Another Week of Reading

I did a lot of reading in the past week and not all of it from books. I've been blog wandering, following links hither and thither, discovering new blogs and seeking ideas. Wanting to do things differently but uncertain how to!
Michelle @ A Reader's Respite has written an interesting post and I agreed with so much of it particularly the reviewing part.
Then I find I'm not alone in my dissatisfaction and am actually suffering from a malady Amanda @ Fig and Thistle has identified as Blog Malaise which sounds a whole lot better than blog slump and apparently there is a great deal of this about right now. So not to worry and on to the books...

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The minute I began to read I realised I knew this story! 
A neglectful, uncaring uncle hires a young and inexperienced governess for his orphaned niece and nephew and off she goes to the isolated manor house ......I must have seen the movie many years ago because nobody who has navigated their way through the bewildering maze of Henry James' prose could possibly forget the experience. His style of writing takes some getting used to but once I slowed down and concentrated all was well. Sounds like the classic gothic ghost story but it is so much more - every word, every action can be interpreted in more than one way and it's left to the reader to come to their own conclusion. Creepy and chilling! I loved it!

A wet weekend and I went contemporary again with Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty.
I've enjoyed all her books since overcoming my initial reservations that What Alice Forgot was too 'chicklit' for me and her latest was no letdown.
The author very cleverly creates a suspenseful situation that keeps the reader compulsively page-turning - horrors! a death at the Pirriwee Public School's Trivia Night.
Plenty of both drama and humour against a background of primary school politics and petty gossip. Very entertaining .

Too big for bedtime so a changeover to an early Ruth Rendell - The Secret House of Death.

And of course it is now Mary Stewart Week and I made an early start with Wildfire at Midnight which will have its own post later this week - I hope!

Reading this week...also the start of the two week Diversiverse and I'm struggling a bit with deciding what to read. I started The Swallows of Kabul but the cruelty and brutality was sickening so quickly discarded.

The Map of Love by Ahdaf Souef has been on my shelf for two years and I did love the first paragraph...

- and there, on the table under her bedroom window, lies the voice that has set her dreaming again. Fragments of a life lived a long, long time ago. Across a hundred years the woman's voice speaks to her - so clearly that she cannot believe it is not possible to pick up her pen and answer."

This one is calling me and I will continue to read it but at 500 pages I may not finish it in time to review so this afternoon I tootled off to the library and found two smaller books for this event ...........

Revenge: Eleven dark short stories by Yoko Ogawa
Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyemi
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Always subject to change, of course but for now that's what I'll be reading this week.