The Preacher

Finally! Something I liked! The Preacher picked up pretty much where The Ice Princess left off. Erica and Patrik are expecting a baby and Erica is basically on bed rest. That was the only thing that disappointed me about the book. In The Ice Princess, the book was written from Erica's perspective with a healthy dose of Patrik (although it is third person omniscient), but with Erica at home resting, Patrik and official police work are the focus in The Preacher.

Again, Läckberg does a great job of weaving story lines so that they are at once connected and separate. I appreciated that she carried on Erika and Anna's storylines and that she catches the reader every once in a while. More than once I thought I had the mystery all figured out and then she'd bring something else in and I'd question my thought pattern. It turned out, again, that I figured out who it was, but I was missing a few key pieces of information to string everything together so I bounced around a bit.

The translation on this was also quite good. There were a few little things - farmor (father's mother, paternal grandmother) gets translated as mother's father (maternal grandmother) and I got a bit confused and there is a weird thing with decades at one point, but overall the translation worked for me.

I'm on to The Stone Cutter now and when my parents were here on the weekend, they picked up The Gallows Bird/The Stranger (same book, different titles) and The Hidden Child and they have The Drowning already, so I think I know what I'll be reading this summer!

The Gods of Gotham

Sigh. This book came with high praise and excellent reviews. And I just thought it was kind of ho-hum. It wasn't horrible. I didn't have to force myself to read it, but it wasn't as good as I was expecting it to be. I had to get it back to the library (I may have possibly incurred a small fine so I could finish it) because I had four books come off the hold list at the same time and they all had additional holds on them so I couldn't renew any of them. So maybe I didn't enjoy it because I was rushed?

There were plot twists and there was flash English and there were prostitutes and crooked cops and priests and preachers and good girls who weren't really good and bad girls who might not really be bad and a big fire and a crime scene or two, but it just wasn't doing it for me. And the map in the front of the book sucked - I figured out where Five Points was and the wards were labelled, but the streets weren't.

The flash or flash-patter bugged me. I had to keep consulting the glossary but not all the words were there. And I can't really find any references online to flash - is it real???

Has anyone else read this? I'd really love to hear someone else's thoughts on it!

City of Lost Souls

City of Lost Souls is the fifth of six in the Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments series. I wasn't thrilled with the ending of the last book and some of that spilled over into this book. It got a bit strange and there was a lot of waiting for something to happen. I will read the sixth book because I need to know what happens, but I am not as excited about it as I was about the first three book in this series or the books in The Infernal Devices. The best part of this book? I managed to get a brand spanking new copy because I was one of the first in (the virtual) line when they received the shipment!

I also heard that Cassandra Clare is writing another trilogy called The Dark Artifices that takes place sometime in the future. From what I've seen it appears that the books will follow a similar plot line to the other two series - talented teenaged Shadowhunters who have intense romantic feelings for one another that are problematic in someway. What do you think, should I read those too or am I going to be increasingly annoyed??

Teaser Tuesday - Another Swedish Translation

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I'm tearing my way through the Camilla Läckberg books, so here she is again this week (from a different book than last week):

Agnes didn't care much about where the money came from. She was born rich and had always lived as rich people do. It made no difference whether the money was inherited or earned, as long as she could buy jewellery and fine clothes.

The Stone Cutter, Camilla Läckberg, page 8

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT at Should Be Reading with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment there (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

The Ice Princess

Oh I should have known better than to pick up a book at my parents' house when I had packed a stack of library books to read (and return before they were due)...J was having a bath and I had left my book in the basement, so to entertain myself, I pulled a book off the bookcase at the top of the stairs and got myself hooked. I read The Ice Princess quickly...I really liked it. Camilla Läckberg is a Swedish crime write and this is the first book in a series about Erica Falck and Patrik Hedström. My mom sent me home with this book and the next two. I'm on the lookout for book four and five because they have number six but haven't been able to track down the other two...

This book is a translation and I think it was well translated. Some of the nuances surprised me as sometimes translations miss those or mistranslate themm because they are so subtle, although, the translator for this book is the same man who translated the Stieg Larsson books and the Henning Mankell books. I like how the various story lines are woven together - and how some of the story lines that appear to have nothing in common actually intersect.

Erica Falck, an author, is one of the first on the scene when an elderly man discovers Erica's childhood friend dead and frozen into the bathtub. While at first it appears that Alex committed suicide, it soon comes out that she was murdered. Erica ends up getting involved in the investigation, first purely by circumstance and then out of interest as she writes a book about the victim.

I knew who murdered Alex right away. And then it was someone else and then it was someone else and then...well, you get the picture. I was right on one of my guesses though, but I loved that the book twisted and turned and kept me guessing. I appreciate the multiple threads - some related to the crime, some not - as they kept the story interesting.

I can't wait to read the new one, The Preacher

Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris

This is my first re-read of the year. My friend Virginia sent me a copy of this book from Australia a few years ago - it was one of the books I wrote about for the 30 day challenge. I have a love-hate relationship with Paris that I haven't quite figured out. I dream about Paris, I want to visit Paris, I want to visit Paris for an extended period of time, maybe I even want to live in Paris, but once I get to Paris, I'm not so excited about it...

Anyway, I read this book a few years ago. I had been back from living in London long enough that it was time to get on with life and stop wishing I was back there. I had days were I coped well with my reentry into Canadian life and days where I didn't cope at all. I was wrestling with all kinds of stuff, including buying a plane ticket and quitting my job and heading back to Europe. Now, I don't think I was ever going to do that...I was working at a job that barely paid my rent and groceries, so there was no way I was saving enough to get myself to Europe, find somewhere to live, and feed myself until I found a job and I was far too scared to think about putting all that stuff on my credit card. This book helped me realize that part of the reason I came home was because I missed my friends and family and I didn't want to be far away from them (and unlike Sarah Turnbull I hadn't fallen in love with a Parisian, so my decision was far less complicated) and I really probably didn't need to put myself through all that again.

I know I finished Almost French but as I reread it, there were parts of the book that I didn't recognize at all. It was like reading it for the first time...I liked it this time as much (or maybe more) that I did the first time and I'm glad I read it again. After I wrote about it for the 30 days challenge, I tried to find it, but neither the bookstore nor the library had it, but they both have it now...which is interesting since the book was written almost 10 years ago!

I think I enjoyed this book as much as I did the last time - possibly more. When I read it the first time, I read it partly as advice for where I should be heading with my life. This time I read it simply as a memoir.

Return to Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I did Teaser Tuesdays for ages...and then for some reason I stopped, but it's time to play again...so here it goes:

Soon she had the coffee on, and she started setting the breakfast table for herself and her guests. They trickled into the kitchen one by one, each more bleary than the last, but they came round quickly when they began helping themselves to the breakfast she had prepared.

The Preacher, Camilla Läckberg, page 44

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT at Should Be Reading with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment there (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!