Lazy 3-day weekend poll ~ spring reading list, edition 7 :: Now Smell This

Welcome to our 7th annual spring reading poll! Please recommend a great book to add to our reading lists, and tell us what fragrance we should wear while reading it.

Or, do what I do and record here everything you have read since the last reading poll. And if you want more recommendations, scrolling through the literature tag will bring up all the older reading polls.

Or, as always, just talk about something else.

What I’ve read since the winter poll:

Because Deva recommended it, I read Sebastian Barry’s Annie Dunne, and then I read the second in the Dunne series, A Long Long Way. The writing is achingly beautiful, so thank you Deva. Also on the fiction front, I read Julian Barnes Departure(s), which Barnes has said will be his last book, and that’s it…not a long fiction list, for me. 

In the mystery/spy department, I finished Val McDermid Silent Bones, Sherry Thomas The Librarians, Derva McTiernan The Unquiet Grave, and three by Margaret Frazer (The Clerk’s Tale, The Bastard’s Tale and The Hunter’s Tale).

For non-fiction, I read Artemis Cooper’s Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure (recommended by DeniseH) and Ann Fadiman’s Frog and Other Essays. 

I have had the feeling over the last few months that I was watching tv more and reading less, and apparently I was right. (I also started more books that I did not finish than usual…5 by my count.) So instead of scenting one of the books I read, I’ll give a scent to the end of what seemed like an incredibly long dreary winter…The Different Company De Bachmakov.

Note: top image is Lost Verses series [cropped] by Nick Kenrick at flickr; some rights reserved.