What Are We Currently Reading?

[buffynut]

On 7/24/2016 at 0:04 AM, Princess Sparkle said:

If you liked Wild, I can't recommend "Tiny Beautiful Things" enough. It's by the same author, and it's a collection of her best Dear Sugar advice columns when she wrote them at The Rumpus.  I read it last year, and it was the first book in quite some time that actually moved me to highlight passages because they were meaningful to me. 

Thanks for the suggestion. I've put the e-book on hold at my library.

On 7/27/2016 at 2:58 PM, topanga said:

I've just finished Before The Fall by Noah Hawley. Very entertaining. Well-written plot with interesting characters. But nothing too intellectually heavy. His writing style reminds me of John Grisham's (without the law), and I know some people thumb their noses at Grisham, but the man knows how to tell a story. 

The novel has a pretty big mystery at its core, but it's also a slice of nice novel about American society. Hard to put down. 

I like John Grisham's writing style, so I may like Noah Hawley as well. So I've put the e-book of Before the Fall on hold.

Meanwhile, I'm still reading the Outlander series. Less than 100 pages to go in the 6th one. 

[hendersonrocks]

I'm just over halfway through Invincible Summer by Alice Adams, and I like it. It manages to feel both light and substantive at the same time - a really good summer read.

[NutMeg]

I've started Human Traces by Sebastian Faulkes. I'm only a few dozens of pages in, and I cannot say it's gripped me yet - I was just starting getting interested in the Jacques' family story in Brittany when the book switched to Thomas Midwinter in England, and so far I have a hard time getting into it, so I moved on to other stuff but will get back to it. Anyone who can offer insights/encouragements to get back into it? 

[alias1]

I'm sort of reading The Passage (Justin Cronin).  I'm about 200 pages in and it's very addictive in that I want to find out what happens next.  At the same time, it isn't really my type of book.  It's very long (700 some pages) and it's the first of a trilogy.  Has anyone here read the books and liked them enough to recommend going forward?

 

In the meantime, Vinegar Girl (Anne Tyler) just became available so I plan to read that first.

[Princess Sparkle]

54 minutes ago, SierraMist said:

I'm sort of reading The Passage (Justin Cronin).  I'm about 200 pages in and it's very addictive in that I want to find out what happens next.  At the same time, it isn't really my type of book.  It's very long (700 some pages) and it's the first of a trilogy.  Has anyone here read the books and liked them enough to recommend going forward?

I have honestly started and stopped that book at least three times.  It actually is my type of book - I love vampires, and I thought this twist on it was interesting.  But I found the chunk of the book about the outbreak to be a hell of a lot more interesting than the chunk about the aftermath.  That part moves excruciatingly slowly to me, and that's always where I end up abandoning the book.

[MeloraH]

2 hours ago, SierraMist said:

In the meantime, Vinegar Girl (Anne Tyler) just became available so I plan to read that first.

I'm probably going to add that to my to read list but I think I should probably read Taming of the Shrew first (although I have seen 10 Things I Hate About You (the movie and the tv show) so I might be ok) but I read The Tempest earlier this year in anticipation of Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed. I expected to like it more than I did but I think I may have been expecting too much/it's probably better with visuals.

I just started Cousin Bette by Balzac and even though I'm not too far into it I'm liking the pre-Zola Zola-ness of it I've only read a handful of Balzac's short stories before this...

[GaT]

4 hours ago, SierraMist said:

I'm sort of reading The Passage (Justin Cronin).  I'm about 200 pages in and it's very addictive in that I want to find out what happens next.  At the same time, it isn't really my type of book.  It's very long (700 some pages) and it's the first of a trilogy.  Has anyone here read the books and liked them enough to recommend going forward?

I read it a long time ago & the only thing I remember about it is I didn't like it & never read anything else by this author.

[DearEvette]

Doing a comfort re-read of Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series.  Miles is one of my favorite fictional characters hands down.

[Haleth]

18 hours ago, SierraMist said:

I'm sort of reading The Passage (Justin Cronin).  I'm about 200 pages in and it's very addictive in that I want to find out what happens next.  At the same time, it isn't really my type of book.  It's very long (700 some pages) and it's the first of a trilogy.  Has anyone here read the books and liked them enough to recommend going forward?

I'm reading the third one right now and so far of the three I liked The Passage best.  I found the second half of the book about the aftermath to be more interesting, sort of Walking Dead-ish.  There was one night I was up til 3 or 4am reading it, not wanting to put it down.  The second book was ok, but not as compelling as the first.  The third book has a large section that goes back to how it all began and revisits the early events.  Now I'm back to the present day storyline and hope it offers something different than the other books.  I do recommend them as long as you like a WD kind of scenario, post apocalyptic society rebuilding.

[alias1]

Thanks Haleth!.  That puts the books in perspective for me.  I'm not really into the WD kind of thing.  It's a library book so I'll keep it on my kindle until they make me return it.  I may finish it or not, but I think you've convinced me that I'll probably forget the sequels.     

[Haleth]

Just wanted to add I finished the third last night and really, really liked it.  Cronin wrote a couple hundred pages of very intense action, followed by closure for all the characters.  The ending was bittersweet and satisfying.

[AuntiePam]

Finally finished The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer.  I had the Kindle version and wouldn't recommend it -- the formatting was wonky in spots, and there were no photos or maps.  But as a history of Hitler's rise and fall, it can't be beat.  Shirer was there for most of that time period, and he had access to documents uncovered after the war. 

Also finished Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and World War II by Mark Harris.  Harris follows five directors who enlisted and worked with the government to show the war to the US -- John Huston, Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Ford, and George Stevens.  It's fascinating, for anyone interested in the war and for movie fans.

Currently reading Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman.  I love Lippman.  This one has some clunky expository dialogue but it also has Lippman's trademark observations about people, how we live.  The story takes place in two time periods -- the 70's when the main character is growing up and the current time, when she's a district attorney investigating a murder.  Of course there's a family mystery -- seems like most novels have a family mystery lately.

[tenativelyyours]

Sailed through The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin.  This series is her best by far.  And some of the best speculative fiction out there for me.

Tried to read Amy Schumer's The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo but found it rather dull.  Will likely read a chapter between other reads.  It isn't bad, it is just uninteresting.  I'm not sure why so many comics, especially female, think everything that involves their dating and sex life is automatically hilarious?  Sarah Colonna, Chelsea Handler among others I have found amusing for an essay here and there but a whole book is just mind numbingly self-absorbed.  This looks to be the same for me.

So moving on to sample a few other new books that just hit my Kindle since I'm also feeling a bit of the summer reading doldrums.  Nothing really taking.  So I have The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore, The Gentleman by Forrest Leo, The Subsidiary by Matias Celedon and Mr. Eternity by Aaron Thier.  At least one those I'm hoping draws me in.  I think the Jemisin book was just too good and I have sometimes found lately, I come down from a reading high rather hard.

 

I also have to pull up Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad since I read it when I got it from Netgalley and thanks to Winfrey it is my local book group's reading for the beginning of the month which is approaching way too fast.  It wasn't that long ago so I just need to skim through it and make some annotations.  I liked it but if I have to get one more video of her burbling on about it, I'm going to do something drastic.  Like maybe next time I pass Rachel Ray going down the street on my way to work, I'll kick her in the ankle.  'Bout the closest thing to showing Oprah-related outrage I can think of right now!

[DearEvette]

18 hours ago, tenativelyyours said:

Sailed through The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin.  This series is her best by far.  And some of the best speculative fiction out there for me.

That is next on my list.  So stoked for this!!

[Deanie87]

On 8/18/2016 at 0:41 PM, AuntiePam said:

Currently reading Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman.  I love Lippman.  This one has some clunky expository dialogue but it also has Lippman's trademark observations about people, how we live.  The story takes place in two time periods -- the 70's when the main character is growing up and the current time, when she's a district attorney investigating a murder.  Of course there's a family mystery -- seems like most novels have a family mystery lately.

I am listening to the audiobook of this right now.  I'm almost done and I like it but don't love it.  I am a Maryland native, lived in Baltimore for years and currently live in the the county that this book is based in, and while I find the references and history interesting, I wonder if those without any connection to this area would enjoy it.  Its a weird experience so far.  While its fun to hear about local landmarks, she name drops so many things from this area, and includes so many nostalgic touchstones from the 70s and 80s, this book should completely be up my alley as I am also Lippman's age, but it just tends to annoy me for some reason.  Its like she is checking things off a list for a very specific place and time and even though I can relate, it kind of seems like bad writing to me.  I also find the similarities to To Kill a Mockingbird to be disconcerting and, while I think that they must be intentional, they don't seem to be any kind of homage or anything like that.  Its a shame because I find most of her stand-alone stuff to be wonderful.  I am hit or miss on the Tess Monaghan series.

I am also currently reading Before the Fall and I am really liking it so far.  Some of the characters seem to be thinly-veiled caricatures of real people, but that kind of makes it more fun. 

[AuntiePam]

Deanie87, I finished Wilde Lake last night.  It left a bad taste.  I started out admiring those people -- dad, Lu, AJ -- and ended up disgusted with them. 

The secrets and the mystery were too contrived -- maybe that's what writers in this genre think they need, to stand out, or to not be derivative. 

I didn't see any similarities to TKAM except for Lu's POV as an eight-year-old looking back on her childhood, and a sainted father.  Maybe that's just me -- I can be dense about things like that. 

Next up is a history of the Russian Revolution, Black Night White Snow.

[Finagler]

I'm about a third of the way through Hamilton by Ron Chernow.  Got the book because my D and I saw the play on Broadway.  The show was great, the book is pretty good but very detailed.  Just reading about the things Alexander Hamilton did in his short life is a little sad, when you think about what he could have possibly accomplished if he lived for another 20 years.   The first 150 pages are about his early life and the American revolution, now I'm into the part of what happens after the war is over, getting the country established and creating the treasury, coast guard, etc.  

[GaT]

I'm reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child the authors are listed as J. K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, & John Tiffany, but I don't think that J.K. Rowling really wrote any of the play. Anyway, I'm actually enjoying it, & the reading is going pretty quickly, but I can understand why people who thought they were getting another Harry Potter book may not like it. I've never read a play before, but it's definitely different, plus, the focus isn't really on Harry, Ron, & Hermoine this time. Maybe someday if I'm lucky I'll get to see the play.

[Deanie87]

On 8/21/2016 at 1:32 PM, AuntiePam said:

Deanie87, I finished Wilde Lake last night.  It left a bad taste.  I started out admiring those people -- dad, Lu, AJ -- and ended up disgusted with them. 

The secrets and the mystery were too contrived -- maybe that's what writers in this genre think they need, to stand out, or to not be derivative. 

I didn't see any similarities to TKAM except for Lu's POV as an eight-year-old looking back on her childhood, and a sainted father.  Maybe that's just me -- I can be dense about things like that. 

Next up is a history of the Russian Revolution, Black Night White Snow.

I am just about done and the ending is really annoying.  As far as TKAM, it was the widowed father, older brother, black maid, etc.  A lot of it reminded of it, but I maybe its just me and it wasn't intentional.  Another big similarity was 

Spoiler

the part about Davey getting accused of raping and beating a "white trash" girl, only to find out that her father was the one who did the beating reminded me a lot of Tom and the Ewells, though we did find out later that the rape did happen.  All of that plus the conversation between Lu's father and the kids about that case seemed reminscent of TKAM.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Deanie87

[AuntiePam]

Deanie87, now that you mention it, yeah, the stuff in the spoiler box is similar to TKAM.  There'll be one other thing that you won't like about the ending --

Spoiler

The totally unnecessary reveal that when Lu's husband Gabe died, he was with another woman.

And the twins -- they were such a small part of the story, I wonder why they were included at all. 

[Ruby Gillis]

12 hours ago, doram said:

I'm re-reading Agatha Christie's The Man in the Brown Suit.

I was surprised at how "sexy" this book was.  I mean, sexy for Agatha Christie.

[Qoass]

I'm about a third of the way through I'm Thinking of Ending Things and I can't make heads or tails of it.

[MeloraH]

9 hours ago, Ruby Gillis said:

I was surprised at how "sexy" this book was.  I mean, sexy for Agatha Christie.

Totally. I always feel like it should have a better title. I wish I could remember why I decided to pick it up as my third or fourth Christie a long, long time ago, maybe the blurb...but it definitely wasn't the title.

I'm currently about halfway into Peril at End House which is pretty standard so far. I'm actually trying to read all the books/stories that were made into Poirot eps and then watching them on Netflix. Luckily my library had the giant Hercule Poirot's Casebook which had ALL the short stories so that got me through a lot of episodes but now I'm up to the point where I only have novels left so it's a bit between watching episodes.

[MeloraH]

8 minutes ago, doram said:

Wow! I didn't know there were Agatha Christie movies on Netflix. :D

 

The Man in the Brown Suit was either the first or the second Christie book I read. I only know for certain that it and "Death Comes As the End" were the first 2 Christie books I read. It's interesting, really, because they are very atypical Christie books - as atypical as you can get, really. LOL. 

It's the ITV Poirot series with David Suchet, the ones based on the short stories are like 50 minutes and the ones based on novels are 90 mins. I'm just afraid they're going to get taken off one month.

Yeah, of the ones I've read I think Brown Suit probably is the most atypical. I read And Then There Were None first (I thought the recent adaptation was pretty good but may have just been blinded by Aiden Turner's hotness in a period tux/towel respectively), for summer reading one year... then in some order Nile, Orient Express, Big Four, Dumb Witness and Brown Suit then I didn't really read any for awhile until fairly recently...

[GaT]

1 hour ago, MeloraH said:

Yeah, of the ones I've read I think Brown Suit probably is the most atypical. I read And Then There Were None first (I thought the recent adaptation was pretty good but may have just been blinded by Aiden Turner's hotness in a period tux/towel respectively), for summer reading one year... then in some order Nile, Orient Express, Big Four, Dumb Witness and Brown Suit then I didn't really read any for awhile until fairly recently...

You should read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, it's considered groundbreaking. 

[Ruby Gillis]

8 hours ago, MeloraH said:

It's the ITV Poirot series with David Suchet, the ones based on the short stories are like 50 minutes and the ones based on novels are 90 mins. I'm just afraid they're going to get taken off one month.

Evil Under the Sun and Murder in Mesopotamia are my favorite books but I haven't watched the movies yet.  I guess I need to marathon this weekend!

[Archery]

A friend loaned me the Paul Theroux travelogue, The Kingdom By The Sea, written by an 11-year ex-pat American who decides to travel the coast of Britain in 1982.  He hooked me 2 pages in with this gem:  "As for the Irish, I had never personally known anyone in London who took an Irishman seriously unless the Irishman was armed."  By the time I got to his observation (in 1983) that Britain's future might well depend on the engineering marvel of the at-the-time abandoned England to France tunnel, I was all in.  The print's small, because both the book and I are old now, but I'm loving it. 

[Pepper Mostly]

Wow, so funny I wandered in here today--I read a lot of Paul Theroux's travel books back in the 80's--The Old Patagonian Express, The Great Railway Bazaar, Riding the Iron Rooster, and The Kingdom by the Sea among them. My mother's read pretty much all of his books, the travelogues and the fiction, but I don't read too much fiction and have found his not to my liking. BUT I was over my parents' last weekend and borrowed his Deep South, which was written just a couple of years ago, and I'm enjoying it very much. Its a little different from many of his travel books, since he is here in the US, and he visits and revisits several places over the course of a year. He's a Yankee, like me, (he grew up in Medford, MA) and his perspectives on the south are through the lenses of a northerner, a writer, an observer, a seasoned traveler, and a fellow American. Its thoughtful and measured. Theroux has always read as a bit of a sourpuss to me, but he seems mellower here. 

I just finished The Count of Monte Cristo, 1200 pages of unabridged goodness. Good, evil, unlimited riches, nobility, venality, vengeance, purity, betrayal, poisonings, affairs, long lost offspring, secret lesbians, disappearances, reappearances, redemption. The works! Of course some of the attitudes toward women-oy! But its a product of its time and understandable. A great yarn and lots of fun.

[proserpina65]

Just finished The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale.  Although she does go on a bit too much about how he inspired the Great Victorian Detective character popular at the time in fiction, it's a really good read and I found her conclusions very interesting.  If you're into Victorian true crime, it's worth a read.

I've moved on to The Jungle Books, but have gotten a little bogged down in reading the background of Kipling's life.  I did read the Rikki-Tikki-Tavi chapter, though, because I've always loved the Chuck Jones cartoon.  The story did not disappoint; it was just as charming as the cartoon, which is pretty much word for word from Kipling.  I think I'm going to bag the biography bits and start the actual stories.

[GaT]

13 minutes ago, proserpina65 said:

Just finished The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale.  Although she does go on a bit too much about how he inspired the Great Victorian Detective character popular at the time in fiction, it's a really good read and I found her conclusions very interesting.  If you're into Victorian true crime, it's worth a read.

 

Even though I'm not into Victorian true crime, this book sounds interesting. I'm going to put it on my list of possibles.

[AuntiePam]

3 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

Just finished The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale.  Although she does go on a bit too much about how he inspired the Great Victorian Detective character popular at the time in fiction, it's a really good read and I found her conclusions very interesting.  If you're into Victorian true crime, it's worth a read.

 

I was slightly disappointed. The author did a fantastic job piecing together the wealth of information about the case -- newspaper reports, official records, letters, interview notes, etc. We know what everyone did in great detail. The author was careful to stick to the facts. She didn't fictionalize or make assumptions. That's good reporting. However, the result was that I was unable to connect with or feel sympathy for any of the people involved, even poor little Savile. All I had was facts, and facts can't put flesh on these people.

It's a good read, but it felt like something was missing. It's not the author's fault though. Unlike today's true crime writers, she didn't have the benefit of personal observation of the players. They just never came to life for me.

[scarynikki12]

On 8/11/2016 at 0:21 PM, SierraMist said:

I'm sort of reading The Passage (Justin Cronin).  I'm about 200 pages in and it's very addictive in that I want to find out what happens next.  At the same time, it isn't really my type of book.  It's very long (700 some pages) and it's the first of a trilogy.  Has anyone here read the books and liked them enough to recommend going forward?

I'm late to this but I absolutely love The Passage (book and trilogy).  I will agree that the first book is my favorite but don't take that as a reason to discount the other two.  I think that each volume has its points where it outshines the others in a way where they really feel like a complete story.

Since you're on the first one, let me just say that I had to reread it about ten times before I had a handle on the fear it invokes.  Cronin wove the outbreak and fallout so well that I just let myself get sucked in and, subsequently, terrified.  I also really enjoy the characters after the outbreak and I like that he slows the story down so that we can get to know them. 

He famously wrote the story after his daughter asked him to write a story about a little girl who saves the world.  I think that Amy is an amazing character and that he did his daughter proud.  So I say stick with it.

[Darian]

Wish I had a better memory for what I've read. Finished up Before the Fall, which I really enjoyed and Jane Steele, which was described to me as, "if Jane Eyre were a serial killer." That's not a spoiler. It was a fast, fun read, and, at times,, touching. I don't read a lot of YA, but I devoured Rin Chupeco's The Girl from the Well and The Suffering, a ghost story series with large doses of Japanese myth. Am halfway through Kindred by Octavia Butler, which I can't believe I never read before. I literally can't put it down (really, I carried it around with me when our contractor was here to give us an estimate).  

[alias1]

3 hours ago, Darian said:

Wish I had a better memory for what I've read. Finished up Before the Fall, which I really enjoyed and Jane Steele, which was described to me as, "if Jane Eyre were a serial killer." That's not a spoiler. It was a fast, fun read, and, at times,, touching. I don't read a lot of YA, but I devoured Rin Chupeco's The Girl from the Well and The Suffering, a ghost story series with large doses of Japanese myth. Am halfway through Kindred by Octavia Butler, which I can't believe I never read before. I literally can't put it down (really, I carried it around with me when our contractor was here to give us an estimate).  

I have After The Fall on my kindle and am having a little trouble getting into it.  I'm trying to decide between After The Fall and The Good Liar.

I absolutely loved Jane Steele.

[Qoass]

Add me to the Jane Steele fans and am now enjoying Bellweather Rhapsody thanks to mentions of it here.

[Miss Dee]

On Thursday, August 25, 2016 at 0:44 AM, MeloraH said:

Totally. I always feel like it should have a better title. I wish I could remember why I decided to pick it up as my third or fourth Christie a long, long time ago, maybe the blurb...but it definitely wasn't the title.

I'm currently about halfway into Peril at End House which is pretty standard so far. I'm actually trying to read all the books/stories that were made into Poirot eps and then watching them on Netflix. Luckily my library had the giant Hercule Poirot's Casebook which had ALL the short stories so that got me through a lot of episodes but now I'm up to the point where I only have novels left so it's a bit between watching episodes.

I had to comment because I am doing the exact same thing!

[MeloraH]

On 8/30/2016 at 2:04 PM, Miss Dee said:

I had to comment because I am doing the exact same thing!

Awesome! I went with Mystery of the Blue Train next because it was referenced in End House and I think Murder on the Links, which is the second to last one I read, and James D'Arcy is in it (I've been making my Poirot, To-Read list based on the guest cast except Links I just wanted to see the future-Mrs. Hastings and End House I wanted to finish up season 2). I'll read Death in the Clouds next because Blue Train came in a collection with it and 4:50 From Paddington (a Marple I've already read) then probably go with Ayckroyd next based on recommendations here. Then Appointment With Death (Tim Curry) and Elephants Can Remember (Iain Glen).

[Miss Dee]

I just watched that one tonight! James D'arcy was mighty sexy. I wish they hadn't changed the story so much from the original, though. I've found that most of the adaptations generally include all the important stuff from the novels, but Blue Train was way off the track.

[Ruby Gillis]

7 hours ago, Miss Dee said:

I just watched that one tonight! James D'arcy was mighty sexy. I wish they hadn't changed the story so much from the original, though. I've found that most of the adaptations generally include all the important stuff from the novels, but Blue Train was way off the track.

According to her autobiography, Blue Train was one of Christie's least favorite works.  Maybe they felt less pressure to be faithful.

[MeloraH]

19 hours ago, Miss Dee said:

I just watched that one tonight! James D'arcy was mighty sexy. I wish they hadn't changed the story so much from the original, though. I've found that most of the adaptations generally include all the important stuff from the novels, but Blue Train was way off the track.

 

12 hours ago, Ruby Gillis said:

According to her autobiography, Blue Train was one of Christie's least favorite works.  Maybe they felt less pressure to be faithful.

Maybe. Also I just realized, and confirmed via wiki, that Blue Train is basically an extended The Plymouth Express, a short story that they already did in season 3 so maybe they wanted to make it different from that?

In general they're mostly pretty faithful but I feel like sometimes they'll throw in a car chase or Hastings chasing someone down to make it more exciting for TV.

[alias1]

I finished Before The Fall.  I would say the ending was a letdown, although I pretty much saw it coming,  l was hoping I was wrong.

Now I'm on to the 3rd Joe Pike book, The Sentry (Robert Crais).  So far it's really good.

And someone mentioned Death Comes As The End (Agatha Christie) so I'm reading that, too.  I think I read it years ago, but don't remember the plot.  It is a very different setting (Ancient Egypt around 2000 BC).

Edited September 4, 2016 by SierraMist
The name of the book is Before The Fall (not After)

[GaT]

I'm reading When the Music's Over by Peter Robinson, it's the 23rd book in the Inspector Banks series. I'm a fan of British police procedurals, so this series is right up my alley, & I've read them all. I can only think of one book I didn't like in the series, & that's because it had spy stuff in it & I'm not into spy novels. Definitely an enjoyable read, but I don't think it's a book you can read without reading all the others first because the relationships progress from book to book even though the crimes change.

[NewDigs]

3 hours ago, GaT said:

I'm reading When the Music's Over by Peter Robinson, it's the 23rd book in the Inspector Banks series. I'm a fan of British police procedurals, so this series is right up my alley, & I've read them all. I can only think of one book I didn't like in the series, & that's because it had spy stuff in it & I'm not into spy novels. Definitely an enjoyable read, but I don't think it's a book you can read without reading all the others first because the relationships progress from book to book even though the crimes change.

How did I miss a new Alan Banks book? One of my fave procedurals. Sometimes I wish I could click on something and hear the music Banks listens to. The whole series is so good but for some reason the one that sticks with me is The Dry Season with clues found in a reservoir-area recently exposed by drought.

And I, too, am not a spy fan nor a thriller fan so was disappointed when book 4 of Kristina Ohllsen's Fredrika Bergman series found the characters, I dunno, out of charcter? And in totally different jobs. Not a procedural. Boo! 

Thanks for the Robinson heads-up. 

[RealityCheck]

13 hours ago, GaT said:

I'm a fan of British police procedurals, so this series is right up my alley, ...

Since you like British procedurals, you might like to try:

Deborah Crombie : Superintendent Duncan Kincaid
Caroline Graham : Chief Inspector Barnaby
RD Wingfield : Detective Inspector Jack Frost
Charles Todd : Inspector Ian Rutledge

[GaT]

8 hours ago, RealityCheck said:

Since you like British procedurals, you might like to try:

Deborah Crombie : Superintendent Duncan Kincaid
Caroline Graham : Chief Inspector Barnaby
RD Wingfield : Detective Inspector Jack Frost
Charles Todd : Inspector Ian Rutledge

I read Deborah Crombie & I've read Charles Todd (not into historical stuff), I've read some Caroline Graham, but should probably check to see what I might have missed, & I've never heard of RD Wingfield, so I'll check them out, thanks. I'm also a fan of Catherine Aird (Inspector Sloan), Martha Grimes (Richard Jury), Reginald Hill (Superintendent Dalziel & Sergeant Pascoe), Jill McGown (Chief Inspector Lloyd & Inspector Hill), Ruth Rendell (Chief Inspector Wexford), & Ann Granger (Inspector Markby & Meredith Mitchell) :-)

[Epeolatrix]

I'm currently reading Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David. It's a somewhat cheerful examination of the many ways clothes have been dangerous throughout time. The author discusses mercury in hats, arsenic in fabrics, flammable crinolines, damage caused by tight-lacing corsets, Isadora Duncan's neck-breaking strangulation by scarf, and the effects of clothing manufacture on animals and the environment.

Edited September 6, 2016 by Violet Impulse
Switching a pronoun to a noun.

[Black Knight]

I'm about to start a re-read of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which I haven't read since it first came out. I remember liking it and I'm looking forward to the movie later this month, which is why I want to re-read it. Plus, the other two books are out now and so I plan to read the whole trilogy in a go.

After that I'll move on to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, since a friend and I are seeing it in London in November. I am a bit apprehensive because of a negative article I read, but I'm hoping the article is just wildly skewed. I'm keeping an open mind until I actually read the play for myself. I know Rowling didn't write the play, but she had to sign off on it, no doubt, and I can't imagine her approving what the article makes the play sound like.

The best book I've read this summer was Phil Klay's short story collection Redeployment. It deservedly won the National Book Award.  It's gripping, tense, heartbreaking, and even in the case of one story, blackly funny and farcical. I also re-read Watership Down, in anticipation of the upcoming adaptation. It still holds up for me after all these years. It's funny to realize how thoroughly all the mating stuff flew over my head when I was ten.

As to the faithfulness of adaptations of Christie, Christie herself was not at all precious about changes. She adapted a few of her books into plays herself and made any number of changes, even to the actual solutions of the mysteries. (For instance, in Appointment With Death,

Mrs. Boynton kills herself as a way to go on tormenting her family even after death through placing them all under suspicion for her supposed murder.

) She strongly felt that what worked in one medium didn't work in another and one shouldn't shy from making changes. That said, I did like the recent Lifetime adaptation of And Then There was None for keeping the original ending (except for one relatively small change that I can live with - some concession had to be made to the medium, you can't end a movie with a super-long letter being read that explains everything) because there'd never been an adaptation that'd done that before (including Christie's own play adaptation) and I really do like the original ending and wanted to see it sometime.

[Haleth]

I finished a book last night that I couldn't put down all weekend.  It's brand new, called To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey. It takes place in 1885 and is about an army officer tasked with exploring the Alaskan interior with several companions. Meanwhile his plucky young wife left behind in Vancouver is exploring her own purpose by learning to photograph nature. The stories are told by means of their correspondence and diary entries. Both stories are fascinating.  There is also a mystical element that connects the two storylines and a current day narrative regarding the owner of the documents.  A couple weeks ago I was complaining that none of the recent books I've read lived up to anticipation, but this one breaks that trend.  It's a lovely story.  

[Qoass]

I find that it's best for me to read a book about six months before it comes out as a movie.  That way, I remember enough of it to know whether I'll be interested in seeing the film, but not enough to object to any plot changes or hinky casting.

[alias1]

3 hours ago, Haleth said:

I finished a book last night that I couldn't put down all weekend.  It's brand new, called To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey. It takes place in 1885 and is about an army officer tasked with exploring the Alaskan interior with several companions. Meanwhile his plucky young wife left behind in Vancouver is exploring her own purpose by learning to photograph nature. The stories are told by means of their correspondence and diary entries. Both stories are fascinating.  There is also a mystical element that connects the two storylines and a current day narrative regarding the owner of the documents.  A couple weeks ago I was complaining that none of the recent books I've read lived up to anticipation, but this one breaks that trend.  It's a lovely story.  

Thanks for the review of To The Bright Edge of the World.  I had to look it up as I didn't realize Eowyn Ivey had written another book.  I absolutely adored The Snow Child, which came out in 2012.  I am a little put off by the length (717 pages).  She is a beautiful writer, though.