1. What are you currently reading? Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. Oh, my, but this book is intense. A Chicago reporter is sent on assignment to the small Missouri town where she grew up. Young girls have been disappearing, and she's to use her hometown connections to get the story. The writing is wonderful. Ms. Flynn creates an atmosphere so claustrophobic that after reading awhile I want to run outside and feel the sun on my face. This book is as dark and creepy as it is involving. As opposed to the tripe I just finished ...
2. What did you recently finish reading? On Borrowed Time by Jenn McKinlay. This is one of the "Library Lovers" series. I know when I pick up one of these "cozy mysteries" that I'm not going to get breakneck action or a challenging character study. But this book requires such a suspension of disbelief that to accept it you'd have to be brain damaged.
For example, our heroine, Lindsay, has just seen her brother kidnapped. Now she and her ex-boyfriend are in a small boat, chasing after a much larger one through dark and dangerous waters. There's an explosion. Lindsey and Sully are almost killed and her brother and his captors are lost in the night. So what do you think she does?
Call the police? No. Fall apart? No. Have passionate, life-affirming sex with Sully? No.
She sits in the kitchen with her landlady, Nancy, as Sully makes them all some of his famous hot chocolate. I believe there was mention of nutmeg and cinnamon.
The entire book is just this dumb. Last fall I read an earlier book in the series -- Book, Line and Sinker -- and, taken on it's own terms, I enjoyed it. But this one is borderline insulting, and I finished it only out of misguided optimism and stubborness.
3. What will you read next? Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe.
