if you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle

Most of November is already gone, but here is, rather late, my October reading.

New books
How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin. A young woman is called to a meeting with her great-aunt, whom she has never met before. Unfortunately the great-aunt gets murdered and it turns out she was predicted to be murdered as a teenager and has spent her whole life collecting information about the people in the village she lives in. Now her great-niece may inherit everything, if she solves the murder within a certain time frame. I liked the premise, but somehow the book failed to really grip me. I’m not sure why, but it felt like characters and descriptions were a little flat. It seems the book is the first in a series, so I may check out the next one, and see if things improves.

Testimony of Mute Things by Lois McMaster Bujold. Another Penric and Desdemona novella. The last few installments have been chronological, following Penric’s life as a husband and father, but this one took place with Penric in his 20s.. It’s a pretty straightforward murder mystery, but though I always enjoy Bujold's writing, this felt like one of the weaker novellas in the series. Still worth reading, though!

As usual I'm also reading several other books that I haven’t finished yet, but I also stopped reading a book, which I almost never do. Usually I stick to the end even if I don’t think the book is particularly good, because I want to know how it ends, but this one was so bad I couldn’t stomach it anymore. The book in question was Gallows Hill, a horror novel by Darcy Coates. I read Dead Lake by the same author which I thought was ok, and I like the premise of Gallows Hill. A young woman inherits her parents who she hasn’t seen since she was a young child, and doesn’t remember. In fact she doesn’t remember anything since before she came to live with her grandmother, though some strange scars on her body seems to indicate something traumatic must have happened. It turns out she has not only inherited a large and isolated house, but also a winery. And of course strange and sinister things start to happen.

You know, if I was broke, having used up the last of my money to get to my parents funeral, but finds out I had inherited everything, my first course of action would be to have a discussion with the family lawyers where I would explain my situation and see if it would be possible to get some money. Then, before going to the isolated house my parents lived in, I would buy some groceries. Well at the house, being met by a friendly and helpful employee of my parents, I would make sure he showed me the house properly, especially where all the many doors to the outside were located, and to make sure they are locked. Actually, I would probably stay in a motel instead, but now I’m here, and when choosing a bedroom, and I noticed the windows have locked, I would most certainly lock that window. The day after, when I find that someone has left nooses outside the house I would definitely leave, but if I didn’t, I would still make sure my phone batteries were full all the time.

The heroine of this story does none of these things. None! She also doesn’t locate a bathroom until she has stayed in the house for 2 or 3 days. At the point she noticed for the second time that her phone batteries had died, I gave up. I don’t think I have ever read a book with a protagonist so completely devoid of common sense. I mean, people can make stupid decisions, or be forced to, but the whole plot in this book seems to hinge on a protagonist too stupid to live. And who knows, perhaps she dies gruesomely by the end because of her lack of sense. But I couldn’t stomach more than barely half of the book, so I will never know.

Re-reads
Killer by Jonathan Kellerman. Some time ago I mentioned that I’m looking for a crime novel I was absolutely certain was a Jonathan Kellerman book, but when I re-read them, I never found it. In it the protagonist comes into contact with a woman with a small child, father unknown. The woman either disappears, or is found murdered, and the child definitely disappears. The protagonist eventually finds out that the woman has been murdered by the paternal grandfather who has some kind of cult, and the baby has been kidnapped by that family. I have a very distinct memory that the child gets to sleep in a bed looking like a car, a bed that belonged to his father, though the child is otherwise not well treated. It frustrates me so much that I haven’t been able to find that book.

Anyway, I realized that I had actually missed Killer in my re-read, and got a bit excited as the plot starts out somewhat similar. A woman tries to get custody of her niece, claiming her sister is not fit to be a mother. The little girl's father is unknown, but though the mother is a bit flaky, the aunt doesn’t get custody. Soon after the aunt is murdered and the mother and child disappear. At first I thought this actually was the book I was looking for, but the plot was solved in a completely different way. So I’m still frustrated. As Kellerman books goes, this was quite ok, though the ending felt a bit quick and sloppy.

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook by Alice B. Toklas. I like reading cookbooks. Back when my insomnia was bad, cookbooks were what I read to get sleepy again. I also like cooking and trying out new recipes. This book is more a memoir with recipes than an outright cookbook. Toklas was Gertrude Stein’s life partner, and this book is a non-linear story of their life together, through two world wars, travels and servant woes. The recipes are a reflection of their time, the end of the 19th century and up to 1950, and many, if not most, are very complicated, or featuring ingredients not many eat today. But it’s a fun book.