What are you reading now?: February 22, 2025

Still working on Nemesis Games. Will knock off Crypt of the Moon Spider today. Humane and Designing Tomorrow rounds out the week and the month.

I'm reading 2 books right now, The Norton Book of Women's Lives edited by Phyllis Rose, and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Women's Lives is for home since it's 812 pages, and Parable is what I read at school during my lunch break. Both have been very good this week.

I'm currently reading Creative Illustration by Andrew Loomis. It's a book for professional artists (which I am not), which goes beyond the basic drawing skills that most other art instruction books cover, to tackle composition, and even how best to create an artistic advertisement that will sell a product. I read another book on composition over a year ago The Painter's Secret Geometry by Charles Bouleau, and I find that my current read is shedding new light on that one. Very glad I stumbled across this book!

I'm now reading Good People, a novel by Israeli author Nir Baram. I'm about 80 pages into this 423 page novel. Two parallel stories are going on, both in 1938-39. In Berlin, a young man rising in the Berlin office an American market research firm is trying to navigate the increasing fraught political situation. In Leningrad, a young woman is trying to protect her parents by feeding information about the people who come to their literary gatherings to the NKVD. Both are discovering the growing impossibility of managing events.

Sorry, I've been off line for a couple of weeks due to moving.

So, I'll be posting a bunch of stuff to catch up.

The Invisible Man – H G Wells
Book on CD read by Scott Brick
3***

This is a classic of science fiction / horror. It begins when a man appears at a small English village and takes a room. His face is bandaged, and he always wears a hat, a coat with turned-up collar and gloves. He demands privacy and takes his meals in his room. Once his boxes / crates of belongings arrive he takes over a parlor, unpacks multitudes of bottles and equipment, and begins working in what appears to be a laboratory. Once his secret is revealed, however, he goes on a rampage through multiple villages trying desperately to find a way to fix the self-imposed condition.

Griffin (the reader learns him name about 70% through the book) had a promising career as a physician, but became fascinated by physics and chose to abandon medicine for the study of this pure science, particularly the properties of light. Of course, he saw the advantages of being invisible, but never reckoned on the disadvantages. There are a few rather humorous scenes caused by his predicament but on the whole the atmosphere is one of anger and frustration and madness.

Scott Brick does a great job of narrating the audiobook. He has a deeply sonorous voice that lends itself to this type of gothic horror / science fiction.

Sand In My Bra and Other Misadventures – Jennifer L Leo (editor)
3***

Subtitle: Funny Women Write From the Road

This is a collection of essays written by women about their travels. Most feature foreign or adventure travel: Africa, Europe, Mexico. A few are very adventurous: safaris, river-rafting, Burning Man. Some are more generic: packing, fear of flying. Many featured encounters with local fauna: elephants, dolphins, lions. Some are hilarious, especially those that include missteps in translation; a woman who thought she was commenting on a menu item but instead was using a colloquial expression for a penis (to the understandable consternation of her male waiter) had me guffawing out loud.

On the whole, an entertaining diversion while I was on a plane traveling to my own vacation in a national park.

Someone We Know – Shari Lapena
Digital audiobook read by Kirsten Potter
4****

From the book jacket: Maybe you don’t know your neighbors as well as you thought you did. In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses – and into the owners’ computers as well – learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too. After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? And how far will all these nice people go to protect their own secrets?

My reactions:
This was a taut mystery / thriller. Several characters revealed themselves to be unreliable. They were lying to their families, friends, neighbors, and the police. The mother of the teen computer hacker confides in her best friend, but doesn’t tell all she knows (and she doesn’t know everything, because her son lies to her). There are multiple personal intrigues, including several affairs between neighbors. “A” is sleeping with “B”, whose spouse is sleeping with “D.” The dead woman was apparently sleeping with multiple partners, but at least HER husband has an airtight alibi. But then why is HE acting so suspiciously and lying to police?

I was sure I had it figured out but was completely surprised by the actual reveal. And the ending gives the reader another mystery to ponder and wonder about.

Kirsten Potter does a fine job of narrating the audiobook. There are a lot of characters and she was up to the task.

I'm re-reading Harper Adams Mystery #1 "Little Girl Vanished" by Denise Grover Swank, because I read it over 2 years ago and they have 2 more to read that follows it and just came out within the last 6 months. I am only half through it but it has parts and people from other books that I have read by the same author. I have read all her books in all her series. I will come back when completed so I can post a full review.

This is a little about the this book:
The first book in a new small-town mystery series by New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author Denise Grover Swank.

Disgraced, ex-detective Harper Adams is perfectly content wallowing at rock bottom. She’s lost her job, house, and reputation, and it only gets worse when she’s forced to move back home to Jackson Creek, Arkansas, the one place she swore she’d never return. (home)

But everything changes when she gets chilling news. A childhood friend’s daughter is missing…and it’s eerily reminiscent of Harper’s sister’s kidnapping and murder two decades ago.

Not her business.

Except with the police fumbling the case at every turn, Harper realizes she might be the only one who can save the girl.

And she might need the help of James Malcolm, a former crime boss, to do it.
(James Malcolm is also in the series Rose Gardner Investigations)

started this audio via Libby ~

House of Glass: A Novel
by Sarah Pekkanen

Just finished Crier's War (and the sequel, Iron Heart). It's far from just an "LGBT book" - it's a trip exploring humanity and what it means to be human.

Also just finished John Scalzi's Old Mans War and have The Ghost Brigades next up, assuming I'm not led astray by my growing TBR pile...

>7 BookConcierge: Putting Sand In My Bra on my list!

I've been listening to a really charming Japanese audiobook: What you are Looking for is in the Library byMichiko Aoyama. I've been reading a lot more Japanese fiction in the past year, and plan to continue to do so.

I'm reading The Martian by Andy Weir. I did a huge book purge a couple of years back, and The Martian is one of the very few books I regret donating. I bought a new-to-me used book to replace it.

I'm also reading snippets from two books every day or so. One is Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang, and the other is Medieval Writings on Secular Women, edited by Patricia Skinner.

Reading The Ape Who Guards the Balance by Elizabeth Peters. Her series based in Egypt.

Sweet Tooth
Ian McEwan
3/5 stars
Serena Frome gets involved in the intelligence community during the Cold War. She then meets with the writer Tony Haley. However, can she trust Haley. Fiction

The new thread is up over here.