Before the Frost

This is the second last of the Kurt Wallander novels and his daughter Linda is a central character (I read somewhere that this was supposed to be the first of a trilogy about Linda, but it never happened because of a tragedy of some sort) I remember the murders in this one were a bit disturbing…it was interesting to see how Linda was similar to her father. It’s too bad there aren’t more Linda novels. I enjoyed this one.

I just have the last book left to read, A Troubled Man. It’s somewhere in a box from when we moved. I’m sort of avoiding it because I’m sort of pretending it’s not the last one…

(February-March 2013)

The Pyramid

The Pyramid is a collection of short stories that date back to Kurt Wallander’s start as a police officer. I remember these and I liked getting the background on Wallander and his ex-wife and his life before the book Faceless Killers. It was interesting…I finished the book and had Faceless Killers sitting here. The end of the last story is the opening of Faceless Killers and the two books were translated by different people. The tone of the two texts is very different…I can’t remember the words exactly but I think one of the Swedish words tranlated to senior citizen in one text and elderly farmer in another. It was quite interesting! And a reminder that we’re not always getting all the nuances in a translated text.

 

(February 2013)

Firewall

For some reason while I was pregnant and after, I had a fascination with crime novels. And Kurt Wallander in particular. Of course, I can’t remember what this was about other than there was more than one crime and they ended up being related. Maybe there was a man in a hidden room…I know I liked it…except for The Man Who Smiled, I have liked all of the Henning Mankell I’ve read, but I sure can’t remember much more than that…

(February 2013)

Update and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was pregnant and I thought I’d be able to read 24 books in 2013. That number was based on a certain number per month before baby arrived and a different number per month after baby arrived. Baby was a month early and adjusting my goal for that, it works out to 14+9=23. And I managed 23 books. So I made my goal.

January 2014 rolled around and I decided to go easy on myself. I had an infant and a kindergartener and I was going back to work, so the 2014 goal is 12 books. A book a month seems manageable, so we’ll see how it goes!  There is a lot happening in the next six months, so I might be a bit ambitious.

Also, there is a new tab for The Big Read. I have challenged myself to read 50 of those books for my most recent 101 in 1001 challenge. We’ll see how I do…

But now, while I managed to make my book target, I didn’t manage to keep the blog updated, so here, and for the next few weeks, are the books I read in 2013 and at the beginning of 2014. As well as I can remember them. Mommy brain and all.



I really liked this book. I inherited my mom’s fascination with World War II history and this book had that. I didn’t realize that Guernsey Island was occupied during the war and, while I didn’t quite get there, I thought I’d go read a bit more about it. When I was off work after I hurt my back, my mom brought me a set of DVDs to watch called Island at War. I really enjoyed them and I found myself wishing there were more episodes as I watched the last one. This book reminded me of that series. It was good and I think I want to reread it.

(January 2013)