A Quiet Weekend.....

Thinking of all who serve our country today and those who died defending our freedoms.....

I was excited to have a whole weekend to myself, with the family out of town: just me and the dog for 2 days! It was nice for a day, then I started missing all the noise, reminding me that "you don't always know what you've got 'til it's gone!" But I did get some reading done and some movies watched.

I checked out some DVDs from the library (natch!), and enjoyed them. Red Sparrow was a lot more graphic than I usually watch, and I guess I'm a little surprised that Jennifer Lawrence was willing to show that much....of herself! But it was a good spy story based on the book by Jason Matthews. I also really liked the new Tomb Raider starring Alica Vikander. I actually think I liked her portrayal better than Angelina Jolie's, but then again, I'm not that much of a fan of the latter actress.

I recently read The Dead House by Billy O'Callaghan, which was a change for me: a creepy ghost story. It's a short novel, and it's a quick and eerie read. An art dealer is invited to visit one of his clients on the west coast of Ireland for the weekend, where he meets his future wife, and something is let loose into the world that has long reaching consequences. It starts in the present with the art dealer looking back into the past and thinking about what happened. When he was visiting Maggie, his client, she got out an Ouija board, because there was some mystery surrounding the house she had bought and was renovating. It was all fun and games until the art dealer goes back to see Maggie some months later and she's gone quite insane. Back in the present, he comes to realize that what what let loose back then isn't quite done with him yet.  This was really more like a short story, and I thought it did exactly what the author intended: made you feel the sense of dread and uneasiness that ghost stories often do. I'm not sure I'd highly recommend it, but it was an interesting change of pace for me.

I'm just about finished with The Summer Wives by Beatriz Williams, a new author for me. It's getting so cold here that it was nice to read about someplace warm. This novel takes place over three time-lines and is a little confusing if you don't read it straight through. I put it down a few times to read something else (as I always do!), and it took me a bit to get the story back straight in my mind when I picked it up again. In this historical fiction novel, which begins in 1969, a famous actress returns home to Winthrop Island on the East Coast after having a car accident. She hasn't been back to the island since she left at 18 after a scandal occurred, and the details of what happened are slowly revealed throughout the course of the book. This is basically a story of conflict between the "townies" who live year-round on the island, and the "summer" people who have houses there. Miranda, the main character, becomes involved with both sets of residents when her mother marries into one of the wealthy families, and a fisherman whose family runs the lighthouse catches her eye. There are a lot of secrets that are revealed and the author does a good job of dropping surprises into the narrative to keep the reader interested. Other than a little confusion over the timeline and the relationship of some of the characters, this has been an excellent read.

The Current comes out in January, and the publisher, Algonquin/Workman, generously allowed me to read an early digital galley after I heard some good things about the book from a colleague. I'm about half-way through and this one is really good! The author has taken some risks in his writing: a lot of really long sentences with little punctuation; but this serves to give the narrative a propulsive pace that makes it hard to put down. It takes some getting used to as you read this type of writing, but the story is so intense and suspenseful, that I'm hanging in there.

In the middle of winter, outside a small Minnesota town, two young women are pulled from a river. One survives, and in her grief over losing her friend and someone else close to her, she realizes that her accident is linked to an unsolved murder that happened 10 years previously. This book has a lot of characters, and the POV of the narrative switches frequently. That, along with the sentence structure makes this a challenging read, but I am finding it really hard to put down! I like to be challenged as a reader and appreciate it when authors take risks. It doesn't always work, and I imagine some readers won't like the writing. But I am really enjoying it!

Next up for me may be The Last by Hanna Jameson, which isn't coming out until next spring.  This one is a homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, with a twist (there seem to be a number of similar stories being published lately)! Set in a Swiss hotel after an apocalyptic event, twenty survivors attempt to identify a murder in their midst. This one is being promoted as a dystopian psychological thriller, and it sounds really good!

What books are you enjoying reading this fall? I'd love to hear about them!