Benita's Big Bad Book Pile 2026

Once again I will attempt to rid my shelves of books that have been sitting around for a very long time. I did not have a good year of ROOTing in 2025. I extracted 81 books from my shelves. That, also happens to be the total number of books I read last year. It was not my normal average, which is somewhere north of the 100 per year mark. But it is a new year, so I will put that behind me and start fresh for this year.

My ROOTing goal for 2025 was 75 and I am going to keep that number as my goal for 2026.

The books I will be reading will be anything purchased or added to my list before December 31, 2025. The eligible books can also be recorded books. If the title is part of a series that I started before 12/31/25 then I will count the book as a ROOT, because keeping abreast with the new titles in a series will keep me from adding more books to my shelves.

I will add titles to this posting when I finish reading them along with a short review. These will be posted below as I get time to write them.

Once again, I will be leading the mystery read along challenge again this year. It is titled "Investigators: Ancient and Modern." I have been moderating that group since 2023. We are reading the Marcus Didius Falco series by Lindsey Davis and the Inspector Kaldis series by Jeffrey Siger. The group also manages to keep up with the new titles added to the series that we finished reading in past years. Those are Longmire by Craig Johnson, Guido Brunetti by Donna Leon, and the Bruno Courreges series by Martin Walker

I took on the moderator role for the 75'er Nonfiction Challenge a few years ago and I will continue to moderate that for this coming year. This group has a selected monthly topic and reads the nonfiction title of their choice each month that fits in with the topic. This is an attempt, on my part, to read more nonfiction each year.

My reading goals for 2025 are to complete reading some of the series that I have started but not finished. Those are the Anna Pigeon and Gabriel Allon series several years ago. In 2025 I did not read a single title in either series. I hope to remedy that in 2026. I also hope to finish the science fiction/fantasy Red Rising series that I started many years ago. Several years ago I started a personal project of reading books from my list that have a title beginning with the word "last." In 2025 I did not read a single title that began with the word "last," but I plan on taking up that project again this year.

This is my reading map for the coming year. I hope I can stick with it and make it work.

1. Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree - Legends & Lattes series, book 2 - January 3, 2026
2. Target: Tinos by Jeffrey Siger - Inspector Kaldis series, book 4 - January 6, 2026
3. Man in the White Sharkskin Suits by Lucette Lagnado - January 16, 2026
4. All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker - January 26, 2026
5. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins - sound recording - January 28, 2026
6. Arrogant Years: One Girl's Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn by Lucette Lagnado - February 1, 2026
7. Voyage Home by Pat Barker - Women of Troy series, book 3 - February 6, 2026
8. A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay - Batiara series, book 1 - sound recording - February 13, 2026
9. A Body in the Bathhouse by Lindsey Davis - Marcus Didius Falco series, book 13 - February 17, 2026
10. Farewell, My Queen by Chantel Thomas - February 24, 2026
11. Dutch House by Ann Patchett - sound recording - March 5, 2026
12. Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy - March 6, 2026
13. My Venice and Other Essays by Donna Leon - March 10, 2026
14. Lucky by Marissa Stapley - March 13, 2026
15. We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands by Rachel Shabi - March 25, 2026
16. Deacon King Kong by James McBride -March 29, 2026
17. We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker - April 4, 2026
18. Mykonos After Midnight by Jeffrey Siger - Inspector Kaldis series, book 5 - April 9, 2026
19. Mammoths At the Gates by Nghi Vo - Singing Hills Cycle series, book 4 - April 13, 2026
20. Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo - Singing Hills Cycle series, book 3 - April 17, 2026
21. Last Chairlift by John Irving - sound recording - April 19, 2026
22. Last Murder At the End of the World by Stuart Turton - April 20, 2026
23. Bending the Law: The Story of the Dalkon Shield Bankruptcy by Richard B. Sobol - April 22, 2026
24. Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo - Singing Hills Cycle series, book 5 - April 25, 2026
25. A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo - Singing Hills Cycle series, book 6 - April 26, 2026
26. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong - April 29, 2026
27. Dispatches From Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta by Richard Grant - May 7, 2026
28. Jupiter Myth by Lindsey Davis - May 13, 2026
29. Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys - May 20, 2026
30. Translation State by Ann Leckie - May 24, 2026
31. The Rocks by Peter Nichols - sound recording - May 25, 2026
32. Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Invention of the Gothic AKA Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral by Philip Ball - June 7, 2026

Welcome back, Benita. Good luck with your goals. Happy ROOTing.

Welcome back and have fun with those reading projects!

Happy ROOTING for 2026, Benita.

Good luck achieving your goal in 2026!

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
This is book 2 in the Legends & Lattes series and even though the second book is generally not as good as the first, Baldree knocks this one out of the park. It is just as much fun to read as the first one. It is a prequel to the first book and gives details about Viv's backstory. The world building is great. The characters are wonderful. The action is fun. And, the plot is well developed. This was a great way to start the Reading Year.

>6 benitastrnad: Need to get to that book too.

Welcome back, Benita, and good luck meeting your ROOTing goals.

Good luck with your ROOTing, Benita.

Target: Tinos by Jeffrey Siger
This is book 4 in the Inspector Kaldis series and was the January selection for the Mystery Series Group. This book basically continues the story of Andreas personal life while solving a murder mystery.

I found this to be a standard kind of police procedural murder mystery. The plot didn't grab me. The scenery did. Call me a resort slut if you will, but I like reading about these exotic places that I won't ever get a chance to visit. Target: Tinos introduced me to another exotic Greek island and I appreciate that. The plot centered around the world-wide immigration issues and, as with the last title in this series, the Greek Orthodox Church. I never thought of the Greek Orthodox Church as an entity on which to base murder mysteries, but Siger has done that. He has also introduced me to a Christian religious denomination about which I know little, so I am fascinated by the introduction to all the ceremony, drama, and pomp that comes with it. This book prompted me to go to Wikipedia and learn more about Tinos and the Panagia Evangelistria and that attendant religious observances associated with that church. I did not know how important such religious observances were in modern Greek life.

In this book it is the secondary characters that really came to life for me. They made the story. I found myself laughing more than once at things that they said.

The bottom line is that the plot might have been mediocre, but the sidelines of the story made reading it worth the time I spent on New Years Day quietly reading.

Man in the White Sharkskin Suit by Lucette Lagnado
I read this book for the Nonfiction Challenge. The January topic was Prize Winners. This book won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in 2008 and had been on my shelves since March of 2014. The book is a memoir of a Sephardic Jewish family that was forced to leave Egypt in the early 1960s when the Nasser government cracked down on the Jews who were living in Egypt. The story of the family immigration was told through the eyes of the youngest child. It is clear that she views her father through rose colored glasses and, while acknowledging her father's faults she finds all kinds of excuses for him. He clearly had no idea of what the culture would be like in the US and refused to learn new ways. In that regard, I found the memoir very childish and not very objective about the family experience. She also seems to lack any kind of perspective on the reasons why they needed to immigrate, or about what their life would be like in the United States.

There is a great deal of information in this book about the mystic side of being Jewish. I learned more about the Sephardic way of worship and I found that very interesting. I have known about the tendency of many sects of Judaism towards mysticism and this told about the importance of a mystical outlook regarding faith.

Good job, Benita. 3 ROOTs down already.

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

I could do a short review and just say that if you haven't read this book - READ IT! But, here is the longer review.

I gave this novel 5 stars. I am sure that it will make my Best Books of 2026 list. Even though it is a tome, at 595 pages, it was an easy reader. Part of that is due to the print formatting. It has short chapters. Sometimes each chapter is only 1 page in length. It also alternates narrators with each chapter. The combination of these two stylistic maneuvers makes it an easy book to pick up and put down and not lose any part of the story.

I figured out part of puzzle/mystery at about the midpoint, but the author did a great job of maintaining the murder mystery suspense throughout with twists aplenty.

I also found myself curious about the location of the book and that took me to Wikipedia several times. I am fairly certain that each of the places named in the novel are actual places that could be visited or tracked down using google maps. Keeping track of all those places, then renaming them in a word puzzle format, and then describing them in word pictures is a considerable feat for a non-native author. (Whitaker is British and lives in Britain.) He must have spent years traveling to obscure places all across the US in order to write those tidbits of information about them and put them into this novel. I also loved the references to cultural touchpoints from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and into the 2000s. They were so much fun to read. The way the author placed them in sentences was clever, unobtrusive, and when I happened to catch one, made me feel like I had discovered an unexpected gemstone.

The library love that was bestowed by most of the characters on their local libraries was also a plus in the novel. Discovering things in libraries was a major part of the problem solving that happened throughout this book and can serve as a reminder to us all that the library has books that can answer, or help answer, so many questions. The role of prison libraries in providing relief from boredom and general learning that can enrich lives was also something I liked. It served to reinforce the idea that all lives need intellectual enrichment no matter the circumstances. Books can provide that kind of stimulation.

The plot was plotted. Then thickened. Then thickened again and again. This cranking up of the tension in the novel, kept me riveted. There were lots of characters, but none of them got lost in the thickening. That so many of these characters had good and bad traits was part of the point of the book. It takes a rare author to juggle that many major characters and not end up with a jumbled-up mess of a book. This one danced along that line with grace and elegance. One of my favorite characters was Sammy. Misty was another one. She should have played the part of the ditzy blonde but refused to be put in that position. My least favorite character was Charlotte. Spoiled little brat that she was.

Now that I have sung its praises, I did find that the bit about Theodore was unbelievable. It didn't fit. I just don't see that happening that way. Or playing out the way it did. For me it was a throw in. Something the author throws in to give every character a happy ending. I didn't buy it. The novel would have been better without that addition. Other than that small flaw, this was a very good novel with a very complex plot and a large cast of good and bad characters.

>13 benitastrnad: sounds super engaging and full of trivia - another BBs :)

>14 Cecilturtle: Here too!. I now have to find it!

Edit: it was already on my list of e-books!

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
I listened to American Dirt. The narrator was excellent and her voice was pitch perfect for reading this novel. I thought it was very good and the recorded version was part of the experience of living the novel. I have no problem recommending the recorded version of the novel to readers.

This novel was intense. Parts of it made me so angry that I couldn't listen to it without cursing. It is a tension filled and anger fueled novel with all the elements of a suspense thriller but with the full knowledge that this is an interpretation of real life. The fact that it is so realistic and based in facts of life for so many migrants makes this an important book to read. It was a very appropriate novel at this time.

This novel was so controversial book when it was published but I never thought I would read it. However, a friend gifted me a copy, and I can say that it was time well spent. I never really understood the reasoning that those opposed to the selection of this novel for the Oprah Book Club. Authenticity shouldn't be an issue for a novel. It is fiction. What part of the word fiction don't those opposed to this novel understand? Because of the excessive publicity surrounding the novel, I fully expected it to be poorly written, full of maudlin sympathy and lacking in substance. The novel did not meet those expectations. It's reputation in undeserved. It is very well written. It is sympathetic but not maudlin. It manages to keep the action tight in much the same manner you would expect from a suspense thriller, but it isn't a suspense thriller. It is a reflection of real life and as such it is brilliant.

I didn't think it was quite a 5 star read, but it was close. I have added it to my Best Reads of the year list anyway, because I think it is an important novel for all of us to read given the recent events in our country regarding immigrants and their treatment. The author's note at the end of the book was also very well done. I can only commend the Oprah Book Club, the publisher, and the author for writing and promoting this novel. It is an important one.

>16 benitastrnad: Wow! Looks like you're on a streak of great reads, Benita! I remember the whole commotion around the book. I was intrigued but never got around to it. Thanks for your review!

Arrogant Years: One Girl's Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn by Lucette Lagnado

This is the second memoir by Lagnado. The first memoir was about her father and this one is the story of her mother's life. Early on in the memoir the author is clearly not seeing her mother in the same rosy tones as she has her father. That opinion changes as the author ages and her tone about her mother softens as both of them age. Her mother is much more successful at making the transition from the kind of life they had in Egypt than is her father. I believe that is due to the fact that her mother had a better education and was willing to go to work and make something of herself. The author, however, is often surprised by her mother. For example, her mother gets a job at the Brooklyn Public Library and is quite successful as a cataloger. At the job she has people of like her, respect her, and like to work with her. It is clear that she has mastered her profession, but the author comes to realize this much too late to make her life, or her mother's, for that matter, easier.

I don't know if the attitude that the author has about her parents is typical of first generation author's, but in this memoir, the author continues her screed about how her parents robbed her of her childhood. They took her from the land of plenty and forced her into a land of poverty where she was humiliated every day by her neighbors and the children she went to school with - at a public school no less. Like the previous book, this one is not quite a screed, but it is close. It is only after the author has been working for years that she begins to soften her attitude toward her parents and in particular, her mother. When her mother is unable to care for herself, she moves her mother into her house and provides round-the-clock nursing care for her mother. Not her father. He dies in a total care nursing home.

The best parts of this book were when the author talked about the social and cultural aspects of their life in Egypt and contrasts that with her life as a Sephardic Jew in New York City. If she could have only cut the whining tone down to a mroe reasonable level this book would have been much better. Throughout the book she continues to complain about her parents lack of sophistication, her need to dress better so that her piers would respect her more, they need to move to a more upscale address, etc. etc. It gets tiresome.

This is not a memoir duology that I would recommend. There are grains of wonderful insights about Jewish life in Egypt and in New York City, but they aren't worth the work it takes to get past the whine.

Voyage Home by Pat Barker

I read this book for my real life book discussion group. It is book three in the Women of Troy series that we have been reading through for the last three years. This is the story of the Women of Troy after the war is over. It is the story of Clytemnestra. It is also the story of Cassandra. The two women are the wife and the concubine of Agnamemnon and each has a reason to hate the man and plot to kill him.

Barker has a knack for making this ancient story accessible by modern readers while also making it relevant to modern life. For that she is to be commended. We had a great discussion about this book because there is so much in it to talk about. One of the things we discussed was the differences and the similarities between the stories of Clytemnestra, Cassandra, and Penelope. This is a great series on the Trojan War and it offers a very feminine perspective on the war and its aftermath. That said, I am glad I read the series, but I think that is going to be all of our classic Greek reading for awhile. We are tired of all the killing and raping and wish for peace.

A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay
This is book 1 in the Batiara series by this author. Kay writes fantasies but it would be easy to mistake this novel for one of those historical epics by authors like Sharon Kay Penman and Dorothy Dunnett. It isn't. This is a fantasy novel that is loosely tied to Kay's Saratine Mosaic series. If this is the first book by Kay that you have read, you might wonder where's the fantasy? If you know what to look for it is there, but I will admit that the clues are very obscure and it takes some knowledge of his writing to find them. I listened to this book and the narrator for it was very good. The setting is in a world that is very much like the Italian Renaissance. It has all the intrigue of Florence, Rome, Milan, and Venice at the beginning of the Renaissance. The center of this action is the Palio horse race and listening to that reminded me of Margurite Henry and her book Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio. This is a book that is full of action and history. I can't wait to read the next one in the series.

A Body in the Bathhouse by Lindsey Davis
This is book 13 in the Marcus Didius Falco series by this author. It is the only one in the series to be based on an identifiable place. The extensive author's note at the beginning of the book sets the stage for this murder mystery. Once again, Falco is sent to that dreaded isle of Britain to do work for the emperor. Vespasian is building a grand seaside villa for his loyal friend - one of the kings of the British tribes, but things have gone awry. Corruption at the building site is rampant and there has been a suspicious death. Falco is sent to straighten things out and get the project back on track. This novel is full of Falco's sly sense of humor and details about Roman engineering and accounting practices.

Farewell, My Queen by Chantel Thomas
This was my travel book for the last 2 years. It was a slim volume and fit easily into the pocket on my overnight bag. It went with me all over the US. I started reading it in June of 2024. I didn't read it in between trips so it took longer to read than a 275-page book would have taken. That is no reflection on the quality of the book. It was well written. I was prompted to read the book because I had seen the movie and was impressed with the movie version. I am not sure what year it was when I saw the movie, but I knew it was a book before it was a movie. I found the book at 2nd & Charles in Birmingham, Alabama for $3.95 and purchased it.

The novel is the story of four days. July 14 - 17, 1789. The narrator of the action is the Queen's Reader, Sidonie. It is her job to read aloud to the Queen. The novel is written after Sidonie has fled with other aristocrats to the home city of Marie-Antionette - Vienna. The novel is written in an interesting format. She uses the diary form recalling the four days of confusion after the fall of the Bastille. The author creates a very calm atmosphere interspersed with periods of intense activity. She has also created a sense of frenzy that carries the reader through the four days.

>22 benitastrnad: How special that you could read a book in 2 years.

>24 MissWatson: I read this in 2024 and found it truly remarkable.

Dutch House by Ann Patchett
I read this book because it was the selection for March for the Belleville Public Library book club. I had both the hardcopy and the sound recording of the book and I listened to the book while driving back from Alabama. It was narrated by Tom Hanks and he did an admirable job of reading it. The novel is about a brother and sister and the abonnement of them by, first their mother, and then with the death of their father, they are thrown out of the house in which they grew up. The house is the symbol of their childhood and their relationship. The both love the house and return to look at it often as they grow to adulthood and beyond. It is intertwined with their lives and irremovable from them; even if they can't legally return to it.

On a larger canvas the novel is about how we interpret the things that happen to us in life. The sister reacts to events in one way and the brother to them in another. One carries his anger at his abonnement far longer than does the other. One seeks immediate revenge and the other simmers away for years. Central to this is the way each of the main characters react to the fact that their mother left them as children to be raised by a series of nannies and other servants, and then to a cruel stepmother. When the mother does reappear their reactions are opposite of each other, bringing a sort of discord that neither foresaw.

This is literary fiction at its finest.

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy
I read this book for my Zoom book discussion group. I loved this book and upon completion I promptly put it on my 2026 Best of the Year list. That doesn't mean it will stay there, but it is one of the best books I have read so far this year. I had read another book by Mundy; Sisterhood: The Secret History of the Women at the CIA and that book was on my 2025 Best of the Year list.

The reason I rate this book so highly is that the author manages to tell personal stories that allow the reader to understand the fervor, frenzy, and singleness of purpose that permeated life during World War II. She did so without losing track of her topic, becoming maudlin, or suffering from loss of objectiveness. That is a literary feat that is rare. The author also tackled several technical issues, and even though I didn't understand, or couldn't visualize, what she was talking about without seeing a picture, I got the basic sense of what was going on and why the work these women did was so important. However, the strength of the book remained focused on the work the women did, and what kind of lives they lived. I found the passages that were descriptions of their lifestyle to be especially well done. It is writing about the Homefront of WWII at its best. I have only gotten that same sense of life on the Homefront from Bob Greene's book Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen. This was the story of the women of that area of Nebraska who hosted and supplied a canteen in North Platte, Nebraska, serving soldiers on troop trains. That book also captured the spirit of the times on the Homefront.

>26 benitastrnad: BBs for the Mundy books - I just finished a fictionalized account of a Canadian Codebreaker in WWII in Death of a Codebreaker and I loved it.

My Venice and Other Essays by Donna Leon
This is a mixture of memoir and essay. It is clear that some of the entries are short articles written for some reason and, perhaps, never published, along with some memories and experiences of living in Italy and the mountains of Switzerland. It is hard to tell which is which in the latter instances. Some of the essays are humorous, some are written while the author was in an obviously cranky mood, and some consist of random thoughts and reactions to what is going on around her. The best essays are the ones where she expounds on her love of all things Handel and Baroque music in general. There are also a few good ones on living in Italy and her observations about the way people in Italy live as compared to the way Americans live. As always, with Leon's essays, the comments are pithy. Some might say cranky.

Hi Benita, Just visiting your thread to see what you have been reading and saying Hi.

Lucky by Marissa Stapley
I read this because it was the April selection for the public library book club I now lead. It was a total waste of time. I waited a couple of days to write this review because I would have been overly critical of the novel if I had done it earlier. I am still critical. The novel is full of tropes. Overused tropes at that. It is simply one cliche after another. I didn't find the characters endearing either. This is simply not a good read - for me. It was a Reece's book club pick and I am surprised at that. This is one glamour book club that usually has reliable selections. This one was a miss.

>30 benitastrnad: I don't like when that happens. I hope your next book will be better.

We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands by Rachel Shabi
This book was about the Mizrahi Jews. In 2023 I read a book My Father's Paradise that was about the Kurdish Jews and was fascinated with this memoir. I had no idea that there were Jews living in Arab lands, let alone the numbers of them. I wanted to explore this part of Jewish life, culture, and immigration, so I choose this book for the monthly topic. The book is written by a Mizrahi Jewish woman whose ancestry is rooted in Baghdad and the first diaspora in 497 BCE. This is important because it gives her a viewpoint that runs contrary to the accepted view of modern Israel.

It turns out that the Jews from Arab lands are NOT a minority. They make up the majority of the population of the state of Israel. They are almost 60% as of 2008 - the date this book was published. There are three kinds of Jews. All of them trace their ancestry back to various diasporas. The first diaspora was in 497 BCE and these are the Mizrahi - the Jews from Arab lands and India. They lived throughout North Africa, Turkey, Persia, and even parts of India. The Sephardic Jews came from Spain and Portugal. Ashkenazi Jews are from Europe. Both the Sephardic and Ashkenazi are products of the second diaspora before 500 CE. This book dealt with the political and cultural problems that the Mizrahi face in modern Israel due to the dominance and the prejudice of the European Jews that stems from the fallout surrounding the Shoah in Europe. Unbeknownst to many, is the fact that the laws of the state of Israel provide preference to European Jews, even though Mizrahi Jews are the majority of the population they are not considered to be equal and that creates problems politically, socially, and culturally. The irony here is that to the outside world, Israel appears to be a democracy, when this is not the case. I found this view fascinating and very disconcerting to what I thought Israel is, and was. The Mizrahi Jews immigrated, mostly, at the same time as the European Jews (after WWII and the 1948 War for Independence) but did not receive equal treatment upon immigrating and have lower educational, economic, and political outcomes than does the minority Ashkenazi population. This turned out to be a book about a majority, rather than a minority, who have many of the same problems as true numerical minorities.

This is not an easy book to read. It is an academic book. (I suspect that it was a PhD dissertation that was turned into a book.) It is not a work of narrative nonfiction so it takes some work to read it. However, it is worthwhile.

>32 benitastrnad: wow fascinating - I knew aout some of the difference but not the impacts.

Deacon King Kong by James McBride
I read this book for one of my real life book discussion groups. This is my third book by James McBride and this is the best one so far. This guy can write a comic scene that is full of pathos and, yet, is so funny that the reader just has to laugh out loud. This is also a very humane book. It is full of great characters who try to do the right things, as well as bad people who make great characters and keep the story going.

This is a work of historical fiction, but my short exhortation on why I loved it and why others should read it disguises that fact. It is set in the 1970s just at the dawn of the drug era and the John Lindsey era in New York City. Things are changing, socially, economically, and politically in the poorer sections of the town. The author hints at those changes but never clobbers the reader over the head with them. Instead, he makes the reader laugh. It might be easy to lose the message in this novel due to all that laughing, but the author keeps bringing up these changes in different circumstances by different people throughout the novel. In the end, this is a hopeful novel. Full of love, pathos, humanness, understanding, determination, and desire for better things.

Very highly recommended.

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker
This one was a very very good murder mystery with lots of pieces and parts. I couldn't put the book down yesterday and read late into the night, even though the P.O. had to be open at 7:45 AM this morning. I finished reading it around noon.

This one is a slow burn. A fire that sits there and smolders and smolders and then WHAM! explodes into fireworks and zinging sparks in all directions. It races across the pages and comes right at the reader with all the nauance of a firetruck with lights flashing and claxon blaring.

If you like murder mysteries with lots going on at all times, this is the book for you.

The style of writing that the author uses can be intimidating? Off-putting? Sparse? Economical? All of that is on purpose. It is the author's way of setting a mood. The mood of small town America. Closed. Insular. Hidebound. Suspicious. It is the author's way of telling the reader about the personalities of the people in small towns and how they deal with outsiders. Sparse. Quiet. Mind-your-own-business types of people.

The thing about small towns is that everybody knows everybody's business. They know whose car is NOT in the driveway at midnight. Who is seeing who and how long they were there. There are no secrets in small towns. The people that live there like it that way. They want to keep it that way.

If you think you have the plot figured out early in the story, let me know because I didn't until the author decided to enlighten me.

Mykonos After Midnight by Jeffrey Siger
This is book 5 in the Inspector Kaldis series by the author. This is another murder mystery in this series. This mystery is set on the island of Mykonos. The book included maps and that was a big help. I say that because I have a pet peeve about books that don't have maps in them when they clearly need them. This mystery was fairly standard, but I enjoyed watching the relationship between the three main characters grow. At its heart was a conspiracy theory and it is becoming easier and easier for me to understand why people believe in conspiray theories. We are fed a constant diet of them from most of our fiction and in much of our nonfiction. I try not to be prudish but I do wish there was less T & A in these books, but I also understand that is standard for both society and for many murder mystery/police procedural books.

Mammoths At the Gates by Nghi Vo
This is book 4 in the Singing Hills Cycle by this author. Short and fun recreational reading. It continues the story of the chronicler of the Singing Hills monastery. This continues the story of the mammoth riders as presented in book 2 in this series. This time the mammoth riders are attacking the monastery in an attempt to claim the body of the dead head cleric. The reader is also introduced to Almost Brilliant's newly hatched daughter. I had requested it from ILL and got fairly fast. When I went to enter it in LT as having been read, I discovered that I had not read book 3 in the series, so I turned around and requested it from ILL.

Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo
This is book 3 in the Singing Hills Cycle by this author. Another great novella by tordotcom. It continues with the adventures of the cleric Chih and her hoopoe, Almost Brilliant. In this episode of their adventures the cleric spends a memorable week traveling with angels unawares and gets involved in combat with the White Hand marauders. These are fun mind candy reading, and I have requested the last two books in the series through ILL and will read them as soon as they come into the library.

Last Chairlift by John Irving
I thought I would give Irving's newest tome a try and checked out the recorded book from the library. Like many famous authors new works, this one needed an editor that would stand up to the author and cut, cut, cut. There was no reason for this totally boring book to be 912 pages. The first third of the book was good. The last third of the book was ok, but the middle part of the book was Irving's writing about his usual obsessions: script writing, homosexuality, sex, sexual organs, hand size, menstruation, and living in Vermont. I rated the book 1 1/2 stars. The only reason I stuck it out to the end, was that the sidekick characters were so interesting and I was simply more stubborn than the author in my determination to outlast him. Others shouldn't bother with reading this worthless tome, that I think was intended to be autobiographical fiction.

>39 benitastrnad: what a shame - Irving is a hit and miss for me.

Last Murder At the End of the World by Stuart Turton
I will confess. I judged a book by its cover. I checked this book out from the library because I thought the cover was beautiful. It also came with turquoise edging on the pages. So cool!

I read this book because it was an attention getter and an attention keeper. It is a murder mystery set in a post-apocalyptic world. The heroine has 107 hours in which to find the murder of the colony's founder or the entire settlement will die from the Fog that has covered the world.

The one problem with this murder mystery is the style of the writing. It takes a little bit to figure out the point-of-view from which the story is told. It took me about 100 pages to figure it out, but once I did the story got really interesting very fast. This is a quirky novel that at its heart is a post-apocalyptic locked room murder mystery. And the wonder is that it works!

Highly recommended. This is the author's third novel and I am going to try to find his earlier works and read them.

Bending the Law: The Story of the Dalkon Shield Bankruptcy by Richard B. Sobol

I read this book because it won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award in 1992. I also wanted to read the book because this bankruptcy is a siminal court case and I didn't know much about it. I got the book through the local library ILL program and started it on January 17, 2026. It took me four months to get it read. I finished reading Bending the Law just in time to get it back to the library on the day it was due.

The book was a blow-by-blow account of the Dalkon Shield Bankruptcy court case that started in the 1980's and didn't end until the 1990's. This was a landmark bankruptcy case and it made headlines again when the Sacklar family was sued for damages at the height of the opiod epidemic. The Sacklar's tried to do the same thing that the A. H. Robins company did, but in the case of the Sacklar's it didn't work. (the times, they are achangin.) I wanted to know exactly what the Robins' did to avoid having to pay out billions in damages. This book provided the answers but it was a hard slog of reading. Unless you plan to spend a great deal of time in study this is not the book for you. It is not a courtroom drama book. It is a factual accounting of what happened in, and out, of the courtroom that allowed the Robins' to escape responsibilty for harming people.

How did the Robins get by with manufacturing a defective product, that they knew was defective? It turned out to be simple. You need to be friends with the judge and the judge needs to be imbedded in the good old boys network.

Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo
This is book 5 in the Singing Hills Cycle. I started reading this series soon after Tordotcom was established as a publishing company. This series intriqued me from the get go. Once again Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant are on the road collecting stories. This entry into the series is a return to the world of fox people and demons. Those are people who are really demons but wear the faces of real people until their baser instincts reveal them for what they really are. This was a fun adventure that Chih has to face without her loyal recording companion. It is a great good story of just over 100 pages. That made it an ideal weekend book for a rainy cold day.

A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo
This is book 6 in the Singing Hills Cycle. The series was published by Tordotcom. Tordotcom is an imprint of TOR that was created to specialize in novellas, short stories, and short novels that fall into the Science Fiction Fantasy genre. The imprint has been a great success with me. Few of the books are longer than 200 pages and that is just right for reading on a cold rainy weekend. This entry in the series is about fortune and misfortune and how people handle those events. It is also about food and the passing down of culture and caring through food. It is set on a river town that has recently experienced a great flood that in turn causes a great famine that has lasted for 3 years. The story is all about those who did their best and those didn't. Good choices and bad choices. Chih and Almost Brilliant record them both.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
I read this book for the Nonfiction Challenge. The April topic was Internal Matters - Human Body. It turned out that this book was about all sorts of animals, not just humans, and the microbes that we all carry and live around. There was so much packed into this book that it is hard to figure out what to concentrate on when writing a review. It suffices to say that I learned a great deal about the science of biomes of all sizes, as well as the amazing work that scientists are doing in understanding how all of these pieces, large and small work together to keep us healthy and to make us sick. What was also of great interest was that the author didn't confine the book to the work being done on the human body, but to work being done on microbes that affect plants and other animals. They are even working on microbes to fight, or colonize, the dangerous microbes themselves. This would render them harmless. A book packed full of amazingness. I found it very readable and understandable. Where there were scientific terms, the author was careful to explain them in easy-to-understand language. This is a book that I would highly recommend.

>45 benitastrnad: That sounds very interesting. Wishlisted

Dispatches From Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta by Richard Grant

I read this becaise it was the May selection for my Book Discussion Group. I had read one of his previous books (in 2010) and didn't care much for the macho attitude that he presented in that book. This book was very popular in Tuscaloosa when it was published and was somewhat controversial because people thought it was anti-South. For that reason, the group put it on the reading list and this year we finally got around to reading it and talking about it. We had lots of fodder for our discussion at our meeting. Some people didn't like the book and expressed their opinion rather freely regarding its contents. Some people thought it was racist, while some thought that it was rather evensided and the arguments presented were well constructed and thoughtful. I agreed with the later group. However, I will also say that I still think he has a macho attitude and it shows in his writing, but he apparently grew up a bit in the years between God's Middle Finger and this one. This was a more thoughtful and mature book than the first.

Jupiter Myth by Lindsey Davis

This is book 14 in the Marcus Didius Falco series that I am reading for the Mystery Group here on LT. Once again Falco is in the province of Britiania. This time the book was set in Londoninium. I especially liked the author's note at the end of the book in which the author tells the reader the modern-day sites of those ancient buildings and spaces. There were also lots of legal terms in the text that were defined and explained. I was surprised to learn that gladiators had no legal rights. They couldn't testify in court. It continues to amaze me how much history a person can learn from a mystery series.

Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys

I read this book for my real life Book Discussion Group. It is the June selection. I have read a couple of Ruta Sepetys books previously and have long had this one in my reading sights. I needn't have worried about the length because the book reads easy. It is written for YA's and my local library had it in their collection with an AR (Accelerated Reading) level and point value on the cover. The reading level of the book is rated at 4.5. This is 4th to 5th grade reading level. For me that means it is easy reading, so in a weekend I read 300 pages in two days.

I like the story and have to applaud the author for finding a way to write about the dictatorship of Franco in Spain and making it interesting for YA's. There is a hint of danger and romantic entanglements that carry the story along. For me there is a bit too much melodrama, but it is very well-done book and a relaxing read. My reading time was cut short both Saturday and Sunday due to electrical outages.

Translation State by Ann Leckie

It was Memorial Day weekend and I had an extra day off so I spent most of it visiting friends and reading. Most of my time on Saturday and Sunday reading Translation State by Ann Leckie and buzzed through the 422 page novel as a result. At first, I thought this was going to be a dud, but then it took off and it was a very interesting work of science fiction. Leckie is an author who concentrates on making her sci/fi a vehicle for discussion about her views on current cultural topics. This one was the issue of transgender and gay rights. It was much better done than the last two sci/fi novels that I read by Becky Chambers, who also tries to do the same thing. Leckie just has a knack for telling this kind of story and making it interesting and exciting to read. This novel is part of the Imperial Radch series (it is book 4 in the series), and it met my expectations for a novel by her. In fact, the last 100 pages exceed them. I couldn't put it down. Great story. It was full of excitement and but took lots of patience to into it.

I also have to comment on the dust jacket design. It is outstanding. The colors are brilliant, but they don't hurt the eye. They have a high tech look that draws the reader to them. There is a satiny quality that tones down the brilliance and gives the cover a tactile look. The entire Imperial Radch series was reissued with new covers. All the covers feature a different cover, but the covers are all related in color and design. Only the cover of Ancillary Sword doesn't work very well and that is because the cover is yellow with the word "sword" in white. The white just doesn't show up well on that color of cover. Whoever did the cover design should be rewarded.

>39 benitastrnad: That's so frustrating, that many pages and utterly boring and too long.

The Rocks by Peter Nichols

I took a short road trip to Manhattan, Kansas on Memorial Day and finished listening to The Rocks. This was an interesting enough book, but one of the main characters was an absolute b___h and by the end of the book, I couldn't understand how or why all of the men in the novel were so in love with her. It might have been because she was beautiful. Of course, novels follow real life, so what else could I have expected? Men love beautiful women. End of Story. Because they are beautiful, they must be good. The narrator for the recorded version of the book was very good, and he kept the novel listenable. The author did a good job on the first two-thirds of the novel and proved interesting enough to keep me listening. Since it was a character driven novel, once the evil genie was let loose the novel wasn't as good. It was clear that the author was driving the reader to a climatic conclusion, but for me the end didn't deliver because it was not another love-gone-wrong romance with a good dose of redemption in the dénouement. It just fell flat. Not a total waste of time, but not as good as I expected it to be.

Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Invention of the Gothic AKA Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral by Philip Ball

I enjoyed this study of the invention of the Gothic architecture style and all the changes and innovation that brought about in architecture. I have owned this book since 2011. It was purchased at the Cool Springs Galleria Mall in Franklin, Tennessee at the Border's Going-Out-of-Business Sale on March 19. (Gotta love LT and all the note keeping capabilities that are built into the system.)

I finally read it for the LT Nonfiction Challenge because the June topic was architecture. I also read it because I am starting to prepare myself for the Isle-de-France trip I am planning to take at some point in my life. It was a good book on the subject of the cathedral building that took place in the Isle during the 13th century. This building boom created an atmosphere in which many innovations in architecture happened that changed the way people created, built, and used buildings. The only problem with the book was that it was slow to start. It spent more pages on the philosophy of the time than was needed, and this section was more academic than it needed to be. When the author got to the actual mechanical details of the building the book moved right along and was full of fascinating history and details about how the building was built.