February Report

It is not my plan to post in detail about my monthly reading as the year progresses, but since this is just the second month of said plan, and since said plan may be misunderstood, permit me to elaborate here, just a little.

The idea is to read two books per month with one of them being non-fiction. I have no problem reading 24 books per year, but I do have a problem reading two/month if you understand what I mean. Some months, the reading just dries up. I also will find it difficult to manage one non-fiction per month since I don't read a lot of those books.

Regardless, it isn't a plan set in concrete and is not even really a plan as such, but more of a thought that it would be something to try ... and then leave if I tire of it.

In February I read 3.5 fiction pieces and one non-fiction.

Before I describe them, very briefly I might add, I want to say something about Amazon. Mostly on FB, I have been getting a lot of notices about inexpensive mystery e-books. A few are free while some may be prompted for only 99¢ or $1.99. They're worth a shot, and while I don't think I have found any treasures, I have found a number of satisfactory volumes.

The first book was not a cheapie found on FB. Elizabeth Varadan is on my bloglist although she doesn't post frequently.  When I saw Imogene and The Case of The Missing Pearls listed on her page, I thought I would download it.

This is a children's book where the young protagonist gets intertwined with Sherlock Holmes in solving a case of missing pearls. As an adult who along with every other adults knows Sherlock Holmes in one way or other, I really liked how Elizabeth managed connecting her young Imogene with Sherlock.

Elizabeth Varadan's blog



I then read Rachel Lynn's, Kelly Porter mystery, Dark Game, the first of the series set in the Lake District. I tend to forget the plots and characters quickly so can't really go into detail, except to say that I would read another in the series, so I think that speaks well enough of it.

I was a little less impressed with Caroline Dunford's, A Death at Crystal Palace, a Euphemia Martins mystery, set about a century ago. I found the pace and circumstances a little too fast and improbable for my taste. But it is the 11th book in the series and probably works a little better for those who already know Euphemia.

The half book was Knife Edge, and DCI James Hardy novel by Jay Gill. As the first book of a series, I would have liked to have learned more about the protagonist who was narrated in the first person. But then we were taken to descriptive writing from the omniscient author for the other parts of the story. Beyond this, there were two antagonists who seemed to have nothing to do with each other, and I found the switching about a little wrenching. Perhaps if I had read more of it in one sitting, I would have tracked the plot and characters better, but I found myself cast a bit adrift. The bad guy scenes were also a little too raw for my taste. I hate to give a bad review, and perhaps I was just a little weary and cranky.

The non-fiction work was Jesus Interrupted by Bart Ehrman, who writes of the early New Testament era. Ehrman is a former evangelical who used to see the Bible as god-breathed and literal but doesn't any more. Although he still respects the scriptures, he doesn't hold them to be completely factual. This irritates fundamentalists to no end, but Ehrman shows respect and doesn't put them or the Bible down. He writes to the average layperson of what most seminarians all learn in their courses but seldom transmit to their flocks.

I had thought that I had read all of Erhman's books since Misquoting Jesus came out and couldn't understand how I had missed this one when I saw it mentioned somewhere. I searched my bookshelves, and didn't see it there. Then I looked through my Kindle library to no avail. How could I have missed it? Finally, I checked my almost forgotten Kobo app, and there it was. I had download it at some point and then forgotten all about it.

If you are interested in the New Testament and early church and have an open mind about the scriptures, you will probably really like reading Ehrman. I don't know of any other author who does what he does in explicating these themes for the interested layperson. He is not writing counter-apologetics but just passing on his scholarship to Everyman as it were.