I was rereading some Stephen King and your mention of short stories led to me rereading a few collections, starting with Everything’s Eventual. I do prefer novels.
In one of King’s introductions he mentions Rose Madder, talking about how poorly it sold and his surprise that nobody ever wanted to do a movie based on the book. So I’m rereading it now.
Me too! I like to think about the story in my spare time, or as I lie awake at night, to predict where it goes next. Can’t do that with the short stories, because it already went! 
Rose Madder’s not one of my favorites, but I liked it all right.
Finished Fairy Tale, by Stephen King. A high-school kid in a Chicago suburb befriends an old man and his equally aging German shepherd. A portal to another world exists on the man’s property, and soon the kid finds himself enmeshed in an honest-to-goodness fairy tale. Very good. I enjoyed it from beginning to end.
Next up is The Judge’s List, by John Grisham.
I finished Phasers on Stun! It’s a great a history of Star Trek and its various evolutions, changes, and re-visionings over the years and I’m recommending it to all my Trekkie friends. Despite the author’s insistence, I am still unconvinced that the reboot movies are in any way good. They’re like Highlander 2: people talked about it for a while but then reason reasserted itself and they were given up as a bad job.
Interesting news from the final chapter: there’s supposedly going to be a new Star Trek movie revealed later this year. I am waiting with lowered expectations due to those reboot movies that never happened.
Finished Castles from Cobwebs by J. A. Mensah, which was good.
Now I’m reading My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food and Feelings, edited by Zosia Mamet.
Finished My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food and Feelings, edited by Zosia Mamet, a collection of essays, of which the best was “The Rat Birthday Pie” by Jillian Bell, which was not what it sounds like, but rather about the author’s first taste of banoffee pie, which happened while a mouse was staring at her. She later made this pie for a friend’s birthday.
Something New by P.G. Wodehouse. (Note: This is an American edition; the book appears to have been titled Something Fresh when it was first published.) It’s the first Blandings book.
Thank you for the recommendation~you made it irresistible. Just went and downloaded the ebook from my public library.
I appreciate the tantalizing enthusiasm~lately my reading impetus has needed a nudge and your review is just the ticket. You get credit for a mitzvah today.
Just finished:
Storm Surge (Destroyermen #8), by Taylor Anderson
Now reading:
Deadly Shores (Destroyermen #9), by Taylor Anderson
Coming up:
Straits of Hell (Destroyermen #10), by Taylor Anderson
Blood in the Water (Destroyermen #11), by Taylor Anderson
My pleasure. I hope you enjoy it as well!
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
A good book, but a step down from Slaughterhouse Five. I laughed quite a bit during this, but it kind of came together less than Slaughterhouse, which I really loved. Still, very good.
I did enjoy it~just finished it about half an hour ago. One of those books that are hard to put down once you’ve started reading, glad I had had my lunch! Intriguing escapism, lots of action and twists, never bogged down.
An author I will now keep an eye out for.
Man, I read both of those books while in college. Damn near fifty years ago. I may have to read them again.
I was way behind on these, just reading them for the first time. Slaughter house lives up to its reputation. It’s a great book. I think about it all the time.
I think Community also had a joke where the flag of their school was the same symbol.
Hah!..
Going to Extremes, Joe McGuinniss’ travels in 1970s Alaska. He’s fairly harsh, but honest in his take on the place. He acknowledges that it’s not for everyone, and one needs to keep in mind what the mentality was in Alaska at that time with the onset of Big Oil.
Currently reading Horseman: a tale of Sleepy Hollow by Christina Henry. Fairly pedestrian YA, but I’ll finish.
I finished Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris, his latest collection of short stories. The book focuses on the COVID pandemic and his (usually poor) adjustment to it. It’s not as funny as his older stuff, I’d say, but there are still some good laughs to be found. More cringeworthy, but definitely worth a read, is his story “Lady Marmalade,” about his family’s long-fraught relationship with his sister Tiffany, who eventually committed suicide.
I’m not too far into A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O’Brian by Dean King, with essays by John B. Hattendorf and J. Worth Estes, but I like it. Just the thing for anyone who, like me, loves O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels.
I’m also still making intermittent progress through Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, a very weird, sometimes unnerving novel about a house that’s much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, a distant-future sf novel about a terraforming project gone badly, and dangerously, awry.
I just began The End by British historian Ian Kershaw, exploring the last year of WWII and how, and why, so many Germans kept supporting the Nazi regime, even when its inevitable defeat was glaringly obvious.
Finished Something New by P.G. Wodehouse, which I enjoyed.
Now I’m reading Sold Into Egypt: Joseph’s Journey Into Human Being, by Madeleine L’Engle.