What Are You Reading --- August 2015 - Page 24

smoky22 · ‎05-30-2010

@Lynneuk wrote:
Ruth Rendell is one of my all time favorite authors. I love all her books and especially the Inspector Wexford ones. Many have been adapted for television and are available on Netflix. They're a little dated now but still excellent to watch. I believe they are called The Ruth Rendell Mysteries or something similar.

Lynne, do you know the name of the actor who plays Wexford? I know it will be someone British and will probably mean nothing to me, but I'm curious to see what he looks like.

dawg lover · ‎03-15-2010

Smoky, that was such a great question that once I saw it, I had to look it up myself! If you google George Baker actor, you will see Wexford (he looks just like I had imagined), and Christopher Ravenscroft actor will show you Burden. I am a few books ahead of you; getting ready to start #10. They are such short books that I have been able to read a book a day. Some are better than others, but overall I am enjoying them.

Lynneuk · ‎03-10-2010

Yes, George Baker played Wexford. Unfortunately he died in 2011. If you google him and see him interviewed you will see he has a very posh voice. When he played Wexford though he didn't sound quite so posh,lol.

Judaline · ‎03-10-2010

Oh, he's a wonderful actor. He reminded me of Jack Hawkins, another favorite. I sure didn't know they made movies of Wexford-looks like PBS? Netflix only has one and the reviews complain there is no ending, or there must be another disc. I don't know what that's about, but I'd love to see one. I saw one on youtube just to see how they'd look-it looks like perfect casting to me.

SAGal · ‎08-09-2015

I just finished CARRY ME HOME: A NOVEL

It was a charming book - a simple story but the characters were wonderful, especially Earwig. He is mentally challenged but wiser than all the rest. Thoroughly enjoyed this. Here is the synopsis from GOODREADS:

4.08 · rating details · 1,225 ratings · 194 reviews

The love of family. The heartbreak of war. The triumph of coming home.

1940. Rural Wisconsin. Sixteen-year-old Earl “Earwig” Gunderman is not like other boys his age. Fiercely protected by his older brother, Earwig sees his town and the world around him through the prism of his own unique understanding. He sees his mother’s sadness and his father’s growing solitude. He sees his brother, Jimmy, falling in love with the most beautiful girl in town. And while Earwig is unable to make change for customers at his family’s store, he is singularly well suited to understand what other people in his town cannot: that life as they know it is about to change; the coming war will touch them all.

For Jimmy will enlist in the military. And Earwig will watch his parents’ marriage buckle under the strain of a family secret. And when Jimmy returns–a fractured shadow of his former self–it is Earwig’s turn to care for him. His struggles to right the wrongs visited upon his revered older brother by war, women, and life are at once heartwarming and riotously funny. Their family and town irrevocably altered, Earwig and Jimmy fight to find their own places in a world changed forever.

SAGal · ‎08-09-2015

I also have have just read THE BOTTOMS. It was very entertaining - hard to put down. The violence was a little dark and graphic for my taste but once i got into the story I had to find out what happened! Here is the synopsis from GOODREADS:

4.13 of 5 stars 4.13 · rating details · 3,668 ratings · 454 reviews

The narrator of The Bottoms is Harry Collins, an old man obsessively reflecting on certain key experiences of his childhood. In 1933, the year that forms the centerpiece of the narrative, Harry is 11 years old and living with his mother, father, and younger sister on a farm outside of Marvel Creek, Texas, near the Sabine River bottoms. Harry's world changes forever when he discovers the corpse of a young black woman tied to a tree in the forest near his home. The woman, who is eventually identified as a local prostitute, has been murdered, molested, and sexually mutilated. She is also, as Harry will soon discover, the first in a series of similar corpses, all of them the victims of a new, unprecedented sort of monster: a traveling serial killer.

From his privileged position as the son of constable (and farmer and part-time barber) Jacob Collins, Harry watches as the distinctly amateur investigation unfolds. As more bodies -- not all of them "colored" -- surface, the mood of the local residents darkens. Racial tensions -- never far from the surface, even in the best of times -- gradually kindle. When circumstantial evidence implicates an ancient, innocent black man named Mose, the Ku Klux Klan mobilizes, initiating a chilling, graphically described lynching that will occupy a permanent place in Harry Collins's memories. With Mose dead and the threat to local white women presumably put to rest, the residents of Marvel Creek resume their normal lives, only to find that the actual killer remains at large and continues to threaten the safety and stability of the town.

Lansdale uses this protracted murder investigation to open up a window on an insular, poverty-stricken, racially divided community. With humor, precision, and great narrative economy, he evokes the society of Marvel Creek in all its alternating tawdriness and nobility, offering us a varied, absolutely convincing portrait of a world that has receded into history. At the same time, he offers us a richly detailed re-creation of the vibrant, dangerous physical landscapes that were part of that world and have since been buried under the concrete and cement of the industrialized juggernaut of the late 20th century. In Lansdale's hands, the gritty realities of Depression-era Texas are as authentic -- and memorable -- as anything in recent American fiction.

SWEET · ‎03-09-2010

Finished Jackie Collins' The Santangelos. Another good book in this long running series.

Onto Beatriz Williams' Tiny Little Thing which is also the sequel to The Secret Life of Violet Grant. Another sequel to this coming out in November.

Group 5 minus 1 · ‎03-11-2010

Just finished the "Book of Joan" by Melissa Rivers. It is funny but not what I was looking for.

songbird · ‎03-21-2010

Ruth Rendell is my author. I have purchased most of her books. I also like her under the Barbara Vine name. Her last book is called Dark Corners. It will come out this fall. Not a Wexford book but psychological thriller under the Rendell name. Many people will miss her. An amazing author that inspired several well known authors, including Stephen King.