Eek! Where has this week gone?

Time seems to have gone really quickly this week and it's Thursday already! Current reading: M C Beaton's Snobbery with Violence - historical crime featuring Lady Rose who has ruined her reputation by being involved with the suffragette movement. This was originally published under the name of Marion Chesney and I would think has been re-published under M C Beaton to try and entice readers of the Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth books. I've read about 40 pages and it seems pretty good.

I'm also reading The Fan Tan Players by Julian Lees which has a really pleasing cover picture. It's set in Macao and Scotland among other places in the early to mid 20th century. Well written with some glorious descriptions of places and food, it features Nadia a White Russian exile and Iain a Scot working for an early version of MI6.

Then there's Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz which I'm still ploughing through. It is interesting but not that sort of thing you want to read for hours at a time.

I've nearly finished Mean Spirit by Will Kingdom - not I think as good as his Merrily Watkins series written under his real name but still worth reading.

Reading and read

I finished Will Kingdom's The Cold Calling - and enjoyed it. Some memorable characters and a frightening plot. 'Cindy' Mars-Lewis the cross dressing shaman with Kelvyn Kite - the talking bird. Grayle - 'Holy Grayle' - the American journalist looking for her sister, Ersula, and Bobby Maiden - the police inspector whose returned from the dead. The background is the supernatural, shamanism and prehistoric stones as well as the Green Man and someone who is killing people in order to return their blood to the earth. I'm now reading the same author's Mean Spirit which is equally good and includes some of the same characters.

I also finished Kate Muir's Suffragette City and enjoyed it. Some very funny scenes and some interesting characters as well the historical background of suffragette activity in the early 20th century.

I'm currently reading David Hamilton's How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body which is very interesting. Visualisation as a way of helping to heal your body. He makes clear that people shouldn't give up their conventional medication but use visualisation as something extra. He is also honest enough to say that the personal stories he quotes have not been medically verified and they're just how people have sent them to him. As I'm interested in the mind/body link I'm finding it fascinating.

I've also just started reading this Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz - about how we are so attached to being right. I've only read about 30 pages so far so maybe more about this later.

Reading . . .

I am currently reading The Cold Calling by Will Kingdom (Phil Rickman under another name) - very good but not as good as the Merrily Watkins series. Then there's Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took my Dog which is improving the more I read of it and I'm familiar with much of the geographical area she writes about which has to be a bonus. The first 30 pages didn't impress me but it's growing on me.

Also reading Suffragette City by Kate Muir which I've had kicking around for ages. I finally picked it up and started reading it on Saturday and was hooked by it. Albertina is living a somewhat Bohemian life in New York when her grandmother gives her a trunk belonging to Agnes - Albertina's great great grandmother. The problem is that Agnes - in spirit form - keeps turning up and haranguing Albertina about her life and how she's wasting it. Funny and historically interesting.

Pretty mixed bunch there and I'm also still listening to Bill Bryson's At Home - on disc 13 of 14.