Restless

Not surprisingly, my lunch time reading strategy was a complete bust. It was pretty crazy last week, and I took lunch when possible. Reading wasn't an option as I ate and ran or ate at my desk.

That being said, I did get some reading done. I even stayed up late to read the final chapters of Restless. To give the story credit, you had to read to the end to figure things out and even then, I wanted greater explanatory detail on a couple of events. It certainly makes the life of a spy seems less than glamorous. People were sacrificing themselves for the side of "good" only to discover in the end that they were "the bad guys" in reality. It was a very British book, and I'm sure someone from the UK would enjoy it more. All in all, the book was a nice surprise. I'm not sure if I would run out and read another by this author, but it was a fun read.

What am I going to read next? I think I'm going to be reading so much at work next week, that I may just focus on journaling or veg out reading some cook books. Donna Hay came highly recommended to me on the weekend. Another person called the books "culinary porn."

I'll let you know.
Here is a review from Publishers Weekly:
When Ruth Gilmartin learns the true identity and the WWII profession of her aging mother, Sally Gilmartin, at the start of Boyd's elegant ninth novel (after Any Human Heart), Ruth is understandably surprised. Sally, née Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré living in Paris in 1939, was recruited as a spy by Lucas Romer, the head of a secretive propaganda group called British Security Coordination, to help get America into the war. This fascinating story is well told, but slightly undercut by Ruth's less-than-dramatic life as a single mother teaching English at Oxford while pursuing a graduate degree in history. Ruth's more pedestrian existence can't really compete with her mother's dramatic revelations. The contemporary narrative achieves a good deal more urgency when Ruth's mother recruits her to hunt down the reclusive, elusive Romer. But the real story is Eva/Sally's, a vividly drawn portrait of a minor figure in spydom caught up in the epic events leading up to WWII.