Started today on The Strange, by Nathan Ballingrud. It’s a science fiction novel that reads like a western, about a young girl on Mars tracking the people who robbed her family business.
I enjoyed Rebecca very much, and once you’ve finished it, recommend Du Maurier’s The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories. It includes her essay on how she wrote the novel, her working notes on the first draft, and the omitted epilogue. There’s also an interesting essay on Menabilly, the broken-down Cornwall estate which inspired Manderley, and several short stories from various points in her career.
Finished When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold S. Kushner, which is powerful.
Now I’m reading Death by Water, a Phryne Fisher mystery by Kerry Greenwood.
Woo hoo! I won a Goodreads giveaway for T. Kingfisher’s Thornhedge! I won’t have it for a while but that’s a nice thing to look forward to. 
YAY!!! So jealous! Congrats!
Thanks! This is the second time I won a giveaway. The first time, I didn’t like the book very much, but this one I feel is a sure bet.
Finished Shadows Reel by C.J. Box. While I enjoy reading the novels about Game Warden Joe Pickett, I fear that the plot lines are becoming far, far too unrealistic, even venturing into Jack Reacher territory. But the books are still good reads.
Next up: The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave.
Just started reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. We listened to Lincoln Highway on a recent roadtrip and I liked it well enough to read another of his books.
I’ll be interested in your reaction to your second Towles read. I read both of these not long ago, in the same order as you.
Finished The Intimate Bond: How Animals Shaped Human History, by Brian Fagan.
Started: The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America, by Brian M Fagan, and First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human, by Jeremy DeSilva.
Next up: The Moon-Spinners, by Mary Stewart.
I thought Gentleman was a far better book than Lincoln, FWIW.
I’ve heard good things about Brian Fagan’s books, I have several on my want to read list.
I read The Moon Spinners ages ago in my late teens or early 20s. Just picked it up on Kindle last week to reread.
Heh. I thought EXACTLY the opposite.
YMMV, indeed!
I’m only a couple chapters in, but I am already liking A Gentleman in Moscow better. But, this will not be a fair comparison: We listened to Lincoln Highway while I’m reading the print version of AGiM. I don’t listen to a lot of audio books, but it isn’t always my cup of tea, particularly with fiction, and I generally prefer to read. The narration of the different character voices throws me (I guess I like my internal voicing better?). This isn’t true of the few nonfiction books I’ve listened to. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Obama read his A Promised Land.
I’ve noticed this with audio books as well. I’ve enjoyed the nonfiction I’ve listened to, but about half of the fiction ones just grated. Part of the problem was the sheer number of accents the narrators attempted. I never realized how many characters in novels are written as having accents, and how few narrators can do those accents passably. And I understand that if you’re narrating a book, you want to make each characters’ dialogue distinct, but after a while I feel like a toddler being read “The Billy Goats Gruff.”
Ahem.
I’m in the middle of “What Would Mrs. Astor Do?” which is a pretty light read about New York society during the Gilded Age. It’s a fast read, and it doesn’t cover a lot about the subject I wasn’t aware of already, but it’s kind of fun. It does kind of put me in an “eat the rich” mood, though.
Finished Death by Water, a Phryne Fisher mystery by Kerry Greenwood.
Now I’m reading 12 Seconds of Silence: How a Team of Inventors, Tinkerers, and Spies Took Down a Nazi Superweapon, by Jamie Holmes.
Have you seen HBO’s The Gilded Age, created by Julian Fellowes? Pretty good, I thought. It’s been renewed for a second season.
That’s why I ended up with the book! HBO is taking its sweet time about that next season.
Finished First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human, by Jeremy DeSilva.
Still reading The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America, by Brian M Fagan.
Started The Moon-Spinners, by Mary Stewart.
Next up: Either A Dangerous Mourning or The Cater Street Hangman, by Anne Perry.
Ha! Gotcha. Thanks.