Killing Floor by Lee Child (audio)

Posted on August 18, 2011 by pagesofjulia

My love affair with Jack Reacher is going strong; or perhaps it should be just starting here? This is the very first Reacher novel published. (While Child did later publish prequels, he recommends they be read in publication order rather than chronological order. Read all about it.) So, in this book, the Reacher I’ve come to know is just six months out of the army. He’s a former MP – military policeman – just roaming, trying to figure out what he’s doing with himself. He was raised in the army, living just a few months at a time at barracks around the world. When it was time, he went to West Point, and found spending four years in one place bizarre. Then he graduated, entered the army himself, and has lived the rest of his life a few months at a time at barracks around the world, too. So roaming comes naturally. (This is the first time I can remember finding Reacher to be a music fan. The song “Rambling on My Mind” recurs.)

Reacher roams into small-town Margraves, Georgia, and is arrested immediately on a murder charge. He’s calm; he knows he’ll be cleared, since he didn’t do it. But when he finds out who the murder victim was… he’s involved, and has to stick around. The victims start stacking up, and he meets a pretty girl who’s also a local cop, and Reacher is pulled into a big mess. The team of killers is stalking him, and he’s not afraid to do battle, especially considering who they started with.

I’ve written about Reacher quite a bit. He continues to be big and burly and frankly, sexy, and tough and uber-capable and clever. The plot line is actually pretty predictable: Reacher will kill people. He’ll get away with it. He’ll probably get laid, although the sex is not graphic. (The violence is.) He’ll amaze you and make you gasp. Like a sighing reader of romance novels (who reads not to find out if they’ll hook up, but just to be there when they do), I’m not here to find out how he’ll win – I know he will. The suspense is in who the bad guy is and how it all comes out. I feel a little bit wrenched every time he walks away from the town, the situation, the girl, and the new quasi-friends he’s made. But he’ll keep on walking away.

But this is the FIRST time he’s done it! I was thrilled to meet him near the beginning of his lack of career, his aimless wandering, and see his plans formed. This is the first time I’ve seen him consider hanging around – because it’s his first retired adventure. Later in the series he’ll learn not to consider it. We also get to meet his brother (well, sort of) which gives me a differently-angled view into his background. I look forward to reading the prequels, too, for the same reason.

Come meet Reacher at the beginning, y’all. This is a classic of Reacherdom and I love it.

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book beginnings on Friday: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (audio)

Posted on August 12, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Ooh, I’m very excited about this one. For some reason, I’ve been hearing a lot lately about this (not new) book and am anxious to get started. We begin:

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.” Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West.

Okay, well, it’s not a GASPworthy start, but I still feel the pull. For one thing, the idea of “hard” blue skies and “desert-clear” air, and a Far West atmosphere, feels both familiar and alluring to me. I’m all in.

What are you reading?

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Teaser Tuesdays: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Posted on August 2, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!


I am tackling another classic, this time via audiobook in the car. Unabridged, of course! Here is your teaser. Happy Tuesday.

I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in the room, the most astounding details. I simply fled.

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The Hard Way by Lee Child (audio)

Posted on July 13, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Okay, you all know I’m a big fan of the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. I have read 9 of the 15 currently out (with The Affair to come in September, yay!). So please take me seriously when I say this is the best one I’ve read yet!

As has become my habit, I listened to this one as an audiobook in the car. I love the narrator, Dick Hill. I think he has just the right mix of slow, serious cadence (imbuing Reacher’s words with the gravity they deserve), and a lightheartedness in the right moments.

And like all the Reacher novels, this novel is fast-paced, suspenseful – I mean real edge-of-the-set, sitting-in-the-driveway-biting-my-nails-while-Husband-wonders-what-I’m-up-to suspense – and action-packed. Reacher is his usual superhero self. Mysterious characters approach him as he tries to mind his own business, and (with limited reluctance) he enters their world, to try and save a kidnapped woman and child. But wait! Are the bad guys really who we think they are? There is intrigue, including military and international intrigue. There are beautiful, sexy, strong, independent women; some of them are also traumatized. There are loyal sisters. Reacher is cool, funny, comforting, and simultaneously rock-hard strong and smart, and brutally violent. (Only when it’s appropriate, of course.)

In The Hard Way, Reacher is recruited by a team of mercenary ex-special forces soldiers to assist in solving the kidnapping of the boss’s wife & step-daughter. As things unfold, he discovers that he hasn’t been told everything – like the fate of the boss’s first wife, kidnapped five years prior, and the fate of two former employees. His loyalties shift; he’s not sure who he can trust. He meets a former FBI-agent, who was involved in the earlier kidnapping case, who may turn out to be a partner of sorts.

I think part of what made this one extra-special to me was the extremity of the danger and trauma at stake, and the happy ending that our sympathetic characters are teased with, the happiness they MIGHT achieve if Reacher is successful. There are some gruesome images offered up; this is not for the faint-at-heart. But if you love a lone ranger with iron-clad morals, a heart of gold, and a Rambo-style ability to inflict pain on those who deserve it, in a world of beautiful/handsome good guys and really bad bad guys, Reacher may be for you. In fact, it’s rather like the traditional Western novel in that lone-ranger sensibility. But these have an intelligence lacking in the traditional Western (not trying to call them stupid; bear with me). Reacher thinks things through in a split second, and we get to share his thoughts on bullet trajectories, angles, percentages, and the weighing of one possible outcome against another. It’s very cerebral at the same time that it’s very physical. I love it.

Before this novel, I didn’t think I’d have favorites within the series. They’re all pretty great. But I’d put this one up there, and if you’re curious, I’d also pick out Echo Burning as a favorite. It was my first Reacher novel, and I picked it up because of the setting: far West-Texas desert on the Mexican border, which is an area where I have spent some very good times. That got me in the door, and opened up the whole series for me, and I’m SO grateful. It had another extra-high-stakes plot (at least for me… I mean, they’re all high stakes, but these two got me somehow, I don’t know. maybe you’d be “got” by a different pair of them) and that setting that I appreciated so much. Also a real knock-down, drag-out OK Coral sort of final scene that really got me going.

Do you read Reacher? Which one is your favorite? And if you don’t – why not?!? No, I jest, sort of. We don’t all have the same tastes. But for suspense and action, I couldn’t recommend it more highly. If not this one, what’s your favorite series? And do you have a favorite within it?

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book beginnings on Friday: The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly

Posted on July 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

My current audiobook (for the daily commute) is the latest from Connelly, also the fourth of his books featuring Mickey Haller. Here we go!

Mrs. Pena looked across the seat at me and held her hands up in a beseeching manner. She spoke in a heavy accent, choosing English to make her final pitch directly to me.

“Please, you help me, Mr. Mickey?”

I’ve got to say this narrator may not be my cup of tea; but it’s early days yet and I’m certainly glad to be back in Connelly’s competent hands.

Thanks for stopping by. What are YOU reading this weekend?

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Towards Zero by Agatha Christie (audio)

Posted on June 19, 2011 by pagesofjulia

After my disappointment with going outside my known tastes, I have switched back to a tried-and-true. I’m sure somebody out there doesn’t like Agatha Christie, but they have yet to tell me to my face.

I had never heard of Towards Zero, and it involves neither Hercule Poirot nor Miss Marple. But it did have one of the most important Christie trademarks: a twisty-turny puzzle-plot that begs for the reader to try solving the crime before the end of the book. I, at least, am generally incorrect several times over because the plots of her books tend to double back on themselves so often.

This novel opens with a meeting of lawyerly minds (which you can see, incidentally, here), in which the title is explained. Most murder stories (and criminal trials), we are told, begin with the murder, when in fact the relevant story begins much, much earlier, and culminates in the murder as the result of all the previous action. Then we switch to the story at hand. In which…

Nevile Strange and his new wife, Kay, decide to visit Nevile’s mother-figure, Lady Tressilian, not at their usual time of year, but at the same time that Nevile’s first wife Audrey will be visiting. This, predictably, results in a number of uncomfortable, awkward, embarrassing moments and some conflict. (I found it interesting to observe the manners of the day which required referring to both women as “Mrs. Strange.”) Kay is rather bleatingly jealous and unsympathetic; Audrey is long-suffering and stoic but seems forgiving; Nevile is wont to refer to Audrey as “his wife” and ignore Kay, which of course irritates her still more. They make an interesting household, along with Audrey’s longtime admirer, Thomas Royde, just returned from overseas to pursue her; Lady Tressilian’s companion Mary Aldin; and visitor Ted Latimer, Kay’s childhood friend and admirer (parallel to Audrey’s Thomas, although rather opposite in temperament). So. All these folks in a classy country home together trying to be polite and play nice and dance around the love quadrangles, and then a murder takes place, and it’s one of those that could only have been committed by someone from within the household. Very Agatha Christie.

Love Suchet's Poirot.

Missing was Hercule Poirot’s biting wit, though. [Aside. Here is where I admit that I’ve never read Miss Marple! Only Hercule Poirot! Also, I grew up with Poirot on television as played by David Suchet and can’t hear or see him in any other way, for better or for worse. But didn’t he make a wonderful Poirot?] There wasn’t really much humor in this story, which is a Christie-staple in my mind, so that was odd; but it was very, very enjoyable without it, so no foul.

Into this closed household comes the vacationing Superintendent Battle and his nephew, the local Inspector Leach, to solve the crime. There are red herrings by the bucketful, and false leads, and I thought I knew whodunit SO many times, but Christie is a tricky one. The final scenes involve the Superintendent talking through the crime with the lot of them and eliciting a confession – also Christie trademarks. Finally, a little surprise romance which I did not entirely see coming topped off this charming, delightful, delicious little tale.

I love Agatha Christie. There’s a reason she’s hailed as a master (and Wikipedia claims she’s the all-time bestselling writer of books). I haven’t read anywhere near a majority of her works, but what I’ve read is always entertaining and clever and usually funny, too. Recommend.

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book beginnings on Friday: The Hard Way by Lee Child

Posted on June 17, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Welcome back to Jack Reacher’s hard-hitting, fast-paced, intelligent world of good-vs.-evil action. I’m psyched to step into this series again. My last audiobook was Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero which was wonderful, so I’m on a roll now. We begin:

Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man’s life change forever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick.

Ah, Reacher. YOU’re the slick one.

What are you reading?

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did not finish: The Rocky Road to Romance by Janet Evanovich (audio)

Posted on June 15, 2011 by pagesofjulia

To be fair, I barely even started this audiobook. I was trying to expand my horizons a little bit. I’ve never read anything by Janet Evanovich! –shocking, to many readers of genre pop fiction, as she’s one of the bestselling romance/mystery crossover authors out there. She’s also one of the big names here in my little library. But then again, not so shocking when you consider I’m not a reader of romance, really. I am a huge fan of mystery novels, but hers are known to be cozy, funny, romantic/sexy mysteries, which isn’t my style. But, so. I wanted to broaden my reading world and thought I’d pick up one of hers, just to know what I’m missing.

I’ll give JE the benefit of the doubt and assume I picked the wrong one. To be fair, this is a romance – not mystery – title, and not one of her more popular, just judging from circular numbers in my library.

I didn’t even make it through one cd. What I did get was the beginning of the sparks flying between Daisy – cute, hard-working, quirky – and Steve, boss at one of her several jobs and obligatorily hunky, mysterious, and distant. The dialog and general writing was just so stilted, and the characters so pat, that I couldn’t take it. I was eye-rolling so hard I couldn’t watch the road, which was a hazard, so I hit eject. The narrator, C.J. Critt, didn’t help matters any, but I don’t think I should blame her necessarily; she was playing along with the book.

I’m being completely honest about the fact that I couldn’t stand this audiobook. But note the qualifications: not my genre or my style; and not Evanovich’s star character (that would be Stephanie Plum, of the numbered series starting with One for the Money).

I think I’m still determined to give JE a try, but will aim for a Stephanie Plum mystery next time for sure. (Thanks to my mother, with whom I mostly share reading tastes, and who enjoyed One for the Money although not outrageously much.) This one made me grit my teeth.

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book beginnings on Friday: Towards Zero by Agatha Christie

Posted on June 10, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

I am settling comfortably into an audiobook that I am fully confident in. I love Agatha Christie, and it’s been years since I’ve read any of her. I especially like Hercule Poirot, and have very fond memories of listening to Ten Little Indians (aka And Then There Were None) on audiobook with my mother (both parents?) on a road trip somewhere when I was small. That’s about the only audiobook I can ever remember listening to until recently, in fact. Too much lead-in, sorry, let’s hear from the master. This book begins:

The group round the fireplace was nearly all composed of lawyers or those who had an interest in the law. There was Martindale the solicitor, Rufus Lord, KC, young Daniels who had made a name for himself in the Carstairs case, a sprinkling of other barristers, Mr. Justice Cleaver, Lewis of Lewis and Trench and old Mr. Treves. Mr. Treves was close on eighty, a very ripe and experienced eighty.

A relatively sedate opening, yes, but I can already feel Christie’s pull and I know a good mystery awaits! As a side note, I’m enjoying these British accents accompanying me to and from work (recall, the last audiobook I listened to was Thank You, Jeeves). Happy Friday!

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Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (audio)

Posted on June 9, 2011 by pagesofjulia

What a charming little venture into the British peerage. This may be a first for me, but I think the audio format actually improved this experience! (I actually have Right Ho, Jeeves at home in paperback, so I can compare then. Although the voice may already be established in my head… we may never know.)

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was an extremely prolific British humorist; he wrote plays, poems, short stories, novels, and more (I’m getting this mostly from Wikipedia, FYI, along with a general sense I’ve had of him). The stories in his Jeeves series are among his best-known, and I, not knowing much about him, decided to start there.

Thank You, Jeeves is just silliness, but of the most enjoyable sort.

Bertram Wooster (Bertie), our narrator, retires to the country when London society ostracizes his playing of the banjolele, and for the same reason he loses his valet, Jeeves, who can’t stand the playing of the banjolele any more than London can. Jeeves enters the employment of Bertie’s old friend Chuffy, who also houses Bertie in a cottage on his country estate. American millionaire Stoker shows up to discuss business dealings, along with his daughter Pauline, formerly engaged to Bertie, soon engaged to Chuffy. A rather Shakespearean case of mistaken identities, love triangles, and well-meaning bumblings ensues. (Like so often in Shakespeare, a good dose of Telling Everyone The Truth In A Forthright Manner would have solved everything early on, but then there wouldn’t have been a funny book.) Also in Shakespearean fashion, the servant Jeeves is a sharper tack than his employers. Eventually the talented, intelligent, well-read, scheming, and discreet Jeeves solves everyone’s problems up neatly, reuniting several estranged couples, keeping everyone out of jail, and even returning Bertie to London where he belongs, and himself to Bertie’s employ. But not before I get to enjoy all sorts of hilarity and irony, in the events of the book but most especially in the dialog. I think this Wodehouse is a master of goofy dialog, and this narrator Jonathan Cecil performed it admirably. Husband did not follow the action at all but greatly enjoyed hearing the characters exclaim over Lord Whatwhatly (I don’t know how this is spelled as I was listening, not reading, but it is funny-sounding).

I will definitely search out more Wodehouse; he is deserving of his fine reputation as a humorist. This was funny and lighthearted and easy to “read.” I recommend.

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