Just finished reading The Fixer by Gene Doucette. Lightweight, I guess, but a lot of fun, though it gets maybe a little less fun toward the end. Not easy to categorize. Maybe a take on the multiverse?
Just finished listening to Summerwater by Sarah Moss. Set in a Scottish holiday cabin park well off the beaten path. Five - at least I think it's five, could be more, could be less - families are on holiday. They start off thinking that they're happy, that their kids are happy, that life is okay, that they deserve a break in a holiday cabin on a loch. Well, there's a lot of time to think on holiday, a little too much time to consider, well, everything, whether you're the 10-year-old daughter of a middle class family or the retired doctor and his wife, the monumentally depressed teenager or the wife who is a compulsive runner, whose approach to running is, if 10 miles is good, 25 miles is better, and why stop there? You won't be fulfilled by the end, and you almost certainly won't be happy. You may in fact be unhappy that I recommended the book. But it's worth the time - plus it's a short book - and it's food for thought. I'm not a book club person, but this strikes me as a good book club book.
Also in the past week, finished listening to John Birmingham's Zero Day Code. If you think life is pretty good, read this book and you'll be absolutely convinced we are on the brink of utter disaster. It's so engrossing that when I got home I wondered why things were so calm and that we should be frantically preparing for the apocalypse. Parts of it are far-fetched, others eyebrow-raising possibilities.
Also in the past week or so, finished listening to the latest installment of Linda Castillo's Amish police procedural, Fallen. I've listened to every one, so it must have something going for it. Then again, I seem to get hooked on these sort of cozy mysteries, though it's not something I like to admit. The main character is Kate Burkholder, the ex-Amish police chief of a small town with a mixed population in Pennsylvania. An awful lot of awful stuff sure does happen in her small town. I guess you could call this the Amish Midsummer Murders, or the Amish Murder in Paradise.
Another I finished listening to last week was Paul Doiron's latest installment in the Mike Bowditch novels, Dead by Dawn. I might have mentioned this in my last what are you reading post. You really can't go wrong with these novels, though it makes sense to start from the beginning (as it does for the Linda Castillo series as well), as characters and relationships are pretty well developed over time.
I just started listening to The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave. Not sure where this is going yet. Husband of one year disappears when the company he's working for is raided and the CEO arrested. Is the husband part of the fraud? Is he an innocent victim? Is he the snitch? The husband's daughter from his first wife is a royal pain in the neck. The current wife, and main character, seems to be a decent person who is charged with looking after a stepdaughter who doesn't care much for her. Not sure how to categorize it yet. I'll keep going and see where it goes for a little bit before deciding whether to cut my losses.
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