What are you reading now?: August 23, 2025.

Wrapping up British Combat Aircraft in Latin America. Starting Semiosis.

Moving on to Feeding Washington's Army, The City in Glass, and Becoming Earth.

I'm about 1/5 of the way through The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City by Kevin Baker. It's long and detailed, at 475 pages, but very well written. Baker weaves the history of baseball in New York through the history of the city itself.

I'm still reading The Fireman by Joe Hill. I'm almost halfway through and it's been very good.

I also started Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York by Ross Perlin for my book club. I'm only at the beginning but I like it so far.

I finished The Wedding People by Alison Espach which was very good and much deeper than I thought it would be. Just about to start Small Bomb at Dimperley. Lissa Evans is reliably entertaining.

I am reading Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Royal Marriage, the 2003 edition. Author Gyles Brandreth was a friend of the late Duke of Edinburgh, and so we see him described in more detail than in other biographies. It's full of facts, delivered with wit, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

In the world of audiobooks, I'm listening to Belinda Bauer's Finders Keepers, which is entertaining.

>3 PaperbackPirate: Ah, cool. I just bought Language City and I'm planning to get to it sooner rather than later.

I'm finishing up The Sardonyx Net and The Nevaris Chronicles. No others on my reading list yet.

Started reading Sandstorm by James Rollins

The Story of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover
by Jan Gradval
4/5 stars
Interesting story about the group musical ABBA, from their early beginnings to when they split up! I enjoyed this book! Non-Fiction

The Secret Book and Scone Society – Ellery Adams
2.5***

From the book jacket: The first in a new series set within a quirky small-town club where the key to happiness, friendship—or solving a murder—can all be found within the pages of the right book . . . Miracle Springs, North Carolina, is a place of healing. Strangers flock here hoping the natural hot springs and renowned spa can cure their ills. If none of that works, they often find their way to Miracle Books, where, over a fresh-baked “comfort” scone, they exchange their stories with owner Nora Pennington in return for a carefully chosen book. That’s Nora’s special talent—prescribing the perfect novel to ease a person’s deepest pain.

My reactions:
I really like Adams’ “Books By the Bay” mystery series and thought I’d give this one a try, though I was skeptical about the “comfort scones” and Nora’s ability to cure someone’s ills by recommending the right book.

Nora and her friends – Hester (who owns the bakery), Estella (owns the beauty salon) and June (who works at the spa pools) – form the society to read and discuss books that will help each of them get over past traumas and move forward with courage and grace. But they are immediately intrigued by the tragic death of a partner in a real estate development, and more so by the sheriff’s quick assessment that it was suicide. So, they decide to investigate.

That decision made little sense to me. They had no vested interest in the development or in this relative stranger to town. Yes, he’d spoken to Nora (who’d given him a book recommendation), and she’d referred him to the bakery so Hester could concoct one of her special comfort scones for him, but that was the extent of their involvement. Of course, once a second murder occurs, and one of their group gets arrested, they have every reason to continue looking for clues.

By the end of the book we’ve learned each of the women’s terrible secret, and there are a couple of promising romantic relationships. But I just got the feeling that Adams was trying too hard.

Still, I did really love all the book references!

Cris Dukeheart does a good job of narrating the audio book. She has a lot of characters to interpret and she has the vocal range to differentiate them, for the most part. (I had to pay close attention when three or four women were meeting together, to be sure I understood who was speaking.)

Update: 18Mar25 One of my book club buddies suggested this for our group so I re-read it. My opinion didn’t change much, though I did enjoy the discussion. The relationships between the four friends stood out more. But I also see that there is another secret that hasn’t been revealed. A ploy that I view as “forcing” readers to continue the series, and one that I hate.

Sun Dog Memory – Doug Armstrong
3.5***

From the book jacket: The girl is a dead ringer for his long-missing sister. And Jed Albright’s chance encounter with her outside a Cowtown depot draws the railway mail clerk into a perilous web of lies, treachery, and vengeance. Soon, he’s a man on the run with a price on his head.

My reactions
I was introduced to this work by my F2F book club; the author lives nearby and one of our members recommended this Depression-era saga. At heart it’s about a family of siblings who tried their best to make it on the Kansas plains but met with disaster. The oldest brother, Arthur, is a detective with the nascent FBI; Jed is a postal clerk on the railroad; Tim is still trying to work the homestead; their sister, Carrie, disappeared years ago and they’ve completely lost touch. Or have they?

Armstrong goes back and forth in time from 1930 to 1911. Times and conditions are tough in both timeframes, but we learn how the siblings came to the homestead and their efforts to make a go of it, and how their fate becomes intricately linked to that of the town’s wealthy railroad executives.

There’s a lot of intrigue here and the reader is just as clueless as Jed. I’m not sure that I ever figured out who was really behind all the treachery, and while I thought the family saga had a satisfactory resolution, the epilogue threw me for a loop.

It certainly held my attention, and I particularly liked the way Armstrong made the landscape and conditions (dust storms, blizzards, heat, etc.) part of the story. I also really liked Jed’s wife, Amanda, though she didn’t play a central role until half-way into the novel.

I'm in the middle of a really good novel, The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. My husband was reading it first and he kept telling me he wasn't sure if I'd like it because it had fantasy elements. I started it and was immediately sucked into this amazing world that Bennett has created with fascinating characters.
It reminds me of a Sherlock Holmes story. Full of adventure and the writing has that slightly formal tone that I enjoy.
It does have sea leviathans and oddly skilled people but they fit into this world. I'm genuinely surprised that I'm reading something that won the Hugo for best novel. Pretty sure that this is a first for me as I am very sci-fi/ fantasy avoidant. :)

>6 rocketjk: It's pretty dense but very interesting!

A Certain Age – Beatriz Williams
Book on CD performed by Adrienne Rusk, Mia Barron, and Barbara Goodson.
3***

Williams gives us a novel of romance, family secrets, and scandal in New York Society, set during the Roaring Twenties. The title refers to two things: the age of the era in American society, and a woman of “a certain age.”

Theresa Marshall is a married woman with a Fifth Avenue apartment, and a boy-toy lover, basically the same age as her grown son. Her family is an old, established one in NYC social circles, but they are without much money. (Theresa’s wealth comes from her husband.) When her brother, a confirmed bachelor, announces that he’s going to marry a young woman with wealth but no family history, Theresa asks her lover, Octavian, to research the girl’s family. And things get complicated once he meets the lovely Sofie.

I was not a great fan of Theresa; I thought Williams made her far too cold and calculating. Sofie, by contrast, was treacle-sweet. Still, it certainly held my attention, though I saw through the old murder mystery pretty quickly. Williams definitely gives the reader a sense of the era … speakeasies, flappers, bathtub gin, horse races, etc.

The audio is performed by three talented voice artists. Unfortunately, I don’t know which performer did which sections. They were equally good, and the change of voice did help with the changes in point-of-view during the novel.

The new thread is up over here.