Thanks for the recommendation for The Ladies of Grace Adieu. I’ll check it out when I finish JS&MN. I read Piranesi a while back and really enjoyed it.
Heimskringla defeated me. I made it all the way through the St Olav section and I was looking forward to the Harold Hardrada bit, but the constant digressions wore me completely out. I’ve put it on the used book store trade-in pile and pulled Joseph Andrews & Shamela off the shelf in its place.
There’s a collection of shorter Icelandic sagas I’ve dipped into now and again–Edited by Jane Smiley.
Finished This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together, by Jon Mooallem, which was interesting. My favorite part of the book takes places years before the earthquake, in which a man in Texas goes on a business trip for a few weeks. Upon his return, he discovers that his wife has done the following, all without discussing any of this with him prior to his trip: 1. She has bought a plot of land next to their house. 2. She has had their house moved to this land. 3. She has had construction started on a new house on the first piece of property.
Now I’m reading Three Men on the Bummel, by Jerome K. Jerome.
Finished:
Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan 1942-1945, by Barrett Tillman, and Shift, by Hugh Howey.
Started:
Death in Daylesford, by Kerry Greenwood
Stranded in the Sky: The Untold Story of Pan Am Luxury Airliners Trapped on the Day of Infamy, by Philip Jett
Next up:
Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, by Richard B Frank
Dare we ask why? Or will the answer be, “You need to read the book”?
@Catamount and @susan – I am much in favor of Icelandic sagas.
Working my way (slowly) through Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. I’m liking it so far, but there’s a pretty fair way to go.
I’m almost done with that myself! Despite the goofy subtitle (why mention both “Imperial” and “Empire” in the same short sentence?), I think it’s excellent - very well-documented and readable. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read on the last year of WWII in the Pacific, planning for what would surely have been a bloody invasion, and Truman’s momentous decision to drop the A-bombs.
I finished listening to Every City is Every Other City by John McFetridge. I thought it was a good read, with a couple of interesting sub-plots enmeshed with the main storyline. I’ll look for more of his books.
Finished The Silent Companions today. It seemed to me that the author tried very hard to put a twist in this book, but it didn’t quite land. There were other issues as well; I didn’t really like the main character, and there was a red herring subplot that remained unexplained. However, it was almost the sort of book I’d like to read, so I will give this author another chance.
The book doesn’t say why she did it, other than the fact that she liked getting her own way.
Finished Three Men on the Bummel, by Jerome K. Jerome, which I enjoyed. Note: This book was published in 1900, and parts of it have not aged well.
Now I’m reading Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism, by Elsa Sjunneson.
Again based on a suggestion from Libby, I started listening to Cradle of the Deep by Dietrich Kalteis. Pretty good thus far.
I finished Philip Glass, Words Without Music: A Memoir. It was okay, with interesting information; however, it was pretty emotionally flat and at times somewhat elliptical. He jumps around a lot as well. Still, I’m glad I read it.
Currently reading Gold Fame Citrus, a post-water-crisis apocalypse (California version), but the style doesn’t grab me and so far I’m not finding the characters engaging.
Finished Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism, by Elsa Sjunneson, which was powerful.
Now I’m reading Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, a science fiction novel by Lawrence M. Schoen.
Finished Charles Stross’ latest in the Laundry Files series, Season of Skulls. Great fun summer read. I like how the series centers different characters every time. The audiobook narrator is also first rate.
Also finished The Country of the Blind: A Memoir of the End of Sight, by Andrew Leland. Leland has retinitis pigments (RP), as I do. He’s younger than me, and a couple of decades behind me in the progression of the disease. He describes, much better than I could, what it’s like. He profiles blind activists, organizations, and engineers, touches on different approaches to disability, and wrestles with a lot of things I have, but far more coherently. I kept finding myself wanting to pause the audiobook so I could commiserate, expand on a point, or argue with him. I think the book is excellent, though I may not be really objective about it, since it is so close to home for me.
I read Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, largely because someone mentioned it in a previous thread. It treads a lot of very familiar ground: young people in a closed society go through intensive training to learn to ride magical dragons into war. It was a really enjoyable read, though, and I can’t wait for the sequel to come out later this year.
I’m now reading the Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks. It’s fine. I’m a sucker for the “woman finds love/community/purpose in life while running a bookshop” genre.
Started this morning on The Militia House, by John Milas, a horror novel set during the war in Afghanistan. Feeling wary about the possibility of animals being hurt in this one, but okay so far.
The Passage - Justin Cronin. A post-apocalyptic novel, and apparently part of a trilogy. Very long, but quite well written.
Finished Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, a science fiction novel by Lawrence M. Schoen. Not bad, but reads like a mix of Planet of the Apes, Dune, and David Brin’s Uplift series, all of which were done better.
Now I’m reading I Brake for Yard Sales and Flea Markets, Thrift Shops, Auctions, and the Occasional Dumpster, by Lara Spencer.
I finished Spellbreaker by Charlie N. Holmberg last night. It was okay, the main failing was that nothing really happened in the first half of the book. The last third was wild though and pretty much made up for the lack of action before then. I will read the second book soon.
Over the weekend I finished Downfall by Richard B. Frank, a WWII history about the last days of Imperial Japan. As I said upthread, it’s excellent.
I also finished Satchel by Larry Tye, a bio of the Negro League and later Major League pitching legend Satchel Paige. As I wrote before, he was remarkable on the mound, always quotable about baseball and how to live a good life, but enigmatic as to his family, childhood and even his date of birth. An amazing pitcher but not always a nice person (he married three times, at least once bigamously, and apparently cheated on all his wives). Still, I enjoyed learning a lot more about him.
Still reading Kykuit, the Rockefeller Family Home by Ann Rockefeller Roberts, with photographs by Mary Louise Pierson, her daughter. It’s a beautifully-illustrated book about the Rockefeller estate, north of New York City, established by John D. himself. I hope to visit there someday.
I’ve also just begun Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 by D.M. Giangreco, which has an argumentative tone I don’t really appreciate, but I think it will be a good supplement to Frank’s Downfall.
Next up as an audiobook: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, a crime novel.