Finished Juliet Takes a Breath , by Gabby Rivera, which was okay.
Now I’m reading The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World, by Nichola Raihani.
Decided to read the Zoe Gilbert novel and found it a bit of a slog at times. Shame, as i really liked her Folk.
Not reading In the Wet by Shute and enjoying it a lot more! It was published in 1953 and does reflect attitudes and language of the time though. In the Australian Outback in the early 50s a dying man recounts a future life he believes he’s had in the 1980s…
Finished reading J. Hunter Holy’s The Flying Eyes. I was underwhelmed. It’s hard to shake the feeling that they presented her with a picture of the Schoenheorr painting and asked her if she could write a story to go with it (that kind of thing has definitely happened, I know).
Now on to The Return of the Pharaoh by Nicholas Meyer, which I learned about on this Board and picked up at a bookstore going out of business.
Also Time and Changes , the autobiography of L. Sprague de Camp, one of my favorite writers. I didn’t even know this existed until last month. I got to meet de Camp and sit down to talk with him one-on-one many years ago. One of my all-time favorite writers of science, science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction. (He tried to make a career of it, but it didn’t work out. But his Dragon of the Ishtar Gate and The Bronze God of Rhodes – think “Pillars of the Earth”, but about the Colossus of Rhodes instead of a medieval cathedral – are priceless)
On audio I’m reading Stephen KIng’s If It Bleeds
I must try not reading it again !
Finished The Searcher by Tana French. An ex-cop from North Carolina by way of Chicago retires to a small Irish village, where he gets involved in looking for a missing young man, Brendan. Very well written though the descriptions of nature become repetitive after a while. The plot moves forward slowly but hangs together well. I did get tired of the slow pace at times, especially during a very long and not actually very interesting scene in a pub. Overall, though, I liked it. I have another of her books out of the library for when I have a chance.
I have described her style as ultimate navel gazing…and overly fond of the sound of her own cleverness.
I don’t know that I’d go quite that far, but I certainly see where you’re coming from. That scene in the pub–self-indulgent would be a good word for it, though I’m not sure I could put my finger on exactly why!
I reread an old favorite of mine - Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright.
Finished The Beautiful and Damned, F Scott Fitzgerald’s second novel, published 100 years ago. Follows a dissolute couple at the start of the Jazz Age as they spiral downward. Loosely based at least in part on Fitzgerald’s own marriage to Zelda. It was pretty good but can’t hold a candle to his next novel, The Great Gatsby, which many consider to be THE Great American Novel, a notion I would not argue against.
Next, I’ve already started The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance, by Ron Chernow. His first book and the fourth one to be read by me following his excellent biographies of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and Ulysses Grant.
Finished Best Horror of the Year, Volume 12. Best stories: The Puppet Motel (Gemma Files); The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team (Joe Lansdale); Playscape (Diana Peterfreund); Mr. and Mrs. Kett (Sam Hicks); and The Butcher’s Table (Nathan Ballingrud). That’s five good stories, plus a couple other decent ones, out of a total of 22.
Now on to Best Horror of the Year, Volume 13.
The Bronze God of Rhodes is on my TBR list for later this year.
Finished The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World , by Nichola Raihani, which was good, and which I would have enjoyed more if I hadn’t already read much of the information in other places.
Now I’m reading The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold.
Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles Bernard Cornwell
A comprehensive history of the famously pivotal battle, with a lot of interesting info about the tactics, equipment, and people involved.
I finished Ian Fleming’s 1960 James Bond short story collection For Your Eyes Only, which was all right but not great. None of the stories has much to do with the later movies which took their names. “Quantum of Solace” is probably the best of the five, and it’s a very atypical Bond tale - mostly it’s about 007 listening to an old British colonial governor, late one night after dinner, tell the story of a marriage gone wrong.
Still reading this, and in a similar vein, I just started The Hundred Days by Patrick O’Brian, the next in his celebrated series of Napoleonic naval adventures. Capt. John “Lucky Jack” Aubrey has taken his beloved frigate HMS Surprise to Gibraltar after saving a British convoy in the Med, while his particular friend and ship’s surgeon Dr. Stephen Maturin mourns the death of someone close to him. Excellent, as are all of O’Brian’s books IMHO.
Finished The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold. Meh.
Now I’m reading Alfred Hitchcok Presents: A Month of Mystery, edited by Robert Arthur.
Well, I’m not reading it anymore as I’ve finished it! I enjoyed it a lot.
Quite a quick read with a hopelessly inaccurate, but interesting, vision of the 1980s from the early 1950s!
There’s been another big (but maybe not World) War and there’s been a socialist government in the UK for decades. Everything in England (by which I think he usually means the UK as a whole) is run down, massive continuing emigration has led to a diminishing population and empty houses are everywhere. And they still use the archaic ‘one man, one vote’ system of democracy! In more go-ahead countries more votes can be earned! Get a degree - get a second vote! Work abroad (and thus gain a broader outlook) for at least two years - get a third vote! All the way up to the extremely rarer 7th vote!
And, as is usual with Nevil Shute’s novels, there’s a lot of aeroplane stuff in it!
Anyway, now reading Plutoshine by Lucy Kissick.
A specialist team arrive at a small scientific colony on Pluto to build giant mirrors, etc. to make it more habitable. Proper hard SF, with some it told from the PoV of a mute 10 y.o. girl.
Good so far but I’ve only read 75 pages or so,
That 7th vote thing sounded so feasible … i asked some Australians if there was
any truth in it when i went there in 2000, and they didn’t know anything about it !
If you haven’t read Landfall or Trustee from the tool room, I thoroughly recommend
them.
Yesterday I finished Best Horror of the Year, volume 13. Out of 25 stories, I really liked only two of them “It Doesn’t Feel Right” (Michael Marshall Smith) and “A Treat For Your Last Day” (Simon Bestwick). However, a high percentage of the remaining stories were decent, and only a few were dreck.
Today, I’m going back to novels with Simone St. James’ The Book of Cold Cases. It’s about a true-crime blogger interviewing an acquitted murderess who lives in a possibly haunted house. (And since this is Simone St. James, yes, the house is actually haunted. Good.)