Somehow I got even further behind writing up what I've been reading. Here's the 7 books that I read last July. I'm going to pretend that I'll get to the rest of the year soon.
Christopher Syn by Russell Thorndike and William Buchanan was the only book in the series in our local library system and it was a large print edition. It was a huge book but easy to read. The novel is a reworking of the Further Adventures Of Doctor Syn by Buchanan and it came out in 1960. It was used as the basis for the 1963 Disney production The Scarecrow Of Romney Marsh. The novel was fun enough and I plan to read the whole series from the beginning. I picked the lot up for my Kindle but haven't gotten to them yet.
The Casual Vacancy by J K Rowling sure wasn't much fun to read. It took me ages to finish it. The writings fine but the story is just a drama about some people in a village in England. I wouldn't read it again.
House Of Many Ways by Diana Wynn Jones is highly entertaining. A young woman named Charmain goes to house sit the cottage of her Uncle and has an adventure. Her uncle is a wizard and Charmain takes to magic right from the get go. There's plenty of interesting characters popping in and plenty of stuff to read about. I haven't found a DWJ book that I haven't liked and this one is just as good as any of them. I've started to re-read her books and plan to work my way through the lot a bit at a time.
Bridge Of Birds by Barry Hughart is a novel set in ancient China. It contains the first adventure of Master Li and Number Ten Ox. There are two sequels and sadly no more. A plague strikes the silkworms of the village of Ku-Fu and all the children between 8 and 13 are in a coma. The head of the village sends Number Ten Ox to find a wise man, in the hope he could find a cure. Ox travels to Peking and stumbles onto Master Li, an ancient reprobate with a slight flaw in his character. Together the two travel around the country and meet all sorts of wonderfully colorful characters. Master Li finds the cure and the villainous creeps behind it. There's plenty of humor and the writing is really good. I've read these books 3 or 4 times already and plan to tackle them again in a few years.
Abhorsen by Garth Nix is the final book in the series. I was glad to get past them. Now they can go on the sell pile. After reading this series and the Falling series I didn't become a Nix fan.
Don't Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli is the novel the movie Mortdecai was based on. It's the first of a trilogy and the Mortdecai in the books isn't much like the movie version. Mortdecai is an art dealer and thief. He's got a hot painting, the cops are suspicious of him, and he's got a buyer in the US. According to the Wikipedia Bonfiglioli was a Wodehouse fan and Mortdecai mentions Wodehouse in the novels. There's a bit of the Wodehouse breeziness in the books but they are much darker than Wodehouse at his darkest and the body count in Kyril's book is very high. People get killed just by associating with Mortdecai. He's one of those wrecking ball sorts of fellows, breakable things suffer dearly in his presence, best to avoid him if you can. It was fairly entertaining, I have the rest of the trilogy on my list at the library but haven't asked for them yet. Too many books coming in lately to want more from the library. I'll get to them eventually.
The Secret Of Wildcat Swamp by Franklyn Dixon has the Hardy brothers in their 31st adventure. The boys are out west on a paleontology trip when they get involved with a group of freight train robbers. There's also an escaped convict to complicate the story. It's about average for the series and I enjoyed it. I have 24 of the first 38 books in the original series. The publishers changed the series after that book, making the stories tamer and shorter. The chapters per book changed form 25 to 20. In the original series the boys drive cars, motorcycles, speedboats, carry guns, and travel all over, nearly getting killed on a regular basis. No one believes that they will die and the villains are more entertaining. It's a fun series and I'm glad I've been reading them. I need to get onto ABE Books and look for the rest. The local stores occasionally turn up a book or two but that's pretty hit or miss. Too often the ones they get are the ones I already have.
Not too many books for the month. I have been upping the number of books per month in recent times. I've read 56 books so far in 2016. Much better chance of getting partly through the pile of unread books that have accumulated over the years. I also plan to re-read some of the already read books I have squirreled away in the attic.
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