It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

 

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at 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.


FINISHED THIS WEEK:

Synopsis here.
I was disappointed that the author did not go into enough detail or delve deeply enough into the Masonic world. which fascinates me. 
Speculation has it that Mozart revealed secrets of the Masons in his Opera, The Magic Flute, and was marked for death by the Masons. 
It is fast paced and pretty typical action story with adventure and excitement. 


From the book jacket:
"A Russian peasant who became an international legend, a Cold War exile who inspired the adoration of millions, an artist whose name was a byword for genius, sex, and excess. The magnificence of Rudolf Nureyev's life and work is known, but now Colum McCann reinvents this figure through the light he shed on the lives of those who knew him." Boldly embellishing the biographical facts, McCann tells the story through a chorus of voices. There is Anna Vasileva, Rudi's first ballet teacher, who, banished from St. Petersburg, rescues her preternaturally talented protege from the stunted life of his town; Yulia, whose sexual and artistic ambitions are thwarted by her Soviet-sanctioned marriage; Victor, a decadent Venezuelan, who revels in the hedonism of the gay celebrity set; Odile, the legendary cook, who finds love at middle age while feeding the great and their hangers-on. Spanning four decades and many worlds, from the killing fields of World War II to the wild abandon of New York's gaudy eighties, Dancer is peopled by a large cast of characters, obscure and famous, real and imagined.


I read this quickly, often just skimming the pages. I enjoyed the very first section about the Russian soldiers returning from the war. It also was interesting in providing me an insight into the Cold War and the miseries suffered by the people.
I knew nothing really about Nureyev's background and don't really like ballet.
All that being said I did not enjoy any of the other fictional characters. I thought Nureyev was obnoxious and full of himself (I suppose most people who rise to fame so quickly may be that way).


I had enjoyed Let The Great World Spin so much that this was a major disappointment.
However, McCann's writing always amazes me. He goes in and out of first and third person narrative and changed narrators often and sometimes without provocation or notice which fascinated me. 





From the book jacket:
A bone-chilling new mystery from the acclaimed author of The Devil of Nanking. Mo Hayder , a rising star of hardcore horror fiction, returns with a riveting and macabre novel that explores the evils committed in the name of faith. Journalist Joe Oakes is a born skeptic who makes his living exposing supernatural hoaxes. But his stay with a cult-like religious group on Scotland's remote Pig Island might be enough to turn him into a believer. When the island erupts into bloodshed, Oakes must abandon everything he thought he knew to discover the secret behind exiled cult leader Malachi Dove, who lives alone behind a wall of electricity and toxic waste on the island's far end. As the cataclysm of violence crashes down around him, Oakes is ultimately forced to confront the very nature of evil itself.




What to say? I absolutely hated the first section of this book and almost put it down. However, when his wife becomes the narrator I was amazed at the triteness of her personality and her deep feeling of self-importance.
I stuck with it so that I could see that I had solved the mystery correctly.
It is pretty typical horror fiction, lots of blood and gore. Not one of Mo's better reads.

STARTED THIS WEEK:

From the book jacket:

“Breathtaking . . . A tightly woven spiderweb of plot and a rich cast of characters make this a truly gripping read.” —Jeffery Deaver, author ofThe Bodies Left Behind
 It should be an open–and–shut case. Canada’s leading radio–show host, Kevin Brace, has confessed to killing his young wife. He had come to the door of his luxury condominium with his hands covered in blood and told the newspaper deliveryman: “I killed her.” His wife’s body lay in the bathtub of their suite, fatal knife wound just below the sternum. Now all that should remain is legal procedure: document the crime scene, prosecute the case, and be done with it. The trouble is, Brace refuses to talk to anyone—including his own lawyer—after muttering those incriminating words. With the discovery that the victim was actually a self-destructive alcoholic, the appearance of strange fingerprints at the crime scene, and a revealing courtroom cross-examination, the seemingly simple case begins to take on all the complexities of a hotly–contested murder trial. In the tradition of defense lawyers–turned–authors such as Scott Turow and John Grisham, Toronto-based defense counsel Robert Rotenberg delivers a debut legal thriller rich with his forensic skill. Firmly rooted in Toronto, from the ancient Don Jail to the sterile morgue and the shadowy corridors of the historic courthouse, Old City Hall takes the reader inside clattering Italian restaurants and late-night greasy spoons—and outside, to open-air skating rinks and parade-filled streets. Rotenberg leads us on a fascinating tour of a city as exciting and vital as the motley ensemble populating his story: there’s Awotwe Amankwah, the only black reporter covering the crime; Judge Johnathan Summers, an old navy captain who runs his courtroom like he’s still standing astride the foredeck; Edna Wingate, an eighty-three year old British war bride who just loves hot yoga; and Daniel Kennicott, a former big-firm lawyer who became a cop after his brother was murdered and the investigation hit a dead end. Douglas Preston rejoices that Rotenberg’s Toronto settings “make this most multicultural city in North America come alive.” Elmore Leonard has Florida; John Lescroart, San Francisco; Robert B. Parker, Boston; Scott Turow, Chicago; George Pelecanos, D.C. And now, with Old City Hall, Rotenberg offers us a page-turning legal thriller set in a diverse and surprising Toronto filled with unexpected characters and plot twists that keep you guessing until the very end. 

2012 books read (48 to date):
The Coast Road - John Brady
Still Midnight - Denise Mina
The Bulgari Connection - Fay Weldon
Good Bait - John Harvey
The Heretic's Treasure - Scott Mariani
Dead I Well May Be - Adrian McKinty
The Devil's Elixir - Raymond Khoury
A Darker Domain - Val McDermid
The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin
GB84 - David Peace
The Emperor's Tomb - Steve Berry
Stonehenge Legacy - Sam Christer
Inquisition - Alfredo Colitto ABANDONED!
The Troubled Man - Henning Mankell
Nineteen Seventy-Four - David Peace
Faithful Place - Tana French
Dead Like You - Peter James
Brother and Sister - Joanna Trollope
The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton ABANDONED!
A Beginner's Guide to Acting English -Shappi Khorsandi
The Snowman - Jo Nesbo
The Leopard - Jo Nesbo
The Stone Cutter - Camilla Lackberg
Miramar - Naguib Mahfouz
The Gallow's Bird - Camilla Lackberg
Nineteen Seventy- Seven - David Peace
Timeline - Michael Crichton
Millennium People - JG Ballard
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins 
Birdman - Mo Hayder
Clara Callan - Richard B. Wright

The Paris Vendetta - Steve Berry
Little Girls Lost - Jack Kerley

The Reutrn of the Dancing Master - Henning Mankell

Nemesis - Jo Nesbo

Dublin Dead - Gerard O'Donovan

City of Bohane - Kevin Barry

This Beautiful Life - Helen Schulman

The Copenhagen Project - K. Sandersen

Prague - Arthur Phillips
Fortunes of War - Gordon Zuckerman 
The Cold Cold Ground - Adrian McKinty
Before the Poison - Peter Robinson

The Mozart Conspiracy - Scott Mariani
Dancer - Colum McCann
Pig Island - Mo Hayder