Friday Five: Books!

Jan at RevGalBlogPals says: "I hope some of you received books for Christmas presents; I did and have been reading ever since. Then I discovered a new author from those recommendations that pop up on Amazon.com. Instead of buying those books, I've been checking them out at the library, which will not help Amazon's future recommendations for me at all.

So tell us what you're reading, what you would and would not recommend--five books or authors! "

I'm currently reading mostly mysteries, and as a relaxation method after a day doing taxes, I recommend the "cozy" kind. I read Roberta Isleib's first in a series, Preaching to the Corpse, as the Connecticut entry in my "A Mystery for Every State" project, and just finished her second in that series, Asking for Murder. The protagonist is a psychologist/advice counselor, Rebecca Butterman, who lives in Guilford, CT and works in New Haven. I thought I'd guessed "whodunnit" and was completely wrong!

I also enjoyed Mary Stanton's Angel's Advocate, which is set in Savannah and has a bit of "woo-woo" (supernatural) about it as well as Southern charm.

A very different type of book was S.J. Bolton's third thriller, Blood Harvest. Like her previous ones, it's set in an isolated rural area of the British isles and there is local folklore and some heavy-duty

dysfunction and just plain scary stuff. I also enjoy police procedurals and in this country Michael Connelly is one of the best writers of those -- I recently read his third Harry Bosch novel, The Concrete Blonde. I do read non-fiction, and am currently making my way through John Keegan's The First World War. As Keegan is a military historian, there's a lot about troop movements which my poor grasp of spatial relations makes problematical for me, but it's still good. I received James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, about the Civil War, for Christmas, so that will be my next Big History book.

I did not read every word, but skimmed through Molly O'Neill's One Big Table, a huge American regional cookbook and food history. I was ambivalent. It's got lots of great stuff in it, but it's just too darn big to read comfortably (weighs 5 1/2 lbs!!) and the recipes were a little quirky for my taste -- aebleskiver with blue cheese??? -- and often called for ingredients that are hard to find if one doesn't live in NYC or whatever particular ethnic enclave might have, say, pomegranate molasses on every store shelf. I wouldn't spend the $50 for it but might check it out of the library again -- it's a good book for libraries to have, I'd say.

I do post reviews of my reading on Goodreads.