Book Christmas Advent Calendar, Day 8: Mystery books for the Christmas tree - meme from Kerrie

    Kerrie over at Mysteries in Paradise has a cool meme going, where she lists the 10 books she would give as presents this year.  The 10 books are the 10 best mysteries she has read this year.  Her post is here.
      I think this is a super idea.  The 10 best books read, or you could do 10 best books in a genre, or whatever you like.  So I was looking through the list of books I've read this year - 78 so far, including 34 mysteries - and this is the list of books I would give as Christmas presents this year.  I don't do a points rating like Kerrie does, I go by how I remember the stories and if they have a hold on me still.  And how much I enjoyed them!

Susan's 10 Mystery books for the Christmas tree
1. Like This, Forever - Sharon Bolton.  LOVED this mystery. Review here.
2. The Detective's Daughter - Lesley Thomson.  Reviewed here last week.  I just gave a copy to my mother for her birthday (so already given!). 
3. Talking To the Dead - Harry Bingham.  Another different main character, she suffers from Cotard's disease, where she thinks at one point earlier in her life she is dead.  Now recovering, Fiona Griffiths starts working as a constable.  Very interesting character, and the other characters are good.  Really enjoy the second one, as well, Love Story, With Murders.
4. True Murder - Yaba Badoe.  Chilling.  Suspenseful.  Wonderful characters, and creepy in places. Highly recommended.  Unforgettable gut-clenching ending. 
5. The Man on the Balcony - Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.  Number 3 in the Martin Beck mystery series from Sweden.  A chilling story of the abduction and murder of young girls, and how the police have to hunt for him with very few clues.  Will they find him, or not?  A mistake is made early on by Beck, which makes the reader (at least I did!) spend my time going, "come on Martin!  Think!"  The painstaking investigation is representative of a true policeman's work.  Very good and suspenseful.
6. To Darkness and Death - Julia Spencer-Fleming. Reviewed here.
7. Invisible City - Julia Dahl. Reviewed here last week.
8. The Magus of Hay - Phil Rickman. Reviewed here.
9. White Bones - Graham Masteron.  Reviewed here.
10. The Outcast Dead - Elly Griffiths.  The latest in the Elly Griffiths mystery series, as good as all the others.  This series is consistently good with all the characters, though sometimes the plot can be a little uneven. Not in this case. A set of bones is uncovered during an excavation, and Ruth is called in.  She identifies a female skeleton and a child's skeleton.  The female skeleton has a hook for it's arm.  Norfolk just happens to have a historical figure of a woman in the Victorian century who ran an orphanage for unwanted children, and several disappeared.  She was hung for the murder of them.  Is this her skeleton?  Dark, disturbing, and at the same time sad.  Ruth doesn't believe in the folktale told about Mother Hook who sold her children to the resurrection men for money.  For, along with the bodies, she uncovers a journal.  Very good mystery, unputdownable as ever with Elly Griffiths.  Several side stories also advance, which I love to see in a mystery series.  And we discover a little more about Ruth herself and her relationships in her family.  A solid mystery with several macabre elements.  Highly recommended as they all are in this series.

Bonus mystery:
I really wanted to add the first Anna Dean mystery, Bellfield Hall, featuring Miss Dido Kent, though I couldn't think of who likes Jane Austen type writing as much as I do.  If you know someone who loves Jane Austen, then this is the mystery book for them.  Fun, and as close to Jane Austen as we can get if she were to write a mystery.

I liked doing this so much, I think I will do a separate list tomorrow that includes the other different genres I read this year, as I read some good fantasy and non-fiction and found a new poet I love.

So there you have it.  What would you give as a Christmas present that you really enjoyed this year? 

Happy New Year! ( a little late) and new Phil Rickman mystery rocks

Happy New Year, everyone!!! 

Yes, I'm late.  We were sick with some stomach virus over New Year's again.  We had a wonderful game of Dr Who monopoly, and brought in the new year quietly at home.  It was the first time we'd been at home for several years, as we usually go to my friends' who hold an annual New Year's get-together for our group.  I'm hoping this won't be the shape of our entire year.....but so far my eldest son had a raging fever for most of this week, and yes, it's Friday, and I'm home with a sore throat and generally achy all over.  So let's hope this is it for January. 

                                              

I've already read a book that I love.  This is a good way to begin the year!!!  The Magus of Hay, by Phil Rickman.  The latest - book 12 - in the Merrily Watkins series.  In this book we end up in that loveliest of book towns, Hay-on-Wye, which everyone knows has the largest number of bookstores in any city in the world. Except in this novel, the number of bookstores has been falling due to the recent recession and the rise of Amazon and online bookstores.  A couple, Robin and Betty Thorogood, who are returning characters from an earlier book in the series, have decided to buy an empty shop that once used to be a bookstore, and turn it back into a bookstore, in Hay.  Only the shop has a very bad history, and Betty, who is a witch, gets a very bad feeling upon entering the store before buying it.  At the same time, a body is found in a pool in a river.  When DI Frannie Bliss, back from his terrible beating in the previous novel, goes to investigate what should be a routine drowning, what is discovered at the dead man's house persuades him that Merrily should be called in to provide him some advise.  Then the young constable who notified Bliss of the body, goes missing.  Who took her?  Why?  Who was helping the old man shortly before his death?  And what is the link to the shop that Betty and Robin have bought and are setting up to open?

I really enjoyed this mystery.  I especially enjoyed the moments of eerie atmosphere,  creepy sense of dabbling in the dark arts, and the return of Betty and Robin and Gwyn Arthur Jones, the detective superintendent from the same book - The Crown of Lights - who is now retired and strangely enough, has opened a bookstore in Hay. 

Lol and Jane and Gomer are off-page for much of this novel. The few times Lol phones Merrily - he is off on a tour, his first one, to promote his new material - I am reminded of how much I like his character, and like him with Merrily.  It was good to see Merrily on her own for once, too, and how difficult she finds it, with Jane gone with Eiron on a dig in Wales.  Huw Owen is back, and he is such a fun character also!  I really like him!

As always, there is a rational explanation for much of what happens, and always the sense that there is an undercurrent of the uncanny, the unseen, and malevolent forces that exist side by side in the world with the rational.  There is the beginnings of a new story thread too, with Merrily and the new reverend who comes in to 'replace' her temporarily as she is supposed to be on vacation, which I expect will be part of the next book or two.  It will be interesting, because Merrily might be forced out of the diocese and her job if she is not careful, and meanwhile something that is not holy and right, is trying to get in through her church and the replacement reverend.......

Excellent series, fabulous and well-drawn characters, and lovely creepy sometimes scary atmosphere of hauntings, eerie happenings, and ghostly manifestations.  Highly recommended.

I hope you have had a healthy start to your 2014, and have been reading some good books too. I have to catch up with all of your new blog posts.  Oh, and do my final books of the year post.  I haven't forgotten.

Next up:  The Abominable by Dan Simmons finally came into the library for me.  Last night, before I began feeling really ill, I managed to get there to pick it up. This weekend, in between napping, I will be reading this much-anticipated adventure to Mount Everest, just before our dreadfully cold weather (and this means -24c at night) returns mid-next week.  Who will be colder, me or the characters in the book? Brr. I hope to be deliciously scared too, as I was when I read The Terror by him, which I loved.

Happy Easter! Cake and I won at Monopoly, and April fool's day....

                                                                 

  Happy Easter, dear book bloggers.  Above is a picture of the Easter cake I made this morning, from Nigella Lawson's cook book Feast.  Easter Egg Nest Cake.  Yum.  It's flourless, made with chocolate, eggs, sugar, and vanilla, with whipping cream and more chocolate for the icing.  MMMMMM.
                                                       

The Dr Who comes from the game of Monopoly we played after Easter lunch.  Dr Who Monopoly was a Christmas gift we gave to our family this year.  It's quickly becoming a big hit with us.  Dr Who lives at our family....I will be doing a post shortly on just how much Dr Who is alive here.  But first: I won!  I won the game!  Usually I am the first loser (which as you know is the BIG loser of the game), or second last. I use the scarf (from 4th Doctor Tom Baker), which my daughter says is because I am like him.  In the picture below are my eldest son's girlfriend, my eldest son and youngest son next to him, then my husband and my daughter.  The cupcakes were brought by Heidi, a wonderful surprise and very delicious too.

                                                               
Then, mother nature played a joke on us:
                                          
*sigh*  The temperature is going to plummet tonight, and very cold the next few days.

What Reading Time?
 I haven't been able to read with getting ready for Easter (Easter hunt, two meals, etc), though I am reading Of Blood and Honey and enjoying it so far.  Now I wish I had a day to just read!!!  We are about to watch The Hobbit to round out the evening.

Still, I made sure the bunny was good to me:
 Below is the book I bought for myself for Easter:  Candlenight by Phil Rickman.  It's his first novel published, and not available until recently.  It looks good, set in a remote Welsh Mountain village, with an ancient secret the villagers are hiding.  No one does atmospheric horror like Rickman.  Happy Easter, everyone!  I hope the bunny was good to you too!
                                                           

amazing interview with Phil Rickman

No, not here. Sadly the interview with Phil Rickman is not with me, but wonderfully is over at Kittling's Books, here.  It is a fabulous interview.  He has a great sense of humour.  And yes, there is a new book in the Merrily Watkins series coming out next May: The Turning of the Hay.  Yeesss!!!

 In other news - how life affects reading
There is a hole in the foundation of the house and we have it sandbagged to keep rain from going into the foundation.  We have some contractors coming to look and give estimates.....this happened two weeks ago, and we are still trying to deal with it. It's suspected the recent drought we suffered through here in Eastern Ontario is to blame, not that that will fix it or the crack that is running through the foundation on the other side of the house.   It's meant that I can't concentrate on reading very well.  Because we are going through our divorce, the decision to sell the house or not was still on-going, and now even that has been pushed back, as the house has to be fixed before any other decisions can be made.  It's been a rough year, and this was so unexpected.  I suspect this is why I've been reading so many short stories in the past two weeks.  I am finding it hard to concentrate on reading for any length of time. I also seem to have 8 books on the go again, a sign that I am stressed and not able to settle into anything big. 

Does life affect you like this too?  I hate it when I can't read for very long.  I feel like I am missing a piece of myself when that happens.

Who says readers don't converse in public?

Remember that post I had a few weeks back, from Chris at Book-a-Rama's post, who spotted the U.S. article about 'people who have their nose stuck in a book are considered anti-social and the stigma attached?'  Well, unexpectedly, I have the perfect answer to that outdated stupid idea:

This morning, yes, this first dark Monday morning after the clocks were moved back one hour,  the sun was just rising as my bus stopped at the major transfer station near our home, and people rushed on to the bus. Morning is not a time I talk very much.  A gentleman took the seat beside me.  He had a book in his hand, Bk 12 of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series.  He noticed me staring at the book (he hadn't opened it yet) so I said, "I'm sorry, I was looking at the book because I read up to book 9 in this series, and I didn't realize Bk 12 was out now."  And for the next ten minutes as our bus raced along the river drive into the heart of Ottawa, we discussed Robert Jordan, Isaac Asimov, Tanya Huff (he's read Enchanted Emporium, which I have sitting on my shelf to be read), Trudi Canavan (very good series he says, I haven't read it yet though I've had it from the library), and I mentioned Robin Hobb and Connie Willis, two of my favourite writers.  My stop came first, and so I said goodbye, and as I jumped off the bus, I thought to myself, "I have no idea who you are, fellow bookworm, but that was a lovely conversation about books."

Now I do have to caution you, my Gentle Readers, that most of the time I don't talk to strangers!  and especially not to strange men!  but sometimes, books break down that wall of silence we all cast around ourselves as we make our way to and from work.  This was a most unlooked for experience, as usually I have my nose in my book and I really am not looking to talk first thing in the morning.    And truly, I was  not looking for any conversation this morning, I just didn't want him to feel awkward with someone staring at the book he was holding.

So thank you, fellow bus-rider and bookreader, for an enjoyable conversation about books.  And as for that stigma about reading books?  What stigma?  I feel so much privilege in being part of a society that welcomes anyone and everyone who delights in the written word. 

It's still dark far too early in the afternoon now!  I want that hour of daylight back!

I know I still have to do my roundup of books read for Carl's RIP 5 challenge.  I did get my 10 books read, including - just finished yesterday - Phil Rickman's To Dream of the Dead, wonderfully atmospheric and moody and perfect for this time of year.  So reviews coming shortly.  We have just finished the annual two-birthdays-family visit-Hallowe'en rush at this time of year, on top of which everyone was sick with the cold virus going around Ottawa, so I am just now catching my breath.  I hope you all had fun with the challenge, I've tried to visit as many of you, my Gentle Readers, as I could lately.