What are you reading the week of June 17, 2023?

I spent much of the past week driving from Massachusetts to Tennessee and back again. There wasn't much time for reading. I've started Maigret and the Madwoman.

Setting aside South Pacific Air War for the moment to work on His Majesty's Airship and In the Weeds; those two wound up being not renewable at the library.

After I'm done with that lot I expect to be starting After the End of the World and Heinkel He 177 Greif.

I'm reading The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson for book club. So far I'm intrigued.

We're going on a road trip to Utah this week, so I will also be reading Beyond the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner.

*ETA: I also reread Fall into Darkness by Christopher Pike for my library's BINGO card, revisit a childhood favorite. That was fun!

I finished the LTER book of poetry, Good Grief, the Ground. It took a while since with poetry, I can only read a few poems at a time before I need to stop and let it settle in. I can't say I understood every poem but so many spoke to a truth of my experience and emotions that I was awed. I usually pass the LTER books that I receive on to others. This one I will keep.

>1 fredbacon: Fred, did you get your new dog?

This week I finished Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll - it was excellent, and far more than I'd expected from a thriller. I also read A Simple Favor as I'd enjoyed the film. The book was only just okay.

Am now reading Pachinko, which is engrossing, and I'm listening to The Golem and the Jinni, which is spectacular.

In the world of not-so-spectacular, I started Austerlitz for the third and last time. I really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't plow through it. The sentences that went on seemingly forever made it very difficult to follow, and I give up.

I'm unemployed and have been reading a lot.

I did! I posted a picture of him in the previous thread. But it was a heck of a trip. I drove about 2200 miles in three days. I blew out a tire late at night in the middle of nowhere in Virginia. I had to call AAA. They had someone there within an hour. Then I had to find somewhere I could buy a new tire the next morning. It took me days to recover from the trip.

I actually had to leave two days later than planned as I had what turned out to be a pinched nerve in my back. The pain was so intense that I ended up in the emergency room. At first the doctors thought that it might be a kidney stone, but that was eliminated fairly quickly. They finally decided that it was either a muscle spasm or a pinched nerve. It took about 18 hours for the pain to subside. The next day, my left leg was numb. (It still is.) So, the final diagnosis seems to be a pinched nerve. It's steadily improving, but they take time to heal.

>6 fredbacon: Slow and easy on the back. Take care.

Starting The Wisdom of the Bullfrog by William H. McRaven .

Marrying Winterborne– Lisa Kleypas
Audiobook performed by Mary Jane Wells
3***

Book two in the Ravenels series focuses on Lady Helen Ravenel. As the book opens, her engagement to Rhys Winterborne, the Welsh department-store mogul, has ended rather abruptly. But it wasn’t Lady Helen who broke it off, rather her cousin Kathleen. Now Lady Helen must take her future into her own hands. But Rhys wants assurances that she won’t back out, and that her family won’t interfere. So, he proposes “ruining her” so that she and her family will have no choice but to go along with the wedding.

I certainly understand why Kleypas is so successful at the Regency romance genre. The men are devastatingly handsome, occasionally brutish, always strong and determined, and attentive lovers. The ladies are equally strong-willed, determined, refined and chaste (at least until they are introduced to the joys of the bedroom). Almost everyone has a secret or two that could possibly cause a scandal from which they might not recover. The road to happily ever after is full of bumps and detours to add tension and keep the reader turning pages, but the couple will get there.

Mary Jane Wells does a great job of narrating the audiobook. 5**** for her performance.

Still not really reading We Only Need the Heads by John Scalzi, A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon, and House of Gold by C. T. Rwizi.

>6 fredbacon: It has been a hard week or so. Thank goodness there was the arrival of your new puppy to bring some happiness.

I finished a book I probably was supposed to read somewhere back in high school. The Red Badge of Courage was an introspective examination of himself by a soldier facing action in a realistically portrayed battle of the Civil War. His thoughts range from glory to shame to a worn pride.

I will read The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty, Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo and Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I had been searching for a website that could assist me with my MBA Essay assignments when I came across https://mbaessayhelp.com/ which enables me to complete my essay writing easily and swiftly.

Pray For Silence – Linda Castillo
3.5***

From the book jacket: The Plank family moved from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to join the small Amish community of Painters Mill less than a year ago and seemed the model of the Plain Life—until on a cold October night, the entire family of seven was found slaughtered on their farm. Police Chief Kate Burkholder and her small force have few clues, no motive, and no suspect. Formerly Amish herself, Kate is no stranger to the secrets the Amish keep from the English—and each other—but this crime is horribly out of the ordinary.

My reactions
This is book two in the Kate Burkholder series, set in an Ohio county with significant Amish population. The differences between the Amish and the “English” make it difficult for the police, though Kate’s background does at least give her fluency in the particular German dialect spoken by the Amish.

She’s assisted in this case by state agent John Tomasetti. There’s a complicated relationship between these two, and both are suffering from past trauma and loss. This case brings many of their worst nightmares into the forefront and tests both their professional and personal relationships.

Kate also has several good, experienced, and highly competent cops on her team. I particularly loved the description of Officer Roland “Pickles” Shumaker: Wearing his trademark trench coat and pointy-toed cowboy boots, he looks like he’s just stepped off the set of some nuevo spaghetti western. He’s seventy-four years old, acts like he’s twenty-tow, and doesn’t look a day over eighty.

I love murder mysteries that feature strong female leads, and I look forward to reading more of this series.

But I feel I should offer a bit of a trigger warning: I enjoy reading about the investigation, including the gruesome details of the murders and the forensic clues that help lead to solving the crime. Castillo does a great job of giving fans of the genre such as me what we like about murder mysteries. But … this is a very violent crime with some very disturbing discoveries about the victims and the perpetrators. Descriptions of the crimes include torture, sex trafficking, mutilation of the corpse, child pornography, and “snuff” films.

Starting this audio via Libby ~

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
by Jesse Q. Sutanto

I finished Mission to Moscow, Joseph E. Davies' memoir, sort of, of his two years (1936 through 1938) as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union. I say "sort of" because the book is not a narrative but a series of journal and diary entries as well as many of Davies' official reports and correspondences with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, President Roosevelt, and other government officials. There is quite a bit of repetition, as sometimes, for example, a report to Hull is immediately followed by a very similar report to Roosevelt. That said, the accumulation of information and insights that Davies provides ends up being pretty interesting for someone (like me) with an interest in the events of this era. Davies was in Moscow, and part of the inner diplomatic circle, during the purge trials and the run-up to World War Two. Interestingly, this book was published in October 1941, just 6 weeks or so before Pearl Harbor.

I've posted a longer review on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next up for me will be a baseball biography, Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life by Bill Madden.

The Cat Who Played Brahms – Lilian Jackson Braun
3***

Book five in the delightful cozy mystery series starring James Qwilleran (just Qwill to his friends), and his Siamese Koko. Qwill has been notified that he’ll be evicted when his building is sold, so he decides to take a sabbatical and take up a family friend’s offer of a remote cabin on a lake “up north.” He figures he’ll have peace and quiet and will be able to begin work on the book he wants to write. Mooseville is certainly NOT the big city, but something mysterious is going on; several of Qwill’s cherished possessions go missing and then a neighboring cabin owner is murdered.

I really enjoy this series. I like Qwill and I like Koko, and NO, the cat doesn’t talk but his meanderings and occasional reaction to a visitor frequently point Qwill in the direction of a significant clue. I also like the women in Qwill’s life. He’s always a gentleman but he operates alone, and he likes it that way.

This episode ends with a bit of a surprise twist and a cliffhanger. But having already read the next installment (my mistake … I read out of order) I was happy to get the background.

Replaced the Vera Wong audio with this Libby audio ~

Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?: A Novel
by Crystal Smith Paul

I finished The Zigzag Way. It was an appropriate title for this book in that it told the story of a cast of characters from various points of view. While it was well written and enjoyable to read, I found its point elusive.

The new thread is up over here.