July Reading Roundup

I ask you, where did the month of July go? One day I'm in Seattle, enjoying the cool mountain air; then I'm in Savannah dying from heat stroke.  Not really, but it felt that way.  This past Sunday the heat index made the temperature feel like 127 degrees, and there we were, walking along the riverfront like idiots.  Needless to say, after we finished shopping, we beelined it back to the hotel, which was luckily in the middle of Savannah's historic district, only about a half mile away from the river.  Anyway, July sort of flew by without me noticing it.

Once again, the bulk of my reading focus was on crime fiction, trying to finish up the books that were on the CWA International Dagger shortlist.  This year's winner, by the way, was the team of Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom, for their Three Seconds,  which was not so much a mystery novel, but rather a suspense/thriller sort of thing; it's still worth reading just for the knots it produced in my stomach.  My plan to get some more of my literature tbr pile out of the way just sort of fell by the wayside in July since I was so busy absorbing the best of international crime fiction.

Here's the shakedown:

translated fiction:
not counting the crime fiction (which is separately listed), I read absolutely zero translated fiction this month.  A first.

general fiction:
 On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy (read, not reviewed for lack of time)

australian fiction:
Voss, by Patrick White (counting toward the 2011 Aussie Author challenge)

nonfiction/history
Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge, by John Gimlette

***

french crime fiction
Seeking Whom He May Devour, by Fred Vargas 
Have Mercy on us All, by Fred Vargas
Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands, by Fred Vargas
This Night's Foul Work, by Fred Vargas
An Uncertain Place, by Fred Vargas
Total Chaos, by Jean-Claude Izzo (for the Europa Editions challenge)
 
scandinavian crime fiction
The Hypnotist, by Lars Kepler
Three Seconds, by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom
The Quarry, by Johan Theorin

spanish crime fiction
Death on a Galician Shore, by Domingo Villar 

turkish crime fiction
The Hotel Bosphorus, by Esmahan Aykol  

.....totaling 15 books for July.  Easy to do...I had a lot of long lazy vacation days with books at my side. 

other book-related stuff:
1) my book group is on hiatus until the end of September; however, I did participate in the Bookbrowse.com discussion of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

2) Added to the Amazon wishlist this month:

Solace, by Belinda McKeon
To Each His Own, by Leonard  Sciascia

3) Books bought this month:
Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles
Half Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan 
The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick DeWitt
A Cupboard Full of Coats, by Yvvette Edwards
Far to Go, by Alison Pick
The American Girl, by Monika Fagerholm
The Treatment and the Cure, by Peter Kocan
 
4) several ARCs through the door, with more on the way (eek!) and

5) I found another freecycler who is putting together a library for the condo development she lives in, and she is gladly taking several boxes of books from my garage. My husband is eternally grateful.


so that's it for July.  If anyone's interested, over at the other blog, The Crime Segments, I'm currently finishing  Misterioso, a Swedish crime fiction novel by Arne Dahl, and starting a month of books mentioned in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano novels.