January Reads II

With all the cold, snow and ice January brought, I can't say I'm sorry to see it go. On the other hand, the weather was quite conducive to reading. Since January 13 I have read: Three 'Agatha Raisin' mysteries by M.C. Beaton. These are entertaining, quick reads set in England's Cotswold District. Agatha is a 50's something woman retired from the London PR rat race. She vacillates between loving the charm of village life and being bored by it. Missing the fast paced work world may explain her penchant for solving mysteries. One way or another, Aggie is involved in murder and mayhem. The three titles are: "The Murderous Marriage", The Wizard of Evesham" and "The Fairies of Fryfam".
Meg Rosoff is another London author new to me. "The Bride's Farewell" tells the tale of a young woman in 1850's England who flees home before dawn on the day she is to wed her childhood sweetheart. Pell joins the stream of humanity on the road to Salisbury Fair hoping to find work. She has sworn to never marry, to never bear child after child and become the drudge she saw her mother to be. Her experiences and the outcome of the book make for an entertaining read. Rosoff is a Carnegie Medal winner for "Just In Case". I would like to read that as well as her two other books, "How I Live Now" and "What I Was".
I had to wait three months before finally getting Kathy Reichs' "206 Bones" from the library. This is her twelfth Temperance Brennan novel. It took me a few chapters to get into the book and at first I didn't think it was as good as her previous eleven books (all of which I've read). The story line explores what could happen if a forensic colleague sabotaged work in the lab. 206 bones refers to the number of bones in the human body. I still find Reichs work fascinating and will continue reading all her novels and watching "Bones" on t.v.
In keeping with one of my New Year's Resolutions to read some non-fiction, I read Martha A. Sandweiss's "Passing Strange" the biography of Clarence King. King was a nineteenth-century scientist, geologist and author who helped survey and map the American West after the Civil War. Much is known of King's public life, of his friendship with Secretary of State John Hay, and his membership in many of New York's finest men's clubs but very little is known of his secret marriage to Ada Copeland, a black woman and former slave and of their five children. It is this secret life which history professor Sandweiss attempts to uncover. And while at times "Passing Strange" almost felt like a novel, I still found myself slogging through to finish it.
"Souvenir" a first novel by Therese Fowler completes my January reads. "Souvenir" is a "what might have been" story of a young woman who chooses family responsibility over her own desires. In order to save her parents' farm, she marrys for money instead of marrying her childhood sweetheart. Seventeen years later when she is confronted with her own mortality, she once again has to make choices.
When these seven books go back to the library tomorrow or the next day, I am going to try really hard not to bring seven more home with me - opting instead to read a few of my own books - including Mark's xmas gift, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog".