I am participating in the Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times meme, created by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness. I had no idea it had been so long since I had written a Bookshelf Traveling post (the last one was on July 24th). Maybe it was because the times have been so insane, with the numbers for Covid-19 cases and deaths going up so much, here and abroad. And other distractions, political and otherwise.
So here I am with another shelf. The built in bookshelf is supposed to be books that I want to read soon (relatively), keeping them in easy reach and accessible. But somehow it doesn't work that way. I have had some of the books here for many years, and for the most part don't know why I haven't read them.
On the far right is Bangkok 8 by John Burdett. This book was passed on to me by my husband after he read it. The book was published in 2003 and I would say it has been on this shelf about 12 years?
Description at Crimereads in an article about Bangkok's expat crime fiction scene:
Bangkok 8, which has its surreal, seemingly drug-induced, moments, was the first in a series featuring Detective Sonchai Litpleecheep, a Thai cop whose mother was a prostitute and father was an American soldier during the Vietnam War (Bangkok was a major R&R destination for US soldiers during that conflict).
Two books over from that is Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes. My notes indicate that I must have had this book for at least 10 years.
Description at Macmillan:
"Damian Baxter was a friend of mine at Cambridge. We met around the time when I was doing the Season at the end of the Sixties. I introduced him to some of the girls. They took him up, and we ran about together in London for a while…."
Nearly forty years later, the narrator hates Damian Baxter and would gladly forget their disastrous last encounter. But if it is pleasant to hear from an old friend, it is more interesting to hear from an old enemy, and so he accepts an invitation from the rich and dying Damian, who begs him to track down the past girlfriend whose anonymous letter claimed he had fathered a child during that ruinous debutante season.
The search takes the narrator back to the extraordinary world of swinging London, where aristocratic parents schemed to find suitable matches for their daughters while someone was putting hash in the brownies at a ball at Madame Tussaud's. It was a time when everything seemed to be changing—and it was, but not always quite as expected.
Towards the left side of the shelf is a relatively new acquisition, Killing Me Softly by John Leslie.
This is the first book in a series of four, and it was published in 1994. From the description on the book cover:
As Raymond Chandler did with Los Angeles, and Dashiell Hammett with San Francisco, John Leslie re-creates the town of Key West through the jaded sensibilities of an unforgettable P.I. – in this case, Gideon Lowry, a Conch with a penchant for rum and soda, inhabited by his own poignant sense of the past.
A Conch is a Key West native (in this context). There is a good post about this series at Black Gate.
Have you read any of these books? What is your opinion?
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