Words and music

[graculus]

What I've read since my last post about books, a month ago:

Every Which Way But Dead by Kim Harrison (bored now!)
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (okay but not great)
Pelagia and the Black Monk by Boris Akunin (not as good as the previous one in the series)
Gideon the Cutpurse by Linda Buckley-Archer (why are publishers apparently so obsessed with finding 'the next JKR'?)
The Ninth Stone by Kylie Fitzpatrick (a real curate's egg)
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke (so good! highly recommended!)
The Ascendancy Veil by Chris Wooding (final book of trilogy, highly recommended!)
The Akhenaten Adventure by PB Kerr (Jonathan Stroud sets a tough act to follow)
Country of the Blind by Christopher Brookmyre (needs a good editor?)

And I'm currently reading Lirael by Garth Nix. As usual, more commentary on the above can be found here.



Gakked from siluria:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your LJ along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they're listening.

It's an eclectic list, to say the least, with no commentary - think of it as a lucky dip! I think I've picked up a couple of these from here, so they're legit, but don't know where else I've sourced stuff from in some cases...

1. Dawn Landes - Bodyguard

2. Suede - Filmstar

3. Jennifer O'Connor - Exeter

4. Maroon 5 - Little of Your Time

5. Nickel Creek - Just (Radiohead cover)

6. Shearwater - Red Sea, Black Sea

7. Billy Bragg - I Keep Faith

And none of this tagging business neither! Pffft.

Comments

[graculus.livejournal.com]

In terms of crime/mystery, I'd recommend checking out anything by the following, for starters:

Barbara Nadel's books featuring Inspector Ikmen (series starts with Belshazzar's Daughter)

James Lee Burke, who has two series of books, one featuring Detective Dave Robicheaux (series starts with The Neon Rain and another, shorter series which features maverick lawyer Billy Bob Holland (series starts with Cimarron Rose)

Ian Rankin, of course, his Rebus books (series starts with Knots and Crosses)

Walter Mosley's books featuring private eye Easy Rawlins (series starts with Devil in a Blue Dress)

Michael Connelly's books featuring Harry Bosch (series starts with The Black Echo)

Peter Tremayne's series of books featuring Sister Fidelma are quite good reading too (series starts with Absolution by Murder and there's loads of them)

Faye Kellerman's books are good - she's married to another writer but I like her stuff much more than his - her series featuring Detective Peter Decker (series starts with The Ritual Bath)

I'm not a big fan of the forensic stuff, so I've no recs in terms of people like Patricia Cornwell and so on...