So, life has got somewhat complicated lately, so I have not really been able to read the “harder” books simply because I can’t concentrate right now. However, this has meant that I am willingly picking up books that I would not normally choose, because I would like to have a good read without bursting my brain cells.

So, I am saying that I am enjoying enormously A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell who is (as many of you already know) the Epic Ruler of well-written mystery-ish books. I am not that well versed in mysteries – not averse to them, by any means, but they are just usually not my first pick off the pile. However, whenever I do read them, I enjoy them so who knows what kind of perverse reasoning my reading mind is using.

So – really enjoying this Rendell. She has developed believable characters who do believable things and have consistent actions/reactions. Her writing reads very smoothly, and the story has just sucked me in. I have no idea why I haven’t picked  more of her work up, but there you go. I am looking into reading more of her work, but I am not that enthustiastic about huge long series of books (i.e. the Inspector Wexford character). So – thinking I will just pick up her stand-alone titles and see how that goes.

So – thanks to Baroness Rendell for some above-great writing. Much appreciated by this reader.

BTW, Rendell started off her writing career as a reporter for a paper called Chigwell Times in Essex. She wasn’t very good about it as one article she wrote about an invented ghost living in a local house led to the paper being sued. And another article was about an annual dinner at the local tennis club. She didn’t attend, made the story up, and published it only to find out a bit later that the main dinner speaker had actually died at the event. 🙂

And the newspaper name reminded me of this old BBC-TV children’s program, Camberwick Green, with which I grew up:

At the same time, an ILL arrived at the library last week about the Columbine shooting and how the various urban myths developed surrounding it, despite (or perhaps because) of the constant media coverage and cell phone access. This is not an easy book to read especially in light of the recent shooting in Aurora (only 17 miles away from Columbine), but I am learning a great deal about how simple it can be for a news story to reach unprecedented levels of inaccuracy just through its immediacy (and through repetition).

This is more of an investigative reporting book written by one of the Denver Post and NYT journalists who covered the story from the very beginning. I had to take pauses whilst I was reading the descriptions of the actual shooting event because it was so emotionally powerful and literally took my breath away. However, we seem to be past the original crime now and the book is covering how the media covered the incident. It’s really interesting to read especially as I would expect that a very similar process may occur with the Aurora shooting incident. (Very sad and my thoughts go to all who were affected.)

And then reading the old childhood classic of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (1906). Wow – this is one rough kid classic. Tinker Bell is jealous and spiteful, there are constant murders on the island, and never enough food for anyone, not to mention the psychological issues of the Lost Boys concerning Wendy. Hmm. I don’t seem to remember this in the Disney version…! More notes to come on this in the near future…

Happy weekend!