Our library system has all of the Home Front Detective (London, WW I) and Domesday Book (England, 1080s) books, and a handful of Railway Detective (England, 1850s), but that’s it Thus far I like the WWI books the best. I’d like to try the ocean liner series, too, but none of those are available
Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America - Scott Ellsworth
The dramatic last year of the Civil War, from the beginning of the Virginia campaign to the Lincoln assassination.
Covers a lot of ground in just 200 or so pages, so doesn’t go into much depth on any one topic. But pretty good all in all.
Started A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, it’s a reread for me. I finally got my bookclub to read something GOOD! 
I finished Buckeye by Patrick Ryan…a novel covering a couple of families in a northwestern Ohio town/small city between the beginning of WW2 (mostly) and the mid-seventies.
I loved it! Extremely well-written and very real characters–Ryan has a gift for making the reader understand the characters and their motivations even when we don’t agree with the choices they’re making (and some of the choices are really pretty indefensible).
I’d say it’s the best book I’ve read all year, which is true though it isn’t saying much given that we’re still in mid-February, so instead I’ll say it’s right up there with the best I’ve read in the last couple of years. Which is pretty decent praise, all things considered!
I managed to get through high school, college, and young adulthood without reading this novel, even though I like Dickens and a lot of people around me LOVED the book (well, that may have been part of the problem for me–why would I want to read something that OTHER people loved? ←- fortunately, I grew up).
Then a few years back I was hired to work on developing a reading/ELA program for 9th and 10th graders. One of the literature excerpts they used was chapters 1 and 2 of Great Expectations. Wow, were those chapters good. I was captivated–so captivated I almost forgot to write the questions, glosses, and prompts about the text my editors were expecting. Oops.
But the next chance I could I went over to the library and checked out a copy of the book. I did think it dragged a little in the middle (though I take your point that Dickens’ portrayal of Pip in the section is deliberate), but otherwise I completely second your review. Great book.
Even if other people liked it too.
I read the Ancient Egypt book last year. I also found it interesting, if not compelling.
I’m over halfway through book 9/9 of the Slough House series. This one isn’t grabbing me as well as the others. Too much focus on non-slowhorse characters, who are by far more entertaining than the Park people.
Finished The Roma: A Traveling History, by Madeline Potter, which was interesting; and The Case of the Marble Monster and Other Stories, retold by I. G. Edmonds, which was fun. The latter was a story collection, of which my favorite was “The Willow Witness”.
Next up: Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe, by Ella Frances Sanders, and A Palace Near the Wind, by Ai Jiang.
Finished A Box Full of Darkness…meh. I’m not sure why the characters needed to be so unlikeable. The middle kind of dragged, and then suddenly the solution came relatively easy and they all lived happily ever after. I’ll still pick up future books by this author because she writes in the genre I like, but I’ll keep my expectations low.
Finished The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, which was good if not fantastic.
Started A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill, which has definitely grabbed my attention (stayed late yesterday reading for example) even if it has (IMHO unnecesary) dream sequences that bother me in their surreality.
I finished Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold, and goodness, I found it quite boring. The ending was nice though. But then I started the next book, Penric’s Fox, which is off to a promising start. I can’t really explain why I kept reading, I guess because it’s Bujold.
It takes a lot to sustain my interest with fantasy.
IIRC Penric and the Shaman was somewhat unique in that there was no antagonist. There generally wasn’t a lot of conflict which made for a slow story, but I guess I was in the mood for that – just seeing a slice of life in that world.
I quite liked the Penric series as comfort reads.
I am currently listening to Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner. It is the second book in the Fallen Gods trilogy (after Godkiller). They are character-driven stories and light on tropes – no reluctant kings or whining children. I feel they are very much in the spirit of Bujold’s style.
I haven’t read the other books. I wonder if the Penric books are meant to be more of a break/rest from a more complicated narrative?
At any rate, Penric’s Fox started with worms. I love worms, so I’m back in.
Finished A Cosmology of Monsters, which was good.
Between yesterday and today devoured Los días de la revolución (Revolutionary days) by Eduardo Sacheri, a very good pop history book about the Argentinian* Revolution and War of Independence from Spain.
Now debating whether to continue with the logical follow-up Los días de la violencia (The days of violence, about the civil wars that followed independence) or look for something different.
Or may be read Ser soldado en las guerras de independencia by Alejandro Rabinovich (Being a soldier in the independence wars) and finally scratch and itch I’ve had since primary school:
Exactly what weapons, equipment and tactics were used in those wars?
Both school lessons and history books say little more than “The revolutionaries won this battle in this place but then lost that battle in that other place” and so on. No details on tactics, equipment, nothing more than some vague strategic notions.
* Which is funny because one of the main theses of the book is that there was no “Argentina” at that point in time.
Finished Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe, by Ella Frances Sanders, which was well-written and which would have interested me more if I hadn’t already been familiar with the science in the essays. Also finished A Palace Near the Wind, by Ai Jiang, which was okay.
Next up: Star Light, by Hal Clement, and We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay: Tips, Tales, Travels, by Gary Janetti.
I finished Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge and… The book suffered a lot from an author who had an idea but possibly not quite the talent to bring it to life.. and an obsessive love of metaphors. Dear God, so many metaphors, cut them out and this would have been a really good short story. And sooooooooooooooo much exposition.
I really enjoyed the last hour- 20-30 pages- of the story, which is why I ultimately gave it 3 stars on Goodreads.
Currently reading Lone Women by Victor LaValle. It’s about a lone woman, yes, who is black and trying to survive Montana in the early 1900s. Ah, but this is a horror novel, and this lone woman has something secret in a very heavy trunk.
Recommended by @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness.
Almost done with Rose of Jericho, a different American history horror novel, set in the late 19th century just outside Pittsburgh, I think.
It’s…okay?
The story follows three women who are witches, and their move to a small town. It also follows a guy whose wife dies on the third page of unspecified illness and who, in vengeance, tracks down and murders Death.
Early in the book a witch casts a spell by peeling a strip of bark off an oak tree and chewing it, tasting its mintiness. I almost put the book down there, because THAT’S NOT OAK, that’s birch or something. I don’t much care about tiny details in general, but such a specific touch about spellcasting is supposed to make me feel the witch’s attunement to nature, and getting it so wrong gives me exactly the opposite feels. I guess it’d be like if Rambo racked his machine gun before mowing down the bad guys in a hail of arrows.
Otherwise, there’s some mild creepiness, but I’ve never really engaged with any of the characters.
Finished Star Light, by Hal Clement, which is a sequel to Mission of Gravity and Close to Critical. I enjoyed it. Also finished We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay: Tips, Tales, Travels, by Gary Janetti. Meh.
Next up: Stupid TV, Be More Funny: How the Golden Era of The Simpsons Changed Television–and America–Forever, by Alan Siegel, and To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf.
Finished Ser soldado en las guerras de independencia (Being a soldier in the independence wars) by Alejandro Rabinovich which I loved (though I still need to find a book about the actual battles in those wars).
Continued with Los días de la violencia (The days of violence) by Eduardo Sacheri which I also liked.
I tried to find more books on that vein and failed so I read, The Everlasting
by Alix Harrow and liked it very much.
Now once again I’m casting my nets in search of something to read.