Hot, hot, hot

How hot can it be? We've just had almost a week of more than about 37 degrees here (more than about 100F). That's hot!

Christmas Day was very hot and I was very lucky to be able to spend it in an airconditioned house!

For those of you who don't live in Western Australia, here is how lots of us start each Christmas Day. We go to the beach, have a glass of champagne with breakfast and cool off in the water. Marvellous!

It was very hot all the way through to New Year's Day. I survived in my beautiful new house with the airconditioning on. I am a bit worried about my next electricity bill! Still, it was beautiful inside and like a furnace outside. I read several books. The first and second best was "Catch Me" by Lisa Gardner. It is about a woman in her late 20s who approaches Dective DD Warren to find her killer - she is going to be murdered in four days' time. DD Warren becomes involved and tries to work out who it will be. It was riveting reading! I couldn't put it down.

Then there was "Oh Dear Sylvia" by Dawn French. It was a total change of pace - a little bit of humour, a little bit of nastiness and a lot of discovering that Sylvia was a multi-layered person, who in the end did things for the right reason. It made me think of why people do things and sometimes everyone else thinks that what someone else does is wrong, or mean, or horrible, but there may be a reason behind it that is none of those things.

Next was another dectective mystery by John Connelly called "Burning Soul". This one was about a man called Randall Haight, who had been jailed for murder as a 14 year old. He and a friend had murdered a 14 year old girl and now in the town he lives in another 14 year old girl has gone missing. Someone is sending him photos of the barn where they killed the girl and his secret is now out. Detecitve Charlie Parker has to find out who is sending the photos and who took the girl. Was it Randall Haight? This one only took a couple of days to read, it was so good. I find I always rush through good books like this because I want to find out what happens, but then I get let-down when I finish, because there is no more to read.

After that I went to the library and found another Lisa Gardner book entitled "Love You More". Boy! How good was that? Even better than the first one. I only took about a day to read this one. A mother (a State Trooper near Boston) witnessed the murder of her husband and at the same time found out that her four year old daughter had been kidnapped by the same people. To save her daughter she must confess to the murder! This book too shows that the things people do may not be for the reasons that we think. Detective DD Warren and her partner have to find out why she killed her husband. Towards the end they realise that maybe she didn't and they have to work it all out,

Yesterday I read "Old Filth" by Jane Gardam, which is about a retired international lawyer with a practice in Hong Kong. He was a Raj Orphan, a child born to English parents in the Far East and then sent back to England at the age of about four or five to be fostered and educated. It was a lovely story and completely different from all the others that I had read. I liked his name Old Filth because it stands for Failed in England Try Hong Kong! There is another book from his wife's perspective, "The Man in the Wooden Hat". I haven't read that one yet.

Every Christmas we have two weeks off work and every year I tell myself that I am going to do all sorts of things around the house and every year it is too hot so I just read lots of books. At least I enjoyed myself!