I also had an e-book copy of Eleanor H. Porter's Pollyanna on the iPad to read on my holiday. One of my friends has a nephew who named his daughter Pollyanna and I've wondered why ever since she was born a few years ago. Pollyanna is an orphan of missionary parents, who is sent to live with her unhappy aunt. Pollyanna's ability to cope with all ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago I finished The Hanging, by Lotte and Søren Hammer. It starts with 2 young children, early to school, discovering the bodies of 5 naked men, hanging in the school gym. Detective Inspector Konrad Simonsen and his homicide team from Copenhagen face the difficult task of first identifying the bodies, which have had faces and hands ( Read more... )

I read this just after I got back from Japan. Isaac Asimov's I, Robot: To Protect is by Mickey Zucker Reichert and written as a prequel to all the Robot books by Isaac Asimov. Susan Calvin, the robot psychologist fans would know from the original books, is just starting her medical residency in 2035. She has chosen psychiatry to specialise in and ( Read more... )

Not sure what order I read these in but that doesn't really matter...

The Second Death is a novel by an Australian journalist and radio personality, Kel Richards. The main character is a late-night talk-back radio show host, Mark Roman. During a sweltering Sydney summer (the descriptions of the heat were so evocative I felt sweaty myself) he ( Read more... )

I've just had a week's holiday (with my parents, without Ben and the girls) in Kobe, visiting relatives. Before I left on May 1, I finished Barry Maitland's The Chalon Heads, his second Brock and Kolla mystery. It is a rather convoluted story (perhaps this is because I'm always half-asleep when I have time to read) about a former gangster, Sammy ( Read more... )

I've just finished 2 books - one a children's book and one concluding the series about the Icelandic detective Erlendur.

Arnaldur Indriðason's series finishes with book #9, Strange Shores. It seems Erlendur has retired (I haven't seen 6, 7 or 8) and is on a holiday to the east of Iceland, the area in which he grew up before moving to Reykavik with ( Read more... )

The Stranger is Camilla Läckberg's 4th book (first published in English as The Gallow Birds) about Patrik Hedström, the policeman with the Tanumshede force and his wife Erica Falck. The latest case is a woman found dead in her crashed car. She appears to have lost control while under the influence of an extremely large amount of alcohol. However ( Read more... )

I just read a review of a children's book that I thought Solveig might like. When I read the synopsis, I realised I've read it myself - not sure when, but it was published in October 2011. The Sleeping Army, by Francesca Simon, is set in an England in which the Norse gods are still worshipped, though increasingly less and less. One night, Freya ( Read more... )

Actually, here are most of the children's books.

Shadows of the Silver Screen is Christopher Edge's second book about Penelope Tredwell, the owner and writer of the magazine The Penny Dreadful. The magazine is approached by a revolutionary filmmaker, Edward Gold, who wants to film one of Montgomery Flinch's (her nom de plume) stories. Monty, the ( Read more... )

I've read quite a few children's books recently, yet again trying to interest Solveig in something other than her usual series.

The Melting Pot is by Christopher Cheng, an Australian who has one Chinese parent and one non-Chinese parent. The book is the diary of Edward Chek Chee , also of mixed heritage. He's growing up in Sydney in the early ( Read more... )