Pile o' Books

Visited my local indie bookstore over the weekend, & they sent me home with a PILE of review copies for my very own reading pleasure! Thought to myself: "that's blog-worthy", so here we are.

Sped right through this one immediately. The Mapping of Love and Death is the 7th Maisie Dobbs mystery by Jaqueline Winspear, and although I'm new to the genre, they're growing on me. This one takes place in and around London between the two World Wars, and, despite my initial coldness toward it, I was eventually hooked.

My main criticism: it seemed somewhat formulaic. Possibly a coincidence, or maybe typical of the genre, but I found the cadence, characterizations, & plot development to be strongly reminiscent of the Inspector Lynley mysteries by Elizabeth George. Still, a pleasant read, and, as someone with a degree in geography, I particularly enjoyed the surveying theme. If you're in Humboldt, keep your eyes open: this tome is travelling! Yep, I sent it out into the world via BookCrossing.

With its 352 pages, finishing this brings my total to 4,461 - that's 18% of my 25,000 page goal for the year.

Wanna see the lineup on my nightstand? Here's the list of the rest of the books I received; you can expect to see me review them in the not-too-distant future.

• In a Dark Wood by Marcel Moring (that's what I'm reading now)
• Where's My Wand? by Eric Poole
• The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
  
• Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
• My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares
• The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
• The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick
• One More Theory About Happiness by Paul Guest

I told you it's a pile! There's one more advance reader's copy coming my way: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin. I requested a copy through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers group, & was lucky enough to score one. I'm a big Marquez fan, so have high expectations.

Tags: books, reading