A month has passed! Yet I still breathe.

Labels: books, christie, mystery

Odna Ten' Na Dvoikh; by Tatiana Ustinova
(One Shadow for Two)

Continuing with my 'so braindead' series I bring you the second novel of T. Ustinova.

Many years ago a woman is murdered. Her spouse, an architect named Andrei Danilov, is the first and seemingly only suspect, and the only thing that saves him from jail was a road police officer who took his time questioning Danilov on the legitimacy of his driver's license.

Fast forward to now, and something goes terribly wrong. Somebody destroys the house, the house, Danilov has been working on. Somebody keeps reminding him of his spouse's death in crudest ways. Danilov's long time Best Friend gets pregnant, and for some reason he doesn't like it. Danilov's mother invites him to his father's latest book presentation, and it's hard. Too hard.

Because you see, Danilov was supposed to become a famous pianist. But he couldn't, and now his parents are forever disappointed in him. So to get over it somehow, he builds a life of structure and order around him. Everything's according to a regimen. Danilov is very OCD.

I can't decide whether I liked this book more than the first one. The first one was more of a romance novel with a bit of suspense & mystery thrown in to make things more exciting. This one is definitely more of a mystery novel, but with a love story on the side of course. I can even call it a thriller. And once more, Ustinova's characters are detailed. She never shies away from giving them a whole lot of complexes and inner turmoils. They don't seem to be easy on themselves, ever.

What I didn't like is that the main character, Danilov, was sort of... repetitive. He's supposed to be, considering his character, but at some points in the story it got old. Another thing I didn't like is that I kept walking around the flat all paranoid, but that's not the book's weak point, of course. It's just me, and my nocturnal lifestyle, and my cowardly nature. :P

Amazingly available on Amazon here. In Russian, though.

Labels: mystery, russian

Moi Lichniy Vrag; by T. Ustinova;
(My Personal Enemy)

I've been braindead for ages, so I asked my Mum to rec me some easy reading. Fiction that's pleasant enough, not too thinky, not too simple. Nothing that would make me want to wash my eyeballs and put them on shelf to rest. Forever.

I liked Ustinova's works. Sure, she belongs to the army of many a mystery writers who somehow manage to produce eight hundred paperback volumes per year, but she's one of the best in there.

Moi Lichniy Vrag is a story about a young woman who works on one of the major television channels in Russia, and somehow finds herself in the middle of a dirty intrigue. Her loved one turns out to be a classical asshole, friends all around happen to enter gloomy times of their own (though they do not abandon her), she's left jobless... blah, blah.

Ustinova paints her characters well. Sometimes I get the feeling that she goes overboard with protagonists (though the supporting cast is never left out), but she does it so well, it doesn't annoy me. (Only just a little.) And there's also one definitive thing I enjoy in her writing: she creates little details and never forgets to pick them up throughout the story. These little signs that actually make you feel like you know the character.

Lovely.

Somehow, there are three versions of this book (paperback, hardcover, audio) currently available on Amazon. I'm shocked. So if you speak Russian, go for it. Even if your level is intermediate. It's easy to read and is entertaining enough.

Labels: books, mystery, russian

All by Arthur Conan Doyle, all dealing with Sherlock.

List of short stories I've read so far:

• The Boscombe Valley Mystery
• A Scandal in Bohemia
• The Five Orange Pips
• The Man with the Twisted Lip
• The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
• The Adventure of the Speckled Band
• The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
• The Adventure of the Yellow Face
• The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual
• The Adventure of the Final Problem
• The Adventure of the Empty House
• The Adventure of the Dancing Men
• The Adventure of the Priory School
• The Adventure of Black Peter

Aw, my little old book is falling apart. I've about 1/3 left to go, and then another book I bought in a used books shop. Most of the stories in that book are repeats from the one I owned, but some aren't, so it was definitely worth that less-than-1-dollar I paid for it. If not more.

Labels: books, mystery, russian, yay sherlock

If you're still surprised that I read other things besides fanfics about sordid relationships between certain HP characters, then you're to be surprised again. :P

Cards on the Table, by Agatha Christie;
TSK, Poirot novels are my favourite ones. I AM RUNNING OUT OF AC BOOKS IN THE HOUSE.

Fugitives and Refugees: a Walk in Portland, Oregon, by Chuck Palahniuk;
Makes me want to go to Portland and walk all over the place with this book in hand.

I have strange relationships with CP's books. I attack them like crazy, but have the tendency to stop somewhere in the middle for a month, and then finish in one sitting. So it takes me two sittings to finish the book, but they often have a huge time span between them. No idea why.

Red-Headed League, the, by Arthur Conan Doyle;
This book that contains this story, it's older than my mother. It's old, it's falling apart, its pages are all yellow with darker spots here and there. And it's so pleasant to read because of that.

Unfortunately, it's published in a rather... scatter-y way, meaning stories from various anthologies and one novel were crammed into one book, so there's no real order to it. It's no big deal, since it doesn't change the content (and context, presumably), it just means that I'm going to list separate short stories as I read them, not the finished anthologies. :P

Blah di blah...

Sex and the City, by Candace Bushnell;
I've read it in English after reading it in Russian, and was surprised at how much the translation altered the book's mood. I know it happens, but this book is the perfect example, I believe.

Anyway. I like the book, and I like it more than the TV series. *DODGES BULLETS* They're like two different universes anyway, the book and the TV show. There are some particular quotations that I enjoy, but since I didn't own the book and don't have it anymore, I'll be able to post just one.

Wiccan Prayerbook, the: Daily Meditations, Inspirations, Rituals, and Incantations, by Mark Ventimiglia;
I'll have to admit: my first reaction to this book was disappointment. I figure the main reason is that I'm not Wiccan (as I keep stating over and over :P). Or the fact that I'm simply not the one to pray. But as I studied it more, it grew on me. There's certainly something very calming about a lot of these incantations.

Labels: books, mr palahniuk, mystery, paganism, russian, wicca, yay sherlock