Fishtailing by Wendy Philips, 2010 is a novel written in poems. The author is an English teacher in Richmond. Each character writes poems to create a sad but good story. She captures high school accurately. Very good book that stays with you.

Listened to Ian Rankin’s The Complaints in my car even though I read it last year when it came out. I think I liked it better as an audiobook, or maybe it’s just that enough time has gone by to separate more from Rebus and accept these new characters.

In the car right now is another mystery, translated from Swedish, Gallow’s Bird by Camilla Lackberg, 2011. A woman is found dead, apparently the victim of a tragic car crash. It’s the first in a spate of seemingly inexplicable accidents in Tanumshede for detective Patrik Hedstrom and his colleagues. It’s a good mystery, likable characters, entertaining plot with lots of twists.

Jane Urquhart’s Sancutary Line is good so far. As Amazon says “”…The cultivated landscape of this farm has decayed so completely now, it is difficult to believe that the fields and orchards ever existed outside my own memories, my own imagination… “. With these opening lines Liz Crane, forty-year old entomologist and the central voice in Jane Urquhart’s new, engrossing and most personal novel invites us into her world and into her mind. Having recently returned to the old Butler homestead and studying monarch butterfly behaviour at the nearby Sanctuary Research Centre, Liz feels she needs to reconnect with all that is familiar from the past.”