Review: The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney

A Private Detective is hired by a Rom man who wants his daughter found. Problem is, she disappeared some 6 years ago and no one has ever looked for her.  Not even the man who'd married her only months before her disappearance.

Thus begins a complex and intriguing search complicated by the secretive ways of the travelling Gypsy community. Even though the detective is himself half Gypsy, the family in question is reluctant to talk.

The travelling family, the Jankos, have lots of secrets, the major one not the missing wife, but rather the details surrounding a mysterious illness that seems to be hereditary and is only evident in the male children, and many deaths, both through illness and through accidents.

The story is told from various viewpoints, beginning with a man in a hospital who is partially paralyzed and has no memory, then from the viewpoint of the detective, Ray, and from a young teenager in the Janko family.

The writing is excellent, the mystery complex.  The world of the last of the travelling Roms is painted with care and sympathy, and is especially poignant as painted through the eyes of the one healthy boy of the family, as he watches his cousin suffer the 'family disease.'

Highly recommended!  (This was an ER book I received through LibraryThing.com)

Review originally posted:  here

Early Voting Niceville

 

On a personal note, rather than book issue, I work Early Voting as well as run a precinct during Florida elections. This year we opened a new site in my town, Niceville.

The first day was a major challenge as we had all sorts of hardware issues. Luckily our hardware guru was there nearly the second we yelled for help, as was the county Supervisor of Elections, who before he got elected was our hardware guru. So between them we were up on time, even if we still had a few glitches going on.

Voters though were wonderful. They smiled and laughed when we said they were Guinea Pigs as we tried to fix the problems. They were all delighted to have a site in their own town and one that should cut down on the lines we had for the last couple of major elections.  I love our voters! 

Today is day tree of Early Voting and I heard we still have a few issues to iron out.  Help will be on hand. So glad we are doing this now, before the madness of a presidential election in November. At this one it is only Republicans voting so we have only about half our electorate coming in anyway (this county is heavily Republican, with Democrats and Independents far behind in numbers).

Early Voting for Florida runs through Saturday the 28th and the Presidential Preference Primary main election day is January 31st. I’ll need a vacation once this is over!

Review: Iago: A Novel by David Snodin

 

I finally finished [Iago: A Novel] which I found to be slow going. I didn't identify very well with any of the characters so really didn't much care about their fate. By the end of the book I did care about Iago and it would have helped immensely if I'd known more about him throughout the book.

It is well written, and the world painted well, though.

I received a free Advanced Reading Copy through the  Http://www.librarything.com Early Reviewer program. Yay for free books!

My official review is here.

Review: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

 

Wow.  Sadly, all too easily seen as actually happening. I do like that about her work. She imagines a dystopian world that you can believe could happen. You hope to hell it won't, but if things go badly, oh yeah.

I listened to the Audio version of this which worked very well since the book is written in first person. The disjointed telling of a story, some of it current time, some of it dreams, some of it memories that come to Snowman as the book progresses is a very effective method and keeps you guessing about what has happened. 

Although you can see the outlines of just how Snowman ended up in his tree quite early on, the details are the arresting feature and oddly compelling. It’s like watching a train wreck or an automobile accident. You want to look away but can’t quite do it.

Certainly a cautionary tale, and one that is all too possible.

I read this for my 12in12 challenge on LibraryThing, category Darwinists.  Also for TIOLI Jan 12 Challenge #6 – Orange Prize shortlist and winners.

Reading habits

I'm trying something different this year. Usually I prefer to read one book at a time. But since I have difficulty sometimes with dead tree books because of arthritis in my hands, I tend to lag when I'm reading Them.

So the plan is to have one e-reader book going, one dead-tree book going, and an audio book as well, since I'm horrible about keeping up with them.

At the moment this means:

Iago: A Novel by David Snodin -  which I got as an Early Reviewer book through LibraryThing.com is the dead tree
Black Lung Captain by Chris Wooding (The Ketty Jay sci fi/steampunk series) is going on the e-reader
and am going to start Oryx and Crake  by Margaret Atwood  audio sometime today.  That’s a group read on LT.

We'll see how well I do. I'm hoping if the books are different enough I won't mind this plan.

Welcome to a Shiny New Year!

 

So far so good.  I’m currently reading two books, one an Early Reviewer book for LibraryThing.com :

 

  Only a few pages in.  Interesting so far. This is a ‘dead-tree edition.’

 

And on my e-reader:

   This is a follow on to a book I loved reading last year  Retribution Falls.