Read two new (to me) books in the last couple days, both of which were very good. The first was Dead Water by Ngaio Marsh, which leaves only one more of her books that I haven’t read. (The title of that final book escapes me for the moment.) The reason I haven’t read the last is because my library system lost its only copy and I delayed so long on reading Dead Water because the only copy my library has (in English) is in large print. I hate reading large print books. It wasn’t a bad book, and played scrupulously fair in presenting the evidence to the reader entirely. I wasn’t shocked by the murderer, but I did guess wrong. Oddly, however, the book’s back cover blurb had the victim wrong, which seemed really odd to me. I mean, don’t people read these books, or at least skim them, before writing those things?
The other book I read was Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer. You may have seen the movie with Brad Pitt that came out a few years ago. The movie was good, and the book was excellent. Not only was it an interesting period in history, but the story would have made a fantastic adventure/fantasy tale. If one didn’t know better, one would say that something like this is too exotic to be real. A German mountain soldier, on an expedition to the Himalayas is interned by the British in India when World War II starts. After several unsuccessful attempts, he manages to escape and flees with a friend to Tibet. Once there, he evades deportation for several months and then the two of them sneak into the middle of the country to the capital of Lhasa where, once they have been granted asylum, he manages to befriend the young Dalai Lama shortly before the country is invaded and subjugated by the ChiComs. I’d recommend this book to just about anyone. It’s amazing.
Neh 