Finished The Impossible Fortress, by Jason Rekulak. It has the feel of a YA novel, although I think it’s being marketed to adults. It could be beneficial for kids to read, as the kids in the book make some dumb decisions that have actual consequences. It’s a nice feel-good story, but not entirely predictable (one twist really got me good)! Anyway, if you like stories about eighties teens, check it out. The title of the book refers to a video game the kids are working on (as well as the store they are trying to rob) and you can actually play the game at the author’s website: http://jasonrekulak.com/game/
No spoilers to worry about.
I have another Rekulak book in the TBR pile. This one is horror and I’m looking forward to it (despite the blurb from Stephen King).
Finished Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm: Poems and Essays , by Yu Xiuhua, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. The best poem was “Early Winter Evening” and the best essay (and best piece in the collection) was “Bright Full Moon, Towering Tree Shadows”, about the life and death of the author’s grandmother. Powerful.
Now I’m reading Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer
The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War Andrew Nagorski
A straightforward account of the attempt by Nazi Germany to seize Moscow in late 1941, following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union earlier that year. Were it not for several blunders by Hitler, they probably would have succeeded, and it might have changed the outcome of the war. Stalin, the Soviet leader, also made a fair number of mistakes. And both sides displayed a callous brutality that is hard to overstate.
The author has done a commendable job in seeking out archival material to describe the experiences of a wide variety of people involved in the convict, from the top leaders to ordinary soldiers and civilians.
Highly recommended.
I should add that it was a little disconcerting reading about tanks and artillery slogging it out on the Eurasian steppes while tanks and artillery are slogging it out on the Eurasian steppes.
Started today on Joanne Harris’ A Narrow Door, third in a series of mystery novels about St. Oswald’s School for Boys. If this is as good as the others, I’m in clover.
I’m about three-quarters done with my audiobook of The Longest Day, Cornelius Ryan’s much-praised history of the WWII D-Day landings. The narrator is a Brit with an oddly flat voice, but the story is quite interesting. Now I might have to see Saving Private Ryan again.
Just finished an audiobook of Sally Rooney’s novel Beautiful World, Where Are You, which is a kind of Irish Millennial romance/drama, for lack of a better phrase. Very talky and self-absorbed, but with subtle and well-written characterization and (bonus!) some good sex scenes. The narrator is terrific, too, and not just because of her lively, lilting Irish brogue.
I’m about halfway through a collection of three alternate-universe novellas, Star Trek: Myriad Universes: Echoes and Refractions, by Geoff Trowbridge, Keith R.A. DeCandido and Chris Roberson. The first was OK, the second is better, and we’ll see about the third.
Taking a break for the moment from John Scalzi’s excellent sf novel The Last Colony, set in his Old Man’s War universe.
Just finished The Man I Think I Know by Mike Gayle.
It was a pleasure to read. A story of loss, mistakes, sliding doors moments, hitting rock bottom and the agony of trying to get back up and failing each time to the point you give up on life. But then how one twist of fate can reignite the spark in your life through a friendship that brings two like-minded and yet very different people together to get back to the top of life’s mountain top and never look back. It’s an outstanding, thoughtful and in these times I would say a book very relevant.
Finished What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction , by Alice McDermott, which I enjoyed. She quotes an anonymous valentine written for a friend of hers, a professor who taught creative writing and hated adjectives:
“Roses are red/Violets are blue/But for Roger/Just roses and violets will do.”
Now I’m reading Mermaid Confidential, by Tim Dorsey.
Finished WorldCon Guest of Honor Speeches, then read Game Birds from the Golden Nature Guide series, a book I hadn’t realized existed. Evidently the Canvasback is a gourmet’s delight.
Now I’m zipping through Stephen Jay Gould’s Questioning the Milennium
Finished Scalpels & Psychopaths by S.C. Wynne, it’s her 2nd Dr. Maxwell Thornton book; a cozy whodunnit series about a disgraced Los Angeles surgeon who flees to a small town in Texas and suffers an ungodly amount of culture shock… plus murder. Nothing to sing about from the rooftops but it’s a fun series with good characters and a bouncy puppy.
Just read Jamie Harrison’s new novel, The Center of Everything. I don’t know if all y’all have run into her before. She’s Jim Harrison’s daughter, FWIW, and has a unique, macabre voice. This novel is dense and slightly hallucinatory. It’s kind of a murder mystery, but not really. I can’t really describe it (and need to re-read it). Her previous books (Edge of the Crazies, An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence, Blue Deer Thaw, The Widow Nash) are all excellent also, although some are out of print. Montana wackiness.
I finished Cleveland and the Civil War by W. Dennis Keating, a concise, interesting volume by a local historian; I learned a lot.
In two days, I also devoured Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Not nearly as big or complicated as her masterful Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and unlike that book there’s nary a footnote to be seen, but a quiet, deeply moving fantasy novel about a semi-amnesiac man living in a vast marble palace that is, from time to time, inundated by the sea. Gradually, from visitors - one friendly, and others not - and through his own inquiries, we learn just who he is and how he got there. Highly recommended.
A 1936 Newbery Honor winner, All Sail Set by Armstrong Sperry is a YA novel about a young man who helps design and then sails from New York to China as an apprentice aboard the famous clipper ship Flying Cloud. A straightforward adventure story with beautiful woodcut illustrations (reminiscent of Rockwell Kent) by the author.
I finished Trusted Like the Fox by Sara Woods… it only took me a month to read. In the driest of deserts, there are bleached bones and sand pancakes that are less dry than this book…
I have started Someone Killed his Editor a murder myster by Josh Lanyon.
After reading 60 pages of Sundial, the new horror novel by Catriona Ward, I quit. So far, it’s all about an abusive marriage, (plus some animal abuse and maggots). I’m just not up for this, man.
