What are you reading now?: November 15, 2025

Wrapping up Anima Rising (it's okay, but just okay) with The Great River and Swedish Jet Fighter Colours to come.

Starting Katabasis.

I'm struggling my way through a reread of Emma for my book group. I enjoyed this book much more on my first reading about 30 or 35 years ago. By now the follies and vapidity of the English privileged classes is familiar enough to me to make the reading tedious, despite Austen's capacity for the brilliant turn of a phrase.

I'm still reading The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan. I'm about 2/3 of the way through and really liking the different pov and timelines.

I've finally gained a Libby eBook copy of this ~

Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President
by E. Jean Carroll
(fascinating memoir written in the stream-of-consciousness style)

It Happened One Summer – Tessa Bailey
2**

From the book jacket Piper Bellinger is fashionable and influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When an out-of- control party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off and sends her and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar … in Westport Washington. Piper hasn’t been in Westport five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan Taggart, who thinks she won’t last a week outside Beverly Hills.

My reactions
The relationships are ridiculous. The characters are stereotypes without the sense God gave a goose. Well, Brendan certainly has some sense, but he is so gobsmacked, hit-by-a-truck in love lust with Piper he can hardly think straight. Piper is sweet, but a spoiled brat who has never had to stand on her own two feet and lives her life as one big social media reality show with significant product placement. Her sister, Hannah, the level-headed one in the family, isn’t in trouble with Stepdad, but she won’t let Piper be banished alone. I rather liked Hannah. And I also liked Brendan’s “relief skipper,” Fox.

But really, I read these books just for the sex scenes. And for the possibility of a great metaphor for orgasm. It’s hard to beat the description Bailey gave in Unfortunately Yours, but she did okay in this one.

A moderately entertaining summer read.

Currently reading a Sigma Force thriller The Eye of God by James Rollins

The new thread is up over here.