Number 50!

I forgot to mention that Double Whammy was my fiftieth book. I have reached my goal for 2008, and it's not quite August!

I think I can manage another 15-20 books this year.

Double Whammy!

Just finished it. This one would have made a great movie! I never knew that Bass fishing could be such a bloodthirsty sport.

This one has so many great and gruesome twists. The best thing about Carl Hiaasen's novels is that the bad guys not only get what they deserve, they get them in creative and ironic ways.

There is also the usual Hiaasen plot about greedy developers destroying what's left of Florida's natural beauty. It's always fun to read the downfall of these jerks.

The week's reading...

As I've gotten into Mansfield Park, I've started to like it more. I'm sure I'll end up enjoying it. It seems to be more serious than Austen's other novels...

I'm a third of the way finished listening to Double Whammy. It's great. It's definitely early Hiaasen, but some of the recurring characters in his later novels appear.

Yet another classic I need to read...

Brideshead Revisited. Never read it before! My mother is ashamed of me. :p She wants to see the new movie version of it, so I'd better pick up a copy. Books are almost always better than the movies...and I've heard that this film really chops up the novel.

Started Mansfield Park, I can say it's not my favorite Austen. I'll keep reading it, though...

Not really "reading"...

I borrowed this terrific book from the library: 500 Handmade Dolls: Modern Explorations of the Human Form. It's really more of a picture book- it's filled with beautiful photos of art dolls, from the traditional to the unusual, dolls made from cloth, to dolls made from whatever the artist could get a hold of. I'm inspired. I'd love to try my hand at doll making again.




I suppose I could count it in my total number of books read! :p Each photo has a detailed explanation from the artist on how he or she came up with the idea for the doll, and what it was made of.

Oops.

So much for my reading plans for this week. I've read nothing since Thursday! I listened to Death of a Village on cassette tape, but that doesn't count towards my total because I'd already read it...

While house sitting for my sister this week, I've mostly watched movies and television. I will start Mansfield Park tonight, though!

Almost there...

I read the last two Torchwood novels over the weekend, bringing my total number of books read to 48!

Something in the Water was creepy- about an alien "water hag", who reproduces by implanting men with her "babies". Rather disgusting, but fun.

Trace Memory was better, and was more like a Torchwood episode. A man from the fifties survives a mysterious explosion and keeps popping up in different places in time- including the pasts of the Torchwood staff. Nice little glimpses into each character, and an interesting villain in the "men in bowler hats"- the aliens who are chasing the time shifter.

I keep finding books...

...by favorite authors that I somehow missed. I just downloaded the audio of Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen to my MP3 player. It's one of his first books, so that's probably how I missed it! One summer, I read most of his books. I think there are a couple of others that I haven't read! I'll keep looking for them.

This doesn't mean that I'm not sticking to my current reading plan. That's the nice thing about audio books- I can read more than one book at a time.

No more Hamish. :(

I finished Death of a Dreamer last night. I've now read all of the series...and I'm really looking forward to the next one! Dreamer was pretty good.

I still have the two Torchwood novels to read, and will probably finish them this weekend. After that, I will finally (yes, really) read Wings of the Dove and Mansfield Park. I also have The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Middlemarch in my to-read pile. After I'm done with that, I'm going to start reading M.C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin series. I hope they're as good as Hamish Macbeth!

So by the end of the month, I will have met my reading goal for 2008! I think I may end up reading almost 80 before the year is out...so I will make 100 my goal for 2009. There are enough books in the world to do it!

One more Hamish left.

I finished Death of a Maid, Death of a Gentle Lady, and A Highland Christmas this week. Gentle Lady was the latest novel, and it was great. I think it would make a good movie! The Christmas Story was a cute change of pace- no murders for Hamish to solve, just a missing cat and stolen Christmas lights. Death of a Maid was a good one, too. Now I only have Death of a Dreamer left...then a long wait for Death of a Witch!

So that's 45 books. I've started the Torchwood novel Something in the Water. It's interesting so far.

42!

No, that's not the answer to the big question- Life, the universe, and everything! :p That' the number of books I'm up to. I finished four more Hamish stories! Death of a Dustman, Death of an Outsider, Death of a Traveling Man, and Death of a Charming Man.

Death of an Outsider had one of the most gruesome murders in the series...dead man put in lobster tank, lobsters eat corpse, lobsters get sent all over the U.K. and are eaten....I'll never eat lobster again! Very good story.

Death of a Charming Man was a good one, too. I loved the ending- Hamish nearly gets it wrong! Once again, I figured out the killer early on.

I have four more Hamish stories, then it's a long wait until next February for Death of a Witch.

I also finally found the last two Torchwood novels, so I'll read them next, then back to more "serious" reading.