Rounding Out 2017's "Reads"---and one unlikely "fail".

Elizabeth George's "For the Sake of Elena" was a rather standard-issue police thriller by this American writer with a particular skill for recreating the classic British police procedural thriller. I've read several of her novels.

The author tends to weave various interesting details of UK culture, art, music and architecture into the stories, using devices supplied by the main characters: working class Detective Sargent Barbara Havers' (advanced due to her brilliance as a crime solver, not her charm and beauty) mother is in a decline-spiral due to dementia; how will Barbara cope with this and do her job? Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley (Barbara's boss) is a helpful as possible. He is a constant source of interest in art, music. Barbara Havers was the most interesting character, I thought.

One character is a famous artist: so we learn a lot about painter James O'Neill Whistler--I followed up by checking out a large and beautiful retrospective volume of his work from the library; the best aspect of the novel for me!

Otherwise, I cared little for the spoiled young victim and the other equally worthless seeming list of characters. I wasn't satisfied with the resolution of the case, either.


Gregory Maguire's "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" 

The author first wrote "Wicked"; due to my lack of empathy for the Wizard of Oz stories, I chose to read the novel based on the Cinderella legends.

The plot reveals the Cinderella story from a 180-degree different viewpoint. It is an interesting story; better to read it with no fore knowledge; but it is not a children's story.



A sad, unexpected and unlikely "fail"!

This expressive newborn is the son of one of  my friends. This  is  her photo, not mine.

"The Time It Never Rained" by Elmer Kelton. It was likely my fault, but the photo above "was me" while reading 2/3 of the novel until I had to put it down.

Well-crafted, well written, good characters: a thoughtful Western-genre novel about a southwest Texas sheep and cattle rancher (independent to a fault) in 1950's draught In good times with rain, this rancher would profit: with no rain, his tragic flaw of inflexible independence simply drives him down.

During the illness we suffered over the past weeks, I picked up the book during waking hours; my attitude was not strong enough to experience real-live flu and vicarious relentless depression through this plots' downward spiral.