Read: Amy Irvine - Trespass

I read about three quarters of this book while visiting my mother this past weekend. I thought I would really like it - it's a memoir by a woman who moved out to a cabin in the utah desert wilderness, to get back to nature and her Mormon ancestral roots in the area. But it was a pretty odd book. Her style of writing is fractured and melodramatic, which seems to reflect her emotional stability - during the course of time covered in the memoir she's dealing with her father's suicide and the end of her marriage. I really can't recommend this one.

Want to Read: Carlos Ruis Zafón - The Shadow of the Wind

Recommended by Mark's friend David. Something about his description made me think of 'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco, which can only be a good thing.

Want to Read: Charlie Huston - Sleepless

Police procedural and speculative fiction set in a world where 10% of the population can't fall asleep

Read: Connie Willis - Blackout

Connie Willis is one of my favourite authors. Her books are difficult to classify - a bit sci fi/fantasy, with a love of history, capers, tragedy, and a sense of the uncanny.

'Blackout' didn't turn out to be one of her best, but that may be because it's one of a two-book set - I'll have to wait until this fall to see how the story ends. I'm willing to maintain faith.

A new start to recording what I'm reading

For years I kept track of the books I'd been reading by recording it in a notebook. And then I moved, and I never really found the right spot for that notebook, so I never knew where it was when I'd finished reading a book, and the system fell by the wayside.

And there's another notebook in which I'd record the books I want to read, although it mostly ended up as a collection of pieces of paper folded inside the cover. So now I'll bring both lists together in the same place.

And if I get really ambitious, I'll start a third list - books that are in my library!