October Books

Hi everyone. Happy weekend.  

This Saturday it is time for my monthly book post that I write  to help me keep track of what I have read. If you are here for Art Every Day Month, day 6, then skip all the way down to the end for my daily art photo (if you aren't up for reading about books). As many of you probably have figured out,  I love reading other people's book posts, and maybe you do also. If so, here's my latest. If not, don't feel bad about skipping the post.

My first 2 books for the month were read simultaneously. The Inspector Morse mystery (The Last Bus to Woodstock) was for bedtime, or nap time, or just when I felt like something that was “lighter” to read. My second book, the story of DNA, was great if I sat down to for some more serious reading time, even though it wasn't a particulary difficult read.

Perhaps you might remember watching the Inspector Morse mysteries (in the US they were on Masterpiece Theater) back in the day. The series starred John Thaw as Morse and Kevin Whately as Lewis. I always enjoyed them and decided it was time to read at least one of the actual books. 

This book was excellent, but I also found it much darker than I remember the show being. A young woman is raped and murdered; her body is found in the parking lot of a pub. Inspector Morse has just met his  sidekick, Lewis. Morse is as brilliant but as crotchety  as I remember him being on the show. (Well maybe even more crotchety than I remember him on the show as it has been quite awhile since I'd watched the series.) This book was published in the mid-1970's, and it feels 1970's. I'm not sure in this day and age that Lewis would stick  very long with Morse.

The murder is solved with an unexpected twist. I didn't see it coming. I wonder how Lewis and Morse get on in the rest of this series? I may have to read a few more to answer that question.

I picked up this latest  DNA book because I find the story of the discovery of the structure of DNA very interesting. I've read several books about the people and these events, and I have also seen many films on the subject, so I wasn't sure this book was going to tell me all that much new. I decided to give this new release a try anyhow, because  I am really fascinated with this story. 

I was quite wrong about it just rehashing an old information. Yes the story is  there, and yes, there were familiar items, but I learned a lot of other information also. 

This book was one of the best science books I have recently read. It is very well written, so even someone unfamiliar with the story could get a lot out of it. For me, I like how the author introduced all the characters involved at first, with details, but still made the book flow at a really nice pace. If I didn't know better, I would almost think this book was written as a piece of fiction.

I know this may not be everyone's type of book, but if this is something you would enjoy reading about, then I would  highly recommend this book.

My first listen of the month was this freebie on Audible. I read this book back in the 1980's, but I didn't remember anything about it.

A dead man is found in another man's  bathtub, stark naked except for some pince-nez glasses balanced on his nose.  Lord Peter Whimsey, an amateur detective, gets involved on the case. This is book 1 of this series by Dorothy L. Sayers. It stars her character Lord Peter Whimsey. It is set in the 1920's, and this novel was written by Sayers in 1923. 

It took awhile for me to get used to the narrator, David Case, and he did a great job once I adjusted to the combination of his accent and the author's style. (It did mean I had to listen to chapter one twice just to get the flow going.)

Who was the dead man in the bathtub? Could he be a missing famous fanancier? Or is he someone else. I very much enjoyed this book. It ended with a rather long "soliloquy"  from the murderer, even though by then you knew who the murder was. That did wrap up the story nicely, and overall, it worked. I guess that might have been the style almost 100 years ago when this book was written, but is probably different from how an author would wrap up a similar book today. 

My next listen was this true life murder story by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi.  The Monster of Florence is the name a press gave to the serial killer  who struck in that Italian City between 1968-1985 and who has never been caught or identified.

I've read several books by Preston before (some of his fiction and nonfiction), and he is a very good writer. In this book, he and Italian journalist Mario Spezi wrote  about several unsolved murders in the Florence, Italy area that started back in the 1960’s and that had ended by the time Preston lived there. Preston was inspired to learn more about them because at least one of the murders happened in the garden of the home he was renting. These murders had been  to young couples who were sharing some intimate moments in their cars. 

Spezi was a local reporter who befriended Preston and who wrote about the murders for newspapers from early on. Part one of the book is about the murder and Spezi's reporting of it.  Part 2 is more about the author's life in Italy and how that relates to the murder, but also includes Spezi. .This book has lots of surprising twists and turns for certain. It is not a very straight forward case, and even the authors were accused of the murders while they were investigating it.

Because I was listening, I found it hard to keep track of every lead and every detail of the murders, but the story is fascinating. I like how the author added in some other information about life in Florence as well as Italy also. This book has lots of "characters", some likable, some not. I was listening for enjoyment, so even though sometimes I feel like I need to remember more details from a book, this time I didn't worry about that.

One thing I found strange was how at certain points during the reading, music would just start to play for a few seconds. I am guessing it was a change of story and break in the chapter, but the music was unusual. 

You might remember I read  and wrote about the book Eight Perfect Murders a couple of months ago. In this fictional story, a series of murders  were solved by going back to a blog post, in which the post's author shared what he thought of as 8 books that were the perfect ways to murder someone . Here's the link to that post if you are curious about that book: (August's Reading).

Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles is one of those 8 books. It was originally published in 1931. Right in the first paragraph you know who the murderer is and who he is going to kill. The main character is quite a ladies man who is married to an overbearing wife. I can't say he is a very likable character. I did take me awhile to get into this story, but once I did, I wanted to know what happened.  Since the book was published many years ago, some of it was slightly dated.I thought it would take the whole book for that first-paragraph-of-the-story mentioned murder to happen, but it did not. The author created a story that had several twists and turns as you read through it, especially the ending.

 It took me longer than it should have to get through the book. This is not because of the book, but because instead of reading as much at night as I usually do, I was sucked into some TV on Netflix. I did watched some good shows and documentaries though, so I didn't feel bad that about the TV. And the reality is, some months you want to read more and some months you don't.

With Halloween coming, I wanted to listen or read to at least one seasonal inspired story. I don't know if this book would be classified as Gothic style horror or fantasy (or maybe both), but it was a very enjoyable listen. The narrator,  Katherine Kelligren, was a an excellent and very animated reader.

Ramses the Damned, The Passion of Cleopatra is book 2 in Anne's Rice's Mummy series. In book 1, a Mummy is discovered by an English archaeologist digging in Egypt during  the Edwardian time period.  The archaeologist then suddenly dies, and his daughter, Julia Stratford,  brings the Mummy to her home in England for an exhibition in memory of her father.  When the Mummy comes back to life from an ancient Egyptian pharmaceutical, he ends up eventually becoming engaged to this young woman.  That might sound a bit of a creepy fantasy (which of course this story is), but I really enjoyed book 1. Setting this story in the early 1900's is perfect for the tale, and  Anne Rice wrote a  good story. 

Book 2 picks up where book 1 left off. The story begins and woven throughout it are recaps of book one. That was good because it is amazing how many details I had forgotten in the few years since I had read the first volume. 

In this next installment, written by Anne Rice and her son Christopher, Ramses the Mummy is back, as is the also brought back to life Queen Cleopatra. The explanation of how Ramses, who lived a very long time before Cleopatra, is able to know the last queen of Egypt makes fictional sense. Cleopatra is an incomplete being however, and she is an angry lady. There are also some even older and more magical eternals around also,  giving  life to those who can get their hands on this ancient elixir.  A few of the characters have psychic connections between them as well. All of these characters are woven together in a story that doesn't get boring. If you are looking for a suspenseful fantasy story that will keep you listening, then I would recommend these first 2 books.

I  picked up this Ken Follett paperback at Costco a few months ago, and I've finally got around to reading it.  I've read the first 2 books in this series, The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. The Pillars of the Earth is about the building of a Cathedral in a fictional English town called Knightsbridge in the twelfth century. It is one of my favorite books. (If you have never read it, it is long but highly recommended.) The second volume in this series, World Without End, takes places about 200  years after the first book, and it was also good, but I thought not quite as good (for me) as book 1. There is a third book, A Column of Fire, which I have not yet read.  My latest reading book, The Evening and the Morning, is a prequel to the first book, and it is set in 997 CE, just at the end of the Dark Ages. 

Since this book is just over 900 pages long and since I started it late in month, I haven't finished it. (I definitely need to find some extended reading time!)  It is not a hard read however, and it is a very good story. I am really enjoying the time period it is set in. There are Viking raids, robbers hiding out in the woods, both a corrupt church and  ruling lords too. Follett is  great at making villains you really dislike, which adds to the story. So far (and I am just a bit more than half way through), I am giving this book 5 stars. 

 

My last listen for the month is this novel, based on the real life socialite spy Nancy Wake who was one of the most decorated women  during  World War 2 and also a British spy. She was also one of the most wanted women by the Nazis. Two of my friends recommended this novel to me.

This historical novel pulls you in right away. It starts with Nancy jumping out of a plane, and quickly moves on to her being at an Adolph Hitler rally in Berlin. Nancy Wake was a reporter with Hearst newspaper in Paris at the start of the war. An Australian by birth, she was married to a Frenchman. She also trained with the British to work in espionage. There is so much more to this novel, and I don't want to give it away, but if you like World War 2 books and haven't read this one, then I highly recommend you do. I had a hard time not stopping everything just to listen to this story.

My last book for the month is this one.

I've had this knitting book for a few years now. I was looking through my pattern collection because I had the urge to knit some mittens. Something pretty, something faster than a sweater, and something that I could make while watching TV at night. Plus, I wanted to use some yarn in my stash and not have to buy any. 

Do you see the red and pink mittens right above the SH in the author Shirley A. Scott's name? That's the pattern I chose. 

And for AEDM, here's how my knitting is coming along.

You can see instead of pink and red like on the book's cover, I chose brown and turquoise for colors. By the time this posts (since I'm writing this Friday afternoon), I might even be done with the right hand mitten. I just need to do a few shaped rows at the top and finish off the thumb.

The best part about this yarn is that I bought it when I visited Iceland in 2016. Not only is it fun to make mittens, but it's some nice trip memories too.

That's all there is for October's books.  I love recommendations. I hope you maybe found something that might interest you.

Thanks for visiting.