Book reports

I just finished The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.  I quite liked it a lot.  Ms. Kingsolver has a knack for writing about characters from small towns.  In this book she tells the tale of a small town minister who takes his wife and four daughters over to the Congo in the early 1960's.  He's going to change the world by converting all the Congolese heathens to Christ, or so he thinks.  His mission doesn't go as planned and things go haywire from almost day one.  If you lived in a small town and went to any of the Christian sect churches, then you know this family.  I loved the first 3/4 of this book but the last chapters after the family leaves their mission left me cold.

I read The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky while at the beach last month.  I enjoyed it immensely.  Kurlansky is a top notch food historian and this book about the history of oyster eating in New York is a very good read.

I really liked Camilla Lackberg's The Ice Princess.  It's a Swedish mystery that's gripping and fast paced.  It's full of snow, ice, murder, and intrigue.  This is the first of many crime novels Ms. Lackberg has written, she's a bestselling author in Sweden and is just now getting published in the USA.  I highly recommend this one.  It's even better than Henning Mankell's Wallander series.