Vanishing Acts Jodi Picoult

Sometimes there are books you can't put down-and this is one-and sometimes there are books keep spinning circles in your head,after you've finished, and this is one of those too. A wonderful story, with characters you believe are real, and places so well described you can feel the heat on your skin. Who IS this woman? It is also one of those books where you go back and reread paragraphs, because the language touches something in your own history.
".'.. it's crazy, isn't it, the way we always say that children belong to their parents, when it's really the other way around?' I suddenly remember being very little and being embraced by my father. I would try to put my arms around my fathers waist, hug him back. I could never reach the whole way around the equator of his body; although I'd squeeze hard, he was that much larger than life. Then one day, I could do it. I held him instead of him holding me, and all I wanted at that moment was to have it back the other way."

Quentins Maeve Binchy

Ok so this is my first Maeve Binchy novel. She's Irish. And the title is a Q word so I had a lot in common to start with. Oddly though, I didn't choose this. It got into my bag by mistake. Leprechauns perhaps. So here's what I think. I liked it a lot; there were a LOT of characters, and sometimes it was hard to keep them all straight, especially since they tended to take turns telling bits of the story, and just as you got really intrigued with one bit, another started. But it wasn't at all the bodice ripper I had thought it would be. Intriguing stories and characters, and lots of local color, or colour.

Crime Beat Michael Connelly

A series of cases discussed. Not really well done. Read on airplane-forced audience. If I hadn't been stuck, I might not have finished it.