Home

Weblog (home)

Knitalong

Pattern of
the Month

On the Needles
(...and Off the Needles)

Stitchcraft

Vintage
Patterns

About the
Idle Hands

« Unravel 2012 | Main | The Reindeer Inn »

Wednesday February 29, 2012

Books in February

  • Recalled to Life by Reginald Hill [read by Brian Glover] BOM-RecalledtoLife.jpg
    Returning to Dalziel and Pascoe to read the 13th in the series. Dalziel has the opportunity to visit New York, while Pascoe stays at home worrying about the state of his marriage (and Dalziel).
    I like the way Dalziel is portrayed as a tough, intelligent, and serious-minded policeman, (though to some extent, a figure of fun as far as his colleagues are concerned). He may be "the Fat Controller" but he is also fit, making him a physical as well as a mental force to be reckoned with.
    Brian Glover made an excellent reader, both with and without his Yorkshire accent.

  • The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell BOM-DogsofRiga.jpg
    Working through the Kurt Wallander series with this, the second, book. First published in 1992, the theme is around political change in the Eastern Block countries and what it means when "the authoritites" are corrupt and cannot be trusted.
    It is due to be one of the English (Kenneth Brannagh) adaptations of the Wallander novels - series 3, not yet aired.

  • Death Comes to Pemberley by P D James BOM-DeathComestoPemberley.jpg
    More P D James than Jane Austen pastiche, which is what you might expect. The author has used the characters, and, in my opinion, kept them pretty well all in character.
    I found the introduction, revisiting previous scenes, quotes, and general scene-setting, rather dull - I feel I am already overly familiar with the material "to date", although I appreciate that the book needs to stand alone, and it might be useful for those who are not familiar with Pride and Prejudice. The author does advance theories about the relationships between the characters, somewhat outside the original novel, which I found quite interesting (never having studied English Literature academically), though I am not sure I agreed with all of them.

  • Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves [read by Julia Franklin] BOM-TellingTales.jpg
    I wanted to read these books as I saw the excellent TV series with Brenda Blethyn playing DI Vera Stanhope. Having listened to this one (the second in the series) I think they did a pretty good and faithful job of dramatising them - and Brenda was wonderful of course, making a fair stab at disguising her many positive physical attributes in order become the frumpy Vera.
    The book had a slow start for me, only becoming interesting once Vera appeared on the scene - but the I obviously warmed to it and I became just as interested in everyone else as I got towards the end of the book.

Posted by Christina at 9:53 AM. Category: Books of the Month

Comments