December column for paper



I have a confession to make. I have never read The Hobbit. It has now moved up on my long list of “must” read books for this winter. I have several books by John Irving on hand and many of them have been made into movies such as The Cider House Rules, and The World According to Garp, but I chose this one to read this month.

Until I Find You

by

John Irving

820 pages that drags you along in the life of Jack Burns. I am not sure it is worth the time spent reading it but you get caught up in a sort of voyeurism that you need to keep reading to see how things turn out. It starts out with Jack as a boy of 4 on a pilgrimage to norther Europe with his mother to find his womanizing father. They never find him but his tattoo artist mother indulges in some prostitution along the way. This all takes up about 100 pages. She returns home to Toronto and puts Jack in an all girls school so that he will be “safe” since he is such a pretty little boy. Of course this backfires and he is abused by the older girls and later by older women, which sets up his life of unfulfilled romances. Funny, but had he been a little girl we would have been more incensed by this large part of the book. Later on he becomes a famous Screen Write and finds out that his father has been following his life from a distance all along and in the end they find each other but under weird circumstances. So if you want a long long read that is not all that satisfying then you might like it. As for me I am sending it to my niece in Oregon who has run a tattoo/piercing business for years and I actually think she will like it.

The Marks of Cain

by

Tom Knox

This book takes you to Spain and France as two strangers, American David and Englishman Simon become involved in two apparently unconnected strands of what's revealed as one conspiracy. Through his grandfather's will and secret map David is urged to learn his true family history. It will lead him to the heart of Basque country, where he meets a woman who gets caught up in his quest.

Quinn is an investigative journalist and is working on two violent murders of elderly people. He finds that both had been in a top secret Nazi camp and there is a tie in with the same Basque area and a possible curse on a race of people found there. The story takes you on a journey from Arizona, to the Spanish countryside, to the heart of Southern Africa. In the end they try to supply a rational basis for the Nazi genocide. I found this to be a good read and would recommend it to others. I found myself going to my computer to search for facts about the area and people involved so it was quite educational as well.

Devious

by

Lisa Jackson

If you like authors who carry their main characters along from one book to another, you will like this 7^th Rick Bentz/Reuben Montoya novel.

A murder of Sister Camille, an old high-school friend takes them to St. Marguerite's cathedral. Sister Camille's sister gets involved along with her estranged husband who just happens to show up the same day of the murder. This old Nunnery is the site of more murders and the connections with certain Priests and an older nun makes for a great who done it book.

Dorothy Cliff is the owner of Read Again Books in Granby.