Currently Reading:
To Fetch A Thief: A Chet and Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn
This is my favorite currently published mystery series, perhaps my favorite of all time. I pre-ordered the book so that it would show up on my Kindle as soon as it possibly could. I have not been disappointed. I am almost done with book and have not yet figured out who did what and what will happen at the end. The books are wonderfully and humorously narrated by Chet, Private Detective Bernie’s faithful partner and dog. In this story Chet and Bernie are on the trail of a missing circus elephant named Peanut and his trainer. They find the trainer dead near the Mexican boarder. They know it is a murder, but are having trouble convincing the authorities of this. Eventually the trail leads them to Mexico and a large web of corruption on both sides of the boarder. I don’t know how it ends yet, but I am excited to find out.
I have been reading a little bit every day of The Gospel of Matthew. I am reading the English Standard Version translation. I like the NIV as a translation better, but it is good to read different translations for different perspectives.
I have been reading The Gospel of John with my small group bible study. I have actually been reading this for over a year. We started in June of 2009, but since we only meet twice a month and we dig pretty deep into the text, it takes a while. I think Luke is my favorite Gospel, but John is the most challenging and the most deeply layered. It is a book that you can read over and over and over and get something new each time.
This is the second to last Sherlock Holmes collection of short stories that was published. The stories are from different eras, but it is a solid collection. I have now read all of the novels, they will be mentioned later in this list, and most of the short story collections. When I finish this there is only one more short story collection to read and I will have read every Sherlock Holmes story published by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Recently finished:
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Having seen the movie countless number of times, I thought it would be interesting to finally read the original. This essentially starts with the tornado that carries Dorothy to the Land of the Munchkins. The first half of the books is quite similar to the movie. There are challenges that groups does not face in the movie. There is the somewhat gruesome explanation of how the Tin Woodman become made out of tin, but as they approach The City of Emerald, as it is known in the book, things change a lot. For one thing the book is only about eighty percent over when the Wizard flies off in the balloon without Dorothy. Dorothy eventually makes it back to Kansas, but this does not appear to be a dream. Maybe because I love the movie so much and I am so used to the story of the movie, but I think the changes that the screenwriters made to the story help it. It is one of the few times where the movie is superior to the book. That being said, I liked the book and I am glad I read it.
Sally’s In The Alley: A Doan & Carstairs Mystery by Norbert Davis
This is the third book in the series. It is part of a Kindle 99 cents pulp mystery series. This is a really interesting series. I was attracted to it because of the price and because it is a mystery series about a private detective and his dog. If I didn’t have a Chet and Bernie Mystery to read, I thought this could tide me over. Carstairs, and enormous Great Dane does not narrate the book and is really a fairly minor character. These books are really all about Doan, a seemingly schlub of a fellow who is anything but. This often gives Doan the advantage because people underestimate him. The most interesting thing about this series, and this book in the series in particular, is that they were written during World War II. You get a good feel for how the war affected almost everything in life. You could feel the war in the writing in the previous two books in the series, but Sally’s In The Alley had to do with Japanese spies and espionage. These books are pretty funny at times and rather violent at others. For 99 cents it is hard to beat.
The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A collection of short stories from before the turn of the century.
The Valley Of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The last of the Sherlock Holmes novels. This book, like the first Sherlock Holmes story and novel spends most of the second half of the book in America explaining what happened in the first half. It is an intriguing was to tell a story. The valley of fear of the title is a mining area of the American west. It is ruled by fear by a organized crime ring that masquerades as a lodge/service organization. We start the story with a murder in a country house. There is something amiss in the explanation and Holmes through deductive reasoning figures it out. What he doesn’t know is how things got that way. The explanation is far more fascinating than the Holmes part of the story. A great read.
The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Probably the most well known of the Sherlock Holmes stories thanks to the movie adaptations, but I think it is the weakest of the novels. It is okay. You actually don’t get a lot of Holmes in this story. Watson is out on the moors by himself for most of the book and he writes reports back to Holmes on what is happening. Not a bad novel, but not as good as the average Sherlock Holmes stories.
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
This is a collection of stories and I only read the story of Mowgli. It was quite different from the Disney Movie (surprise, surprise). I was not thrilled by it. It did not make me want to keep reading the rest of the stories. I remember reading Rikki-Tikki-Tavi as a kid and not coming away enthralled either. I guess I just don’t get Kipling.
The Mouse In The Mountain: A Doan & Carstairs Mystery by Norbert Davis
This is the first full-length novel in the series. The first was more of a novella. In this adventure Doan and Carstairs go to Mexico. Doan is there on assignment to bring back a corrupt ex-pat to the United States. A major earthquake hits when Doan finally tracks down his target. There is no way out of the remote Mexican village and they get a taste of local corruption. Not that Doan isn’t corrupt, he gets a little extra at the end.
The Static Of Spheres by Eric Kraft
This is a novella that was offered for free on Kindle. It was okay. It is the narrated by an adult looking back on a time before television. The narrator remembers wanting a really good radio. This leads him to think that he would like a short-wave radio and talks his grandfather into helping him build one. In truth the grandfather builds the whole thing, it takes more than a year and never works. It was a nice kind nostalgic look back that ultimately didn’t lead very far. Enjoyable as it goes, but didn’t make me want to buy a full novel that had the same characters which was the reason that Amazon offered this for free.
Suicide Squeeze by Victor Gischer
A down on his luck repoman is hired to take back a sloop. It gets complicated when the Japanese mafia and a priceless baseball card are involved. A lot of people end up dead and this was supposed to be funny, but I did not find it so. Kind of typical hard-boiled everyone in the book is a scumbag type of book.
The 100 Minute Bible by Michael Hinton
It was cheap and promised to be an overview of the Bible that touched on all the major themes. It might be good if you have almost no knowledge of the Bible, but it gave me no insight at all.
An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris
The third in a series of books about Harper Connelly and her step brother, Tolliver Lang. Harper has the ability to find dead bodies. She is hired by a woman whose son went missing. What she finds are many bodies. She discovers that there is a serial killer in town. This is probably the creepiest in the series. In a sort of creepy twist, Harper and Tolliver, who aren’t actually related by blood, but have acted as brother and sister throughout the series, become romantically involved.
Holocaust House: A Doan & Carstairs Mystery by Norbert Davis
This is the first in the Doan & Carstairs series. It is a novella and introduces us to the characters. Carstairs, the Great Dane, has a very small role in this book. It is amusing and made me want to read the other books in the series. This was written during World War II, but before the discovery of just how vast the Jewish Holocaust was. I don’t think the word Holocaust had a different meaning or least a different connotation when the book was written.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
I got this book because it is a phenomenon and I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I have no idea what all the fuss was about. It is an okay book where the mystery is solved 75% into the book and the last 25% of the novel is wrap up. Could have used a lot of editing. The actual girl who has the dragon tattoo, Lisbeth Salander, is an interesting character, but she is really the only interesting character and is really just a supporting, although critical, character. I will not be reading the rest of the series.
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
A lot of classic novels are offered for free on Kindle. This was one. It is a story I was generally familiar with. I saw the movie musical as a kid. Enough of it has seeped into the popular culture that it is hard not to know the basic story. It kind of surprises me that this has become such a classic. Oliver is really not that interesting of a character and the whole plot is dependent on about three-dozen really amazing coincidences. I can one or two big coincidences in a plot, but they just kept happening. I heard someone describe it as a fairytale. I think that is an apt description in that what happens is really no less plausible, although a lot more gritty, than The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz.
The Art Of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein
This is another book narrated by a dog, in this case Enzo, the faithful dog of an aspiring racecar driver. That is where the similarity with the Chet and Bernie series ends. It is occasionally funny and you do care about the main characters, but this is a sad book where really awful things happen to people. It ends up on a happy note where Enzo is finally reincarnated as a human (always his wish throughout the book). But he is not just any human he is a formula one racing champion.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
I bought this book because I saw the trailer for the movie and thought it looked interesting. I read the book and it is interesting, although rather gruesome at times. It is narrated by Susie Salmon a 14 year-old girl who was brutally raped and murdered by a serial killer who lives in the neighborhood. She looks down from heaven and watches as her murder tears her family apart. She is able to have some influence giving come-uppance to her murderer. But that takes years. He is never actually caught. It worked in a weird way as a novel. I watched the movie after reading the book and didn’t think it worked as a movie at all. I’m not even sure why anyone who read this book thinks it would work as a movie.
Murder Takes The Cake by Gayle Trent
It was recommend to me by Amazon. The description seemed funny. It was okay. It is about a woman who moves back to her home town and tries to start a cake business. When she delivers a cake to a very difficult customer, she finds the customer dead. It seems almost everyone in town had a motive. She becomes an amateur detective and gives recipes for pastries and other food along the way.
Consent To Kill by Vince Flynn
Mitch Rapp battles a Saudi Billionaire who wants revenge for the death of his brother. The Saudi hires a couple of German assassins to kill Mitch. It is classic Mitch Rapp being a gnarly dude. But in the end Mitch shows some compassion to the assassins. Kind of a surprise. The new Mitch Rapp book, American Assassin comes out today. I’m sure I’ll be writing about it in the next update of my Kindle reading list.
