What are you reading the week of May 19, 2018?

I'm just about finished with Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East. I picked up a copy of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman which I've already started as well.

My reading rotation is packed this time around: The Day of the Dead by Nicci French, Sophia of Silicon Valley by Anna Yen, City of Bones by Martha Wells, and A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White.

While continuing Jane Austen at Home and the Selected Poems of Gwendolyn Brooks, I'm also now reading Noir by Christopher Moore and Royal City by Jeff Lemire.

I'm still reading one chapter per week of The Gunslinger by Stephen King. This week I finished my chapter early so I started Dead Heat by William Murray for Triple Crown Season.

Have been reading more memoirs than mysteries lately but I am back to mysteries. Just started The Defense by Steve Cavanagh.

My latest is The Outsider by Albert Camus.

>6 aussieh: One of my very favourite books!

>1 fredbacon: Thanks for starting us off again, Fred!

I am reading and chomping in big gulps Phil Harwood's Canoeing the Congo: First Source to Sea Descent of the Congo River. I absolutely love good travel writing, and this madman's incredible story has me gripped. The journey takes him from Zambia and throughout the Democratic Republic of the Congo, considered by many to be the most dangerous country in the world. At least half a dozen times I've worried about his imminent demise from drowning because of unmapped waterfalls, being eaten by hippos or crocodiles, or being macheted/shot/speared by some of the angrier citizens of riverside Africa. This is a writer and adventurer with cojones.

OK, so the list gets longer without much progress on the one I really want to get into... Keep throwing in some extras.

The slow, ongoing read:
Grant - Ron Chernow

Just finished:
An Obvious Fact - Craig Johnson
Got a thing for Longmire

The Body in the Birches - Katherine Hall Page
Not what I expected from something described as an old fashioned
mansion murder mystery. Fifty pages left, two bodies and so far no one's investigating. Just three sets of summer families with big old family houses on a Down East Maine island. They all have old money and are angling for more. They eat lots and lots and lots of locally sourced produce (recipes included), burp with self satisfaction, and look for good deals on shrubs and perennials. Oh and occasionally trip over inconvenient corpses.
(Can you tell I live and Maine and hate the summer folks?)

In progress:

Short fiction:
Best American Mystery Stories 2017
Selected Stories - Alice Munro
Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I

I'm about 70% through Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State and the Birth of Liberty by John M. Barry. So far the book is more a history of the Puritan movement and its roots in the religious conflicts of 17th century England as well as the history of the Massachusetts Bay colonies than it is a biography of Williams for a treatment of his ideas, although the book does center around Williams and his problems. The Puritans were no picnic, to put it mildly. In England in those days you could literally get your ears sliced off for criticizing how the Church of England conducted Sunday services. The Puritans in Massachusetts were happy to do the same for you if you favored using the Book of Common Prayer. Good times!

Finished listening to the good novel, The Which Way Tree, a Moby Dick of a different sort.

Next up is a short story collection, Aetherial Worlds: Stories by Tatyana Tolstaya.

Finished the historical fiction, Henry and Clara. It told the story of the couple who were with Lincoln at the theater when he was killed. An interesting account of how this and the war devastated them.

I picked up Lolly Willowes yesterday and I love it. Where has Sylvia Townsend Warner been all my life??

i'm about half way done with Ill be gone in the dark - its hard to digest but addicting at the same time... Next I think i'll read candymakers before I send it off to my nieces.

Started my ER win You All Grow Up and Leave Me by Piper Weiss. Only a few pgs in so can't give an informed opinion yet but as a memoir/true crime that took place in NYC in the 90s about a male tennis coach who attempted to kidnap a student of his written by another of his former students, it's creepy, disturbing and unfortunately still too relevant in our world today.

Highly recommend That's Not English which I finished on the weekend.

I’m nearly finished with Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale. Although I haven’t been necessarily loving it, it is quite the page-turner and I’ve stayed up too late the last two nights reading. Still have about 40 pages to go.

Still reading The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

Set aside the short story collection, Aetherial Worlds because it just did not grab me at all.

Next up for listening is The Whistler by John Grisham.

I am still plugging away at Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1.

Finished Sophia of Silicon Valley by Anna Yen. Enjoyed it. An affectionate poke at the people, brands, and technologies that put Silicon Valley on the map.

Finished A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White. Space opera with magic. It kind of grew on me by the end.

Added Reamde by Neal Stephenson to my reading rotation.

Now about to start into The Plains by Australian author Gerald Murnane

Just cracked open Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley.

I finished the LTER book The Time of Our Lives. I anticipated this book with some trepidation, fearing it would be too self impressed, too self-righteous. I was pleasantly proven wrong. While it did have a hint of those qualities, much of the book was humorous and entertaining although not exactly insightful or deep. I enjoyed the memoir pieces a bit more than the fiction.

I finished the extraordinary In the Distance by Hernan Diaz. I have also enjoyed reading several interviews with the author (Paris Review, The Nation, others) in which he discusses writing this novel. Such an accomplishment as well as being a hauntingly beautiful story of a Swedish immigrant's travels and adventures in the American West (from the Gold Rush days to the wagon trains and eventually on a ship heading to Alaska)

Next up: Susie Steiner's Missing, Presumed

My Brother Michael
by Mary Stewart
3.5/5 stars
Camilla Haven is on a trip to Greece after a breakup with her fiancé. At a café, a man drops off a car for her because she supposedly ordered it and was to take it to Delphi. On a whim she decides to take the car to Delphi and meets Simon who is there looking into what happened to his brother during WWII. As their relationship deepens, unexpected events happen and put the two of them in danger. Suspenseful!

I'm now reading a biography of Alan Sues, who was a star on Laugh In. It is QUITE good.

>26 benohmart: I remember him. I will have to look for this.

Finished The Defense by Steve Cavanagh, an action filled legal thriller. Starting the next in the series The Plea.

The new thread is up over here.

Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
2.5**

From the book jacket Smilla Qaavigaaq Jaspersen is part Inuit, but she lives in Copenhagen. She is thirty-seven, single, childless, moody, and she refuses to fit in. Smilla’s six-year-old Inuit neighbor, Isaiah, manages only with a stubbornness that matches her own to befriend her. When Isaiah falls off a roof and is killed, Smilla doesn’t believe it’s an accident. She has seen his tracks in the snow, and she knows about snow. She decides to investigate and discovers that even the police don’t want her to get involved.

My reactions
I really wanted to like this. It’s been on my tbr for ages and it fits a genre I usually enjoy: Psychological thriller / mystery with a strong female lead. And Smilla is definitely a strong female heroine. She’s a keen observer, tenacious, self-reliant, and intelligent. She’s also moody and distrustful, keeping herself somewhat closed off from those around her. And perhaps it’s that quality that made the book less appealing to me. I could never get to really know Smilla or care about her.

Høeg does have a way with words, however. His writing is very atmospheric; I could practically feel the cold, smell the briny sea air, or taste the food. A couple of examples:
“His pants have frozen into an armor of ice.”
“Toward the spot where the current has hollowed out the ice so it’s as thin as a membrane, a fetal membrane. Underneath, the sea is dark and salty like blood.”
“With whipped cream so fresh and soft and yellowish white, as if they had a cow standing in back of the bakery.”

And I think this passage perfectly describes Smilla and her philosophy:
“Whining is a virus, a lethal, infectious, epidemic disease.”

There are sections of the book that were mesmerizing, but many sections that just bored me to tears. And then it just ….. ends. With no real resolution. Even after finishing it I’m not sure I understand what happened. On the whole it was a chore to read, and it took me three weeks to finish it.