With great power…
I also picked it up because of your recommend. :)
At this rate, Barbara Truelove’s gonna owe me money.
Still reading Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow by Jesse Stuart. Finished The Long Way Down, by Robb White, a YA novel from the 1970’s about trapeze artists which I found more entertaining than I expected, and Rumbles: A Curious History of the Gut, by Elsa Richardson, much of the content of which I’d already read elsewhere.
Next up: The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, and In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World, by Simon Garfield.
Envy me, for I have been to the library and obtained the latest Benjamin January mystery, Murder in the Trembling Lands.
Great book! But Hamilton resigned his Army commission in 1782; he didn’t write any of The Federalist Papers until after the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
Burr was Vice President of the United States and would’ve been presiding over the Senate, not the House.
Zipped through the graphic novel of The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, illustr. by Dennis Calero. Bradbury’s words are as good as ever; Calero is an amateurish artist not at all up to the challenges of the text. Don’t waste your time.
Finished Stone & Sky by Ben Aaronovitch. It was a fun romp into corporate espionage and Scottish folklore. I’m enjoying the person Abigail is becoming and I am ALWAYS here for Peter’s snark.
I finished Royal Gambit over the weekend, it was really good! One of the best in the Rook series so far.
I started today on
It’s about a robot left to its own devices in a world where human authority is disappearing. Off to a slow start, but seems promising.
You might want to check out Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross. It’s about a robot society where humans have gone extinct. The problem for the robots is that while they are intelligent and self-aware, they also were programmed with the central purpose of serving humans. So they’re trying to adjust to a society where their central purpose is no longer possible.
Thanks!
Still reading Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow by Jesse Stuart. Finished The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, which was okay; and In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World, by Simon Garfield, which was very interesting and enjoyable.
Next: Robert B. Parker’s Hot Property, a Spenser novel by Mike Lupica, and Rosamond Lehmann in Vegas, a collection of columns from The Believer magazine by Nick Hornby.
Lots of space opera, bit of bodice ripper, intriguing mystery.
https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/paradox-series-by-rachel-bach/
So far this month I’ve finished:
After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945, by Ben Shephard – A Nazi concentration camp (the one where Anne Frank died) liberated by the British.
The Winds of Fate, by S M Stirling – the second book in his new series, about a history professor and four grad students who are tricked into taking a trip from 21st-century Austria to second-century Pannonia (same place, different name, very different government).
Their Backs Against the Sea: The Battle of Saipan and the Largest Banzai Attack of World War II, by Bill Sloan – also covers the Battle of Tinian.
Etiquette and Espionage, by Gail Carriger – the first book in her second series of steampunk stories, which are actually prequels to her first series, set in 1850s England. A fourteen-year-old girl is sent to a rather nonstandard finishing school.
The Axmann Conspiracy: The Nazi Plan for a Fourth Reich and How the U.S. Army defeated It, by Scott Andrew Selby – Axmann was the last head of the Hitler Youth, and was supposed to start preparations for the eventual return to power of the Nazis.
Currently reading:
Tarzan the Magnificent, the 21st book in the series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Could have sworn I’d read all 24 books back in the late '60s/early '70s, but the only things in this one that are at all familiar are Tarzan and Muviro.
Soulless, by Gail Carriger – the first book in the above-mentioned first series, set in 1870s England.
Infantry Soldier: Holding the Line at the Battle of the Bulge , by George W Neill – memoir of a soldier in the 99th Infantry Division.
Coming up:
I’ll probably get Curtsies & Conspiracies, by Gail Carriger, the second Finishing School book. And I’m going to reread Jungle Girl (aka The Land of Hidden Men), by Edgar Rice Burroughs, in which a newly minted American doctor stumbles across a lost city in the Cambodian jungle.
I read that awhile back. I loved the concept but was underwhelmed by the actual writing.
Starlings: The Curious Odyssey of a Most Hated Bird Mike Stark
In the late 1800s Eugene Schieffelin, a wealthy New Yorker, released several hundred European starlings that he had had shipped over from England (sturnus vulgaris) into Central Park*. This was not a good idea. Within a few decades the noisy aggressive birds were a nuisance all over the country Schemes with varying degrees of hare brainedness were undertaken to rid cities and farms of the invaders, without success. Nowadays we mostly just put up with them.
* there is a story that he did this because he wanted every bird mentioned in Shakespeare to be living in the park, but this is likely not true.
Short pleasant book.
Just finished A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage by Asia Mackay. An unusual storyline, in which two serial killers, both of whom prey on Really Bad Men, meet and fall in love. After they are married, they become a lethal killing team, eliminating scumbags all over Europe. After baby comes, however, the killing stops, and they are suddenly another suburban couple. But a couple of years later, the bloodlust returns.
I enjoyed this book for the most part, although I thought it dragged somewhat in the second half. But a really surprise ending made up for that shortcoming. Overall, I would recommend this book.
Still reading Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow by Jesse Stuart. Finished Robert B. Parker’s Hot Property, a Spenser novel by Mike Lupica, and Rosamond Lehmann in Vegas, a collection of book review columns from The Believer magazine by Nick Hornby, both of which were okay.
Next: Ruled Britannia, by Harry Turtledove.
Finished Never Flinch, the latest by by Stephen King. Two separate cases – a serial killer on the loose and a psycho pro-life religious nut stalking a pro-choice icon on her lecture tour – eventually converge. Private eye Holly Gibney is on the job. Quite good.
Have started The Big Empty, Robert Crais’ latest. Almost halfway through. A young Internet influencer hires Elvis Cole to find her father, who vanished suddenly ten years earlier when she was 13. I expect to finish it before our imminent move back to Bangkok, although things are a bit chaotic at the moment.
I finished the first. A mostly-funny little novel with some good things to say about freedom, love, history, courage, and the abiding and transformative power of reading. It’s a good book-club book.
Made a little progress on the second. Just hasn’t grabbed me the way The Martian did.
Now about halfway through Knife, Salman Rushdie’s short memoir of the 2022 fatwa-inspired murder attempt against him at Chautauqua, and its aftermath. Both harrowing and interesting.