Three more...

The Agatha Raisin books are fast reads! I've finished three in the past few days- Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist, The Fairies of Fryfam, and I just finished The Case of the Curious Curate. I'll go into more detail later, too tired to think right now!

So now I'm up to 60! I might just make it to 100 books before the end of 2008.

Two more Agatha novels!

I read Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener and Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley this week. I'm starting to like this series a lot! There is a lot of humor in the stories, and Agatha is quite a character. A bit of a bitch, but a wonderful bitch! I'm reading the sixth book in the series right now, and I have all of them either checked out or on hold at the library.

Total books read for 2008: 56.

Speed reader!

I finished Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet last night. I read it in one sitting! It's the second book in the series. I'm trying to read them in order. I'm going to read the next two in the series, and hopefully I'll find the rest at the library!

Book number 54!

I finished Tourist Season the other night. It was good, but not as funny as some of Carl Hiaasen's other novels. This one is about a group of terrorists who want to take back Florida for nature and the Seminole Indians. They kill off tourists and plot to kidnap the Orange Bowl Queen. It has the usual Hiaasen themes of over development and the loss of nature. This one has a rather poignant ending.

I started to listen to Stormy Weather on audio CD, but after a few minutes, I remembered that I'd read it and hadn't liked it much- the only Hiaasen novel I didn't like. So I put it away, and I'm going back to M.C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin series.

I will never have plastic surgery....

I just finished reading Skin Tight. It's another early Carl Hiaasen novel, with his usual skewering of South Florida's excesses. This time, it's plastic surgery. It's funny and rather gross- after reading about a nose job and liposuction gone wrong, I decided that plastic surgery is definitely not for me! Some of Hiaasen's best characters are in this one- such as ex-investigator Mick Stranahan, who appears later in Skinny Dip, and "Chemo", a hit man who once suffered a bizarre facial electrolysis accident- and ends up with a weed whacker to replace the hand eaten by Mick's "pet" barracuda. The whole story is about a case Mick and the police couldn't solve- the disappearance of a college student who had just had a nose job. Doctor Graveline, who performed the operation, thinks Mick is ready to out him as the killer, so he sets out to kill him. And if that wasn't enough, a sleazy tabloid television host named Reynaldo Flemm is trying to get the story on his show. The book begins with the first inept hit man meeting his demise at the hands of Mick- or rather, the head of his stuffed marlin. It's a roller coaster ride from there to the end! There's gruesome ends for some characters- Graveline gets a taste of his own medicine (or in this case, a nose job), and poor Reynaldo goes under the doctor's knife for his story with disastrous results.

There's romance, sex, blackmail, greed, biting satire, violence, and crazy characters a-plenty. This novel is pure Hiaasen! I'm reading Tourist Season next.

Another book read!

I finished Mansfield Park last night. I ended up loving it. I loved the characters...though Fanny Price is a little bit too good to be believed at times. With the terrible parents she had, I have a hard time thinking she could have turned out well even after being taken in by her Bertram relatives. I loved hating the awful Mrs. Norris, who put down poor Fanny at every opportunity. Fanny's gradual acceptance by her aunt and uncle, and her friendship and later love with cousin Edmund made for good reading. I loved seeing the terrible cousins and the Crawford siblings get what they deserved. Like any Austen novel, the right characters end up together, the good characters are successful and happy (like Fanny's brother William) the bad ones are punished (though cousin Tom manages to grow up and behave better).

The tangled love stories were a bit confusing at first. I never liked Charles Crawford, and didn't feel the least bit sorry for him when he truly fell for Fanny and was rejected, and wasn't surprised that he wrecked Maria's marriage. His sister Mary seemed to be nice at first, but turned out to be selfish and greedy- revealed to Edmund at last after Tom's illness (her unspoken but obvious thought that Tom's possible death would mean more wealth for the younger Edmund). It was obvious that Fanny always loved Edmund, and that he would end up loving her despite believing that Mary was the only one for him.

This novel was definitely more serious than Pride and Prejudice or Emma. The ruin of Maria and near-ruin of Julia was more terrible (though not wholly undeserved) than Lydia's elopement in P&P, or the foolish engagement of Edward and Lucy in Sense and Sensibility.

So that was book #52!

Up next- Skin Tight by Carl Hiaasen, another one I haven't read before.

A great loss to the literary world...

From msnbc.com: "Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident writer and Nobel literature prize winner, has died aged 89, the Interfax news agency reported on Sunday."

Rest of the article here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26000555/

I've only read The Gulag Archipelago, and that was a long time ago. I need to read it again!

Amazing that he lived to be 89, considering what he went through in his lifetime.

Another detour...

I'm still reading Mansfield Park, but I've also been listening to other books. I read my first Agatha Raisin mystery by M.C. Beaton- Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death. I think it was the first one in the series. I loved it! I have several more Agatha Raisin audio books checked out from the library. I also checked out two more Carl Hiaasen novels that I've never read- Skin Tight and Tourist Season.

So I'm up to 51 books, and will easily make it to 60 before August is over!