TBR Thursday 35…

Episode 35

 

The TBR has stayed steady this week…on 114! Unfortunately I seem to be in reading lull – I’m enjoying the three books I’m currently reading, but seem to be going slower than a snail on a go-slow. I may run out of reviews soon and be forced to ‘entertain’ you all with a sing-a-long. Though I’m not really sure that you deserve that…

Crime

 

Anyway, I’m starting this week with a question to all you crime aficionados…

 

On the grounds of having seen so many rave reviews around the crimosphere for Leif GW Persson, I cheerfully pressed the NetGalley request button for this one…

The Blurb says “It’s August 2007, and Lars Martin Johansson, chief of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Sweden has opened the files on the unsolved murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme. With his retirement quickly closing in, Johansson forms a new group comprised of a few trustworthy detectives who doggedly wade through mountains of paperwork and pursue new leads in a case that has all but gone cold despite the open wound the assassination has left on the consciousness of Swedish society. Yet the closer the group gets to the truth, the more Johansson compromises the greater good for personal gain, becoming a pawn for the private vendetta of a shady political spin doctor. Sharply detailed and boldly plotted, Persson’s work lifts the veil on one of history’s greatest unsolved crimes in a novel that goes toe-to-toe with the best of true crime books.“

 

However, what the blurb doesn’t say is that this is apparently the third in his The Story of a Crime series. So the question is do they standalone or must they be read in order? Just in case, I’ve downloaded no. 1 in the series…

The Blurb says “A young man falls to his death from a window in a student dorm in Stockholm, his loose shoe striking and killing the little dog being taken for his evening walk by an old man. It seems to be a mundane suicide—at least that’s what the police choose to think. But the young man is American, not Swedish, and there are a couple of odd things about his room when they search it. . . .

From these tiny beginnings, Leif GW Persson slowly begins to unravel a puzzle that gets larger and larger as it becomes more and more complex, until it sweeps us into a web of international espionage, backroom politics, greed, sheer incompetence, and the shoddy work of Sweden’s intelligence force that leads to the murder of the prime minister.”

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And a couple of others that I hope to read sometime in the ever more distant future…

Fiction

 

Courtesy of NetGalley again. Two things attracted me to this one – it’s described as ‘an American classic’ and, more importantly, it’s short…

The Blurb says “An American coming-of-age tale during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.

Set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.”

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I really don’t like James Joyce, and I tried and failed once before (a long, long time ago) to read The Dubliners. But regular commenter Jilanne Hoffman sandbagged me on a comments thread a few weeks ago and in a moment of weakness I downloaded it. Jilanne says that reading the story The Dead may cause me to die of heartbreak. Er…I better thank you in advance then, Jilanne, eh?

The Blurb says “This work of art reflects life in Ireland at the turn of the last century, and by rejecting euphemism, reveals to the Irish their unromantic reality. Each of the 15 stories offers glimpses into the lives of ordinary Dubliners, and collectively they paint a portrait of a nation.“

 

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NB All blurbs taken from NetGalley or Goodreads.

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So…what do you think? Do any of these tempt you?