Theme Thursday: Body Parts

This is a new one for me. Theme Thursday is a weekly event hosted by Reading Between the Pages. Each Thursday, a theme is posted for that week. Participants select a conversation, snippet, or sentence from whatever book they're reading and post it for everyone to read. Sounds like a great way to discover new books and authors, so here goes.

This week's theme is BODY PARTS, and this excerpt is from John Verdon's new thriller, Shut Your Eyes Tight. It's taken from an uncorrected proof of the novel, so please remember that the quote may differ slightly in the published edition.

And I should probably put up a **GORE ALERT** before I start!

"The body was sitting in a chair at [a] small square table in the front room, six feet from the entry door." He grimaced, as one might at the smell of a skunk. "As I said, the body was sitting at the table. But the head was not on the body. The head was on the table in a pool of blood. On the table, facing the body, still wearing the tiara you saw in the video." (p.73)

Sorry. Hope you're not eating breakfast while you're reading this.

Booking Through Thursday: Biographies

This week, BTT asks:

There are so many crappy biographies … would you rather read a poorly-written biography of a fascinating life, OR an exquisitely well-written, wonderful read of one of a not-so-interesting life?

Sorry, but why would I want to read anything that's poorly written? I'd much rather read a fascinating well-written biography of a fascinating individual.

Wouldn't we all?

And then there's fascinating and fascinating, isn't there? My opinion of what constitutes an interesting life might not agree with yours at all.

Actually, though, I don't really read that many biographies or autobiographies anymore -- I'm almost an all-fiction-all-the-time gal right now. In the past, I read a lot more nonfiction than I do now, for some reason. Guess I need the escape fiction provides. (Thank you, Doctor Freud.)

But if I did pick up a biog, I'd certainly prefer "exquisitely well-written" over crappy every time. No matter how fascinating its subject might be.

WWW Wednesday

WWW Wednesday is hosted weekly by MizB at Should Be Reading. To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions:


What are you currently reading?

Shut Your Eyes Tight by John Verdon

Verdon's second thriller to feature retired police detective Dan Gurney. I read the first book (Think of a Number) last year and really enjoyed it. I'm reading an ARC of this one, but I think the book is being released this week.



What did you recently finish reading?

Nat Tate by William Boyd

Deliciously inventive tale of the "well known" American artist, Nat Tate. Boyd's little hoax is probably not for everyone, but I found it a wonderful read. You'll probably appreciate "Tate" more if you're familiar with Boyd's 2002 novel Any Human Heart.


Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt.

Hope to have a short review of this one up today or tomorrow. It's taken me much too long to finish, but that's not a reflection of the book's quality or length. Just real life flooding in on me at just the wrong time.




What do you think you'll read next?

Whisker of Evil by Rita Mae Brown

Actually, this one could have gone under "Currently Reading" -- started it last month, and only got a couple of chapters read. Again, not a reflection on the book -- I always love the Mrs Murphy mysteries.

And after that, probably a vintage mystery of some sort. Seems to me that mid-summer is the perfect time of year for some Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers.

Teaser Tuesdays: Mr. Chartwell

This week my teaser lines come from the book I just finished, Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt. This snippet comes early in the novel (p.19), and the Churchill mentioned is Winston Spencer Churchill, former Prime Minister of England. He's painting in his garden when he begins to sense a very dark presence:

Churchill knew what worried him. And then there it was.
Behind him it whispered ardently in his ear, "You can't hide from me...."

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.

Friday's List: Vacation Reads

Best books to take on vacation? I guess we all have our favorite summer authors, or favorite types and genres. Here's what GoodHousekeeping.com thinks might make the best summer reads for 2011:

1. Then Came You. Jennifer Weiner
2. The Paris Wife. Paula McLain
3. State of Wonder. Ann Patchett
4. Planting Dandelions. Kyran Pittman
5. The Gap Year. Sarah Bird
6. The Memory of All That. Katharine Weber
7. Conquistadora: A Novel. Esmeralda Santiago
8. Caleb's Crossing. Geraldine Brooks
9. Nothing Daunted. Dorothy Wickenden
10. Sister. Rosamund Lupton

A little something for everyone: some fiction, some non-, some romance, some humor, some history. Haven't read any of them yet, and there are a few I've never even heard of (as usual). But also one or two I'll definitely be adding to my "want to read" list.

What about you? Got any recommendations for that "perfect vacation read"?

Booking Through Thursday: Dog Days

This week, BTT asks: "...what animal-related books have you read? Which do you love? Do you have a favorite literary dog? (Snoopy, anyone?)"

Well, I love books and I love animals. But in general, I'm not really a great lover of books about animals. Especially the overly sentimental and maudlin works produced in the wake of John Grogan's hugely successful Marley & Me. And I really can't abide those books that introduce a pet only to kill it off, for emotional effect.

But one of my favorite mystery series, the Mrs. Murphy books by Rita Mae Brown, features cats and a dog who help solve the mysteries their human friend gets herself involved in; I'm reading one right now (Whisker of Evil). And one of my all-time favorite books is Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles (although I don't suppose anyone would pick the terrifying gigantic hound as a favorite literary canine).


Another favorite "animal" book is one I read just a couple of years ago -- Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. There's really not a dog in the book (the main character has a pet rat), but the entire plot hinges on the investigation of the death of a neighbor's dog.

And yes, I do love Snoopy -- I've got a small collection of Peanuts books. I imagine Snoopy has been everyone's favorite literary pup at one time or another. But when it comes to cartoon dogs, I've also always loved those loopy animals drawn by James Thurber. Thurber was a writer, not an artist; but he loved drawing and he loved dogs. And that combination made for some wonderfully weird illustrations to his stories over the years.


And today I hope to finish reading Rebecca Hunt's Mr. Chartwell, about a sort of dog/monster haunting the book's protagonist. But Mr. Chartwell (or Black Pat as he's mostly called) isn't a nice doggie and you definitely wouldn't think of him as man's best friend.

Oh, and I almost forgot -- one more animal-related book: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH! Can't leave that one off the list. Read it for the first time just a couple years back and really loved it. Can't believe it took me so long to get around to it.

Friday's List: Samples

I've had my iPad for over a year now, and I still think it's a nifty little device. Pricey, but comes in very handy for travel or those times when I'm away from my main computer. And it's also a very efficient e-reader; in fact, I've looked at the Nook and the Kindle, and I think I really do prefer the iPad (but to each his own, of course). I haven't done a huge amount of e-reading -- just enough to discover (as I figured I would) that I really like reading actual books as opposed to the electronic kind. But one of the really nice things about having the Kindle app (downloaded free from Amazon) is that I've been able to take advantage of Amazon's sampling feature. And that's allowed me to download free samples of interesting-looking books before making up my mind about whether or not to read the whole work. Here's what I've "sampled" so far:

1. The Attenbury Emeralds. Jill Paton Walsh
2. Fall of Giants. Ken Follett
3. A Game of Thrones. George R.R. Martin
4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Stieg Larsson
5. Henrietta's War. Joyce Dennys
6. In the Garden of Beasts. Erik Larson
7. Leviathans of Jupiter. Ben Bova
8. A Lonely Death: An Inspector Rutledge Mystery. Charles Todd
9. Love You More: A Detective D.D. Warren Novel. Lisa Gardner
10. Miss Hargreaves. Frank Baker
11. Mr. Chartwell. Rebecca Hunt
12. On Borrowed Time. David Rosenfelt
13. Separate Beds. Elizabeth Buchan
14. West of Here. Jonathan Evison
15. What the Night Knows. Dean Koontz
16. The Winter Ghosts. Kate Mosse
17. Wish You Were Here. Stewart O'Nan
18. Wolf Hall. Hilary Mantel
19. 13, rue Therese. Elena Mauli Shapiro

The samples are usually somewhere around twenty-five to fifty pages, or the first few chapters of each book. But after all these downloads, I've actually gone on to read just one of the titles (Mr. Chartwell). I've got another downloaded (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), but haven't read it yet. This doesn't mean I'm not interested in reading the other books I've sampled -- just haven't had the time yet. Maybe if I cut back on all that sampling....