I have been sticking religiously to my 50 books in 2013 reading challenge, even though I haven’t shared my books on this blog for a while. I am completely on track for now though and I hope I will be able to maintain this steady reading schedule throughout the year. Here are the last books I read:
Book Ten: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
I am sorry, but I cannot understand what the fuss is about. This book contains less than 200 pages, but my days of being skeptical towards a short book are long in the past- before I read Love Story by Erich Segal, that is. However, this was one book I did not exactly enjoy. Maybe because I was not looking for the deeper meanings in the narrative, or maybe because I could not relate to the protagonist in any way whatsoever. I only felt pity mingled with disgust for the 16-year-old, slightly unhinged boy who went about pretending to be a grown-up. Seriously, what is the deal with this book? And why is it banned?
In the least, I expected it to build up towards a climatic ending or atleast a twist in the last pages. Well let me not spoil the “suspense” for you *eyes-roll*. Will someone who loves this book please enlighten me?
Book Eleven: You Can’t Hide by Karen Rose.
One of the first things I noticed while reading this book was that its author was a chemical engineer who now wrote romantic-thriller novels. Wow. That is inspiring to a certain student of chemical engineering *ahem*. That student is me. Sorry, I had to put it bluntly. Just in case. 🙂
Anyway, this book is about a psychiatrist whose patients are slowly being driven towards suicide one-after-the-other. Someone has access to all her personal files. Someone is breaking her codes of patient-doctor confidentiality. Someone wants to destroy her. But what that someone does not count upon is the large group of people who rally around her in order to protect her and find out who is behind these murders and assisted suicides. The noose is tightening but our psychiatrist protagonist falls in love with a certain police officer.
Suspense is what drives this book forwards. The romantic bits were okay but I felt like they were hindering the book’s flow. And it does not make sense for the protagonists to make love while someone is out there killing people and they’re the only ones who can put an end to it all.
Book Twelve: Cold Granite by Stuart Macbridge
By far, my favourite book out of these three. Its the author’s first novel and i can see elements of Ian Rankin in the writing style and flashes of Inspector Rebus in Macbridge’s Logan McRae but the plot is entirely his own and may chill you to the bone.
Aberdeen, Scotland, is emerging as a land of horror for little kids. Someone is busy kidnapping and killing off four year old boys and then sexually abusing the corpses. On his first night back from recuperation, Logan finds himself drawn deeply into a fascinating case of kidnappings, murders, dead bodies and a large group of suspects, all of whom have something or the other to hide. Throw in Logan’s ex-girlfriend who is the police pathologist, a Police Constable he may or may not want to start dating, an ambitious reporter who somehow has access to all of the police’s secrets, a tough boss who is dealing with stress of his own and a schizophrenic roadkill scraper who has built himself a haven of all sorts of dead animals, and Logan is left to deal with a huge dungload of problems. Not to mention the physical and mental scars of his own.
Macbridge paints Aberdeen as a dark place where it rains perennially and the citizens have to deal with a constantly morbid, overcast weather. With a child-killer on the loose, and many other complications blocking his path towards true justice, Logan is fighting against odds as he seeks the pedophile responsible for his chaos.
Yes, Ian Rankin elements are strongly suggested through the structure of this book, its dependence upon local pubs, the nature of Logan’s cities as well as the nature of Logan’s scars.
But I would highly recommend it for crime readers.
Currently Reading: The Rozabal Line by Ashwin Sanghi. Review coming soon. 🙂
Blue Loft 