Read: The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry 📚Leans more towards agonised burnt out spook cases of Greeneland and Deighton than gripping suspense. Feels real enough that I now need to research what actually happened in Bahrain in 2012. #booksky #thrillers
Read: Harry’s Game by Gerald Seymour 📚 Long overdue to read this (mostly associate it with the 1970s TV series and Clannad). Pulls together action, politics, ‘world’, psychology, morality, emotions, suspense, allthethings, brilliantly. Total, total classic. #booksky #readingcommunity #thriller
Read: Yellowface by R F Kuang 📚Readable and smart while disappearing up its own postmodern identity-politicking arse. I can see why publishers hyped it: industries love to see themselves reflected back as edgy and absorbing, especially when they’re cliquey and privileged. #booksky #reading #books
Read: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James 📚 Pacey and compulsive psych thriller just keeping to an acceptable amount of supernatural flummery. Will be reading more of her stuff. #booksky #horror #thriller
Read: The Call of the Wild by Jack London 📚 Fight Club but with dogs in the late 19th century Yukon. #booksky #books #readingcommunity
Read: In Ascension by Martin MacInnes 📚 Top drawer grown up SF with much geekiness, philosophical ponderings, and characters who exist in a world rather than being case studies or Star Wars/Tolkien knock offs. If you liked Contact, The Martian, Arrival, it’s the same kind of deal. #booksky #books
Read: The Missing Millionaire by Katie Daubs 📚A digestable way to learn about early 20th century Toronto rather than turning up any new info on the disappearance of theatre impresario Ambrose Small in 1919. Entertaining enough though. #BookSky
Read: The Friends of Meager Fortune by David Adams Richards 📚 Who’d have thought a family saga in in post WW2 New Brunswick logging industry would be this enthralling? The characters are recognisable people, even if the backdrop is unknown. #booksky
Read: Desert Star (A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel) by Michael Connelly 📚 Bosch and Ballard content. Solid procedural plus some Ageing Bosch character development. Reliably delivers what you want and then some, and this is why the big name writers get to be the big names. #booksky
Read: The Widowmaker by Hannah Morrissey 📚Love the seedy, grimey Black Harbor world and this has the usual tapestry of decay, lies and small town secrets. Not quite up there with Hello Transcriber, and there’s gratuitous Oirishness at the end. But better than most. #booksky
Read: Putin’s People by Catherine Belton 📚TLDR: Putin helped the KGB steal all Russia’s money, oligarchs stole it from the KGB and set up Putin as leader, Putin stole the money from the oligarchs. Putin wins. Authoritative, heavily researched and so so so so detailed. #booksky #bookstodon
Read: You Killed Me First by John Marrs 📚More gloriously fucked up suburban homicide from John Marrs. At one point I feared it might veer into supernatural tropes, but thankfully it was just psychosis. #booksky #bookstodon
Read: The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak 📚Modern day CIA spy-daughter investigates what her CIA spy-father got up to in the cold war. Top flight blend of character, suspense and world. Audiobook marred by a narrator with only a passing acquaintance with many common English words. #bookstodon
Read: Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner 📚Good, but not quite up to the hype. Lit types called it a thriller, but it lacks suspense and there are longeurs about human evolution which aren’t really part of the genre. It’s a thriller if you don’t normally read them, I suppose. #booksky #bookstodon
Abandoned: The Spite House by Johnny Compton 📚mysteriously on-the-run father with two daughters gets a ‘stay in this weird house for money’ job. Believable characters, strong idea, and some thematic meat underneath it all. And yet, somehow I couldn’t get into it. #booksky #bookstodon
Read: Bleaker Waters by Gary Kruse - A mix of Jane Harper-like ‘locals hiding a secret’ and Commissioner Ricciardi ‘I see dead victims’ psychological thriller, and set in my native Norfolk, so I know the locations well. Twisty, engaging read. #booksky #bookstodon
Read: Blue Machine by Helen Czerski 📚 This is how you write popular science: engaging, clear, authoritative. Stories, weirdness and passion. It’s about how the sea works - the depths and shallows, the currents, the chemistry, the thermodynamics. An all time favourite. #booksky #bookstodon
Read: Vintage Ondaatje by Michael Ondaatje 📚Grab bag of his writings. I’d gleaned he was ponderous and dull from the English Patient but turns out he can be quick and funny too.
Currently reading: Remembrance Day by Henry Porter 📚 Techno thrillers age - the writing and construction is skilled but the breathless references to SIM cards, ZIP drives and faxing really date this one. #bookstodon #booksky
Currently reading: Blue Machine by Helen Czerski 📚 lining up to be one of my favourite ever books. There’s a lot of sea to be fascinated with and Czerski’s a fantastically lucid, enthusiastic and grown up writer. #booksky #bookstodon
Abandoned: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 📚 There’s something good there, but it’s very well hidden. I lost patience with looking for it. #bookstodon #booksky
Read: Death on the Island by Eliza Reid 📚Christie fanfic, right down to the island location, and Roger Ackroyd shaped red herring. Passed the time and didn’t annoy me, so there’s that.
Read: City of Vengeance by D. V. Bishop 📚Very readable and atmospheric. I kept wanting to return to it despite the central murder mystery being puny and the outcome of the Medici political shenanigans being well known.
Abandoned: Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck 📚 DNF. East German love affair round end of East Germany, trans. Michael Hoffman, booker winner 2024 Intense and Germanic and pervy. Worth another go at reading when I have the headspace.
Read: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas 📚 Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes Rebecca, and both elements are Good Things. #booksky #BookSky #bookstodon #amreading