Book and more books

The image to the left is from 18th century Korea, the time of the first half of Margaret Drabble's "Red Queen". I recently read this lovely book and can only say that I have become a Drabble fan. There are lots of books left to read. A good situation for one who loves to read and loves finding "new" authors. Other books have also provided some entertainment between the frustrating days of work. Jack Kerly's second Carson Ryder novel "The Death Collectors" kept me busy for a day or too, had to try to dredge up the background from his earlier book "The Hundredth Man". Kerly does like psychological wierdos. More psychological suspense was found in "Missing Persons" by Stephen White. It also contained som strange types, but there wasn't a lot of suspense as I sort of figured out where the whole thing was going. White is another "new" author, but I'm not sure I am going to be a devoted fan. Lastly, needing a Friday book (easy to read, not too challenging) I broke down and bought Iris Johansen's "Countdown". I know that Johansen's books are just romances in disguise, but Friday is Friday. And Saturday is Saturday so after washing windows and dishes we settled down to a video of The Kingdom of Heaven. It was entertaining, but that is about it.

Filling in the blanks

The subject of today's blogg is reading books in a series in the wrong order. I found one of Charles McCarry's books at the library (reading a Swedish translation of a book written in English is sometimes the only way to still one's curiousity). The book - "The tears of autumn" - was one in a long line of conspiracy theories about Kennedy's murder in Dallas, November 1963. This is an event I remember well - but was too young to keep up with all the various theories. Charles McCarry blamed the Vietnamese. True or not doesn't matter, the book was fun to read. But (and here is the point about reading books in the wrong order), I found numerous errors. David Patchen who is Paul Christopher's friend is described as being newly divorced. In another book (1991) David's loving and life long relationship with a Quaker woman is described in detail. The time line concerning Paul's marriage to Cathy seems also strange. But I guess none of that really matters. The other book out of order was Jodi Compton's "The 37th Hour". Here was the story about how Sarah's husband Mike Shiloh landed in jail and about the murder of her friend's daughter. I didn't find any discrepancies - but then again the time between books (only a year) for Compton was much less than for McCarry (over 15 years).