Read Brendan Slocumb’s novel Symphony of Secrets. It’s his second novel, and like the first, The Violin Conspiracy, is based in the world of (classical) music with an accomplished Black musician as the protagonist.
Early in the 20th century, composer Frederic Delany has risen from the ranks of exploited Tin Pan Alley songwriters and pianists to the consensus holder of the title “Greatest American Composer Ever.” His fame rests on many compositions, but most especially on a planned five-opera cycle. The first four took the world by storm, and people are eagerly awaiting the fifth, but…nothing. It’s rumored that the manuscript has somehow been lost. Delany eventually produces what seems to be a version based on his memory of the original, and it is…not good. Panned by the critics, in fact, as being even less than mediocre.
Now, in 2018, the missing manuscript has been found and Dr. Bern Hendricks has been hired by the Delany Foundation (run by Delany’s relatives) to prepare a copy in advance of an actual performance of what everyone is sure will be a great success. There are oddities from the start, including a code that Delany seems to have devised, and Bern (and his girlfriend/computer whiz Eboni Washington) quickly begin to delve into the question of just why opera #5 was so bad.
The action flips back and forth between the present day investigation and the story of Delany on his rise to stardom. On the whole, I liked it, though the puzzle aspect doesn’t stay a puzzle for long, and the “bad guys” are too evil and too all-powerful. I also noticed I had trouble sticking with the novel–I’d read a couple of chapters and put it down and go find something else to do–which isn’t usual for me when I’m reading a book I like. Oh well, probably has more to do with me than with the book. All in all, I’m glad I read it.
I just finished Station Eleven also. It was good; I’m always interested in these post-apocalyptic stories and this one seemed more like what would actually happen than most. I wasn’t so interested in Arthur or the comic book stuff, but there were some very nice touches…such as the plane that landed but never approached the airport. Jeez.
Just finished Family Business, by Jonathan Sims–a fairly cozy horror novel about the nature of grief, plus eldritch horrors. It didn’t blow me away, but it was pretty entertaining.
Yeh, the comic book stuff seemed almost tacked on. I also would have liked less present day narrative, I’m far more interested in how people cope with a crisis and how they come back from it.
I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump over here, but last night I finished The Nest, by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney. I read it in fits and starts over about a year, but now that I’m done, I liked it. It’s a story about adult siblings who have been depending on an inheritance and the aftermath of the inheritance never materializing. It’s told from multiple perspectives and I think I would have liked slightly fewer perspectives.
I keep thinking about this book, and realized I never said anything about it. It was good and all that, but one scene kind of ruined it for me, because it was much less believable than ghosts or time travel. It was the part with the little girl finding and holding the apartment. Just incredibly dumb and unnecessary. Apparently this tale takes place on another planet.
I finished What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher and wow, I like this one even better than the first book.
Again it’s a novella, I read it in two days but someone with a lot of free time would likely get it done in a couple hours. It’s fast paced, snarky and so so very T. Kingfisher.
Finished The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner, a science fiction novel from 1975 which had interesting ideas (many of which came true) and language use (I told my husband it read like a cross between Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson), but forgettable characters, in my opinion.
Now I’m reading Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, by Keith Houston.
Finished! Good stuff as always. I wondered if Easton was going to go through more Poe-inspired adventures, but I didn’t recognize this one as a retelling of anything. I’m very glad the horses were okay!
I started immediately on another book, The Haunting of Rookward House, by Darcy Coates. Everything suffers in comparison to T. Kingfisher, but I’m not sure if I’ll go on. Coates is one of those authors that I keep picking up because she writes the kind of things I want to read, but I don’t recall any that have been done very well.
I’ve read a couple of Rebecca Makkai’s novels (The Borrower,The Hundred-Year House) and liked them both, so I thought I’d give her newest a whirl. This one is called I Have Some Questions for You, and I’m not quite sure what to think about it.
When Bodie, the narrator, was in boarding school in the nineties, her roommate Thalia was murdered. The athletic trainer, a Black man, was tried and convicted for the crime, but Bodie isn’t so sure that he’s guilty. She comes back to the school to teach a mini-course in 2018 and–with the help of a couple of her students–essentially reopens the case. She suspects that the school’s music teacher, Mr. Bloch, was having an inappropriate relationship with Thalia and may have been the actual killer.
The novel is partly about the whole Thalia mystery, but is more broadly about the concept of justice and even more about the violence and harassment inflicted on women by men. There is a recurring theme: “The story had just broken. It was the one where the woman was attacked with a switchblade for meeting up with a friend. No, it was the woman with the uncle. No, it was the other woman with the uncle. No, it was the Congressional scandal, you know the one…” It’s very effective.
I liked the book all right. It’s quite well written, and it’s deep. But I didn’t like it as much as I’d hoped. Bodie becomes steadily less likable as the novel goes on, and I prefer when possible to be on the side of my protagonists; she does some things that are hard for me to swallow. (Yes, it’s quite possible the author did this deliberately to make things less cut-and-dried and more ambiguous. Still!) And the students Bodie’s working with are IMHO too smart, too sophisticated, too dogged, and generally too perfect to be believable. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of good stuff in here, and I don’t feel like I wasted my time or anything.
A mining prospector on a distant planet discovers a group of cute animals that seem to be fairly bright. Which is a problem, because if they are intelligent life, mining on the planet must halt. And powerful forces will stop at nothing to prevent that.
A remake of H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy (with the permission of his estate), which I should reread.
Entertaining fun
Finding Judge Crater Stephen J. Riegel
On August 6, 1930, Judge Joseph Crater left a New York restaurant where he had been dining with friends and got into a cab and was never seen again. His disappearance remains a mystery, although the author makes a plausible case for what happened.
I enjoyed the book, although it gets bogged down in discussions about New York city politics and legal matters. My copy was set in a rather small font size, which was annoying.
Oh my god! I read Fuzzy Nation when it came out, and I was like, “I swear I read this book when I was a teenager!” but obviously hadn’t. Thank you for the explanation!
I only seem to make time to listen to audiobooks. I was using Amazon/Audible until my daughter turned me onto Libby. The selection is obviously more limited than Audible but the price can’t be beat. I’m currently on book 2 of Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series, “The Drawing of the Three.” The first book, “The Gunslinger” was a little slow and I had to keep referring to the wiki article to make sure that I understood what was going on but it did setup book 2 pretty well. Since I enjoyed LotR, I think I’ll probably like these as well.
I love Libby! I get most of my book club’s books there, since my taste and theirs is often very different. (I continue to go because I have friends in it and I enjoy the members just not the books. )
