I finally finished reading Cinq-Mars by Alfred de Vigny. It’s based on the true story of a plan to remove Cardinal Richelieu as Louis XIII’s prime minister with a military coup. Imagine a proto-“Three Musketeers” but without 99% of the humour and action. I wouldn’t recommend it.
I don’t know why, but so many of the books you all read are ones I’ve never even heard of.
I’m reading James Corey’s latest installment of The Expansion series, called *Persepolis Rising. * It’s good. I love this kind of sci-fi.
I’m also reading A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles. It’s really, really great. What a great exposition of the clashing societies between Czarist Russia and the Bolsheviks. I love it so far.
Those books were so warm and so well crafted. I remember going to the local library to get “All Things Bright and Beautiful” and finding out that all copies were checked out indefinitely.
I just finished “Fire with Fire”, a book that was nominated for the Nebula Award in 2014. It is a throwback to the old style of pulp science fiction that was popular in the 1960s.
It is fair, but I have no idea how this book could possibly have been considered among the best SF of 2014. This is not a book that anyone need put on their to-read list.
I’m gonna open a new thread, because I want to hear this discussion :).
Just finished The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter. It has a ton of parallels to the last book I read, The Great Game: set in Victorian London, involving mysterious murders, with a conspiracy comprising tons of figures from 19th-century science fiction/horror literature. But the tone of the books is very different: Great Game is fairly macho even for the female characters, whereas Strange Case is much more feminist in tone. I figure some undergrad could write a pretty good essay contrasting the two.
Now it’s on to something very different: Stray Souls, a fantasy set in London involving mysterious deaths! At least it’s modern London, and it’s humor (and very funny), and I’ve read it before.
Just got back from a long vacation. Instead of being refreshed, I’m fighting a wave of depression. One of our cats died while we were gone (we came back early because of it). Before then, one of my uncles died, which piles another loss onto my mother who was already mourning another brother’s death, and the worst one of all was a suicide in the family (not someone I knew, actually, but the ripples are hitting everyone). Comfort reads and more comfort reads are going to be my continuing themes, I think.
Recent reads
Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks: A Librarian’s Love Letters and Breakup Notes to the Books in Her Life, by Annie Spence. I think someone in these threads didn’t love this, but I thought it was really snarky fun.
River of Darkness, by Rennie Airth. Historical mystery. Clunky, with silly plot complications and I hate serial killer themes.
A Woman of Consequence, by Anna Dean. Historical mystery. A Jane Austen-ish sleuth. Very enjoyable.
Murder With Puffins, by Donna Andrews. Cozy mystery. Self-consciously zany, but that worked for me right now.
Twisted Threads, by Lea Wait. Cozy mystery. I didn’t like the main character, but the story was better than average and the writing fine (this can be hard to find in cozies).
The Boy’s Tale, by Margaret Frazer. Historical mystery. Love the medieval nunnery setting, but the plot is a mess.
The Essence of Malice, by Ashley Weaver. Historical mystery, between the WWs. Good setting, solid story telling. The main character’s husband should be punched in the face. Twice. By every other character, including children, puppies, and fish.
Spackled and Spooked, by Jennie Bentley. Cozy mystery. I’ll simply quote my goodreads review: “It was okay, until the main character fell out of the stupid tree and hit [Pete Puma] a whoooooole lotta branches [/Pete Puma] on the way down.”
The Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander. YA fantasy. Still a great book. I see the flaws more than I used to, but that’s okay. If I always had the same thoughts and feelings while reading, that would mean I was stagnating.
I’m so sorry, wonky–that really sucks.
Sorry to hear it Wonky.
Thank you both. I guess I really have been on a comfort read kick for over a year now, as my refuge against a nutty world. So, I’ll just keep on keeping on!
I am so sorry! My oldest cat disappeared last Sept… it’s really not been our year lately.
Magaret Frazier’s plots usually are a mess 
Oh, wonky, I’m so sorry! Keep doing whatever you need to/can to take care of yourself.
Finished David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. The full title is The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account), which I prefer. The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account) was Dickens’ personal favorite of all his novels, and The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account) is reportedly his most autobiographical tale, with many elements of the author’s own life woven into it. Very enjoyable, and I believe The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account) routinely makes it on lists of the top 100 novels. The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account) follows the eponymous character from childhood to adulthood, with many adventures along the way. I found the simultaneos death of Copperfield’s wife Dora and her little dog Jip oddly moving despite her being such a ditz. Perhaps that is because I am such an animal lover. Anyway, The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account) is highly recommended.
Now I’m catching up on my Robert Harris after having purchased his latest two. I have begun Dictator, the final installment in his Cicero trilogy of ancient Rome.
EDIT: Sorry about everyone’s missing or dead cats. 
I read that one a couple of months ago–think I mentioned in a thread earlier this year. [checks: I did, but not in much detail] Just agreeing with you that this is a very good book by a very fine writer. I’m not much for police procedurals in general, but always make an exception for Mr. Diamond.
I recently read two novels by a writer named Christine Carbo: The Weight of Night and The Wild Inside. Both are “novels of suspense.” Both take place in and around Glacier National Park in Montana (where I have never been); there is some overlap of characters. Carbo writes quite well. Her plotting is excellent, her pacing is too, the setting is well described, and she really seems to have a gift for making human beings seem…well, human. She’s also really good at having her protagonists go through AWFUL events in their teenage years…
I will admit to not loving her figurative language. “She looked caught between grief and anger like a semicolon between sentences.” That one, I’ll admit, was especialy odd, but so were a bunch of others. I recommend the books anyway. 
Carbo has another book out as well, written between these two, but the library system doesn’t have it EVEN THOUGH IT COVERS FIVE COUNTIES and I’m going to have to go through ILL, which I haven;t done in a loooong time.
Intrigued by the Montana setting, I picked up C. J. Box’s novel Cold Wind (Wyoming) and am partway through. I don’t like it as much as Carbo’s novels, but it has its virtues. Game warden Joe Pickett is the lead character, a series character…I like the description of the setting very much and also the stuff surrounding Joe’s (complex, not always happy, and realsitically drawn) family life. Then suddenly we’re over to this other guy, Nate, who I guess has appeared in earlier novels, who seems to have been living in a canyon for the last three years with the latest in high-tech communications and surveillance equipment, leading some kind of ill-defined “resistance” movement and being pursued by important but dangerous people who can;t find him, and he’s…clearly indestructible and smarter than the rest of the world put together, and I don’t really like characters like that. We will see.
Based on my glance at the Carbo books, you might like Clinton McKinzie’s thrillers, starting with The Edge of Justice. They are set in the Rockies, with an FBI agent (I think that was his job) who likes to rock climb.
Cool, thanks! I’m not familiar with them but will take a look. (From my couch–I love hiking but rock climbing has never appealed :))
I also may try to find Dear Fahrenheit 451, which you recommended upstairs. I find it interesting how the same book can strike me in very different ways at different times, and the “breakup” part of the title looks like it speaks to that.
Sorry about all the stuff in your life. Such a stupid world sometimes. Glad reading is helping.
Finished Threshold by Jordan L Hawk, another “urban” (takes place in a coal mining town in West Virginia) fantasy in her m/m fantasy series about ex Pinkerton Griffin Flaherty and Dr. Percival Endicott Whyborne. Overall a fun book, a little bit of pacing issues but nothing that stopped me dead.
Finished Winston S. Churchill: Youth 1874-1900, by Randolph S. Churchill. More interesting than I thought it would be. Told mostly in letters to and from the young Churchill. He asked for money (and later, money and favors) frequently. It’s odd to read him asking his mother to get him transferred from India (where he played polo more than anything else) to Egypt, where he could go into action and hopefully win a medal.
Just started A Civil Contract, by Georgette Heyer.
I just read The Only Girl in the World by Maude Julien. It’s a memoir about her bizarre childhood in an isolated farmhouse in France. Her father had some odd notions about Freemasonry and raising a superhuman. To call him controlling would be the understatement of the year. Every moment of Maude’s time was accounted for, with lessons, manual labor, and loony “tests” of her courage or perception. To be honest, I don’t actually believe everything she writes. Some of the details seem embellished or invented, like the story of her mother. In the memoir she states that her father selected a little girl from a poor family, became that girl’s guardian, sent her to boarding schools, and married her when she grew up, all part of a careful plan to create the perfect child. Even if a tenth of what she writes is true, though, it’s quite a compelling read.
Coincidentally, the next book on my shelf is Educated, another memoir about a girl growing up in isolated circumstances and her eventual escape. It will be interesting to compare the two books.
Finishing up Thongor of Lemuria - hey, I never read them before – and Benjamin Franklin’s aphorisms from Poor Richard’s Almanac (Favorite quotation – “The First Degree of Folly, is to conceit one’s self wise; the second to profess it; the third to despise Counsel.”).
I just took a long trip and listened to two audiobooks. One was Jeffrey Deaver’s contribution to the James Bond opus Carte Blanche. I’d read this book a couple of years ago, but had forgotten the bulk of the plot. Deaver’s updated Bond is better than John Gardner’s or Raymond Bensen’s were, but I still prefer the “period piece” new Bonds, Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks and Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz. James Bond really does belong to a certain period of history, and both those authors managed to fit their circumstances right in with Fleming’s style.
I also read Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs’ Still Life with Crows, an earlier Agent Pendergast novel than the others I’ve read recently, and now I’m pissed – they basically took a big chunk of the plot of this book and stuck it onto the back of the more recent novel Crimson Shore, apparently needing more wordage to fulfill their contract, or something. They even re-used the bit with Pendergast telling the cook in the small American Town restaurant how to prepare the meal he wants.
Now I’m finishing up Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Gods of Mars on audio. I listened to that on my trip, too, because I had a copy on hand, although I hadn’t listened to it in a long time.
I fnished Spectred Isle by KJ Charles. Not as immediately engaging as some of her other books, but a good urban fantasy m/m romp nevertheless.
Finished this one again. Midway through I checked the author’s note, and realized that “Kate Griffin” is a pseudonym for Catherine Webb–who also writes under “Claire North.” I’ve raved before about North’s modern, speculative novels (The First Twelve Lives of Harry August, The Sudden Appearance of Hope, etc.), but just realized that in addition to her serious novels, she’s got a wicked sense of humor.
And she’s twelve years younger than me and has three successful novelist careers. Way to show the rest of us up, Catherine.