So I shouldn’t tell you there’s another Saint coming out the end of this year? (At least that’s what I was told by a friend who follows her on the socials)
No way! Terrible news. 
I also saw yesterday there’s another in the Sworn Soldier series coming: What Stalks the Deep. Ursula is good to us.
Sorry, erroneous post
And another Fairy tale retelling .. she says her schedule was thrown off by moving to New Mexico, but… shakes head
Hemlock & Silver
Finished Century Rain, a science fiction novel by Alastair Reynolds. Excellent worldbuilding, okay thriller plot.
Still reading Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards.
Next up: What Time Is Noon: Hilarious Texts, Ridiculous Feedback, and Not-So-Subtle Advice from Teenagers, by Chip Leighton; and Matrix, a historical novel by Lauren Groff.
I’ve read a few since my last post.
The Old Woman With the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo: In a corner of John Wick’s universe, there’s an assassin who’s an elderly woman. She has a knife. It’s set in South Korea. There’s not much more to the novel than that; it’s a reflection on age, and a window into Korean culture, and a fine thriller, and if that sounds fun it’ll be fun.
The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas: my daughter really loved this book, so I read it. Hunger Games/Goblet of Fire set in a mythological modern-day culture based on Aztec mythology, plus more genderqueer characters than you can shake a stick at. The gender issues were pretty front-and-center, with a lot of allegory that didn’t always make sense to me, but it’s a fine YA read, and I don’t mind not always understanding what an author is saying.
I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle: he’s still alive? He’s still alive! About 90% of the way through this I realized it was mis-shelved in the adult section when it’s obviously a children’s book, and that helped me appreciate it more. It’s a very frothy comic fantasy novel, nowhere near the heights of Beagle’s best (when he was at his best he was one of the best ever), but as a kid’s fantasy novel it fizzes along just fine. It’d be a great readaloud.
Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Recommended. I’ve mostly loved Tchaikovsky’s works, with the exception of Service Model which I hated. This one might be my favorite. It’s a “land on a hostile alien planet” science fiction novel, as told by Jeff Vandermeer and Franz Kafka. Very darkly funny, very mindblowing, excellent blend of politics, bonkers science, and wry humor. Not to mention a propulsive plot.
At this point I’ve read all this year’s Hugo contenders except Ministry of Time, and Alien Clay is far and away my favorite of the bunch. If you’re cool with politics infesting your hard SF, or hard SF mucking about in your sociological SF novel, pick it up!
Finished The Locked Door by Freida McFadden. This is the second novel by this author that I’ve read in the past month. Both books are well-written, feature fairly interesting plots, and both feature protagonists that aren’t quite as upstanding as we have been led to believe. But both novels also had quite unbelievable plot twists at the end that almost ruined the story for me. Not sure if I’ll read another of her books.
IMHO, the only reason it’s nominated is the author knows someone in the committee.
Interesting. Honestly, I thought it was kind of a weak year of nominees. I strongly disliked two of them, and two of them were just really good. Alien Clay is the only one that truly impressed me.
YMMV, but it felt, to me, like alternative universe fan fiction about a historical guy the author wanted to bonk that had a sorta espionage plot tacked on to the end. I was enjoying the fish out of water first half, however, the thriller part was just bad.
Started Den of Iniquity by J.A. Jance. The first hour has been filled with the soap-operaish goings-on of the narrator’s family. Hope it gets better.
Finished What Time Is Noon: Hilarious Texts, Ridiculous Feedback, and Not-So-Subtle Advice from Teenagers, by Chip Leighton. (My favorite: “If I put more than one stamp on a letter, do I layer them or stick them side by side?”) Also read Matrix, a historical novel by Lauren Groff, which was very good.
Still reading Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards.
Next up: Days of Grace, a memoir by Arthur Ashe with Arnold Rampersad; and High Times in the Low Parliament, a fantasy by Kelly Robson.
I’m on to the second in the Saint of Steel series, Paladin’s Strength. I like the world and the recurring characters, although I could do without the romance. At least there is an adventure story as well, and T. Kingfisher’s signature humor makes it all worthwhile.
Finished Honolulu Noir, a collection of noir stories by Hawaii writers, all set in Honolulu. The stories ranged mostly from dreadful to sort of okay. Two did stand above the dross, both straight-up detective stories from yesteryear, one set in 1953, the other in 1928. The 1953 story was by Scott Kikkawa and featured his Detective Francis “Sheik” Yoshikawa, who first appeared in Kikkawa’s noir novel Kona Winds, an excellent read. Kikkawa himself is a federal law enforcement officer and writes well. Except for those two stories, there is no reason to waste your time with this anthology even if you have a particular interest in Hawaii.
Have started The Exchange, John Grisham’s sequel to The Firm.
I finished Dance of the Comedians: 75 years of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote by Dan Sendker. This must be a pretty obscure book – there’s only one review on Amazon.
As I remarked when I first mentioned this book, it’s incredibly long (about 500 pages), and looked as if it had even more information than I would want.
This turned out to be true, but that’s not altogether a bad thing. Sendker researched this EXTREMELY thoroughly, and shows knowledge of pop culture history I would not expect in someone as young as he is (based on what he wrote about his own history in the book).
He not only lists EVERY. SINGLE. CARTOON. featuring the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, he gives full credits, including which animator animated which scene, what the musical cues and borrowings were, and a synopsis of each cartoon with breakdowns of all the gags. He does this not only for the classic Chuck Jones cartoons, but the ones by other WB directors, and those may be Depatie-Freleng. And the Bugs Bunny/Wile E. Coyote cartoons. And Sam the Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf. And the web cartoons, and the later CGI cartoons, and those appearing on other Looney Tunes franchises. And he devotes an entire chapter to the mocie “Coyote vs. ACME”.
He gives Bios of all the directors and animators. And background drawers, and writers.
Most of that covers about half the book. But he wasn’t done.
He gives a breakdown of every single comic book featuring the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. I mean he gives synopses for every single story in every single issue of comics from Dell, Gold Key, and DC. And every Big Little Book, and Golden Books. And details of every single video game featuring the pair.
It’s a completist’s dream. I think I found something he missed, though – View Master put out a three-reel set of reels featuring the Road Runner. And they also put out a separate reel that was only for the View Master projector featuring the Road Runner that wasn’t in that packet.
Incidentally, the unusual title comes from the section of Bedrich Smetana’s opera The Bartered Bride, “The Dance of the comedians”. I didn’t realize that this music even existed (although I’d heard of Smetana and The Bartered Bride) , or that it was used by Warners Brother music director Carl Stalling in a lot of cartoons. It became something of a signature tune for the Road Runner series. Someone has even put together a supercut of the music as used in WB cartoons:
Now I’m reading Leviathan Wakes by James A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). I completely missed these when they were coming out, and only learned about them through the TV adaptation of The Expanse.
You should contact Mr. Sendker! He’ll either be interested to hear about it, or he’ll climb in your window some night and kill you. 
I read The Mysterious Mr. Quin by Agatha Christie. I had read it eons ago in my early 20s, so it was new for me now. 
Some of the stories where just okay, one or two were bad(the Wikipedia editor and I disagree on the bad ones) And three really stood out. They were The Dead Harlequin, The Face of Helen (for the ingenious method of attempted murder) and The World’s End.
Finished Days of Grace, a memoir by Arthur Ashe with Arnold Rampersad, which was powerful; and High Times in the Low Parliament, a fantasy by Kelly Robson, which was okay.
Still reading Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards.
Next up: Banking on Death by Emma Lathen and The Monster’s Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World, by David K. Randall.
Put my other book on hold to start listening to the latest by one of my favorite authors.
Lethal Prey by John Sandford
On audio I finally finished Rebellion and have moved on to The Autobiography of Mark Twain I’m halfway through the first disc, and they still haven’t yet read any of Twain’s own words. It’s all credits and Introduction.
I’m a big Twain fan, and I couldn’t help noticing that have seen many copies of Volume 1 of this three-volume set in used book stores, but I’ve never seen volumes 2 or 3 there. Similarly, although I’ve seen the audiobook of volume 1 in new and used bookstores, I’ve never seen audio versions of volumes 2 or 3 anywhere.
There are a few reasons I can think of for this. People may have bought the first volume, or had it given to them as gifts, when it first came out. Maybe they thought they would like it, or (if a gift) their friends thought they would like it. Or they thought they ought to read it in pursuit of Culture with a capital “C”.
Or it could be because the first volume has the most “traditional” form of very readable autobiography – the part that Twain’s executor Albert Bigelow Paine abstracted and published after his death as his “autobiography” (against Twain’s instructions and wishes – Twain didn’t want it published until a century after his death, which is when Volume 1 appeared). I’d read the Paine-edited “autobiography” before i bought the real thing. And a lot of the Real Thing consists of weird short entries of almost stream-of-consciousness writing (actually Twain’s dictation), and people found that hard going, so they bailed after the first volume.
In any event, I like Twain’s writing, even in the weirder parts of his autobio.