What are you reading the week of August 31, 2019?

Well, it has been a busy week. I've been chugging along in Molecular Biology of the Cell, and I've started Warfare in the Ancient Near East. Yes, I know. There is something very wrong with me. :-)

I'm still delving into The Girl Sleuth, which is over 40; I was so involved that I got the 20th anniversary revision to compare them. That's a good sign, no?

>2 richardderus:
similar subject area/different author/2006 publication

Enjoying this OverDrive/Kindle eBook ~

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak

>3 Molly3028: I gave that one four stars! The books are irresistible, and Rehak's got a finely balanced voice in their praise. Neither too breathlessly admiring nor too stodgily analyzing, which is a tough line to walk.

I'm still reading NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. So far I'm loving it!

Tossed Walkaway by Cory Doctorow by the wayside. Complete drudgery. Doctorow is hit or miss for me. This one was such a complete miss I couldn't even see the barn he was aiming for.

Added In Hero Years... I'm Dead by Michael A. Stackpole to my rotation instead.

And, of course, still reading David Copperfield and Mew is for Murder.

I'm about a third of the way through No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead by Peter Richardson.

Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
4/5 stars
Goodwin relates her life around the major events of the 1950’s including her love of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the hope that they will win the World Series, the changes in her neighborhood and her life in the Catholic Church. I thought this was wonderfully written and enjoyed learning about that time period through her eyes.

It has been a busy week but I did manage to read Antti Tuomainen's The Man Who Died; a tongue-firmly-in-cheek Finnish crime novel with plenty of unsolved mysteries and a lightness of touch that made reading it highly pleasurable.

I'm now having difficulty focusing on books, and so am reading three of them. In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin is so beautifully written and I'm loving it. I'm still reading Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich but can only read it a bit at a time as the horror of it creeps into my brain, and I can't tell myself that "it's just fiction". I'm also reading one novel: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.

I'm still reading What Might Have Been, Volumes 3 & 4. Volume 3 on alternate wars ranges all over the place so far with interesting takes on what would have happened in the fledgling US if the French and Spanish defeated the British, how Helen of Troy ended the Trojan War early, how Hitler was killed by one of his field marshals in 1943 resulting in a German-Russian peace deal, a fascist Europe and some disturbing alliances, what happened if Constantine was defeated by Maxentius, and what happened if Germany developed a rocket plane able to drop a bomb on NYC. Very much enjoying this collection!

>9 ahef1963: Voices from Chernobyl was my first read of the year, and a 5-star one at that!

Finished Mew is for Murder by Clea Simon. Better than I expected.

Next up is Freaks by Tess Gerritsen.

Enjoying this iTunes audiobook ~

The Other Mrs. Miller by Allison Dickson

(domestic thriller/Phoebe had a troubled past with her now dead father, and she has a faltering marriage with her therapist husband/dysfunctional relationships/mysterious woman/satire)

UPDATE: ****

Blind Justice – Bruce Alexander
4****

Alexander has written a mystery featuring a real historical figure. Sir John Fielding was a celebrated magistrate in 18th century London. Blinded in a navy accident, he presided over the Bow Street Court, and was known for his ability to recognize criminals by the sound of their voices. He was also instrumental in founding London’s first professional police force, the Bow Street Runners.

Alexander’s novel relies on a young narrator. Thirteen-year-old Jeremy Proctor is an orphan who arrives in London and is the victim of scam artist who makes a living “catching thieves.” Sir John sees through the plot and offers to help Jeremy find a suitable position. But a “locked room” murder demands immediate attention, and Jeremy proves his worth as an assistant to Sir John.

I loved the characters in this book and found myself looking up various references to real people to get more back story. Alexander paints a vivid picture of 18th century London and the many injustices that her poor endured. Jeremy is a wonderful narrator – intelligent, studious, dedicated, eager to please, and observant. The supporting cast is top notch, especially: Mr Bailey, one of the constables in the Bow Street Runners; Mrs Gredge, the housekeeper; and Mr Donnelly, an Irish surgeon. There are several suspects and a few twists that keep the reader guessing.

I’ll read more of this series.

>14 BookConcierge:

With you all the way on this book! Alexander is fantastic at breathing life into his characters. While reading, I could see the people walking around in my living room. This kind of book is what I call an "intelligent" novel that gives the reader more than an escape, or entertainment through its vividness alone. I found his 18th C. London more believable than even O'Brian's naval stories about Captain Aubrey.

Next in the series is Murder in Grub Street.

So I've had a tiny bit of time on my hands. When that happens I pick up a few of half-finished titles piled on my nightstand.

Ahead of anything on the pile I sought out:
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
Could not put it down. Hated being confronted at first. Read passages multiple times to understand what she was saying. Once I figured out all of her definitions, she was right. She's white and addresses the book to all other white people and tells us all why we are racist, intentionally OR unintentionally. My problem was she doesn't offer much of a solution. Lots of discussion with a friend about out disagreements.
So, white or not white, read this book!

In progress:

Death Claims - Joseph Hansen, the second in his Dave Brandstetter mystery series from 1970 - 1991. - Gay detective fiction

A Room with a View - E M Forster - Love it

The Fire Engine that Disappeared - Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahloo
One of my favorites in the Martin Beck mystery series. Can't beat Scandinavian crime.

Finished Lost Horizon last night and enjoyed it very much. This afternoon and evening read Hilton's Goodbye Mr. Chips. I started getting misty-eyed within the first five minutes, and finished sobbing. It is remarkable that such a young man - apparently Hilton was thirty-three- could write such a sensitive, deeply touching book.

>5 PaperbackPirate: I enjoyed King Jr's take a lot, but ohhhhh migod that book was creepy. So creepy. Hill's work has a certain chilliness about it that King's doesn't, I think.

I've been quite sick, so I was rereading a lot of Terry Pratchett (Touchstones aren't working for me right now for some reason). I also reread the first few Adrian Mole books, and some Jon Ronson, who is very funny but probably not that accurate. I have also been reading (or rather rereading) the Comfortable Courtesan books by L.A. Hall as they come out, and they are very comforting indeed.

Re new books, I have been in a bit of a rut, but managed to read Furious Hours, the new book about the true crime book Harper Lee tried to write; The Hazel Wood, a rather sophisticated YA fantasy; The Incendiaries, which was terrible; and Caitlin Kiernan's revised novella Black Helicopters, as intriguing and elliptical as all her other work. I have also been beavering away at some less compelling books: Hubris, the story of the lies behind the "yellowcake" of the first Gulf War; Astounding, the new book about the white male fathers of Golden Age scifi; and Helter Skelter, which I read once and probably never again mumblemumble decades ago. I forgot nearly all of it. Surprisingly it seems a bit dull and dry, or maybe that's just the writing style.

I have A TON of new books lined up on my Kindle, not to mention all the actual paper books lining the walls and a lot of the floor. Some that look intriguing: Voices from Chernobyl (my husband and I loved the show); Rise of the Rocket Girls; This Republic of Suffering, about grief and mourning during and after the US Civil War; Semicolon; An Unkindness of Ghosts; The Raven Tower....I could go on....and on....

>17 Catreona: I just read Goodbye, Mr Chips last week. What a delight it was and agree with your thoughts about the author’s youth and skill with the story. The edition I read was also illustrated with some lovely sketches. It was one of those books I just wanted to hug and hold close, as odd as that may seem.

>19 the_red_shoes: Hope you’re feeling better!

This week I’m back to Michael Connelly with Dark Sacred Night.

I finished my reread of Angle of Repose -- it had been 25 years since I read it the first time, and I was surprised at how much I'd forgotten. Such a good book, so steeped in the growth and development of the West, and the lives of the characters are so complex and rich. I love the exploration into past lives, the desire to understand beloved grandparents, the discovery of how much is unknowable no matter how hard we try, no matter how desperately we need to know as a way of understanding ourselves.

Now I'm reading Aleksandar Hemon's My Parents: An Introduction / This Does Not Belong to You.

>19 the_red_shoes: - Hope you feel better soon!
>21 mollygrace: - Angle of Repose is one of my favourite books. I've read it several times, but probably not for a decade.

I just finished the astounding In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. I have mentally added it on to my lists of "best books" and "favourite books" and "beautiful writing". There's so much history in it; I was just expecting a travelogue. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lived in Patagonia for a period of time. Darwin was there. Anarchy happened. Indians died, shot by Europeans or plagued by epidemics brought to South America on board the ships. I am feeling now like I should pack a rucksack and wander around Patagonia myself. The one thing I was disappointed in was the book's map. It's old and blotchy and hard to read or to track Chatwin's journey.

I sincerely believe I'm being generous with a 3-star rating of Lanny. Go see it on my blog because I just do not want to hear about it from the multivarious snarking twidgees' mouths. Not in the mood, not in this lifetime.

I’ll Give You the Sun – Jandy Nelson
Audiobook narrated by Julia Whelan & Jesse Bernstein
2**

From the book jacket: Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, at sixteen, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways… until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else – an even more unpredictable new force in her life.

My reactions
Okay, the book jacket should have given me a clue to the over-written, melodramatic story I was in for. But I didn’t read the book jacket in advance. I needed a YA book with a multi-colored cover for a challenge, and my Youth Services Librarian suggested this one.

These twins were dealing with some serious family tragedy in addition to the usual teen difficulties of awakening sexuality, finding your place among your peers, fitting in, bullying, etc. Their inability (or refusal) to communicate with one another only added to their problems.

Nelson’s choice to use a dual timeline / dual narrators didn’t help the storyline much. Noah voices the 13-year-old situation, while Jude tells the story when they are sixteen. The chapters alternate, and the reader is left trying to piece together what is really going on, how the once close twins have been broken apart and what might get them back together.

The book was nominated for a slew of YA awards, and I can see the attraction for the target YA audience, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.

The audio version is very well performed by Julia Whelan (Jude) and Jesse Bernstein (Noah). Using two voice artists certainly helped keep the timelines/characters straight. I’d give them 4**** for their performance.

>15 Limelite: Thanks, Limelite ... I do plan to continue the series. Sorry I came so late to this party. I mentioned it to a fellow library patron ... she checked it out and read it in one day. She'll also continue to read the series. "Intelligent" is a perfect description!

>25 BookConcierge:

Ha, hah! Perhaps we need a thread "'Intelligent' Fiction for 'Intelligent' Readers." That would be fun! I foresee many contentious postings about what "intelligent" means is both regards. There are more than a few writers who bludgeoned me over the head with their intelligent fiction. It just took me a while to get "woke" to the concept of intelligent fiction.
Eleanor Catton
Wallace Stegner
Dorothy Dunnett
John le Carré
Neal Stephenson
Toni Morrisson
Umberto Eco
Louise Erdrich

I'm not saying that reading these books will make you smarter; I'm considering the idea from the p.o.v. of the author's mind shines through, thus the plot and characters rise above the everyday same in most fiction. And the reader is more thrilled to read such books.

I'm certainly not intending to imply that only readers who pursue the avant-garde, "difficult," and prolix works are to be considered. Or those writers, either. It's probably that quality of being memorable in a lasting meaningful way that is close to explaining the quality of "intelligence" as I consider it. Perhaps there are richer imaginations in certain readers and writers that require richer fiction to satisfy them.

What a dreadful muddle my mind is when I think about this idea!

>26 Limelite: Now THERE's a can of worms I'll be avoiding like it gots the cooties.

John L'Heureux was born in 1934, became a Jesuit priest in 1956, & jumped ship in 1971; he didn't die until April 2019, when I saw his Obituary therefore discovered he'd ever even existed. So now I'm reading The Medici Boy to see what he was all about.

Enjoying this OverDrive audiobook ~

Social Crimes by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

(NYC society satire/Jo Slater is a socialite who loses everything and plots revenge)

I'm reading A Game of Thrones. I finally got around to watching the series, and I'm in Season 3 now. Watching the series made me want to read the books to see how the series holds up to the original source.

I finished No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead by Peter Richardson. This book was published in 2014, and Richardson attempted to differentiate his book from the (at a wild guess) dozens of previously published band biographies and musical histories of the Grateful Dead by, as the title suggests, writing a book about the ways in which the band shaped, and was shaped by, the important cultural events of their era(s). All in all, I'd say that Richardson succeeded in this goal quite nicely.

Richardson does a nice job of providing an overview of the background to and creation of the original Counter Culture/Hippie movement as it developed in San Francisco. It is fair to say that that movement and the Dead were organically joined, and that probably neither would have developed as they did without the other. As Richardson portrays it, the Dead's style of performance, in which they aimed to tear down the walls between musician and audience and to create music that would lend itself to ecstatic dancing in particular, placed them squarely at the center of the growing scene.

I've posted more in-depth comments on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Evicted – Matthew Desmond
Digital audio read by Dion Graham.
5*****

Subtitle: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Fascinating. Frustrating. Horrifying. Compassionate. Informative. Distressing. Enlightening. Desmond thoroughly explores the effects on impoverished residents of being repeatedly evicted and contrasts the plight of the poor with the profits made at their expense.

Many of the people he profiles are not people I’d want to rent to back in the days when I was a landlord; they were dealing with drug addiction, anger-management issues, domestic violence. And yet, they are human beings, most with hopes and dreams of a better life, but stuck in an endless cycle or disappointment and despair. Desmond lays out evidence that denying them a decent shelter perpetuates the cycle of poverty. And the landlords he profiles are not people I’d want to be friends with either. They did little to maintain the properties and simply took their profits to the bank.

In the end, I'm left with more questions than answers, but these are questions that need to be asked, and answers that need to be sought. I can hardly wait for my F2F book club meeting in September

Dion Graham does a marvelous job of narrating the audiobook. Clear diction, and a good pace gave me time to absorb information.

I finished the first of what will be two rounds of reading in my "between book" stacks:

* “Personal Experiments with the Black Bass” from Laugh with Leacock by Stephen Leacock
* “Honesty/Integridad” from It's All In the Frijoles: 100 Famous Latinos Share Real-Life Stories, Time-Tested Dichos, Favorite Folktales, and Inspiring Words of Wisdom by Yolanda Nava
* "Too Old: Madonna" from Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen
* "Ann Raney Coleman" from American Heroines: The Spirited Women who Shaped Our Country by Kay Bailey Hutchison
* “Through Other Eyes,” by Luigi Pirandello from Esquire Magazine - 40th Anniversary Celebration edited by Don Erickson

I'm reading Headhunters by Jo Nesbo; a stand-alone piece of fiction, and I'm enjoying it mightily. It's been a couple of years since I last read Nesbo and I'd forgotten how fast-paced and absorbing and intelligent Nesbo's fiction is.

from The Medici Boy by John L'Heureux, page one, first two lines:

It is right and just to confess at the very start that it WAS fornication that took me out of the Order of Friars Minor and set me on the path of sin. I am an old man—perhaps sixty-seven—and make this confession at leisure and in detail since, imprisoned in this monastery, I have nothing left but time.

I believe I now know whose reincarnation I am.

Finished listening to yet another wonderful Inspector Gamache tale, A Better Man by Louise Penny.

Next up for listening is The Day The World Came To Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede

I finished The Yellow House It is a memoir but also the story of a family, a house, New Orleans, and Katrina and its aftermath.

Finished Open Season by Archer Mayor. Liked it much better than I expected.

Next up is The Long Call by Ann Cleeves. This is the first book in her new Two Rivers series.

My pre-order of When Did You Last See Your Father?, the 10.5th book in the Chronicles of St Mary's, showed up on my Kindle at midnight, so of course I read it. If you're already into the series, you'll understand why! If you're not, don't start here.

I finished Volume III of What Might Have Been, Alternate Wars, and now working through Volume IV, Alternate Americas.

Volume III was a good collection - I was surprised to see a short story by Winston Churchill included: If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg; it was interesting.

I finished Aleksandar Hemon's delightful and illuminating My Parents: An Introduction / This Does Not Belong to You.
Now I'm reading The Widow's Children by Paula Fox.

You're good Richard! (In response to 34).

>41 nhlsecord: Thank you!

>35 hemlokgang: I loved that book by Jim Defede. Very uplifting!

The Rose and the Yew Tree
Mary Westmacott
5/5 stars
Written by Agatha Christie under a pseudonym, this story is narrated by Hugh Norreys who knows all the participants in this unusual tale. When Hugh is summoned by John Gabriel now known by as Father Clement, Hugh is shocked by the revelation. John Gabriel was a scoundrel and social climber who was a hero in the war and was running for election when Hugh first met him. However, when John meets the lovely Isabella, whose family Hugh is staying with, everything changes for John. I really enjoyed this book, the characters, the story line and the surprise ending.

The Golden Wolf by Linnea Hartsuyker
The 3rd novel and final installment of the "Golden Wolf" trilogy.

Up next: The Devil's Slave by Tracy Borman
Follows events begun in The King's Witch in the author's new historical fiction series.

I've read this week's Economist and the July/August issue of Wired, and started the June Wired.

I've also been reading Gerald's Game by Stephen King and Random Harvest by James Hilton. Enjoying them both, despite how radically different they are. Just finished Random Harvest. Must say I'm sorry BARD seems to have only those three (Lost Horizon, Goodbye Mr. Chips and Random Harvest) by Hilton, as I'd like to read more of his. Still, it's not as though there were a dearth of reading matter.

Not sure if I'll return to Texas Thunder. The protagonists are really rather unattractive. There is no romance, just waiting for the right time and place to rut. The mystery of the grandfathers' moonshine recipe doesn't interest me enough to entice me back. Life's too short. Mind you, I'm not wholly against trash. There's trash and then there's trash. I rather enjoy Colleen Callahan's DragonFury series, though I got distracted from the last book, Fury of Obsession, I probably will get back to it eventually. I guess the difference is, I don't like crude trash. *wry grin*

Finished listening to the uplifting The Day The World Came To Town: 9/11 In Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede.

Next up for listening is The River by Peter Heller.

The new thread is up over here.