Wow, only two months of 2022 left! And still so darned many stacks of books to read…
Happy Autumn up north and welcome to spring down south. Dress accordingly, use sunscreen if necessary and stay hydrated. Also keep reading.
I am currently reading"
Subway Slayings by C. S. Poe on my Kindle. I love her characters and her mysteries are intriguing and well plotted.
Spy X Family #4 by Tatsuya Endo. A spy has to make a family for a mission… hijinks ensue…
Khadaji was one of the earlier members of SDMB, and he was well-known as a kindly person who always had something encouraging to say, particularly in the self-improvement threads. He was also a voracious, omnivorous reader, who started these threads 'way back in the Stone Age of 2005. Consequently, when he suddenly and quite unexpectedly passed away in January 2013, we decided to rename this thread in his honor and to keep his memory, if not his ghost, alive.
Finished the last Robert Crais novel. His new release is preordered and drops tomorrow, but I started The Plot today. Really enjoying it so far. Thanks for the recommendation @Dung_Beetle IIRC!?
The current state of my book pile (which I forgot last month)
Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis - It’s about a doctor in the early 20th century who really wants to be a researcher. It’s pretty good.
The Vicomte de Brangelonne, Alexandre Dumas - The first installment of the final part of the “Three Musketeers” trilogy. I’m about halfway through. So far, Athos and d’Artagnan have helped Charles II reclaim his throne and now we’re waiting for Mazarin to die.
The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien - I forgot how freakin’ long the Tom Bombadil section was.
Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence - it’s good so far. Lot of guys running around naked for some reason.
The Grief of Stones, Katherine Addison - I’m not kidding, I want to live in this world.
The Vor Game, Lois McMaster Bujold - OK, SDMB you got me. I’ve started the Vorkosigan Saga. All I have to say is why in the hell did it take me so long to find this series?
Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier - Find from the sale shelf at the library. Now I have my very own copy so I can quit swiping my housemate’s.
Finished listening to The War Widow by Tara Moss. It’s a story about a woman private detective in Sydney in 1946. She takes on a missing teenage boy case, which turns into something far more onerous. Really enjoyed it, even more so because it’s read by Corinne Davies, who has a most delightful English accent.
Finished Our Laundry, Our Town: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond, by Alvin Eng, which was okay.
Now I’m reading Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe’s Lost Country, by Simon Winder. Three of Charlemagne’s divided his empire into three parts: France (more or less), Germany (more or less), and Lotharingia–everything in between.
I finished reading two Cthulhu Mythos books. You’d think that I’d have finished them off years ago, but it’s not true. And it’s not just the new crop that keeps coming up*. These are some classic old ones I’ve read.
At the Boston Book Festival I picked up an absolutely pristine copy of The Spawn of Cthulhu, edited by Lin Carter.** Ballantine published a lot of Lovecraft and August Derleth’s own contributions, but somehow I’d missed this volume, which was one of the “Ballantine Adult Fantasy” series that Carter edited. It’s different, in that it shows how the Mythos grew, and reprints some of the stories from which Lovecraft filched names and characters. An interesting read, especially the stories I hadn’t read before.
The other one was an e-book, the Cthulhu Mythos Megapack, with 1200 pages of stories, includiung some old stuff that I hadn’t read before.
In addition to these, I’ve been reading an e-book collection of Clark Ashton Smith and of Lord Dunsany. I’ve finished the Smith (there are a LOT of his stories I’d never read), but the Dunsany is a bit of a drag.
Now I;m reading Rachel Maddow’s Bag Man , about the Spiro Agnew bribery scandal. I missed her podcast when it came out.
I’ve also picked up Stephanie Schorow’s two books on Boston fires – The Great Boston Fire and The Coconut Grove Fire. Stephanie gave a reading at the BBF from the Boston Fire book. She’s in two writing groups with me, and I’m going to get her to autograph these.
I’m guilty myself. I’ve written and published three Lovecraftian stories
** The book is in unbelievably good shape for a book that’s over half a century old. There are no creases or folds, all the corners are perfectly square, and there isn’t even any yellowing or browning of pages or the covers. It’s as if the book popped out of a time machine. .
I’m glad you brought up this topic. I had an 8 hour drive today. After reading this post last night, I downloaded the Bag Man series and listened to its entirety.
Holy crap, Agnew was a sleaze ball. And he was damn close to being president.
Currently reading Such Sharp Teeth, by Rachel Harrison. For a werewolf novel with lots of gore and cursing, plus discussion of child abuse, it has a distinct feeling of coziness. The novel this author wrote about witches was the same. It’s not a bad thing, just odd.
Forgot to mention. On audio I’m reading Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens. They kind of cheated, in my opinion – two of the ghost stories are his Christmas novels A Christmas Carol and The Haunted Man, both of which I’ve read. The others I w3as unfamiliar with. Interesting, but not particularly scary.
After that it’s on to Preston and Childs’ Dance of Death, the second of the “Diogenes” trilogy. I haven’t read the first, Brimstone, but I can’t find it on audio, and I’m hoping I can make sense of the story with only outlines.
Finished The Plot. Really enjoyed it, thanks @Railer13 and @Dung_Beetle for the recommendation. I have reread all of Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels and am ready to start his new release in that series, but I decided to read his book Suspect just to be a completest. I’m really enjoying it so far.
