Medium

I'm not sure how you define a reading slump. Usually I'd say it was one of those periods when you have lots of things that you could read, but you just can't get into anything. And I suppose that's been true for me, but I don't know if it counts when the reason I haven't been able to get into anything is because I've been so exhausted from work. Anyway, it doesn't really matter whether you call it a slump or not - I haven't read (or knitted) an awful lot since my last post. But my lovely boyfriend took me away for a couple of nights at the end of October, and promised me lots of time to spend chilling out with a book, which obviously necessitated having a bit of a think about what to take. I'd heard a podcast (You Wrote the Book, with Simon Savidge) interview with Val McDermid, and she sounded interesting, so I thought I'd have a bash at her Wire in the Blood series. I finished one before we left, and took the second with me, and I've just finished the third (reading time having reduced significantly since being back at work). And I think I'm not going to read any more of them. It's been a bit of a weird one, this. I've read a lot of books in my time, and usually one of a few things happens: either I love them; I find them to be enjoyable trash; or I don't like them and stop reading. But these were different. The first one was ok. It was well-written but residing firmly in the 'enjoyable trash' category, until I saw the big clunking plot "twist" coming from a mile off, at which point I was a little bit disappointed, because well-written crime novels should be a little more subtle than that. But hey, I'd managed to read all of it in a couple of days, and it was published 20 years ago, so it's possible that Val McDermid was still honing her craft - maybe it was worth seeing what the second one was like. And I enjoyed that much more, partly because it was one of those "opposite" crime novels where you already know who did it and you just have to find out how they get caught, thus avoiding big clunking plot twists. So, onto the third. And cue another problem, because the two main characters are now leading such different lives that getting them back together is a little bit contrived. And in order to make the plot work, they have to do really stupid things that I'm fairly sure people as good at their jobs as they supposedly are wouldn't do. And inevitably, they get themselves into danger and nearly get killed at the hands of the criminals. Again. I mean, seriously. If this sort of stuff happens to you on a regular basis, you're either rubbish at your job, which they're not supposed to be, or you have an unnatural, unrealistic amount of bad luck. It's the old Midsomer Murders problem. And I'm kind of... over it. The three books I've read weren't bad. But they weren't really enjoyable trash either. They were just... fine. Ok. All right. Distinctly medium. And if I'm going to spend some of my limited time reading, I think I want something just a little more extraordinary than that.