Books read in April 2012

[lizbee]

A bit late, on account of how I had other things to do the morning of May 1.  (Life without a gall bladder - pretty great so far!  This morning I managed to make my own breakfast!  And later I'm going to hobble a few metres to the train station, then hobble a few more to a cafe, and have lunch with a friend!  THIS IS EXCITING STUFF!)

Nothing to Envy: love, life and death in North Korea - Barbara Demick
Fourth Year Triumphs at Trebizon - Anne Digby
Cover Her Face - P D James
A Mind To Murder - P D James
Unnatural Death - P D James
Shroud for a Nightingale - P D James
The Black Tower - P D James
Death of an Expert Witness - P D James
Ran Away - Barbara Hambly
A Taste for Death - P D James
Devices and Desires - P D James
Original Sin - P D James

April's reading actually goes full circle, in that I finished Nothing to Envy in the waiting room at the Royal Melbourne hospital, and finished Original Sin a month later in the pre-operative assessment ward. 

Nothing to Envy and Ran Away were definitely the stand-outs for the month. Nothing to Envy is a straight up set of personal histories of life in North Korea, and the author makes no pretensions about her book being anything else.  And Ran Away was just a straight-up satisfying entry in the Benjamin January series.  A few months ago I said I really wanted fic about January and Ayasha fighting crime in Paris, and about a third of Ran Away was exactly that.  (Though I was slightly thrown by a character being named Shamira, which is my stepmother's name.) 

As for the rest, I decided on a whim to read all of P D James' Dalgliesh novels in order, which for some reason I had never done before.  It's proving somewhat unsatisfying -- I don't know if I'm just not in the mood for James' politics, or if her quirks are becoming a little too obvious, but the only reason I haven't taken a break is because I can't get into A Brief History of Montmaray. 

Comments

[melyanna]

I read Cover Her Face, A Mind to Murder, Shroud for a Nightingale, and The Black Tower last year or the year before. Stalled out in Death of an Expert Witness. I felt very ambiguous about them. I've gone back to reading hard sci-fi since and have generally enjoyed that more.

[lizbee]

I read her entire back catalogue (at the time) when I was in high school, and caught up on the newer books a couple of years ago. And I like them very much, I'm just finding that reading in order highlights the general stagnation of character development. Dalgliesh is Very Private And A Poet And Likes Churches And Driving Alone In The Countryside. Kate has Class Issues. There's a revolving door of male officers who usually serve as a foil to Kate (this I like! Usually it would be a regular male and a revolving door of women!). James vaguely disapproves of the ideology of contemporary mores while writing interesting and sympathetic gay characters and PoC. It's just a bit repetitive.