Thursday, January 28, 2016

What I've Been Reading: January 2016

I wish I had more interesting news here, but the reading doldrums continue here. I'm reading about a book a week, though my goal for the year (have you set your reading goal on GoodReads.com?) would have me reading double that. I'm sure this will pick up as soon as I stop binge-watching Jessica Jones on Netflix and knitting during my lunch hour! In any case, there are still some good ones to share from this month.

Still Life With Crows, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. I have not been this dedicated to a series in at least a few years. I cannot stop reading them, and have no desire to try! Here, FBI Special Agent Pendergast finds his curiosity piqued by a murderous tableau found in a Kansas cornfield. Is it a serial killer, or a darker curse lurking on the very land itself?

The Orchardist, by Amanda Coplin. This is my book club's choice for February, so I decided to get an early start on it. This is a haunting story of a solitary orchardist who provides shelter to two runaway teenage girls in the untamed American West, and the dramatic consequences of his actions, which spin out across the following decades. At the same time, he must also confront the troubling circumstances surrounding his own past, and how he came to the orchard decades before. I have a feeling this will provoke a lot of good discussion--it is packed with layers of stories and characters that build beautifully on one another. This is one to be savored, not devoured.

The Japanese Lover, by Isabelle Allende. If you want to know what our staff is buzzing about right now, this is it--a multi-generational saga that reaches from present-day San Francisco to WWII-era Poland and America. Engrossing from the first page, this is another novel to be savored, even as you can't stop turning the pages long past your bedtime. Very highly recommended. Also available in Large Print and Audiobook formats.

Brimstone, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. You guessed it, book 5 in the Special Agent Pendergast series! Back on the East Coast after his case in Kansas, Pendergast encounters some old friends from previous books, chief among them Vincent D'Agosta, now working in a lesser capacity for the Southampton Police Department. Their worlds collide once more while both investigate the sinister homicide of a universally hated art-critic who, it turns out, spent his last night alive trying frantically to make amends with those he wronged most in the past, resulting in a long list of rather unusual suspects. This series is so compulsively readable, maybe it's no wonder I'm not getting so much else done these days?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Megan when last I checked the library didn't have The Tsar of Love and Techo by Anthony Marra. Just finished it and it is fabulous - short listed for a bunch of awards. You might want to look at acquiring it for the library.

Megan Norrell said...

Thanks for the suggestion, Sandra! I've added it to the library's next order!