What Are We Currently Reading?

[DearEvette]

1 hour ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

I love how Nora writes boys and men. Boys, because they are SO relatable and sound like, well, 10-year old boys sound and act like! And since she's the youngest of five, and had four older brothers, and two sons--she likes men; understands them, and writes them well.

This is one thing I have noticed and have loved about her books over the years.  She does write boys very well.  You can tell she's been around young boys a lot (...aaand that sounded way more creepy than I meant... LOL).  But she absolutely gets the 'voice' and mannerisms right. 

I remembered thinking this when I did a re-read of Black Hills last year.  So much of it is from Cooper's pov and we meet him when he is young going to stay with his grandparents in South Dakota for the summer and feeling like it is a punishment because he is a born and bred New Yorker.  I found him delightful and he is reminiscent of a lot of her male leads if we meet them when they are younger.  She has a fine hand with creating likeable affable heroes. 

My own recent reading has been rather eclectic -

I recently finished The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold.  I love, love, love the first two books in the Chalion series and have read them many times, this is the third one and I never liked it as much, but decided to re-read it.  Still not as great as the first two but I think I like it better with some distance.

Read Burn it Down by Mo Ryan, the book about in some ways how broken the Hollywood system is that excuses 'genius' and makes way for a lot of the toxic behind -the-scenes environments that are often whispered about on tv and movie sets and it really doesn't have to be that way.  Some things were shocking, some validating. I do like that it wasn't just a gossipy tell all but her background in having access to people in the industry she offers examples of good practices and suggestions that it doesn't have to be that way.

Magic Tides and Magic Claims by Ilona Andrews - these are two long novellas that are officially the first two books in the Kate Daniels: The Wilmington years series.  The original Kate Daniels series ended.  We knew there would be other series shoot-offs. But not one featuring Kate and Curran.  But these have been a nice surprise.  And what I love about them is how true to the characters the author is staying.

Curran and Kate, bless their hearts, have relocated to Wilmington and are trying to live a normal quiet life.  Bwah! The moral of this story is that you can leave a place and attempt to try to live a quiet life and leave some baggage behind, but you are always gonna be you.  One thing I am loving about the second book is that the authors are doing what they (and the character of Kate) resisted even until the end in her original series.  She refused to embrace her full power.  But it seems like they are taking those gloves off in this series and I am enjoying it!

 

 

[GHScorpiosRule]

22 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

This is one thing I have noticed and have loved about her books over the years.  She does write boys very well.  You can tell she's been around young boys a lot (...aaand that sounded way more creepy than I meant... LOL).  But she absolutely gets the 'voice' and mannerisms right. 

I remembered thinking this when I did a re-read of Black Hills last year.  So much of it is from Cooper's pov and we meet him when he is young going to stay with his grandparents in South Dakota for the summer and feeling like it is a punishment because he is a born and bred New Yorker.  I found him delightful and he is reminiscent of a lot of her male leads if we meet them when they are younger.  She has a fine hand with creating likeable affable heroes. 

Totally Agree! And I know what you mean about Cooper. Complaining about not being able to use his...whatever electronic gameboy gadget and instead going to a boring farm where there was NOTHING to do! 😅

Or in Honest Illusions, Roxy and Luke as children. Or Cam in SeaSwept. And even Seth! I loved the scene when the principal calls Cam down because Seth got into a fight, and Cam learns the other kid had hit him with brass knuckles and he whispers to Seth if he's going to let the little shit get away with it? Or something like that. There are so many, many more, but No one writes as well as Nora when it comes to kids. Of course I'm biased.

[SusieQ]

Super happy to see Abraham Verghese has a new book. Covenant of Water.

Cutting for Stone is one of my all time favorite books.

[Mindthinkr]

On 6/10/2023 at 2:10 PM, Spartan Girl said:

Has anybody read Yellowface by RF Kuang? Holy. Shit. I can’t put it out. When the writer’s strike is over, this better get optioned because damn. 

I got this book yesterday based on your post I’m halfway through it and it’s so good. Such an interesting perspective. Thanks for letting me know about it. 
 

I find this thread valuable for finding something new, interesting, or different from my usual reading tastes. 📚

[Haleth]

13 hours ago, SusieQ said:

Super happy to see Abraham Verghese has a new book. Covenant of Water.

Cutting for Stone is one of my all time favorite books.

I've heard nothing but praise from people who've read it.

19 hours ago, Zella said:

How do they usually choose them?

Regarding our neighborhood book club, the members make recommendations.  I suggested two William Kent Krueger titles for next year's list.  (Then was informed that I'd have to come up with the discussion questions, ugh!)

[proserpina65]

On 6/22/2023 at 7:29 AM, Haleth said:

Ugh, my book club has done three books in a row with whiny, annoying female protagonists.  Each one has gotten progressively less enjoyable: Wrong Place, Wrong Time, then State of Wonder, next is The Midnight Library.  I read TML some time ago and hated it and don't plan on reading it again for discussion so I guess I'm free for the month of July.

I suggested a couple different books to the book club administrator. LOL

The concept of The Midnight Library sounds interesting, but it seems like maybe the execution isn't so great?  A whiny protagonist definitely puts me off when I'm reading a book.  I might still read it, but will probably lower my expectations.

[blackwing]

I finished

Enemy of God, the second book in Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles trilogy, which retells his version of the Arthurian legend.  Arthur is continuing to build a unified Britain while driving back the invading Saxons.  Merlin is hunting for something he calls the Cauldron of ________ [something] but I believe it's essentially the Holy Grail.  

I really enjoyed this book, much more so than the first book The Winter King.  The characters are well written.

Rebellions Message, the first book in the Jack Blackjack Tudor mystery series, which was later rebranded as the Bloody Mary Mysteries.  Mary Tudor has just been declared Queen.  The thief Jack Blackjack wakes up in a courtyard next to the body of a man whose purse he had stolen the night before.  Things seem dire.

I love Jecks' Knights Templar series, and I found this book equally as good.  I love how he evokes the Tudor atmosphere, it leaps off the pages.

Revelation, the fourth book in CJ Sansom's Matthew Shardlake series.  Henry VIII is trying to get Catherine Parr to agree to marry him.  Shardlake is called upon to help a teenaged boy who has been put into an insane asylum but doesn't seem to belong there.  Meanwhile, a friend of his is murdered.  Shardlake realises that someone is recreating a series of ghastly murders from the Book of Revelation.

This series continues to live up to its high praise and great expectations.  This book was perfect.

The Forgotten Room, by Lincoln Child.  Another book featuring the enigmologist Jeremy Logan, who is often asked to investigate strange occurrences or phenomena.  Logan is summoned to the headquarters of Lux, a think tank that he used to work at 10 years earlier.  One of the researchers suddenly acted strangely and killed himself.  Logan discovers a secret room hidden inside Lux's headquarters, which used to be an enormous private mansion.  How is what he finds in the room connected to these strange deaths?

Child really knows how to bring creativity and suspense to the page.  Each case of Logan's has been fantastic and fun.

[Mindthinkr]

7 minutes ago, blackwing said:

The Forgotten Room, by Lincoln Child.

I read that book as well and enjoyed it. 
 

I especially like the books he has written with Douglas Preston about FBI agent A. Pendergast. I have read them all. At times I found them to be a bit lackluster, but some of them are real stand outs. I began with Murder of Crows and The Cabinet of Curiosities. They remain my favorites.   

[blackwing]

28 minutes ago, Mindthinkr said:

I read that book as well and enjoyed it. 
 

I especially like the books he has written with Douglas Preston about FBI agent A. Pendergast. I have read them all. At times I found them to be a bit lackluster, but some of them are real stand outs. I began with Murder of Crows and The Cabinet of Curiosities. They remain my favorites.   

I've long wanted to start this series but there's so many books, I found the thought daunting.  But you've convinced me, I'll add "Relic" to my TBR list!

I did try their Gideon Crew series some years ago, I definitely read the first one but for some reason, didn't continue.

[Mindthinkr]

4 hours ago, blackwing said:

I've long wanted to start this series but there's so many books, I found the thought daunting.  But you've convinced me, I'll add "Relic" to my TBR list!

I did try their Gideon Crew series some years ago, I definitely read the first one but for some reason, didn't continue.

Personally Relic wasn’t one of my favorites, but all of our tastes vary 📚

[blackwing]

Ugh.  Why do I do this to myself?  About two years ago, I read a really terrible book called "Falling" by a former flight attendant turned writer named TJ Newman.  It was about a pilot who received a message mid-flight telling him to crash the plane otherwise his family would be killed.  It was completely predictable, filled with airplane cliches and character stereotypes and utter dreck.

Somehow I ended up looking for the audiobook for her second book, called Drowning, on Libby. This time around, a plane takes off from Honolulu but encounters engine trouble.  Most passengers escape the plane but there are 12 passengers and crew who remain on the plane, which then sinks to the bottom of the ocean.  Take one guess as to what they are in danger of.

Two of the passengers are a man and his 11 year old daughter.  Fortunately (or prreposterously), his estranged wife just happens to be some kind of underwater ship repair expert and she happens to be right in the area.  The other 10 are a collection of stereotypes.  The asshole guy who blames anyone he can and thinks only of himself, the nurse who helps tremendously, the lady afraid of water who can't swim, the mild mannered Asian guy who just lost his wife, the elderly Jewish couple who complain and kvetch about everything, the unaccompanied girl who latches on to the 11 year old, and three crew including the pilot who will do anything for her passengers.

There was a bit of action at the beginning, but after that, just as with the last book, I found the book incredibly boring and predictable.  The characters are thinly developed.  Once you get past their walking stereotype, we actually don't learn much about them except for the estranged husband and his estranged wife.  If the book jacket had told me how many people were going to die, I could easily pick out which ones wouldn't make it (and I was right).

The family drama of the estranged wife trying to save the daughter (and the estranged husband) and the constant lamentation and regret of both about how they got to where they were was a bit unnecessary.  Is this an action book or a melodrama?

There's too much technical jargon in this book.  I feel like the author wanted to show off her knowledge of planes, but I really didn't care why there are wires behind the overhead compartments or what they do.  The undersea rescue was also replete with too much technical language, it's obvious she had some consultant feed her all of this information and felt compelled to insert all of it into the book.

I gave this book a chance thinking that the author had improved.  But just as with the first book, it's obvious that she's just going for a movie treatment.  

I will kick myself if I get suckered into reading her third book, whether it's "Choking" about a plane whose air compressor has failed, "Dehydrated" about a plane that has run out of water and crashed in the desert, or "Hungry" about a plane that crashes in the mountains and the survivors debate about eating each other.  I'm sure whatever it will be will read like a bad movie script, be filled with stereotypical characters, and be entirely boring and predictable.

[proserpina65]

On 6/27/2023 at 11:43 AM, blackwing said:

Most passengers escape the plane but there are 12 passengers and crew who remain on the plane, which then sinks to the bottom of the ocean.  Take one guess as to what they are in danger of.

How do they avoid drowning right away?  A plane isn't airtight the way a submarine would be.

[grommit2]

Hmm...only one guess?
Umm...how about running out of breathable air.
Or...sharks?
Or...Oh, I give up.

[SusieQ]

On 6/27/2023 at 11:43 AM, blackwing said:

Ugh.  Why do I do this to myself?  About two years ago, I read a really terrible book called "Falling" by a former flight attendant turned writer named TJ Newman.  It was about a pilot who received a message mid-flight telling him to crash the plane otherwise his family would be killed.  It was completely predictable, filled with airplane cliches and character stereotypes and utter dreck.

Somehow I ended up looking for the audiobook for her second book, called Drowning, on Libby. This time around, a plane takes off from Honolulu but encounters engine trouble.  Most passengers escape the plane but there are 12 passengers and crew who remain on the plane, which then sinks to the bottom of the ocean.  Take one guess as to what they are in danger of.

Two of the passengers are a man and his 11 year old daughter.  Fortunately (or prreposterously), his estranged wife just happens to be some kind of underwater ship repair expert and she happens to be right in the area.  The other 10 are a collection of stereotypes.  The asshole guy who blames anyone he can and thinks only of himself, the nurse who helps tremendously, the lady afraid of water who can't swim, the mild mannered Asian guy who just lost his wife, the elderly Jewish couple who complain and kvetch about everything, the unaccompanied girl who latches on to the 11 year old, and three crew including the pilot who will do anything for her passengers.

There was a bit of action at the beginning, but after that, just as with the last book, I found the book incredibly boring and predictable.  The characters are thinly developed.  Once you get past their walking stereotype, we actually don't learn much about them except for the estranged husband and his estranged wife.  If the book jacket had told me how many people were going to die, I could easily pick out which ones wouldn't make it (and I was right).

The family drama of the estranged wife trying to save the daughter (and the estranged husband) and the constant lamentation and regret of both about how they got to where they were was a bit unnecessary.  Is this an action book or a melodrama?

There's too much technical jargon in this book.  I feel like the author wanted to show off her knowledge of planes, but I really didn't care why there are wires behind the overhead compartments or what they do.  The undersea rescue was also replete with too much technical language, it's obvious she had some consultant feed her all of this information and felt compelled to insert all of it into the book.

I gave this book a chance thinking that the author had improved.  But just as with the first book, it's obvious that she's just going for a movie treatment.  

I will kick myself if I get suckered into reading her third book, whether it's "Choking" about a plane whose air compressor has failed, "Dehydrated" about a plane that has run out of water and crashed in the desert, or "Hungry" about a plane that crashes in the mountains and the survivors debate about eating each other.  I'm sure whatever it will be will read like a bad movie script, be filled with stereotypical characters, and be entirely boring and predictable.

I read that Falling book, too. The hype on it was wild so I gave it a whirl. Yikes, it was lousy. Glad it was a quick read and that I didn't waste too much time.

beware of hype. It's bitten me in the a few times.

Edited June 29, 2023 by SusieQ

[Zella]

13 minutes ago, SusieQ said:

beware of hype. It's bitten me in the a few times.

Same. I've learned to just avoid anything hyped to me that I have no preexisting interest in. I always suspect I won't like it, and I never do, and I'd much rather read something I actually like and doesn't feel like homework or punishment. If it's something I would be interested in anyway and it's being hyped, that has a more solid track record for me. 

[SusieQ]

And the folks here have given me some good recommendations. I hope I have returned the favor.

[Zella]

1 hour ago, SusieQ said:

And the folks here have given me some good recommendations. I hope I have returned the favor.

I have gotten some good ones here too! In fact, I started reading the Matthew Shardlake mystery series by CJ Sansom and have really been enjoying the first book. I'd been curious about it for years but positive comments on here made me make starting it a priority. 

[Haleth]

 

On 6/27/2023 at 11:43 AM, blackwing said:

About two years ago, I read a really terrible book called "Falling" by a former flight attendant turned writer named TJ Newman.

I'd picked up Falling a couple times at the library, then put it back on the shelf.  (I was afraid it would put my off flying.)  Glad my instincts kicked in so I didn't waste my time.

[blackwing]

23 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

How do they avoid drowning right away?  A plane isn't airtight the way a submarine would be.

Correct, the plane isn't airtight, especially when there's a hole in the cockpit windshield and water seeps into the cabin from underneath the cockpit door.  However, apparently, something to do with air pressure equalizing, the existing air in the cabin prevents the water from fully flooding the entire plane.

But then there's carbon dioxide poisoning so they only have a finite number of hours of breathable air.

20 hours ago, grommit2 said:

Hmm...only one guess?
Umm...how about running out of breathable air.
Or...sharks?
Or...Oh, I give up.

This book would have been so much better if sharks had been involved, trust me.  Maybe a shark can eat this author's hands to prevent her from inflicting future awfulness upon us.

14 hours ago, Zella said:

I have gotten some good ones here too! In fact, I started reading the Matthew Shardlake mystery series by CJ Sansom and have really been enjoying the first book. I'd been curious about it for years but positive comments on here made me make starting it a priority. 

Yes!  I had been meaning for years to read the Matthew Shardlake series, and have read the first four books in a span of a few months.  Planning to start the fifth book on my summer vacation in a few weeks, the only thing that is too bad is that my library system doesn't have a papeback version and I'll have to lug a tome with me.

[proserpina65]

1 hour ago, blackwing said:

Correct, the plane isn't airtight, especially when there's a hole in the cockpit windshield and water seeps into the cabin from underneath the cockpit door.  However, apparently, something to do with air pressure equalizing, the existing air in the cabin prevents the water from fully flooding the entire plane.

But then there's carbon dioxide poisoning so they only have a finite number of hours of breathable air.

Hypoxia most likely would kill them much more quickly than that.  Plus, how hard does it hit the ocean, because the impact probably would've caused too much damage to keep air pressure high enough to prevent flooding.  (Why yes, I HAVE been binge-watching episodes of Air Disasters on Smithsonian.)  Crap, I'm giving way too thought to what sounds like a terrible book. 

Edited June 29, 2023 by proserpina65

[Hanahope]

I started Justin Cronin's book The Ferryman and I'm really struggling getting through the beginning.  Has anyone read it and does it get better?  I loved The Passage books a lot, which is why i picked this up at the library.  

[Haleth]

12 hours ago, Hanahope said:

I started Justin Cronin's book The Ferryman and I'm really struggling getting through the beginning.  Has anyone read it and does it get better?  I loved The Passage books a lot, which is why i picked this up at the library.  

I'm a little over halfway done with it.  Yeah, it's a slow start but the action does pick up significantly.  It's pretty wackadoodle.  I'm enjoying it now but reserving judgment for the book as a whole.

[Mindthinkr]

I finished Yellowface and and am now halfway through reading Horse by Geraldine Brooks. It’s a good book with many facets. Horse racing, equine art, museum restoration and racism pre-civil war all woven nicely together. 

[EtheltoTillie]

I am also reading Burn It Down. It’s very well reported. 

[Dani-Ellie]

I finished The Vanishing Hour by Seraphina Nova Glass over the weekend, and while the story was good, the book itself could really have used a stronger copyedit. I caught a few misspelled words. At one point, a character mentions hearing canned laughter from a rerun of Ghost Whisperer (which was, y'know, a drama); all TV references change to The Golden Girls after this one mention.

The most egregious one, though, is that I caught the POV going from third person to first person (or first person to third person) at least three times. It's almost like she'd started out writing in one perspective, then changed her mind and didn't catch all the instances of the perspective when she swapped it over.

It's a shame, too, because the story was intriguing but the mistakes were distracting. I can read past misspellings and even some mild grammar mistakes but the perspective changing for a paragraph (or even within paragraph) takes me right out of it.

[Haleth]

On 6/29/2023 at 6:29 PM, Hanahope said:

I started Justin Cronin's book The Ferryman and I'm really struggling getting through the beginning.  Has anyone read it and does it get better?  I loved The Passage books a lot, which is why i picked this up at the library.  

Ok, I finished yesterday.  I liked it a lot.  There is a huge WTF moment that readers will either love or will hate.  I thought it was kind of mind blowing, but can see that it might make others throw the book across the room.

[Hanahope]

I will have to borrow it again as my time elapsed.  

[BlackberryJam]

Finished Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?

Using the Amazon description of the novel, I'm going to add in my thoughts.

When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions. Can you guess? I bet you can guess. But really, this question isn't the driving force of the novel at all. 

A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty’s affairs than deal with the press. But what she discovers in one of Kitty’s journals rocks her world harder than any other brewing scandal could―and between a cheating fiancé and the fallout from a controversial social media post, there are plenty. So there are three sisters, but only Elise matters. The other sisters are less than cardboard cutouts and have no POV chapters. I say Elise matters, but she doesn't. She so DOES NOT. She's not interesting. Her fiancé has no personality and is barely in the book and the social media scandal is far from developed. 

The truth behind Kitty's ascent to stardom from her beginnings in the segregated South threatens to expose a web of unexpected family ties, debts owed, and debatable crimes that could, with one pull, unravel the all-American fabric of the St. John sisters and those closest to them. The beginning of this sentence is the part of the book where you'll find good writing, developed characters and a compelling storyline. And I DID NOT CARE about the St. John sisters. 

As Elise digs deeper into Kitty's past, she must also turn the lens upon herself, confronting the gifts and burdens of her own choices and the power that the secrets of the dead hold over the living. Elise turned the lens upon herself? When? I'm pretty sure that never happened, at least not in this novel. Elise wasn't introspective and certainly not interesting. She existed to give a big speech at the end of the novel to give it a "dramatic" ending. 

UUUUUGHHHHHHHH. I loved the parts from Kitty (and Kitty's mother's) POV, but the whole St. John Sisters storyline could have easily been excised from the novel and it would have been such much better for the edit. Instead of "finishing" Kitty's story, it simply switches to Elise at one point and I stopped caring then. I just wanted more Kitty chapters. 

[Minneapple]

I have Yellowface on my list but I'm actually a bit hesitant as I wasn't too enamored of RF Kuang's other book, Babel.

I just finished Happy Place by Emily Henry. Her Book Lovers is one of my favorite chick lit/romcom books of all time so I had high hopes but honestly I was a bit let down by Happy Place. I thought it was kind of boring. The characters felt flat. And the friends were annoying. I haven't read Beach Read yet but I'll probably still give it a try.

[Ohiopirate02]

19 hours ago, Minneapple said:

I have Yellowface on my list but I'm actually a bit hesitant as I wasn't too enamored of RF Kuang's other book, Babel.

I've read and loved both.  It really depends on what you didn't love about Babel.  If it was the world-building or the pacing, then you may enjoy Yellowface.  If it's the characterization of Lettie, then stay away.  

[Minneapple]

14 minutes ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

I've read and loved both.  It really depends on what you didn't love about Babel.  If it was the world-building or the pacing, then you may enjoy Yellowface.  If it's the characterization of Lettie, then stay away.  

The thing that got me about Babel was the language and dialogue. The book is set in the 19th century yet the characters all talk like they live in the 21st century. The discussions about gender and sexuality and race all sound way way way too contemporary. I did enjoy the world building, so maybe I'll still give Yellowface a try.

FYI: Amazon has a three-month free Kindle Unlimited subscription if you're a Prime member. I just signed up.

[Spartan Girl]

So I read Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess, and apparently this book was the victim of a Goodreads smear campaign before it was even released. People were not pleased of the premise that the main character, a Black woman, falls in love with her conservative white coworker. I really am weary of these Goodread controversies where they tru to cancel the book before it even comes out. As I suspected, most of these trolls probably haven’t even read the book because it’s definitely not some fluffy romcom book. Even though

Spoiler

They do get back together, the end very strongly implies that it’s not going to work out in the long run because…well, the obvious.

Honestly I thought the book was good and I feel bad the writer had to go through all that crap because those idiots completely missed the point.

[Bookish Jen]

I behoove my fellow book lovers not to read "Groupies" by Sara Priscus, one of the worst novels I read about the rock and roll scene and the women who follow their favorite rock bands. It's as if Ms. Priscus just watched the movie "Almost Famous" a few times and thought she learned everything there was to know about rock music, bands, and groupies back in the 1970s, but she should have done more research. And she should have also learned to write characters I could give an actual crap about.

[festivus]

I'd suggest I'm With the Band by Pamela Des Barres, an actual groupie of the era. Whether you agree with the culture or not, I thought it was interesting read. It's been a long time since I read it but I remember enjoying her writing style.

[EtheltoTillie]

I'm reading Bad Summer People, by Emma Rosenblum.  It's a real page turner/beach read.  It takes place on Fire Island. 

Spoiler

It has a White Lotus vibe.  A body is found in the prologue, then you go through the whole book to find out who and why.  All the people are flawed. 

 

[Irlandesa]

I watched Karen Pirie on Britbox this year and ever since then, I've gotten into reading the books.  Hopefully, by the time they're made into a series, I will have forgotten who did it but I do like Val McDermid's writing style.  I like the mix of two mysteries and they move at a good pace.  So far I've read A Darker Domain, Still Life and I'm just about to start Broken Ground. This is a little unusual for me because I don't normally stick with mystery series. 

I also just finished up Lessons in Chemistry.  I first put it on hold when I saw the cute cover and how popular it was.  I'd since learned that the cover is deceiving and it's not a romcom/chick lit book.  I almost didn't read it because I was afraid of an Eat Pray Love overhyped type of situation.

It wasn't that but overall, I have mixed feelings on it.  I think the writing is right in my wheel house.  I started it on Friday and had finished it by Saturday night which was good since it was due on Sunday.  I really do appreciate writing that moves fast and doesn't bore me.

On the other hand, I feel like it wanted to mix a modern feminist perspective with its main character with the rampant sexism from another time.  I'm not one of those people who calls progressive opinions on feminism, homosexuality, race anachronistic if I see it in fiction. There absolutely were forward thinkers out there going back centuries.  But combine that with the main character being the smartest, and her show having almost a The Feminine Mystique-like effect on her viewers, even through her open atheism, her child being the most precious mini-adult at 4, and even getting the dog's POV was perhaps a step too far for me.  I didn't love the combo.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Irlandesa

[sugarbaker design]

14 hours ago, Irlandesa said:

I watched Karen Pirie on Britbox this year and ever since then, I've gotten into reading the books.  Hopefully, by the time they're made into a series, I will have forgotten who did it but I do like Val McDermid's writing style.  I like the mix of two mysteries and they move at a good pace.  So far I've read A Darker Domain, Still Life and I'm just about to start Broken Ground. This is a little unusual for me because I don't normally stick with mystery series. 

I love the Karen Pirie books, I know they're formula, but sometimes formula is written well.  I read the books first, but I still loved the Britbox show, it was well done, although I did picture Karen as much older.  I'm not sure if that's the way it was in the books, or my own personal interpretation.  I started reading McDermid's Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books, then the Karen Piries.

[laughs]

Been reading Joseph Brodsky's collection of essays titled "On Grief and Reason." I'm almost done with the collection, and so far the stand-outs are An Immodest Proposal, In Praise of Boredom, and his essay on Robert Frost and his works. It's great that he argues against the tendency to reduce Frost's poems to the jovial, avuncular register. He argues instead that Frost is a poet of terror, and nature, too, as depicted in his poems, Brodsky argues, is a thing of terror. Which got me to read a bit about what they call biological magnification (not that this has anything to do with nature and terror, just turned to be a tangential albeit rewarding read; some others call this same phenomenon a planet-level metabolic shift; interesting to consider).

[Haleth]

I'm about 2/3 through TJ Klune's latest, In the Lives of Puppets.  I loved House in the Cerulean Sea, and liked Under the Whispering Door, but I'm not nearly as charmed with this one.  I'll finish, and maybe end up liking it more, but right now I'm not really feeling it.  It's a retelling of Pinocchio with a twist.  

[festivus]

1 hour ago, Haleth said:

I'm about 2/3 through TJ Klune's latest, In the Lives of Puppets.  I loved House in the Cerulean Sea, and liked Under the Whispering Door, but I'm not nearly as charmed with this one.  I'll finish, and maybe end up liking it more, but right now I'm not really feeling it.  It's a retelling of Pinocchio with a twist.  

It took me a while to get through it even though I really did like it. It just wasn't a page turner like the other two. I did love that

Spoiler

We had an asexual protagonist. That's something I rarely find in the books I've been reading. 

The whole time I was reading it though, I was picturing it vividly. I think it would make a great movie and Nurse Ratched was just gold.

 

[JAYJAY1979]

I'm reading Colleen Hoover's 'Too Late'..and I'm about a 100 pages into it.  It's interesting..but I can tell this was done as a writing exercise vs an actual story she plotted out.

Classic love triangle with a rich college kid, his unhappy girlfriend staying with him due to family financial obligations, and a new guy that comes into the fold that instantly clicks with the unhappy girlfriend.

Twist is the rich college kid is an abusive drug dealer, the girl is only with him because he pays for the care of her special needs brother, and the new guy is an undercover cop trying to bust the drug ring of the rich college kid.

[blackwing]

David Baldacci has a new book out that is possibly going to be an ongoing series called Simply Lies.  The protagonist is an ex-cop single mom who works as an investigator for a PI firm.  She works from home and is tasked with uncovering financial assets, mostly through the means of her computer.  One day she gets a call from someone from another office in the firm who asks her to go to some mansion owned by a guy that they are investigating and see the assets in person.  She goes because she is local.  There she discovers a dead body and finds herself as a possible suspect.  Soon, a woman contacts her and asks her to investigate the murder.  Turns out, this woman is the one who sent her to the house in the first place.  For some reason, the PI starts working with her.

This is a mess of a book.  The biggest issue is that the story is told from two points of view... that of the ex-cop single mom protagonist as well as the con woman antagonist.  Or at least ostensibly the antagonist.  This was a strange device, and while I can see situations in which it might work, it didn't work for me here.

I think we are supposed to see both women's thoughts and motivations and wind up viewing both of them as the protagonists and like both.  But it didn't work that way for me.  I ended up disliking both characters.  The PI because it's never fully explained why she agrees to work with this con woman who clearly tried to frame her for murder, and the con woman because she's just not sympathetic.

The plot itself... too many unanswered questions and the book just took way too long getting to any explanations.  Which seems ludicrous considering we are privy to the con woman's thoughts.

I used to really like Baldacci, but of his current series, the only one I really like is the new 6:20 Man one.  I'm lukewarm on Amos Decker and Aloysius Archer, dislike Atlee Pine, and now won't read this new Mickey Gibson one anymore if it becomes a series.

 

On a more enjoyable note, I finished the fifth Matthew Shardlake book, Heartstone.  Like all of the other entries in this series, it was excellent.  Well plotted and very satisfying.  I'm sad that I only have two books left in the series until Sansom writes another.

[Zella]

8 minutes ago, blackwing said:

I'm sad that I only have two books left in the series until Sansom writes another.

The eighth book is slated for release this year.

[Ohiopirate02]

44 minutes ago, Zella said:

The eighth book is slated for release this year.

Do you have a title?  I'm searching for it, but cannot find a new Shardlake book available for pre-order in the US.  Nor do I see anything on his publisher's website.

[Zella]

16 minutes ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

Do you have a title?  I'm searching for it, but cannot find a new Shardlake book available for pre-order in the US.  Nor do I see anything on his publisher's website.

I've seen it titled as Ratcliff. Though I am wondering if they've pushed it back without saying anything. I started the series last month and seemed to find a lot more about a new book then than I do now. 

Oh I just did another slightly different search and found rumors about this dating back for a few years. Maybe we have another George R R Martin on our hands. 😂 sorry I think I was a false alarm.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Zella

[Ohiopirate02]

17 minutes ago, Zella said:

I've seen it titled as Ratcliff. Though I am wondering if they've pushed it back without saying anything. I started the series last month and seemed to find a lot more about a new book then than I do now. 

Oh I just did another slightly different search and found rumors about this dating back for a few years. Maybe we have another George R R Martin on our hands. 😂 sorry I think I was a false alarm.

I got excited when I read your post and immediately switched tabs to Baker and Taylor to get the deets.  I've had experiences before when I've searched B&T for a book and cannot find it only to find it the next day.  And the record for the book in B&T states it was created 3 months ago.  

[blackwing]

Hmm, I don't see a release date either, just that it will be released in 2023 and is set during 1552, just before Edward dies.

I also found some tidbit saying the books are going to be adapted as a series by Disney.  Not sure how true that is or not.  But it did mention Ratcliff.  It also mentions that Sansom says that he wants to do more books post-1558 set during Elizabeth's reign.  Which kind of pisses me off.  Mary always gets the shaft when it comes to TV shows, movies and books.  (Which is why I was so happy to have discovered Michael Jecks' Bloody Mary series which is set during her reign.)

Why can't Sansom at least have one book set during Mary's reign?

[Ohiopirate02]

15 minutes ago, blackwing said:

Hmm, I don't see a release date either, just that it will be released in 2023 and is set during 1552, just before Edward dies.

I also found some tidbit saying the books are going to be adapted as a series by Disney.  Not sure how true that is or not.  But it did mention Ratcliff.  It also mentions that Sansom says that he wants to do more books post-1558 set during Elizabeth's reign.  Which kind of pisses me off.  Mary always gets the shaft when it comes to TV shows, movies and books.  (Which is why I was so happy to have discovered Michael Jecks' Bloody Mary series which is set during her reign.)

Why can't Sansom at least have one book set during Mary's reign?

It's been awhile since I've read the series, but wasn't Shardlake working for the Crown in his investigations?  I can't see him working on behalf of Mary.

[blackwing]

1 minute ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

It's been awhile since I've read the series, but wasn't Shardlake working for the Crown in his investigations?  I can't see him working on behalf of Mary.

He originally worked for Cromwell.  After Cromwell was executed, I believe he might have had his own office, but I can't recall exactly.  By the fourth and fifth books I believe his official job is working at the Court of Requests, but unofficially, he is conducting his investigations at the request of Catherine Parr.

I don't think he has to work for Mary but at least the book could be set during her reign, and he could keep his position at the Court of Requests or some other official court.  She could show up.  Just like how Henry VIII shows up.

I just thought it would be interesting to get Sansom's take on Mary as Queen.

[Ohiopirate02]

5 minutes ago, blackwing said:

He originally worked for Cromwell.  After Cromwell was executed, I believe he might have had his own office, but I can't recall exactly.  By the fourth and fifth books I believe his official job is working at the Court of Requests, but unofficially, he is conducting his investigations at the request of Catherine Parr.

I don't think he has to work for Mary but at least the book could be set during her reign, and he could keep his position at the Court of Requests or some other official court.  She could show up.  Just like how Henry VIII shows up.

I just thought it would be interesting to get Sansom's take on Mary as Queen.

I think we will still get Sansom's take on Mary as Queen even if the book is set during the reign of Elizabeth.  Sansom has gotten wordier as the books progressed with Tombland being over 850 pages.