Jim53 reads in 2023

Welcome, friends, and happy new year! I'm not making any resolutions or commitments or challenges regarding reading this year. I'm just reading what calls to me, with just a couple of specific intentions: (1) read other books by authors of books that I have particularly enjoyed. A good example of this category is Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt. (2) read a bunch of books that we've got sitting on our shelves unread, and determine whether we want to keep them or rehome them. Then follow through. I'm hoping to make a good bit of space this year, although sadly not for more books.

Please stop in, say hi, tell me what you're reading or doing or thinking about. Old and new voices are always welcome.

Happy New thread!

Happy new year and happy new thread!

Happy New Thread, Jim. I recently saw advice about what books one should read.

!. Read only the books you want to read.
2. Don't read anything you do not want to read.

It looks like you are sticking to the rules. I hope you enjoy or get value from everything you read.

Happy New Year; happy new thread!

Happy New Year and happy reading!

Happy New Year, and I love your non-resolutions!

The Happiest and Healthiest of New Years to you, my friend. May all of your reads this year be gems.

(I too have joined the no resolutions bandwagon!)

>9 clamairy:
This bandwagon is getting crowded. I have been on it for quite a while. Delighted to have company.

>1 Jim53: found and starred your thread!

If I don't like what I'm reading, I usually STOP READING IT. :)

>2 Karlstar: >3 haydninvienna: >4 pgmcc: >5 hfglen: >6 Narilka: >7 Bookmarque: >8 majkia: >9 clamairy: >10 pgmcc: >11 fuzzi: Thanks for coming by and for all your good wishes, which I send back to you!

My first book of 2023 was indeed a gem. Having enjoyed the first two volumes of Nghi Vo's Singing Hills cycle, I picked up the third, Into the Riverlands. Our friend Chih the cleric, and their neixin Almost Brilliant, are travelling into a disreputable part of the kingdom, continuing to search out stories. They fall in with an older couple and two young women, one of whom is a master of martial arts. The writing is particularly beautiful in several places. For example,

The first day they were safe, and the second day they were safe, but on the third day, the moon disappeared to tend to his other wife, and the night filled with a thick and sticky summer darkness.

It's a simple enough image, but it adds to the archaic and mythic tone of the book. I recommend all three of these novellas if you haven't read them.

>12 Jim53: Oh, awesome! I didn't realize it had been released. I will keep an eye out for it.

Stopping by to wish you a year of health, wealth of reading and prosperity. Good luck on making space by reading and rehoming books. I have been trying that for about seven years now with little to show for it. ;)

>13 clamairy: I didn't know either, but I just happened to see it on the new-book shelf when I was looking for something else.

>14 MrsLee: Thanks, and back atcha! Yeah, making space is not all that easy. If there were a bookstore near here to which I could bring a lot of books, I would do that. I've given a few to Little Free Libraries, but that's just a couple at a time, and sometimes there is something irresistible there. Our library system has not been taking donations, but I'll check again on whether they've finished whatever project made them stop for a while. I'm saddened by the apparent disappearance of used-book stores. The ones in Durham used to have all kinds of great stuff, and they would take a lot of things in trade, as long as they weren't too ratty or Dan Brown.

>12 Jim53: I was so happy Almost Brilliant was back!

>4 pgmcc: Simple and clear rules are easiest to follow. :)

Happy reading in 2023, Jim!

Happy New Year! I hope you enjoy your year in reading and in life!

>16 libraryperilous: Thanks for the good wishes. I popped over and looked at your profile, and it says we share zero books! Hard to believe unless it's being super-picky about editions or something. I'll look through the books it said I should borrow and see if there are some I've forgotten to add.

>17 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, Claire, and same to you!

>18 Jim53: Oh, that's strange! I popped over to yours, and it says we share 57 books, including Priory of the Orange Tree and the Singing Hills series. I may have some kind of profile setting turned off. I'll see if I can find anything in my account.

Happy new year!

>19 libraryperilous: It says we share 0 as well. And I know that's not true!

>21 clamairy: Oof, definitely not true. I turned off similar libraries many years ago, and I think that must be the cause. I can't find how to turn it back on. I participate in SantaThing every year. I'm sure it's been frustrating for my Santas to think we had no books in common!

>20 foggidawn: Thanks and back atcha! Wishing you a wonderful year.

I just found out that The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which I remember liking quite a bit but not in a lot of detail, is the first book of three. One of the writers in Jungle Reds had gotten a copy of Harold for Christmas, and one of the blog commenters said that Harold was fun, but book two was better. So that goes on the list of things to try in the not too futant disture.

At the moment I'm doing a lot of running around and haven't read a whole lot lately. At bedtime I've been reading Malice at the Palace, another of Rhys's Lady Georgie cozies. I'm not sure why I like these so much; they do get a bit repetitive. I remember Rhys gave me a copy of A Royal Threesome (the first three in the series in a big trade paperback) after I participated in a Jungle Reds game show at Malice one year. Shortly thereafter, my father-in-law was quite ill and finally died, and for some reason reading those three fun and creative, non-gory mysteries was a great comfort to me during that time. I guess they're sort of like comfort food.

>13 clamairy: (Yes, I know. Your reference to Into The Riverlands was posted ten days ago and I'm really late to the game here.) I loved the first one in that set (The Empress of Salt and Fortune) but was disappointed in the second one, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain. You aren't seeing any unevenness in her delivery?

>25 jillmwo: The second and third books are not as tightly woven as the first one. I found the third one a bit messy in its execution, but Almost Brilliant was back so I didn't care.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune is an epic—a tiny one, but still an epic. The other two books don't have the same feel.

>25 jillmwo: >26 libraryperilous: I, too, was less excited about When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain than about the first volume. I really enjoyed the third one, though. Perhaps I spent less time and effort decoding the setting, and was better able to enjoy the story. I'd say the story itself was less epic than The Empress of Salt and Fortune; for me, this was a plus as I felt the characters were real people and I was able to connect to them a little better.

>25 jillmwo:, >26 libraryperilous: & >27 Jim53: - I also didn't enjoy that 2nd one as much as the 1st. (I gave it 1/2 star less.) I am still looking forward to the 3rd!

>28 clamairy: I was very confused for a minute... I recently read the Trespass Collection of which volume 1 is The Tiger Came to the Mountain. Having not yet read my TOR freebie of The Empress of Salt and Fortune, I mistakenly thought you all were talking about the Moreno-Garcia short story, (in my defense, those titles are really similar).

I'm going to dive into The Singing Hills cycle soon. I read Vo's Siren Queen a few months ago and liked it pretty well.

>29 ScoLgo: Really similar? Practically identical! I hope you enjoy The Singing Hills. I suspect that first one will please you quite a bit.

I'm about halfway through Magic Time, one of the unread books on our shelves. It has a sticker from Mr. K books, which is in Asheville. It's been quite a while since we were there, so it's just been sitting patiently, waiting for me to get around to it.

It's an interesting story, told in a couple of different time periods. Carter Ransom is a young man from Mississippi in the 60s, who has quit Vanderbilt law school to be a newspaper reporter, much to the chagrin of his judge father. In his youth he was great friends with Elijah, the son of his family's black housekeeper/cook. Now Lige's mother asks Carter to find her boy, who has gone off somewhere. Carter finds that Lige is heavily involved with SNCC, which he calls "snick," and isn't interested in coming home. All sorts of interesting details and themes related to the civil rights movement.

The fourth Singing Hills Cycle novella has been announced for this fall. Goodreads' link has a September 12th pub date.

It sounds amazing! Two neixin!

>32 libraryperilous: Cool! Thanks for the update.

I finished Magic Time late last night. It's a very good story, with echoes of other southern stories. Carter Ransom, a young man who defied his father (a judge) by dropping out of law school to become a journalist, visits his Mississippi home after his girlfriend breaks up with him. He spends a lot of time remembering his life in the sixties, when his best friend joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinated Committee, aka SNCC, pronounced "snick." Carter became involved in and sympathetic to the cause of civil rights, and fell in love with a young woman in the movement.

Judge Ransom had presided over the trial of several local members of the Ku Klux Klan in a firebombing of a church, in which several of the SNCC members, including Carter's lover, died. In the present, new evidence has come to light that gives an ambitious DA the opportunity to pin the crime on the Grand Knight, who had evaded conviction at the first trial. This provokes Carter to get involved. Various fireworks ensue.

The story is quite well paced and told. My only complaint was a couple of times when Carter philosophizes about some event, and it seems clear that he's acting as his own Greek chorus, telling us the author's thoughts about what happened. It doesn't happen too often. Marlette has a nice technique in which Carter (or someone else) is telling someone about a past event, and we segue into the telling or reliving of that event in its own time, with interesting details. I had to work just a little in the first few chapters to identify the time and place we're in; Marlette doesn't give us chapter or section headings with dates and locations.

I read Marlette's earlier novel, The Bridge, in a book club several years ago. This one dealt with the beginnings of the labor movement, and was also quite good. Before turning to novels, Marlette was a cartoonist, winning many awards including a Pulitzer.

Four stars. Another good read early in the year.

I'm starting a reread of Ellen Crosby's two mysteries featuring photographer Sophie Medina. I remember telling Ellen six or seven years ago that I liked this series better than her series about Lucie Montgomery the winemaker, and her telling me that she had just signed a contract for several more Lucies. So it goes. She has finally gone back to Sophie, and the third book in this series, Blow Up (which doesn't seem to have a touchstone yet) will be published in May.

Multiple Exposure, the first Sophie Medina mystery/espionage thriller from Ellen Crosby, held up well to a reread after seven years. The book begins with Sophie's discovery that her husband, Nick, has been kidnapped or killed. Nick is an oil-company exec who is also a CIA "asset." Sophie moves back from London to Washington and finds her own life in danger, as multiple parties seek valuable information that Nick night have. Being a photographer gives Sophie an entree into various activities that end up being related to the case, including a museum introduction of two previously undiscovered Faberge eggs and a book tour by a politico from Abadistan, which wants to break away from Russia. All sorts of hijinks ensue. Four stars.

Taking a break from mysteries, I've started The Good Life by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz. I can't find a touchstone for it yet. They are the director and assistant director for an ongoing longitudinal study begun in 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Apparently the study captures, over and over again from teenhood to death, all sorts of detailed medical and other information about its subjects, including interviews, in order to draw conclusions about the effects and importance of various areas of life for the subject's sense of living a good life, and maybe even being happy. I haven't gotten very far into it yet, but it certainly sounds promising. One of the early participants was JFK.

I heard of this book, and the study it describes, from the Well newsletter from the New York Times, which mentioned it several times recently.

I found the touchstone because it looks interesting to me!
The Good Life: Lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness

>38 reconditereader: Thanks, RR! I tried to find it thru the author page, but I had the wrong Robert Waldinger.

>18 Jim53:, >21 clamairy: Thanks for pointing this out to me. The mystery has been solved. I posted in the FAQ group and lesmel had an answer for me.

>40 libraryperilous: I clicked your name to make sure and saw the expected 57.

I finished my recent bedtime read, Crowned and Dangerous, which wasn't quite as much fun as some of the others in the series. That's OK, though; it was excellent bedtime reading.

Today I'm taking a break from The Good Life: Lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness to start my newly arrived ER book, Lee Smith's Silver Alert. Lee is the second resident of Hillsborough, NC, whose book I read this year; Doug Marlette lived there till his death. Hillsborough, which is a few miles north of Durham and Chapel Hill and was once a colonial state capital, is like a little artists' and writers' colony: in addition to Smith and Marlette, Alan Gurganus, Frances Mayes, Michael Malone, and numerous other writers live or lived there.

I finished Silver Alert and wrote a review. The book was quite a fun read, with an undertone of gentle humor throughout.

The Good Life: Lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness is quite well written, and I'm mostly enjoying reading it. Sometimes, as they discuss individual cases from the study or the theoretical basis for an assertion, I want to say, "OK, I believe you, I sorta trust you, skip this stuff and tell me the takeaway!" But I have found that authors rarely respond to such exhortations. Lord knows I've tried. This is another library book that I was able to get before anyone else, so it has the feel of a brand new book, which is kinda fun. They got just four copies, though, and there are sixty-some holds on it, so I suspect I won't be able to renew it. I might have to get back at the end of the line, or possibly I'll decide it's worth actually purchasing, which I don't do very much of these days.

>43 Jim53: Silver Alert sounds great. Loved your review. I might try to borrow this one when it's officially published.

I read a truly horrible book on NetGalley called The Tyranny of Desire. It's intentionally offensive to just about anybody, but at least it's badly written. What a waste of time. Is there a way to give negative numbers of stars?

In preparation for reading Ellen Crosby's new entry in her Sophie Medina series, I just finished a re-read of Ghost Image. It's definitely my favorite of the dozen or so of her books that I've read. Sophie is a great character, and Ellen puts her into some fascinating situations.

>45 Jim53:
When I find a book that is truly awful I give it half a star. No star would lead people to think I had not rated it. In the absence of negative scores a half star rating says it all.

>47 pgmcc: That sounds like a good idea!

>47 pgmcc: and >48 Jim53: I agree. That's a really useful approach to sending a negative message. (I've been more likely to just delete the title completely from my library if I thought something was truly awful.)

>47 pgmcc: This is why I prefer a 10 point scale.

>45 Jim53: Somewhere once I saw some reviews of (IIRC) food and/or accommodation where the truly awful were awarded one to five suns, rather than stars (which were only awarded to salubrious establishments). Ever since, this has seemed to me to be a good idea. It sounds like your book deserves four or five suns. In their absence, >47 pgmcc:'s idea will do the job well.

I've started The Bluest Eye for our community book club. I was briefly confused by the beginning, but I've found my footing and am finding it very interesting.

I just read, and paid attention for the first time, the blurb describing touchstones. (On my laptop, it is currently immediately to the right of the box within which I'm typing.) I am truly outraged by the final example. LoTR is not a series, dammit, it's a single continuous story that has been divided into three volumes! There are many better examples of series that consist of a collection of novels that can be read independently and don't start in medias res like "Aragorn sped on up the hill."

Apologies if I've missed prior conversations about this. I just wanted something to let off a little steam about this morning.

>53 Jim53: It does say 'Touchstones are works, authors and series', so LoTR could fall under the 'works' description!

>54 Karlstar: Pretty sure those terms are relative to the three examples, so their example of LotR is showing it as a series. Let's see...

The default link for Lord of the Rings (with single square brackets) goes to an omnibus.
The default link for Lord of the Rings with triple square brackets) goes to a card game. The book series does not even make the top 10 in the 'others' link.

Generally speaking, I have found the series link function to be fairly spotty. The link will show properly in the preview to the right of the edit box but will often change to a single book link when clicking the 'Preview' button - which is exactly what has happened with the above links. The Touchstones preview to the right indicates a link to the series but when I posted this, it changed to match the omnibus link.

So yeah, I rarely use the series link function due to unexpected and inaccurate results.

EtA: I was mistaken. When I clicked the 'Preview' button while editing, both links went to the same omnibus - but when I clicked the 'Post message' button, the 2nd link correctly goes to the series page.

>55 ScoLgo: That has happened to me as well, the series links work on and off.

>53 Jim53: LOL, I never read that message before under the comment box. I knew about single and double brackets, but not triple. Thanks for the steam, my tea was getting cool. ;)

I finished The Bluest Eye. It has a powerful message about self-image, but the story itself requires some patience and deciphering. I suspect we'll have an interesting discussion tonight.

>55 ScoLgo: >57 MrsLee: As many times as I've looked at that message, I never realized that and were actually useful.

I may need to up my quota to learning a lot more than one new thing per day.

>58 Jim53: The Bluest Eye is a tough one. I've read it but I don't think I processed the reading experience the way one probably ought to. Comes of reading books far too quickly.

>60 jillmwo: I read it, too, and I only remember it being depressing.

>60 jillmwo: >61 clamairy: Thanks for your comments. I had a hard time sticking with it; I could only deal with a little at a time. It was on my mind a lot during the time I was reading. While I can't say I enjoyed reading it, exactly, I was impressed and appreciated what I thought she was up to: trying to see how these young girls had developed the racial hatred for themselves that they so obviously felt. There were numerous answers, I think. I was pleasantly surprised by the discussion: I had feared that a handful of members would take offense, but only a couple made snide remarks. It might have been easier to deal with because there aren't explicit white villains.

I've now completed the few things that I read because I committed to them, except for my NetGalley copy of Blow Up, my friend Ellen Crosby's new Sophie Medina mystery, which I fully expect to enjoy. Before I start that, however, I'm taking a ride back into Alliance space with Jack Campbell's Fearless.

I finished Fearless, which was an easy read but not quite as fun as its predecessor. Geary's relationships with some characters have developed in interesting ways. While the central theme seems to focus on his responses to numerous temptations, the word count leans heavily toward descriptions of battles. I'll go on to the next one, but not right away.

I grabbed One Fell Sweep after seeing references to this series in a couple of threads. For some reason I thought it was the first of the series; no idea why. The book read fine without any prior information. It was a lot of fun. I'll have to go back and see what I missed beforehand. I didn't like the picture (presumably of Dina) on the cover, though.

I finished my NetGalley copy of Blow Up (A Sophie Medina Mystery), and I'm still deciding what to say about it. It's a change from the first two volumes of the series, so my expectations were a bit off, but I ended up liking it a lot. It appears I'm the first person to add it, which is kinda fun. More soon.

My recent bedtime book has been The Last Mrs. Summers, the antepenultimate (so far) of Rhys Bowen's Royal Spyness series. This one was particularly fun because she riffs on Rebecca, from starting the book talking about a dream to taking us to visit the second wife of a Cornwall businessman/farmer whose household includes a demanding housekeeper. It was very good fun and moderately exciting. Now I want to read Rebecca again, and maybe even First Among Sequels, which introduces an army of Danverclones to the Thursday Next metaworld.

>67 Jim53: I didn't love that 3rd book and stopped there. I have the next three, and should probably give them another chance. I didn't realize there were Danverclones to look forward to! LOL

>68 clamairy: Yeah, Well was a bit of a disappointment. It had too little excitement for me, although as I recall there was some good humor. He gets his mojo back somewhat in Something Rotten (you can guess who makes an appearance there), and I really liked First Among Sequels a lot. The last two were pretty forgettable. None of the series, IMNAAHO, measure up to The Eyre Affair.

>68 clamairy: and >69 Jim53: I was reading in an Everyman's Library edition -- a collection of stories about books and libraries -- last night (hot off the presses) and was surprised to encounter Thursday Next as one of the segments. It drew from The Well of Lost Plots.

I've got a couple of new books going now: The Hallowed Hunt as my main read and Courageous for bedtime. Both seem to be off to interesting starts.

>70 jillmwo: If you've never encountered Thursday, I highly recommend The Eyre Affair. I remember reading a part in the middle that had me laughing hysterically, so that my wife came to verify that I was OK. You can decide from there if you want to try the others. As mentioned above, Well was not one of my favorites.

All this Thursday Next talk has me wanting to do a series reread.

I noticed that Jasper FForde has a YA series that begins with The Last Dragonslayer. One of the comments that I saw said that the reader had moved on to it after devouring the Percy Jackson books. My granddaughter finished those last year. So I requested a copy of TLD from the library in order to assess whether I think it would be good for her. I haven't decided about that yet, but right now it's perfect for me, so it's interrupted the reading I was doing. Lots of fun and silliness.

Here's a formula for entertainment: take a Jasper Fforde story and make it more juvenile. Perhaps I should say "even more juvenile." You might end up with something like The Last Dragonslayer. It seemed to be just what I needed this week. Jennifer is outstanding. I'll definitely be grabbing the two sequels after returning from a quick trip. In the mean time I'm back on Courageous for the time being.

>75 Jim53: The older I get the more I appreciate some well done silliness. I am glad you enjoyed your discovery.

>76 clamairy: Thanks! I'm finding the same thing.

I finished Courageous, the third volume of Jack Campbell's SSDD series. For some reason I kept expecting someone to say, "Remember, the enemy's gate is down." All the going through gates, seeing what the other army is doing, and reacting creatively really reminded me of Ender's Game. There is a slight hint toward the end that the next volume might contain something somewhat new. I have to decide if it's worth another slog to find out.

I zipped through Scalzi's The Dispatcher in one sitting. Very interesting setup: all of a sudden, people who die at the hands of another person reappear alive, at home in their beds. This leads to the creation of a new profession: dispatchers, who are responsible for ensuring that people die in a way that permits them to come back. This novella doesn't do the concept justice, but I see there are sequels, which I will certainly hunt down. Less silliness than one sometimes gets with Scalzi, but not too heavy.

>79 Jim53: That is one of the Scalzi's I have not read yet.

>80 Karlstar: I read it because NetGalley has the third in the series. Unfortunately my library doesn't have the second. But I started the third this evening and I haven't found anything that makes me think the second one was necessary. This one is a bit longer than the first (220 pp vs 130). So far it's OK, not fabulous.

>76 clamairy: and >77 Jim53: Quite agree. I value well done silliness in a book much more now than I did even ten years ago.

>82 jillmwo: Speaking of which, I just finished the sequel, The Song of the Quarkbeast. Gotta make sure the whole set is suitable. Plus it's great fun.

>81 Jim53: I finished The Dispatcher: Travel by Bullet. True to its name, it features escaping law enforcement by having a confederate shoot you, so that you wake up elsewhere. Scalzi is further exploring the implications of the world he has set up, and in the process gives us a pretty decent mystery to solve, using crypto-stuff. Not a lot of humor, but a few interesting characters. I'm moderately interested in seeing what else he will do here, but I also would like more Kaiju. 3.5 stars.

It was interesting to see the blockchain technology mentioned. I studied it a bit about eight years ago, when my employer was working to come up with enterprise-level implementations. From what I've seen since, one of the primary, or at least most visible, ways it's being used is in transactions involving cryptocurrency.

My understanding is that cryptocurrency *is* Blockchain, or at least an application of it

>85 jjwilson61: It's an application of it. Blockchain could be used for other sorts of commerce and exchanges, but it will require lots of changes in the systems of all the affected companies. It may never be as big as was first imagined.

>85 jjwilson61: Probably not, but there was hope for a while.

I've begun reading a few books that we've had on the shelves for a while but haven't read. I zipped through Grisham's Sycamore Row, which was a pretty good legal thriller. I understand it's the second of three starring attorney Jake Brigance, and that the first and third are much more violent, so I lucked out in having found this one at an old library sale. An enjoyable read but not a keeper.

I've had an interesting time with Jonathan Carroll over the years. I didn't especially enjoy Sleeping in Flame, but I found The Wooden Sea and Outside the Dog Museum quite wonderful. I've just started From the Teeth of Angels, and the jury is still out. The writing is excellent as usual; I just haven't figured out how the different parts of the story relate to each other.

Footnote that probably entertains nobody but me: there was a young man named Jonathan Carroll who lived on my floor in my dorm my senior year of college (1974-5). I didn't understand how he managed it, since he never pretended to go to any classes. Maybe he was staying with a friend. I didn't get to know him well at all. He gained a good bit of notoriety because of his lovely singing voice, and the fact that he found himself in a musical group with Bill and Taffy Danoff. Anyone remember them? They have been largely reviled since their brief burst of fame.

>89 Jim53: I had to use Google. Looks like I can blame them for Afternoon Delight. LOL

>88 Jim53: I have read at least one Grisham, but the violence keeps me away. Glad you found one that was a bit tamer.

>89 Jim53: Nooo!!! Not Starland Vocal Band! One of the funniest things I ever heard on a podcast, was the time Dan Patrick told the story of how he was driving in the car one day and from the backseat, heard his daughter ask what 'afternoon delight' was. Luckily I've never had that happen to me, I don't think my kids ever heard that one on the radio. Thanks for putting that in my head. :)

>92 Karlstar: we asked my mom to explain 'afternoon delight' and she informed us (with a straight face, no less) that it meant they were having ice cream sundaes for lunch. apparently the "skyrockets in flight" was to be interpreted as indicating that they had also ordered 'Bomb Pop' popsicles, which we quite liked so were more than willing to accept this explanation. My poor mom...

>93 Darth-Heather: Bwahaha!!! What a brilliant explanation.

>94 clamairy: sure, except then she had to listen to us singing "aaaaayyyyyfternoon deliiiiight" every time we went to the ice cream shop. :D

>95 Darth-Heather: I wonder what the other customers thought.

>93 Darth-Heather: Love it.

I told my husband (and myself, so I could enjoy the song) that Lou Bega's song, Mambo No. 5 is about dancing with the ladies. I just read about all the legal controversy on that song, so I'm going to see if I can find the original by Dámaso Pérez Prado.

>95 Darth-Heather: lol!! I bet she loved that one. Good memory though.

P.S. Your post is still highly amusing.

>89 Jim53: Back to Jim's original post - is Jonathan Carroll one of the 4 people in the video?

Oh that's too funny about afternoon delight. My mom had a situation on her hands as well, but one of her own making. When I was little we had a cat named Puta.

Seriously. My mom named her that.

And then had to explain it to me.

She said it meant she was a naughty lady. Or something like that. OMG.

>99 Karlstar: Jon is the younger guy in the foursome. IIRC he wore a black vest in the video that I saw. I haven't looked lately but a while back he was doing session work around the DC area.

I first encountered Danoff in his and Taffy's incarnation as Fat City; I had an old signed LP of theirs, with a hilariously bad picture featuring (I think) cowboy hats. He was a strange bird; he was studying Chinese linguistics or some such thing at Georgetown (if you can't go to a Catholic school, a Jesuit school is the next best thing, right?). He wrote or co-wrote a good number of successful songs, including Boulder to Birmingham and Take Me Home, Country Roads.

I have managed to do a bit of reading lately in spite of everything. I'll mention my most recent read first, because I noticed that the story takes place in clamairy 's back yard. Clam, I looked and saw that you have it in your library: Plum Island by Nelson DeMille.

This is one of several books that we own and I haven't read, or just don't remember them, so I'm giving them a chance to convince me to keep them as I thin out the shelves. This one did not make a successful case, although it had a few good moments.

Last month I wanted something easy. I remembered how much I had enjoyed re-reading the first two of Sarah Shaber's Simon Shaw mysteries, which are set near my old stomping grounds in Raleigh. I didn't have the other three, but the library had two of them and I found the third on eBay. It was lots of fun re-reading those three, which I hadn't remembered at all after reading them about eight years ago.

We've had the three Hunger Games books on the shelf for a while. My wife had read them but I hadn't. I remember that I had seen the first one cited in a couple of places as a good example of solid narrative structure. So I gave them a try and found them quite engaging. Several of the character are quite well drawn, and the story line was interesting (I'm one of the few people who never saw the movies, so I had no idea what I was getting into). I liked the first book the best. By the third, it's hard to imagine how Katniss is functioning even as poorly as she is; it seems she would have been pretty well destroyed by what she'd been through. The second half of the third book, in particular, was rather rough sailing. But overall I think these are keepers, mostly because my wife thinks she might read them again.

>103 Jim53: I think I want to try one of the Simon Shaw mysteries. I was just checking up on reviews, availability, etc. Seems like the first one is a good place to start...(particularly as a rewards coupon allows me to pick up a digital edition of Simon Said for free!!!!)

>102 Jim53: Plum Island only worked for me because of its setting, which is here, on the North Fork of the Isle of Long. At time I read it I hadn't moved back here, but I was still very familiar with the area, having lived here during High School. But it's the only book of his I've ever read, I did try to read The Gold Coast, but I couldn't get more than 20 pages into it.

Another series I've been reading is the Innkeeper series by Ilona Andrews. I mistakenly started with the third one a while back, and have recently read the first two. Some of the vampires are a bit annoying, but overall the series it quite fun. I'll look for the next one soon.

>105 jillmwo: I'd start with the first one. You get more of a sense of who's who. Part of the reason why I enjoy them is the familiarity of the setting, but there are several enjoyable characters, and the stories are nicely assembled.

>106 clamairy: I was looking for you and Sammie on the beach but missed you somehow ;-) I wasn't inspired to look for more of DeMille's work. This one's not in good enough shape to give to the library, so it will go to Goodwill.

I've been doing a reread after several years of Molly Fox's Birthday. I remembered that I had enjoyed it a lot, but not the story. I'm pleased to report that the suck fairy has been held at bay and I'm enjoying it a lot again. It has a lot to do with how one presents oneself and how friendship endures and changes. Madden is one of the authors more of whose work I want to look for (I don't actually see a syntactic flaw in that sentence, but it seems a bit weird).

The way things have been going with rereads lately, I may never have to buy a new book again. After a couple of years, they're all like new again.

>109 Jim53: We must have been at a vineyard and not on the beach when you were looking for us. :o) My husband enjoyed his books, but I wasn't crazy about his style.

Your book bullet got me on a ricochet off jillmwo for the Simon Shaw series. I purchased the first on Kindle, but no telling when I will get around to reading it. Always nice to have books waiting in the wings for the moment one needs them.

>107 Jim53: That's a fun series. Good to hear you're enjoying it.

>113 Narilka: I have an idea that you might have been the source of the bullet for that one, so thank you for that. I just picked up Sweep with Me from the library. The titles are getting more subtle all the time ;-)

>112 MrsLee: You're right about the value of having something waiting! I have been forcing myself to read, or at least try, stuff that we've got here so I can decide whether to let it go (a lot of yes verdicts on that lately). But sometimes I want the cool new thing, often having heard about it here. I hope you'll enjoy Simon.

I have begun Ordinary Notes after seeing a write-up in the NYT. I was aware of Sharpe but have not read her earlier book yet. This one takes a bit of focus, which I can muster up only occasionally, but it looks very good.

I've been looking at this list: www.librarything.com/bookaward/501+Must-Read+Books. I have read surprisingly few of the choices. I'm trying to decide whether to put some effort into reading more of them. I'm interested in others' thoughts about the "must-read-ability" of these selections. I decided, pretty much at random, to try Andre Norton's The Time Traders. It was published when I was four years old, and I'm not sure I've ever read any Norton. My other current reads are not real great for bedtime, so I'm hoping this will fit in there.

>117 Jim53: I rate the must-read-ability of that list very, very low. At least for me, I have so many other things I'd rather read or re-read.

>117 Jim53: I was going to suggest the approach you took - look at the list, find a book that you haven't read that interests you and read it. But taking your example, I don't know why that's the only Andre Norton on the list, there are others I would suggest over that one. Hopefully you enjoy it!

Sure, there's a lot of classics on the list like Frankenstein or Dracula or Dune, but in other cases the listed book is not the one most people associate with the author. I haven't read most of them, so I really can't comment on the readability, except the perhaps 10% that I have read, I enjoyed.

I don't see any that would be on my 'not recommended' list, if that helps?

Well, The Time Traders was a DNF. I got about 70 pages in and the storytelling was not much fun. The premise is sort of interesting, but building a story from it would have required a good bit more character development. Now I can say I've tried Norton.

>118 reconditereader: Agreed. There are too many books that I already know I want to read. I seem to have a weakness for this sort of list, and this one was particularly weak.

>120 Jim53: If it doesn't resonate, it doesn't. Some authors you catch one of their works at a particular time and it lights up your brain; catch them at a different time and there is no spark. (And while it's not a particular indicator of anything, I never found Andre Norton to be particularly readable.)

Just stopping by to let you know that I've been reading Simon Said as my bedtime book (See >103 Jim53: above). Freakishly, my heart warmed at a literary reference to microfiche and I wanted to stop by your thread and give you full credit!

>122 jillmwo: Delighted to hear it! I had a similar experience a while back when I re-read Bimbos of the Death Sun. It's kind of like seeing a shoe phone or something like that.

Since I've been trying to focus on ROOTing and rooting out, I just brought home a dozen interesting-looking books from the library. I had to go over to the central library for our spacious county for a meeting, and I couldn't not take advantage. I picked up 20 CDs along with the dozen books.

I can't remember where I heard of Texts from Jane Eyre. It's a hilarious compendium of text exchanges between pairs of characters from many famous (and less-so) books. The snark level, as you can imagine, is frequently through the roof. One interesting aspect of the book is that it reminds me how little I remember of the details of a lot of things that I read a while back. I loved the exchange from P&P: "Remember when there was someone who wanted to marry you? You don't have that any more, do you?"

So far I've discovered that Luigi Boccherini is missing a certain pep in his quintets, Mozart's clarinet pieces are not among my favorites, and much of Terence Blanchard's work remains just a bit too out there for my taste. But there are plenty more CDs to try in this batch.

One of the books I brought home is This Is How It Always Is, which is next month's selection for our neighborhood book club. I'm finding it quite wonderful, and I've put away all my other books for the time being. The tone is fabulous, and the characters are great. I'm into the second section now and continuing to love it. So far it's one of my favorites for the year.

>124 Jim53: That reminds me of the old 'Facebook Hamlet', which is very amusing.

This Is How It Always Is was a great, great read. The tone of the novel draws us in from the outset, and the kindness of the two parents is exceptional (and perhaps, as we see, a bit much). They are incredibly accepting when their fifth son decides he's really a girl inside. We see how keeping secrets, and exposing them, affects everyone's lives, how crucial trust is, and how limiting binary choices are. The conscientious doctor and the imaginative writer are a wonderful couple. Not everything is rainbows and unicorns, of course, and the ways in which the child and their parents learn to deal with the world are difficult--perhaps Frankel could have focused more on depicting this difficulty, but she does so many things well that I am cutting her some slack here. I don't have any life experience with this sort of situation, but Frankel seems to be both thorough and compassionate toward all her characters. My favorite read so far this year.

My recent trip to the library was a microcosm of the last couple of years: I had to return Ordinary Notes before I managed to make much progress in it, and I picked up Sweep of the Blade, which is much more the sort of thing I can manage these days.

Interestingly, after reading This Is How It Always Is, I stumbled into a discussion about what sort of future a half-human, half-vampire child might have.

>127 Jim53: Yeah, I too loved that one. And yes, I cut her a lot of slack because the author is navigating this path in real life with one of her children.

>129 clamairy: I've got holds on both of the books Claire mentioned (Nevada and Summer Fun) and will see whether either comes through in time to read it before we discuss Frankel in book club. If not, I might just read one or both anyway.

I started The Sportswriter today. The writing is nice; I'm not sure how enamored I am of the characterization. I picked it up because I've had the sequel, Independence Day, sitting on the shelf for a while. But for this evening, it's back to Maud and her vampire suitor.

I polished off the next two Innkeeper titles, Sweep of the Blade and the novella Sweep with Me. Now I've got the final one (so far) on hold.

I haven't been finding The Sportswriter particularly compelling. I may give up on it soon.

I stopped by the library and into the YA section, which is where they keep David Copperfield. I want to read it in anticipation of getting to Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead later this year. I had no idea Copperfield was so long. I think I hurt myself pulling it off the shelf. Maybe it will keep me out of trouble for a while.

>131 Jim53: Bit of a door-stopper, eh? Dickens (as my eldest son continually griped in high school) got paid by the word and it shows upon occasion...

>131 Jim53:
The Sportswriter was a book club read for me. I bailed after about fifty pages. I could not see any positive element to it.

David Copperfield is my least favourite Dickens. After all the other Dickens books I have read I was enthusiastic to read another. Once I got to the end of David Copperfield I felt tired.

I still have many more of his books to read, but definitely, Copperfield did not fill me with the joy I felt reading the others.

Any Paul Park fans out there? He was a favorite of several Gene Wolfe fans I used to know. I just started Park's All Those Vanished Engines. It has a very meta feel at the beginning and appears likely to require a lot of attentive work. I remember enjoying his fantasy series that began with A Princess of Roumania; this has a pretty different feel so far.

>134 Jim53: That's an author I'm unfamiliar with, but sounds like I should give them a try.

>134 Jim53: I'm intrigued, most particularly by A Princess of Roumania.

>134 Jim53: I recently bought a copy of Celestis, but have not gotten to it yet. I intend to soon. It was a book bullet from someone in the Science Fiction group and I was intrigued by their comparing it to The Fifth Head of Cerberus, so of course it went onto the TBR!

This WaPo article (which should not have a paywall--lemme know if I messed up sharing) points to a manuscript from a medieval stand-up comic. The article itself is pretty superficial, but it links to one with more substance.

What cracked up medieval peasants? Killer bunnies and poop jokes, apparently.

>138 Jim53: Killer rabbits did exist!

>138 Jim53: I got a big chuckle out of this after you posted it on Facebook. All of those medieval manuscripts depicting rabid bunnies make perfect sense now.

>138 Jim53: oh, I did enjoy that!

"That rabbit's dynamite!"

>138 Jim53: I see the article mentions the Rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python's Holy Grail movie. Doesn't mention the facade from Notre Dame that supposedly inspired it's inclusion though. A picture can be seen on the wiki page that is linked.

Well, I had to take All Those Vanished Engines back to the library. Someone else requested it right after I did. I don't think I'll be getting it back unless I feel more like working hard on something. I wasn't seeing the reward for the effort yet.

But la bibliotheque did come through with a copy of Nevada, a book bullet I took from sakerfalcon. It comes from a very different perspective on the transgender experience than This Is How It Always Is. The viewpoint character is quite modern, and she has the sorts of problems one might expect of a twenty-something (I think; it's been a long time). I'm finding it somewhat slow going, but that's mostly me at this point, I think. I'm definitely enjoying it and I think it will add something to the discussion of Frankel at our book club.

I've begun tutoring an elderly (i.e., even a bit older than me ;-) couple from Zimbabwe in ESL. I'm finding it very rewarding. It's definitely cutting into my reading time, but I'm accepting the idea of reading less and the world not ending. It's rather freeing. Now I must go prepare a copy of my family tree, as they are doing for tomorrow's lesson on different family members and relations. I want to see if their language has a word that's the equivalent of the Yiddish "machatunim: or the Spanish "consuegos": my son's wife's parents (or our co-grandparents), for which I don't think there is a single word in English.

>143 Jim53: Oh, good for you with the tutoring. How many hours a week are you do that, if you don't mind me asking?

>144 clamairy: Two 90-minute sessions, so three hours a week, with two to three hours a week of prep time. I'm finding it interesting.

>143 Jim53: I imagine that the use of a collective term in English of "in-laws" is too vague? And like >144 clamairy: I think it's generous of you to share your time and knowledge that way

>143 Jim53: That is very good of you to do. I have to admit that a scene from Stripes has popped into my head though.

>144 clamairy: >146 jillmwo: >147 Karlstar: You're very kind. I feel it's important to give back.

Jill, I just like the idea of there being a word by which I can refer to those particular people. It suggests a valuing of specificity in talking about relationships. Of course, "Lily's folks" serves quite well most of the time ;-)

Jim, I'm drawing a blank. I think you've given me an excuse to watch it, and that's the fact, Jack.

>148 Jim53: Its actually the very beginning.

I finally found a book I could stick with: one of the volumes on my "read it and decide whether to keep it" shelf was The Promise. I have read a couple of Crais's other Elvis Cole mysteries and found them decent. This one stood out in a couple of ways: (a) the "presenting problem" that gets Cole started was questionable in an interesting way (I won't say more), and (b) he did a great job of presenting three or four scenes from multiple POVs. He handles POV switching mush more smoothly than some authors I've encountered. Overall quite a fun read and just what I needed at the moment. If it doesn't help me get back into more ambitious reading, the library has several more in this series that I haven't read. And they're about to have one more, as this is not one I'll keep to read again.

I just picked up Neil Gaiman's take on Norse Mythology, and I'm currently alternating between that and Harold Fry.

Oh that's a relief! I've followed the Cole/Pike series since the early 90s. That must be the oldest cat in history!

>150 Jim53: I liked Norse Mythology, I thought he did a great job of expanding on the 'characters' a bit.

>151 Bookmarque: Based on the few entries that I've read, reading the Cole/Pike books in order seems unnecessary. There is the occasional reference to something that has happened, likely in an earlier book, but I haven't seen continuing relationships or other factors that would cause me to make an effort to read in order. It's kind of refreshing.

>152 Karlstar: It's off to a very good start.

I completed my reread of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. It's pretty wonderful. There were some details I'd forgotten, and it was good to get reacquainted. Now I can look for the sequels.

Today I finished two books that I had been working on:

The Last Detective: I thought I'd try another Elvis Cole. This one really cranked up the tension and had a bit more graphic violence than I prefer. Well told story, though. I'll continue to read some of these between other things.

The Outsiders: I didn't read this when it came out, when I was in high school. I found it quite interesting some of the time. It's quite an impressive work for a sixteen-year-old author. I found myself getting impatient with the "obvious" insights being developed by the characters; OTOH, they are valuable ideas. Someone had suggested this for our community book club as part of an effort to attract a few more guys; currently there are two of us among twelve-to-twenty women. It was a useful read, because I don't really like my reaction to having it suggested, which suggests that a transfusion of humility and tolerance might be in order.

>155 Jim53: I think The Outsiders was a required read for me in 7th or 8th grade. I loved it then, and on several subsequent reads. The author has written other books since, but none are as good as her first.

I went over to King of Prussia this week for a workshop on best practices for teaching bridge. KoP is near the far eastern end of our large county, and I live at the western end. This gave me the opportunity to stop into a library branch that I've never visited before, and I came away with a pretty good haul of both books and CDs (A disc of blues collaborations by the immortal Dion DiMucci, anyone? No, none of them begin "Here's my story, it's sad but true"). My first read of the bunch, mostly for bedtime, is the most recent Innkeeper chronicle, Sweep of the Heart. Andrews comes up with another excuse to bring representatives from several outlandish races together at Gertrude Hunt, with various forms of intrigue. Good fun.

Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology is a nice retelling of the subject matter, with more modern characterizations and continuity among some of he stories. This makes it easier to read the collection of lore as a single story. For me, the less sensational manner of telling took away just a bit of the wonder of the original stories. It was a much easier, perhaps even more pleasant way to re-experience the stories, but I wouldn't want it to be someone's only exposure to them.

Sweep of the Heart was the longest and most complicated story of the Innkeeper Chronicles (so far). The sovereign of much of the galaxy (?) is to choose a spouse, with candidates from a dozen species gathered at Gertrude Hunt to make their cases, in a competition that is transmitted as reality TV to the worlds of The Dominion. Naturally, some want to win the competition, some want a shot at an assassination, etc., etc. Lots of fun and creative descriptions of the races. Dina has much more magic available to her than she did earlier in the series, and she uses it liberally. And then there's the Costco woman...

>158 Jim53: At one of the few book club meetings I have ever attended, we talked (a little) about Gaiman's Norse Mythology, no one would admit to having read any other version previously.

>159 Jim53: hehehe Costco woman :)

>160 Karlstar: Yeah, to the extent that mythology was taught when I was in school, it was almost all Greek and Roman. I was interested enough that I read some other stuff on my own, including Beowulf (as I recall, I wanted to read Grendel and knew I had to read Beowulf first) and some of the Eddas. I don't know how many people, outside of English graduate programs, had the knowledge to teach the Norse material well. I fear there may be fewer by now.

>162 Jim53: I remember reading some version of Beowulf in 8th grade, although it was probably some watered down translation. I think it was supposed to expose us to ways of thinking about narratives. But like you, most of the mythology I got taught in school was the Greek and Roman. (Some stories I remember reading in books at home, most particularly the story of Balder's death.)

>159 Jim53: I've just added this to my kindle, can't wait to read it! I love this series so much!

>161 Narilka: >164 Sakerfalcon: They sure are a bundle of fun.

I had picked up The Black Flamingo as part of my Pride Month reading, but I didn't get to it till today. I read all the way through it in one two-hour-plus session. It's a YA novel in verse, told by a young man in London who is part Jamaican and part Cypriot. From a very early age he wanted a Barbie, and he realized he was gay and came out during high school. At university he joins a drag society and finds that being The Black Flamingo helps him to see and be who he truly is. It's an easy read but a deep story. This summary doesn't come close to doing it justice. A good solid four stars.

>165 Jim53: I read this a few years ago when I needed a novel in verse for a challenge. It really was good.

>166 Sakerfalcon: & >165 Jim53: That does sound very interesting.

I'm just getting started with The Adventure of Amina al-Sirafi. There appear to be numerous mysterious connections.

>168 Jim53: Oh, I do hope you get a kick out of this one. (One of my best reads so far this year.)

>168 Jim53: & >169 clamairy: OK OK I GIVE UP! After multiple hits in the pub on this one, and the $3.99 on Kindle deal, it is purchased.

>170 MrsLee:
Bwahahahaha...

The scheming and seed sewing finally produces fruit.

>170 MrsLee: I do think you will appreciate this one.

>170 MrsLee: For $3.99 who can pass that up? Its on my Kindle now.

>170 MrsLee: That sound you hear is Pub denizens cackling quietly in the corners over a final victory. (Although, personally, I'm a little insulted that it took this long! You have a strong natural innate resistance to sales pitches, don't you?)

>168 Jim53: I predict that you will find it to be a lot of fun.

>174 jillmwo:
You have a strong natural innate resistance to sales pitches, don't you?)

Am I correct in my recollection (leaving myself wide open for a big fall) that MrsLee has some Scottish ancestry? Those of us with Scottish blood are hard work for salespeople.

>174 jillmwo: & >175 pgmcc: Yes, and yes. One of my great-grandmother's heritage is Scottish. If too many people praise something, I get suspicious. I'm a real scrooge when it comes to advertising as I very much dislike being manipulated and I've read alot about the methods of advertisers.

That being said, I do not consider the fair family of the pub in that category. I have only been avoiding adding new books in an effort to read the sad ones waiting on my shelves. I seriously think I may need to explore vampirism if I'm going to have time to finish reading all my books.

>176 MrsLee:
Through my work I was sent to IBM for a week long sales training programme. It was fascinating and left me with the sense that pure sales techniques are immoral. The sales person's objective was to get the prospect to buy/sign a contract for the item the sales person is selling. They are to do this by persuading the prospect to sign by making them think they needed the item on sale, whether they needed it or not.

On our last days on vacation we were subjected to some hard selling by a pure sales person. He was basically bullying us to buy a new mobile home. My sales training armed us against his tactics. He caused my wife a lot of upset, but he did not get what he was after.

I seriously think I may need to explore vampirism if I'm going to have time to finish reading all my books.

A topic to get your teeth into.

For several days I didn't make much progress. Every time I started to read I was dragooned into playing Uno. Back home again now and hoping to zip through some pages.

Here I am, several books later, finally returning to log some notes. When last we saw me, I was returning home from visiting the grandkids (and those nice people they live with), and hoping to get some less interrupted time for my budding friendship with Miss Amina. I found the first third or so of the book kinda draggy, but then things took off nicely. It was a pretty fun adventure, and certainly left open the possibility of more. Not a favorite, but enjoyable.

Next I read Stardust, largely while sitting in doctors' waiting rooms. Each one that I see finds a problem that he can blame on some prior treatment done elsewhere. Gosh, this is fun. Some of the sections and characters held my interest better than others, which is not exactly a surprise. I think I might have brought more to it, and thereby have gotten more out of it, ten or twenty years ago. In addition to enjoying it for myself, I was previewing it for my granddaughter, and decided it should wait a bit. Besides, I recently gave her a copy of The Last Dragonslayer, so I hope that series will keep her going for a little while.

Finally, today I finished The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, which is the sequel to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. There are some very nice moments, and some interesting revelations. For some reason, I was hoping for more, but I'm not sure exactly what. There is a third book, which focuses on Harold's wife Maureen, which I'll probably get to at some point.

>179 Jim53: Hopefully the new doctors actually find working treatments for you.

>179 Jim53: They are playing the blame game? I'm so sorry. I'm also sorry you didn't love Stardust, though it sounds like you got some enjoyment from it.

>180 Karlstar: >181 clamairy: Thanks. I am actually pretty hopeful regarding the latest theory about my back. I've said that before, but the evidence looks compelling this time. It will take a couple of months to find out.

>181 clamairy: I have been thinking back about Stardust, and I can't really remember what I didn't like, other than the discussion of whores. I believe I'll try it again some time.

I've just finished a couple more books. I enjoyed most of Sea of Tranquility. The last few chapters reminded me a lot of The Stars My Destination. Anyone else see that connection? It reminded me that TSMD was a big favorite long ago and I might enjoy another go at it.

I zipped through The Lost Fleet: Valiant pretty quickly, mostly at bedtime. Not great, not bad. Some amusing scenes, including those with Rione and Desjani. A few more hints and speculations about the Big Reveal that is presumably coming, although it seems to be approaching very. slowly.

At the moment I'm in the middle of Herbie Hancock's memoir, Possibilities. I'm pretty familiar with the music from several stages of his career, so I'm following it quite well and enjoying it a lot. Maybe this is the sort of thing I needed to escape my slump.

>182 Jim53: thanks for NOT spoiling Valiant. I'm starting Courageous.

>182 Jim53: >183 fuzzi: I just read the last book in the Jack Geary series (so far, there's definitely more to come) and I've enjoyed them all.

>183 fuzzi: You're very welcome!

>184 Karlstar: I'm still trying to figure out the appeal of these books. I'm not a fan of military fiction, and there is only a little bit more to these. But when I'm in the right mood I enjoy them.

>185 Jim53: For me they are just fun reads. He and his crew are good people, trying to end an endless war, trying to fix a corrupt government and not turn into one. Not a lot of nuance, not a lot of grey areas, sometimes I just need something that straightforward.

>186 Karlstar: a COMFORT read. No heavy going, just fun.

>187 fuzzi: Exactly.

>185 Jim53: How's it going over there?

>189 Karlstar: Thanks for checking. It's been a bit up and down. i won't go into all of it, other than to say I'm having a relapse in my recovery from covid. Not much fun.

I have managed to do a fair bit of reading, though. In August I decided to give Jemisin another try. I read The Fifth Season back while I was still working, and ended up reading it in lots of choppy little bits. I grabbed it again and was able to spend more extended sessions with it. Maybe because of that, maybe because I had (sort of) read it once before, for some reason it really clicked and I loved it. I went right on to the second one, The Obelisk Gate, and ate it right up too. I loved how she didn't feel the need to explain all the details of everything that the characters were experiencing, but gave us enough to follow along and get the idea. I liked a lot of the secondary characters, especially Ykka.

I had to wait to get a copy of volume 3, The Stone Sky, so I zipped through Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow!, which was one of the better recent entries in Donna Andrews's Meg Langslowe mystery series. Overall I found The Stone Sky slightly less marvelous than the first two books. Something about it--I think it was mostly the origin story of one group of characters--was interesting but dragged a bit. Overall, I enjoyed the series in a way that I haven't been enjoying a lot of SF lately, so it was a very welcome experience. I want to tackle some more of her work, but I'm not sure where to go next. Input would be much appreciated.

I can't remember why I asked for an ER copy of The Prophets of Gentilly Terrace. I generally enjoy stories set in New Orleans, and something about it must have sounded promising. I had a lot of trouble staying interested in the book--he went on and on about the histories of some housing developments around the city, which could have been interesting in much smaller doses. He didn't seem to trust the reader to understand what he was doing with scenes of character interaction: he would show us the scene, with substantial commentary as he went, and then sum up everything that he had already shown and told us. I kept going for eighty-some pages and then gave up.

Recently I switched my "home" library among the branches of the Chester County system. The main significance of this is that the home library is the default destination to which books and other materials are sent when I request them from one of the more distant branches. I find I enjoy interacting with the staff at my new home library (in beautiful downtown Atglen) much more than with the staff at my prior, busier library.

One immediate benefit was that the librarian recommended a new series that I love. Becky Chambers, of Wayfarers fame, has a new series of novellas called the Monk & Robot books. The main character is Sibling Dex, a tea monk, who travels around and sets up a roadside stand serving tea in various places, bringing news and also essentially providing therapy to many customers. The second character is a robot. The race of robots, which had been employed in factories and other such work, decided at some point to absent themselves from the world of humans; now they have sent a representative back to ask how the humans are getting along and what they need. He meets Dex, the tea monk, and travels with them to seek answers to his questions.

Mosscap, the robot, is wonderfully astonished by many things that he sees, things that Dex tends to take for granted. In the first two volumes of the series, they learn quite a bit from each other. I found both books to be great fun, and I'm eagerly awaiting more.

The two books remind me a bit of Nghi Vo's Singing Hills series, in the overall tone, the non-gendered main character, the simple setting, and of course in the length of each story. Speaking of which, I recently read their Mammoths at the Gate, which takes place at the Singing Hills abbey, the home from which Cleric Shih and their neixin companion wander. It isn't as wonderfully new as the first couple of books in the series, but there are some new elements that provide some freshness and interest.

>190 Jim53: Sorry about the Covid relapse. But I am glad you've been getting to read, and some of my favorites, too!

>190 Jim53: My personal favorite Jemisin book is The Killing Moon, but her Hundred Thousand Kingdoms trilogy is also great.

>194 reconditereader: Thanks, RR. It looks as if I actually read The Killing Moon several years ago, but I don't remember it at all. I've added The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms to my library list.

I enjoyed the Monkeewrench series of mysteries written by the mother-daughter team of Traci and PJ Lambreth under the name P. J. Tracy. Traci, the mom, died before the series was complete. PJ has started a new series featuring LA detective Margaret Nolan, and I decided to try the first one, Deep Into the Dark. It provides interesting portrayals of several characters, including one suffering from PTSD. The writing is not quite as good as that of the Monkeewrench series; perhaps the mom was the better writer. I spotted the perpetrator fairly easily, but the story was pretty good. I'll try one more of the new series.

I enjoyed the first two of Jess Montgomery's Kinship series, which focus on a female sheriff in a small town in SE Ohio in the 1920s. In each, Montgomery alternates the POV in the chapters between Lily, the sheriff, and a second female character. In the third installment, The Stills, I found the second voice less interesting than those in the first two novels. The story is still well plotted and told, but it didn't have quite the level of engagement that I found with The Widows and The Hollows. I have the fourth, The Echoes, out from the library and will look into it soon.

I'm still working my way through the books set in John Scalzi's Old Man's War universe. I just finished The Human Division, a collection of interconnected stories set in that world. I wasn't at all sure what to expect, but I found the stories fun. Most of the characters don't change a lot throughout the book, but a couple add a little depth and humanity, which was welcome. I've requested The End of All Things, which I think is the last of these that I haven't read. I'm also in line for his Starter Villain, which has an interesting-looking cover.

My book club read The Tobacco Wives, a story of the near-royal owners of tobacco companies in NC after WWII. The story is told from the point of view of a poor young lady who sews fancy dresses for the wives of the owners. We see the beginnings of talk about cigarettes being unhealthy, and the denial and concealment of this inconvenient news. One wife in particular exemplifies the tradeoffs that are made for the lives they love, both in terms of tobacco and in terms of the roles that women accept.

The book could have been wonderful, but everything remained very much on the surface. I found it pretty disappointing.

I picked up Blowout from the giveaway shelf at the library. It's always good to have a couple of small paperbacks available to take on errands. The story is one of Catherine Coulter's FBI thriller series featuring agents Savich and Sherlock. I found the story entertaining and the interplay of the characters fun. Nothing deep, just a page-turner that's just right for some quality time in the auto service waiting room. I enjoyed it enough that I checked out The Maze, the first volume featuring these two agents, and it was kind of fun to see the beginning of their relationship. I'll probably read one or two more of these between other things.

Saltwater Demands a Psalm is an intriguing collection of poems by Kweku Abimbola, who is from Michigan but writes about experiences and traditions of Ghana. I'm utterly unqualified to comment on poetry, but I enjoyed the different view of the world portrayed in this collection. He seems to want to use naming to bring about rebirth, both in a traditional mystical sense, but also extending it to those killed by police and others.

Hallie Ephron's Come and Find Me features an agoraphobic computer hacker, who has returned from the dark side and works to provide protection for customers' networks. She operates almost exclusively in the online world. Then one day her sister goes missing, and she must venture out into the real world to search for her.

Diana, the hacker, is a well drawn character. Unfortunately, I wouldn't say than any of the other characters are very well drawn. It takes a while for the scene to be set, and for us to be familiarized with the online world where Diana spends her time. The tension ratchets up when she emerges. Overall a pretty good, but not fabulous, story. If you like stories featuring high tech and the things that can happen in the online world, it's worth a read.

I read The Color of Compromise with a church group, in hopes of meeting some like-minded folks in our community. The experience itself was a bit disappointing, in that the group was led by and made up of all white folks. The book itself was somewhat interesting; most of the information was not new to me, but the emphasis on the complicity of mainline churches with racial discrimination was a new way of looking at things. I don't know what I'll do differently as a result of reading it, but it was interesting to discuss.

>190 Jim53: Reading according to how much time is available to you can make all the difference in how much one enjoys a book. Jemison (in my view) benefits from allowing that longer time frame.

>198 Jim53: I read on Scalzi's blog that he's planning to release another Old Man's War book in 2025.

It's great to see you back again! I hope you don't have any more relapses, but glad you've been reading some good books. I loved the Broken Earth trilogy and agree that it helps to have time to read it in long sessions. I have the first Monk and Robot book on my kindle and need to get to it soon.

>206 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, Claire! I'm eager to be out and about because I've built up a pile of new books to grab from the library, including some that I saw in your thread. And I've finished all but one of the large pile that I currently have out. I guess it's not much of a surprise that this is one of the things I most urgently want to be able to do ;-)

>205 Narilka: It will be interesting to see what else he wants to do there. I wonder if we'll ever see more of Jane/John/Zoe or if it will be more of the diplomats. I guess I'll be patient for now. Thanks for reminding me of the blog--that's something I can spend some time on if I continue having to isolate.

An acquaintance mentioned a liking for Samantha Irby's humorous essays, so I decided to try Wow, No Thank You, a recent collection. I'm afraid it's not my cup of cocoa with mini-marshmallows, at all. There are way too many references to current popular brands, trends, etc., for me to relate to, and even if I "got" all those references, the three essays that I tried seemed kinda pointless. It sounds as if she has an audience somewhere, but I'm not included.

Sorry to hear about the covid relapse, I hope all of those symptoms are gone soon. Nice to see you've been able to get a lot of reading in.

>209 Jim53: I had mixed feelings about the Samantha Irby collection I read (We Are Never Meeting In Real Life) -- parts were funny, but on the whole it didn't work for me.

I found a copy of The Long Goodbye that I had forgotten that I owned. From the labels on it I think it had been passed around a bit, and I probably picked it up from the library's freebie pile. Nothing else was calling my name with any urgency, so I decided to give it a try. Hardboiled is not really my thing, but lots of folks seem to consider it a classic. It's an interesting story, in that you keep thinking it's done, but there are too many pages left, and then another connection opens up, or a new twist appears. Nobody appears in a particularly good light; I guess a certain amount of cynicism about human nature is de rigueur for a noir novel. I suspect if you like this sort of thing, this is a well done example of it. I appreciated it more than I enjoyed it, so it's one more book for the giveaway pile.

I hope you like it. I’d attempted this book a couple of times and failed to engage even though I love Chandler and the Marlowe series to pieces. Then it clicked and wow, I think it might be his most personal novel in the sense of how much he evokes through Marlowe. As usual the writing is snappy, the plot is convoluted and Marlowe gets ensnared by his own emotions and sense of morality.

Here are some noteworthy gems -

“I caught the rest of it in one of those snob columns in the society section of the paper. I don’t read them often, only when I run out of things to dislike.” p 11

“Very methodical guy, Marlowe. Nothing must interfere with his coffee technique. Not even a gun in the hand of a desperate stranger.” p 19

“I puffed the cigarette. It was one of those things with filters in them. It tasted like high fog strained through cotton wool.” p 39

“And the next time I saw a polite character drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, I would depart rapidly in several directions. There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.” p 64

And of course, the second paragraph -
“There was a girl beside him. Her hair was a lovely shade of dark red and she had a distant smile on her lips and over her shoulders she had a blue mink that almost made the Rolls-Royce look like just another automobile. It didn’t quite. Nothing can.” p 1

>212 Jim53: Unlike Agatha Christie, Chandler was a big proponent of the idea that no one was completely innocent. I keep looking for writers who can properly balance the two competing ideas in delivering their stories.

>213 Bookmarque: He liked his aphorisms, didn't he?

>214 jillmwo: Yes! I thought of Chandler as someone who takes the idea of original sin Extremely Seriously, to the point that people aren't just all imperfect, but in fact all guilty. I find Julia Spencer-Fleming seems to have a more balanced view of this sort of thing. She's just the first one to pop into my head; I'm sure there are many others.

I just finished Robert Crais's L. A. Requiem. It goes into a lot of detail about the background of Elvis Cole's friend and partner, Joe Pike. Elvis has to make a lot of choices throughout the story, and he makes the ones you would expect, and he pays a heavy price. He has a few smart-ass comments about things, as well as a few more serious observations. It's interesting to compare his statements about the world to the ones Marlowe makes. I would say Elvis retains more hope about things being changeable and about the possibility of happiness. Has anyone else read both? Or other detectives you would add to the conversation (maybe Harry Bosch?)?

Now I've managed to pick up a good haul at the library and have to decide which to read first. I've got The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Kafka on the Shore, Emotionally Weird, The Lincoln Highway, The Janus Stone, and Starter Villain. Scalzi is just about always fun, so I think he's up next.

>216 Jim53:
That is a great haul.

>216 Jim53: Nice! I have both Emotionally Weird and Starter Villain on my wishlist, so I'll be looking forward to your thoughts. (grammar error corrected, I couldn't take it any more.)

>216 Jim53: Great haul. I absolutely loved Starter Villain and hope you enjoy it too.

"So, you want in, Desmondo?"

Oh yes. I want in.

>216 Jim53: That's an interesting connection. I've read both books more than once, but maybe not so close together as you. I did get a very strong sense of Chandler when I first read The Monkey's Raincoat which is the first Elvis Cole book - I think Crais was channeling Chandler pretty hard and that eased off with subsequent novels. On the whole, I think you're right, Marlowe has a much bleaker outlook than does Elvis. I'll take a look at other detectives I think might fit this vein of book. One that comes to mind, but who is far less fun than either Philip or Elvis, is Commander Adam Dalgliesh, a creation of P.D. James. He's introspective and a poet, but also pretty judgmental and that annoyed me in some books.

So thinking about Long Goodbye and LA Requiem a bit more and I think the connection is also in how obliquely we are introduced to the problem and the case itself. Both center on friends of the detective and shenanigans involving them, not a dame coming into the office. Both put the detective into bad situations where there is no good action or way out. Both open up our detective and force him to come to certain realizations about himself and his friend.

Ok, I had a look through my catalog for detectives that have and share interior lives and observations. You might like Carlotta Carlyle as a character. The series starts with A Trouble of Fools and continues through about 10 books or so. I have read almost all of them and have one queued up in my Audible app to get to next.

I've only read two Harry Bosch books and so can't comment on those (I loved the TV series though), but if you can handle a lot more grit than Cole and Pike, and similar levels of violence, the Kenzie/Gennaro series from Dennis Lehane might work. The first book is A Drink Before the War and continues for 1/2 a dozen books or so.

>222 Bookmarque: I loves me some Pat and Angie. It's been a while, but as I recall, I liked the first book the best. That was the one with the father and son IIRC. I agree Patrick is a good addition to our list of thoughtful first-person narrators of mysteries. A couple of other possibilities: Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski, and Elouise (Lou) Norton, protagonist of a set of mysteries by Rachel Howzell Hall that begins with Land of Shadows. Lou, a black woman, is obviously gonna be quite different from Marlowe, Cole, Kenzie, and even Vic.

I sped through Starter Villain. It's definitely a good bit of fun. I wouldn't want to be on Mathilda's bad side. The obscene porpoises were hilarious. I read the proposal about the nanogate and the phone app to my wife, and we had fun coming up with different ways and purposes for hacking it. Thanks to all y'all who mentioned how entertaining this one is. I went down in a hail of bullets and enjoyed it.

I started Kafka on the Shore last night and found it too hefty, in more ways than one, for bedtime reading. I'll give it another shot during the day tomorrow when I have a block of time before bridge. In the mean time I'm reading A Second Chance, the third of Jodi Taylor's Chronicles of St. Mary's. I love Max as a narrator.

>223 Jim53: I was bummed at the way the Lehane series ended...with a whimper and a diaper bag. But anyway...I haven't read the others you mention, but it sounds like I should take a look.

Of you like historical mystery stuff, I nominate Marcus Didius Falco in the long-running series by Lindsay Davis. Start with The Silver Pigs

>226 Bookmarque: I read the first Falco a while back, at the suggestion of someone else here, but I found it quite easy to put down and not go back to. I finished it (I think) but wasn't inspired to continue. I tend to prefer contemporaries for the most part.

A Second Chance just grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Along with the expected humor, there were some heartbreaking scenes, both in the views of history and in the interactions among the St. Mary's staff. I'm not sure I like the ending; I'll have to see what she does next. For today, I don't think Kafka on the Shore will do particularly well while waiting in doctors' offices, so I'll find something lighter to bring.

Emotionally Weird turned out to be just fine for the orthopedist's office and also for bedtime. Eighty pages in, I'm finding it quite entertaining and hoping some sort of point will emerge before too long.

I just noticed that there is a new entry in SJ Rozan's mystery series featuring Lydia Chang and Bill Smith, called The Mayors of New York. This is one of my favorite series, and it's been a while, so I'm eager to see it. Somehow there are a couple of people ahead of me on the hold list at the library. I've got to find a way to improve my book radar/intelligence gathering.

>230 Jim53: Dang, must get my library to order it - they don't have it yet and I do love Lydia and Bill!

>231 tardis: I'm hoping for a good dose of Lydia's mom in this one. She's a riot.

I've decided Emotionally Weird isn't going to have a particularly coherent story arc. It seems to be more of a look at (I refuse to say "a meditation on" or even "an examination of") all of the failures that occur with a wide variety of attempts at different sorts of communication. I am certainly enjoying the musical references (Forever Changes, In the Court of the Crimson King) and the piling of one sort of absurdity atop another. I took a class in postmodern literature at NCSU in the early eighties, and the prof was clearly figuring the whole thing out as we went along (that was where I discovered my love of Calvino). I was thinking how much fun it would be to discuss this book with him and that group.

>233 Jim53: I think you've doomed that one for me. I was a bit on the fence, but it does not sound like something I'd enjoy.

>233 Jim53:
It comes together very nicely.

>235 pgmcc: I appreciate the reassurance. I've been enjoying it whether it does or not. And now they're listening to Liege and Lief! I remember playing that till my roommates begged for mercy.

I'm enjoying coming upon unexpected sentences, such as "Andrea had refined her rather abstract terpsichoreal style at the Isle of Wight Festival so that she now danced like a four-legged octopus in extreme pain."

>237 Jim53: Bwahaha...

Emotionally Weird turned out to be quite a fun collection of self-reference and absurdity. As Peter promised, many of the loose ends were nicely tied up. I had guessed some of it (Nora's parents, the fact that Chick was in fact following young Effie, although not why), but nowhere near all. Some of the ways things turned out, which are too spoilerific to get into, were very satisfying. One brief example: that Effie's hilariously bad mystery novel turns into a best-selling series. At one point I had begun to suspect that characters' stories were being determined by the attempts of other characters at creative writing; I was relieved to be wrong about that. Highly recommended for those with an appetite for metafictive fun.

>239 Jim53:
I am glad you found it worth the effort after all. Like yourself I was in two minds about it about a third to half-way through. I am really glad I continued.

>239 Jim53: >240 pgmcc: So maybe I'm still on the fence? I'll look for it from the library, if I ever find time to get there.

Our library system here has quite a few of Atkinson's, including Emotionally Weird. I'll put it on the list, but maybe not just yet.

>240 pgmcc: Moi aussi.

I've made a couple more attempts at Kafka on the Shore but right now I'm finding it too confusing to enjoy. Maybe when I'm more recovered. I find myself continuing to run out of gas by mid-day or so, which is a bit worrisome.

My younger son mentioned having enjoyed Don't Sleep There Are Snakes, so I snagged a copy from the library and have just started it. The author is visiting a little-known tribe in the Amazonian jungle to learn their language and preach to them. It's off to an interesting start.

At bedtime I've been enjoying The Proof of the Pudding, the latest in Rhys Bowen's mystery series featuring Lady Georgie, forty-somethingth in line to the British crown.

>243 Jim53:
I really like Murakami's books but after every one I feel I need a good break before reading another one. They can be exhausting so do not feel bad about how you feel about Kafka on the Shore. Murakami can be quite heavy. He deals with a lot of emotions and feelings and often does it using apparently supernatural elements.

>244 pgmcc: Thank you, Peter, that's kind of you. I remember I felt like taking my brain to the car wash after I finished the wind-up bird.

I don't know when I'll be back on, so in case this is the last time I'm here before you celebrate a holiday, I wish all of you a very merry everything and a wonderful start to 2024.

>246 Jim53: I hope you enjoy whatever it is you will be doing that will keep you away from LibraryThing! A very merry everything to you and yours and a Happy New Year!

>246 Jim53:
I hope you have a great time over the holiday and that 2024 is a super year for you.

>245 Jim53:
I felt like taking my brain to the car wash after I finished the wind-up bird
Would that be an auto-brain-wash?

>246 Jim53: Wishing you and your loved ones the happiest of holidays! Look forward to "seeing" you in 2024

>246 Jim53: The warmest wishes of the holiday to you and yours!! We'll connect again in 2024.

>246 Jim53: Happy and merry holidays to you too!

Appropriate seasonal greetings to you, Jim!

Thanks, y'all. I survived a few intense days of family time (my dad's 100th birthday followed by Christmas here with the kids and grandkids). Exhausting but rewarding. I ended up DNFing a couple of books: Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes and The End of All Things. On the other hand, my library came through with The Mayors of New York and I stayed up late a couple of nights to read that, which did not help my wakefulness during the days, but the book was a lot of fun. I'd say it's tied with Ellen Crosby's Blow Up for my favorite mystery of the year.

I've just started The Lincoln Highway (I know, how could I not have read it yet?) and I'm enjoying it, but I don't expect to be able to finish it in the next few days, so it will probably be my first book of next year.

>255 Jim53: Sarcasm? Am I the only one who's never heard of that book?

>256 Karlstar: I am just hearing about it, and I really enjoyed the author's two other big books.

>255 Jim53: >256 Karlstar:. >257 MrsLee:. It was only published back in 2021. Thus, not even two years on the publisher's backlist yet. Not getting around to it yet? That's hardly noticeable as a time lag.

It just seemed that everybody in our neighborhood to whom I mentioned that I was reading The Lincoln Highway expressed surprise that I hadn't read it already. I'm nearing the middle and enjoying it quite a bit. I loved A Gentleman in Moscow; now I'll have to track down the other one mentioned by >257 MrsLee:.

>259 Jim53: Rules of Civility, I was too lazy to type it out earlier. Takes place in I believe NYC in the 1920s. Very different tone and message than the Moscow book, but I liked it for what it was. It was one of the books I bought to commemorate my trip to New York.

Best of the year for 2023:

overall best book: This Is How it Always Is
best mysteries: Blow Up and The Mayors of New York
Best SF: The Broken Earth series by N. K. Jemisin
Best Fantasy: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
Best Poetry: Saltwater Demands a Psalm
Best non-genre novels: Emotionally Weird and Magic Time
Best nonfiction: Possibilities

Other books I particularly enjoyed:
The Black Flamingo
Becky Chambers's Monk and Robot books
Ilona Andrews's Innkeeper series
A Second Chance

>259 Jim53: You talk to your neighbors? We moved in 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic and so far really don't talk to the neighbors much. The fact that you have neighbors that read too is amazing to me.

My brother and sister are readers also, but we don't get a chance to talk books much.

Happy New Year!

>262 Karlstar: Yeah, we live in a 55+ community so almost everyone is retired. We've got a pretty good bunch of readers. I'm now having to relearn a bunch of names after meeting people shortly before Covid and then not seeing them for so long. I'm sorry your timing worked out so badly. Maybe this will be the year when lots of people reemerge.

>263 Karlstar: to you as well!

Happy new year, Jim.

>261 Jim53: I need to check out some of those titles! Happy new year, Jim!

I would give my eye teeth for chatty neighbors who read books. Not too chatty, mind you. Just the right amount of chat.

>216 Jim53: Oh, I so loved Starter Villain.