's Malice is from earlier this year, but I managed to miss hearing about it until now. And Ariana Franklin's City of Shadows was first published in 2006, but since reading her Grave Goods last week, I've become a fan and thought I'd like to take a look at one of her stand-alone novels – something not in the Mistress of the Art of Death series.

Alice I Have Been, by Melanie Benjamin, won't be published until next January, but I'm already looking forward to it. I've always been an Alice in Wonderland fan, so this is one I'm pretty sure I'll read.

And Frank Portman's Andromeda Klein is due out a little later this month. I don't read much young adult fiction anymore, but this one sounds like a really fun book. I first heard about it over at Kristen's blog, Bookworming in the 21st Century – it was one of her Friday Finds last week. Is it OK to pilfer someone else's Finds? I hope so. And I hope Kristen doesn't mind. Maybe we could just consider it a form of bloggy recycling.

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week - books you either want to add to your TBR list, or that you just heard about that sound interesting.

Friday Finds: 31 July 2009

Found several new titles this week (well, new to me anyway), but only two of them look like they might actually make it to my TBR list. Don't know if that's a good or a bad thing – I love adding new books to my list; but it's already so ridiculously long that I'd need more than one lifetime to make a dent in it. Or some time all by myself on that well-known desert island with only a fully-stocked library for company.

I discovered Richard Russo's new book, That Old Cape Magic, while I was browsing my "Local" section at Library Thing. Russo is going to be reading from and discussing the book on August 12th, at Politics and Prose, the Washington DC bookstore/coffeehouse on Connecticut Avenue. Don't know if I'll make it to the event, but I'll definitely be taking a closer look at his book.

And I first heard about Her Fearful Symmetry over at Deslily's Here There and Everywhere blog. The new one by Audrey Niffenegger, it's due to be released in September. I was never able to finish The Time Traveler's Wife, but this one sounds spooky and interesting enough to give it a try. It's being issued with different covers – apparently, one in the U.S. and a different one in the U.K – so I'm including pictures of both. The first one with all the vines or branches or whatever, is the Scribner cover that will be available in the U.S. The other cover is from the UK edition by Jonathan Cape.


So which do you prefer? I think I like the Russo cover better than either of them. But doesn't the U.S. edition of "Symmetry" remind you of the cover on Tana French's In the Woods?

And why all these copy-cat covers? And why do books have to have different covers in different countries anyway? Ah, the mysteries of the universe – I could sit here pondering all day. But I really need to get back to my reading!

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week - books you either want to add to your TBR list, or that you just heard about that sound interesting.

Friday Finds: 24 July 2009

Wow, it's already the 24th! Can you believe that? Only one more week to go and the month of July will be outta here. I think this summer is traveling along faster than any other I remember - and I remember quite a few!

OK, enough of that.

Just a couple of new finds this week. Well, actually I discovered The Atlantis Revelation by Thomas Greanias earlier this spring - it was one of the three books I requested in Atria Books' "Galley Grab" back in May. Just got my copy a few days ago and put it at the top of my TBR list - it's due for general release in August. And I believe I first read about Mackenzie Ford's Gifts of War in a BookBrowse newsletter; it was published last month. Ordinarily, I'm not interested in books that center around wars, but this one sounds like it might have more to offer than violence and mayhem.

But I'm afraid all my recent discoveries will have to wait a while. For the moment, I'm immersed in Katherine Neville's The Fire. I received it quite unexpectedly last November (I believe that's right) as a bonus Early Reviewer book from Library Thing, and (also quite unexpectedly) immediately forgot all about it. Well, we were traveling and there were the holidays coming up and things just got really hectic - OK, I have no real excuse. Just poor mental wiring, I suppose. Anyway, I need to get that one read and reviewed ASAP to keep myself in LT's good graces. Wouldn't want to anger the algorithmic gods, now would we?

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week - books you either want to add to your TBR list, or that you just heard about that sound interesting.

Friday Finds: 17 July 2009

This week I added four new titles to my "new finds" list. I have a feeling they'll all be going on my TBR list once I've had a chance to check them out a little more closely. And although I hate to admit it, I might buy the Lowry book for the cover alone!

My list:

• Girl in a Blue Dress, by Gaynor Arnold
• Evil at Heart, by Chelsea Cain
• Homer & Langley, by E.L. Doctorow
• The Bellini Madonna, by Elizabeth Lowry

I discovered the first and last books in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review supplement; Girl in a Blue Dress was released this month, but I believe The Bellini Madonna came out a little earlier this spring (Good Reads says April).

Not sure where I first heard about Evil at Heart or Homer & Langley. Shelf Awareness, maybe? Or possibly a publisher's newsletter. They're both due for official release in September, so I'll have to try to remember to track them down in the fall.

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

Friday Finds: 10 July 2009

Here are my finds for this week. Actually, for the last couple of weeks – didn't post any finds last Friday, since the hubby and I were away for the weekend. I first read about Heroic Measures in a recent New York Times Book Review. I'm not sure exactly where I discovered the other three, although I'm thinking Shelf Awareness is a good bet for The Rapture and possibly for the others as well.

• The Fate of Katherine Carr, by Thomas H. Cook
• Heroic Measures: A Novel, by Jill Ciment
• Name to a Face, by Robert Goddard
• The Rapture, by Liz Jensen

I believe they're all "out," except for The Rapture which is scheduled to be released in early August.


Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

Friday Finds: 26 June 2009

Only two new finds this week. And one of them actually has been around a while even though it's just now showing up on my radar.

Not sure where I first read about Chris Ransom's debut novel, The Birthing House; but it sounds like a great psychological thriller – as one reviewer put it, "a ghost story with class." It'll be published in August. And I think it's very possible that I've heard of Syrie James's The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen before this week, but it's only now registering with me. I discovered it while checking out the Everything Austen Challenge over at Stephanie's Written Word. Haven't decided yet if I'm going to take up the challenge, but James's book sounds like it's worth a look.

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

So, what great new books did you find this week?

Friday Finds: 19 June 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

Just three books this week. And, technically, The Game by A.S. Byatt isn't a new find – it was her second novel, first published in 1967; but I just "discovered" it this week while browsing an interesting library at LibraryThing. Alice Hoffman's new novel, The Story Sisters, made its appearance this month. And Fear the Worst, Linwood Barclay's latest suspense novel is scheduled to be released on August 11.

Friday Finds: 12 June 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

This week I have half a dozen new finds. They all look really interesting, and I imagine several of them will be going on my TBR list. Well, the ones I haven't already read, anyway.

The Condition, by Jennifer Haigh
The Shimmer, by David Morrell
Summer House, by Nancy Thayer
The Wildwater Walking Club, by Claire Cook
Duchess of Death, by Richard Hack
The Longshot, by Katie Kitamura

The first four are being featured in BookReporter.com's weekly "Beach Bag of Books" contests. I believe Summer House is in this week's batch; the others are all coming up in July or August. I discovered Duchess of Death, Richard Hack's new biography of Agatha Christie, while browsing the June selections in LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.

Katie Kitamura's The Longshot was an ARC and something of a surprise when I received it. Didn't really look like anything I'd choose to read, but after the first page I was hooked and rapidly made my way through it in one sitting. Very unusual for me. I'll try to get a review up later today, but for right now I'll just say it was truly extraordinary.

Friday Finds: 5 June 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

Just two new finds this week. I think I may have first read about the Aldridge book in last week's New York Times Book Review. Not sure where I heard about the Waters.

The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes: The Art of Alan Aldridge. This one really takes me back. Alan Aldridge's book, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics was a favorite of mine back in the day. I remember spending hour upon hour just pouring over the artwork, picking out all the references. Great meditation material. Better than drugs.

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters. A novel of psychological suspense. I've already got one of her other novels (Affinity) on my TBR list, and this one looks good, too.

Friday Finds: 29 May 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

Just two new finds this week. Lately, I've been devoting most of my time to reading, and not doing so much "shopping around."

Picked up The Romance Readers' Book Club (by Julie L. Cannon) from the bargain table at our local Borders. Have to admit I was mainly attracted by the cover – it looked so summery. But the story sounds interesting, too; perfect reading for the months just ahead.


I think I first discovered Michelle Richmond's No One You Know while browsing the May selections in LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program, but I've seen it mentioned several places since then. It's "a tale of a woman's search for her sister's killer" and sounds like it might be another great summer read.

Friday Finds: 22 May 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

These are my new finds this week. I haven't decided if they'll all make it to my TBR list, but they all look interesting. I believe I discovered most of them while browsing Good Read's First Reads feature. I've requested several of their books lately, but hadn't snagged any until this week – I'm supposed to be receiving The Book of Love soon (so they tell me).
The Painter from Shanghai. Jennifer Epstein
The Embers. Hyatt Bass
The Book of Love. Kathleen McGowan
The Brambles. Eliza Minot
Breakable You. Brian Morton
Silent on the Moor. Deanna Raybourn

I found Silent on the Moor by reading the review by Jenclair over on her blog, A Garden Carried in the Pocket. I know a lot of bloggers have been raving about Deanna Raybourn for years now, but for some reason this was the first time one of her books actually caught my attention. The Lady Julia Grey series sounds great, but I agree with Jenclair about the book covers, so I've included photos of two different examples. I suppose it says a lot about me that I prefer the less lurid, more boring cover – didn't think I was quite so over the hill!

Friday Finds: 15 May 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

Here are three interesting new titles that I found this week (well, new to me anyway). I'm pretty sure all three are going to end up on my TBR list, which is now so enormous it will take more than one lifetime to make a dent in.

A Proper Education for Girls: A Novel, by Elaine DiRollo
Sacred Hearts: A Novel, by Sarah Dunant
The Family Man, by Elinor Lipman

I've never read any of Dunant's other works, although I've got a couple on my TBR list. And I've only read one of Lipman's earlier novels (The Ladies' Man), but it quickly became one of my all-time favorites, so I'm very much looking forward to reading this latest book.

Friday Finds: 8 May 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

Just two new finds this week, both of them first entries in mystery series that have been around for a while but are new to me. I think it's very likely that both of these will be going on my TBR list.

The Novice's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries, Book 1), by Margaret Frazer. I'm generally not a big fan of mystery novels set in the distant past, but these Sister Frevisse stories sound really intriguing. I discovered them while browsing the Teasers last Tuesday, in a post over at Bookishgal's blog. Here's a brief description from the publisher:

"It is the year of Our Lord's grace 1431, and the nuns of England's St. Frideswide sweetly chant their Paternosters behind gracious, trellised walls. But their quiet lives are shattered by the unwelcome visit of the hard-drinking, blaspheming dowager Lady Ermentrude, with her retinue of lusty maids and men, baying hounds, and even a pet monkey in tow. The lady demands wine, a feast, and her niece, the frail and saintly novice Thomasine. What she gets is her own strange and sudden death. Sister Frevisse, hosteler of the priory and amateur sleuth, fears murder. The most likely suspect is pious Thomasine...but Frevisse alone detects a clever web spun to entangle an innocent nun in the most unholy of passions — and the deadliest of deeds."

Blessed Is The Busybody (Ministry Is Murder Series, Book 1), by Emilie Richards. Emilie Richards has written more than sixty books, so she's obviously been around for a while! Why am I just now discovering her? Blessed Is The Busybody is the first book in the Ministry Is Murder series, set in the (I assume fictional) town of Emerald Springs, Ohio. The series even has its own website with "Perish News." Here's a bit about this first book, from the Emilie Richards website:

"Meet the unconventional Aggie Sloan-Wilcox, a minister’s wife with her own calling: helping troubled souls in need of justice. . . Aggie’s free-spirited ways have been raising many an eyebrow at the Consolidated Community Church, tucked away in cookie-cutter perfect Emerald Springs, Ohio. But nothing is more shocking than the naked body of a murdered woman turning up on her front porch. Suspicion falls on Aggie’s husband, who counseled the victim before her death. Now Aggie doesn’t have a prayer of clearing his name unless she can uncover the truth in a town not known for confessing its sins. . . "

Friday Finds: 1 May 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

I found most of this week's books while researching possibilities for various reading challenges. They may not all make my TBR list, but they all look interesting. My "new finds" list:

The Reserve. Russell Banks
The Dark Lantern. Gerri Brightwell
The Unquiet. John Connolly
Dreaming of the Bones. Deborah Crombie
Water Like a Stone. Deborah Crombie
Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain. Kirsten Menger-Anderson

I think the two Deborah Crombie mysteries look especially promising. Dreaming of the Bones was short-listed for the 1997 Edgar Award, and won the 1998 Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel. I hadn't known about Crombie's Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series. Kincaid is a Scotland Yard superintendent and Sergeant James is his partner in solving crimes, and the two are also (as they say) romantically involved. Hmmmm. Not sure I'll be able to accept that very easily. And does the Yard really allow that sort of thing?

Friday Finds: 24 April 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

These are the interesting books I found this week, while browsing blogs and book stores.

• The Winter Queen (an Erast Fandorin Mystery). Boris Akunin.
  Short-listed for the Gold Dagger Award in 2003, this is the first novel in a series of mysteries that are apparently big hits in Russia and Europe.
• The Sisters Mortland. Sally Beauman.
  Picked this up from a sale bin at our local Borders. Have to admit, I was first attracted by the cover, but it does sound like an interesting book.
• Early Autumn: A Story of a Lady. Louis Bromfield.
  Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for 1927. I'm considering this as one of the books I might read for the Battle of the Prizes Challenge, if I decide to sign up.
• The Shadow Year. Jeffrey Ford.
  A finalist for this year's Shirley Jackson Award.
• Arcadia Falls. Rand D. Johnson.
  Another book for another challenge (should I decide to join up). This time it's the Eco Reading Challenge, for books with an environmental theme.
• The Earth Hums in B Flat. Mari Strachan.
  I've been trying to learn a little bit more about recent Welsh literature, and I discovered this title at Fleur Fisher Reads.
  
  

Friday Finds: 10 April 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

This week I'm a little embarrassed to admit that almost all my new finds have come from browsing the Book Closeouts $1.99 sale, which took up most of two whole days for me this week. Shameful, I know – I really should have been reading actual books, or blogging, or doing just about anything besides immersing myself in an online book catalogue. The only title that wasn't found in the sale listings was The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons; I learned about that one after stumbling onto the 2006 made-for-TV movie based on the book. The film was pretty awful, but the story itself sounded interesting, so I did a little investigating. I've never been able to stick with any of Siddons' work in the past, but this one sounds like it might be more to my taste – I'm a pushover for books about spooky old (or, in this case, new) houses.

Here's my list for this week:

Follies: New Stories, by Ann Beattie
The Bondwoman's Narrative, by Hannah Crafts (and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.)
The River King, by Alice Hoffman
Dreams of My Russian Summers, by Andrei Makine
The House Next Door, by Anne Rivers Siddons
An Expert in Murder, by Nicola Upson

Friday Finds: 3 April 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

This week, several of my New Finds are from the last couple of LibraryThing Early Reviewers offerings. And one, The Dud Avocado, is actually a book I've known about for a while – I'm including it because it always sounded intriguing and it was the reason I was attracted to Dundy's latest, The Old Man and Me. I'm supposed to be getting that last one from LibraryThing, but as my last two Early Reviewer books have never arrived, I'm not terribly hopeful. Anyway, here's my list for this week:

Bad Things, by Michael Marshall (LTER, March)
Being Written, by William Conescu (see the teaser at Popin's Lair)
Key of Light, by Nora Roberts (see the teaser at Inside Mo's Mind)
Mobius Dick, by Andrew Crumey (don't remember where I first saw this one)
The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery, by Enrique Joven (LTER March Bonus Batch)
The Dud Avocado, by Elaine Dundy
The Old Man and Me, by Elaine Dundy (LTER March)
The Tricking of Freya, by Christina Sunley (LTER March)
The Various Haunts of Men, by Susan Hill

Friday Finds: 27 March 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

I found most of my Friday Finds for this week while I was scouting books I might want to add to my "possibles" list in the Once Upon a Time III Challenge, so the fantasy genre is heavily represented. I don't believe any of them are very recent books – in fact, Aegypt first appeared sometime in the 1980s – but they're "new finds" for me. The Brookner I picked up a couple of weeks ago in our local library's sale, but since I didn't do a Friday Finds post last week, I'm including it here.

A Closed Eye. Anita Brookner
White Apples. Jonathan Carroll
Aegypt. John Crowley
Endless Things. John Crowley
Bee Season. Myra Goldberg
Song of Kali. Dan Simmons
Endless Things is actually the fourth book in Crowley's four-novel Aegypt series; the first book, Aegypt, is also sometimes called The Solitudes. Here's a description from Wikipedia:

"Aegypt is a sequence of four novels by John Crowley detailing the work and life of Pierce Moffett, who prepares a manuscript for publication even as it prepares him for some as-yet unknown destiny, all set amidst strange and subtle Hermetic manipulations among the Faraway Hills of New York. . . . The four volumes mingle Moffett's real and dream life in America in 1979 and the early 1980s with the narrative of the manuscript he is preparing for publication. The manuscript is a historical fiction that follows the briefly intersecting adventures of Italian heretic Giordano Bruno and of British occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley."

Harold Bloom has praised the books, and my favorite reviewer, Michael Dirda chose the whole series as his favorite book back in 2007. Well, I've never been terribly impressed with Harold Bloom's pronouncements, but if Dirda likes the books, I definitely want to find out more about them.