It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week.


This week's read: I am on vacation so plan on more than one book.
Bloodland by Alan Glynn
From www.amazon.com comes the following description:

A helicopter crash off the coast of Ireland sends unexpected ripples through the international community in this intricate new thriller from the author of Winterland and Limitless.

Susie Monaghan was on the cusp of stardom when her life was cut short by a tragic helicopter crash. After a full investigation, her death was ruled an accident: case closed. But a hungry young journalist named Jimmy Gilroy isn't buying the official story. Before dying, Susie's path had crossed with an unlikely gallery of powerful men: an ex-Prime minister with a carefully guarded secret; the businessman brother of a U.S. Senator angling for the Oval Office; and a billionaire investor with his eye on an extremely rare commodity. Might there also be a link between Susie's death and a deranged security contractor operating in Congo? Piece by piece, Jimmy uncovers a bizarre nexus of coincidence among these disparate people and events, revealing a conspiracy of frightening reach and consequence--one that could cost him his life.

Set against a vividly drawn world of corporate and political intrigue, Alan Glynn's Bloodland is a riveting paranoid thriller of uncommon depth and page-turning suspense.

From www.amazon.com comes the following description:

When a notorious millionaire banker hangs himself, his death attracts no sympathy. But the legacy of a lifetime of selfishness is widespread, and the carnage most acute among those he ought to be protecting: his family.

Meanwhile, in a wealthy suburb of Glasgow, a young woman is found savagely murdered. The community is stunned by what appears to be a vicious, random attack. When Detective Inspector Alex Morrow, heavily pregnant with twins, is called in to investigate, she soon discovers that a tangled web of lies lurks behind the murder. It's a web that will spiral through Alex's own home, the local community, and ultimately right back to a swinging rope, hundreds of miles away.

The End of the Wasp Season is an accomplished, compelling and multi-layered novel about family's power of damage-and redemption. 

Last week's read:
Rating: Abandoned


I tried, I really did. But I couldn't finish reading this book. Oh, Gill, you were so right!!
This was my second try to get through it. This is not an easy book to read at all. I found myself drifting as I read. The general theme to be good to oneself is noble.

At least I have been to Istanbul, otherwise the landmarks and references will just be frustrating to anyone else.
He makes many, many references to the River Bosphorus that separates Europe from Asia that I thought I would lighten this with a couple of our photos from last November. There is a bridge than spans Istanbul from the western side to the eastern side.

The author is a good writer (he won the Nobel Prize for Literature) but this was just too wordy. Galip, as the main character is neurotic, paranoid, pompous and at times ridiculous in his made up stories and his acting out roles.
I found so little to like about him that I didn't care anymore why his wife suddenly disappeared. I am guessing she found him as boring as I did.
It is full of stories within stories. Every other chapter is an individual article supposedly culled from his step brother-in-law's (Celal, who's also missing) newspaper columns. I started to skip these to get on with the story of the missing sister and step-brother but even that didn't help.
I did enjoy the family scenes of daily Turkish life at the beginning but had dwindled by the time I gave up on the book.
I do plan to give him another try in the future.


So instead of finishing that book I read Gladdy's Wake by B.K. Anderson.


From the cover:
Gladys Sage escaped the backwoods of Northern Ontario, leaving behind the body of her stepfather, to arrive in New York and the world of political revolutionaries. Hired to find her is Pinkerton detective James Kelly, a recent Irish immigrant mainly interested in easy money, drink, and women. Going undercover among the radical followers of Emma Goldman, James’ search for Gladdy becomes a passion that will affect the Kelly family for generations. Nawal Habib, James’ granddaughter, has reinvented herself as a devout Muslim. Five times a day she prays toward Mecca, proving that she has left her early life as Janie Kelly, teenage runaway and outcast, behind. When her husband is killed and her son disappears in New York, suspected of involvement in a terrorist plot, everything she has built comes into question. She has no choice but to turn to the family she fled decades before. Nawal’s search will lead to the secrets kept by her grandfather – a hidden family history that casts her son’s radicalism in a new light, and begins with James Kelly’s obsession with the mysterious Gladys Sage.

I thought the storyline and the characters were wonderful. I couldn't put this book down until I finished it and am still feeling gobsmacked at the ending.

The story is told by Nawal Habib, who was born Janie Kelly. There is another storyteller, it is her grandfather,  James Kelly, who kept a diary of his life for future generations to read and understand the family secrets. The parallel stories kept my interest as they would their way into my imagination.There isn't a topic left undone, there is a gay priest, Irish, Russians, Catholic,  Muslims, Jews, Nazis, Germans, New York City, prohibition, alcoholism, women's rights, murder, 9/11, unwed teenage mother, atheism, romance, protests, the Depression, kidnapping, WW1 and on and on as we span three generations.