So the Harry Dresden comparison is apt, then? 
I didn’t see this. Thank you! I would never have chosen those words on my own, so it was fun to try to make them more palatable.
Absolutely!
Finished Maya Angelou’s Gather Together in My Name, the second in her memoirs. (The library didn’t have the first one on the shelf.) Brilliant.
Just started 101 Stumbles in the March of History: What If the Great Mistakes in War, Government, Industry, and Economics Were Not Made?, by Bill Fawcett.
I finished A Unnatural Vice by K J Charles today, it’s #2 in the series and I’ve now started # 1 cuz I’m a rebel? No, just a dimwit at times, I hadn’t expected a continuous story in my gay porn…
Ms Charles is a decent writer, the characters were interesting, the plot kept my interest and the setting was well done. London in the winter in the 1870s was nasty.
Taking a break from Frank Herbert’s Dune, and have jumped into John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire. It’s an interesting, somewhat tongue-in-cheek sf tale of a distant-future human empire which learns that interstellar travel may soon become impossible.
I thought this was a good read. Preston goes into significant detail on the political situation in Honduras and how that affected the expedition and the subsequent academic opposition from some quarters. And for what it’s worth, his writing of the fer-de-lance encounter the first night in camp was more exciting than any of his fiction I’ve read.
This seems like a good time to read this one: Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It Everything you ever wanted to know about the flu but were afraid to ask.
The author (Gina Kolata) is a medical writer for the New York Times, and I’ve read several of her books and greatly enjoyed them.
Whenever I see her name, I always want to break into the Escape song.
“If you like Gina Kolata, and reading 'bout lots of deaths…”
Finally finished Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West which was about…well, read the title. I read it a chapter or three a day, and the book didn’t suffer for it. Interesting tale well-told and the challenges Lewis (and his great friend and partner William Clark) faced and conquered make for fascinating reading. The author pulls no punches about the times (one of the travelers was Clark’s slave York), but stays true to the subject. If you’re interested in how we progressed from a basically coastal region to the continental powerhouse we are now, this will be the starting point.
I sung that 
As you were meant to.
I thought Ambrose dropped the ball. Could’ve been a fascinating tale, and I wanted it to be, but the book just fell flat for me. YMMV, obviously.
Finished Peter Lovesey’s Beau Death. A mystery novel featuring Peter Diamond, cop in Bath, UK. Like the series, liked the book. Lovesey is a fine writer and is outstanding at misdirection. His characters are interesting too, and there’s really not a wasted word or a throwaway scene in the novel.
Also read Emily Culliton’s The Misfortune of Marion Palm. Marion has a talent for embezzlement and has been siphoning large sums of cash from her daughters’ school in Brooklyn. The jig is looking like it’s about to be up, though, so she ups and runs with a suitcase stuffed with $60K but without a clear plan of what to do. The book is funny and punchy, with short chapters told from various characters’ points of view–though mostly Marion. I enjoyed it; Culliton writes well and delves into character effectively. --I did read several reviews afterward, and was caught up short by two that said “Despite her life of crime you find yourself rooting for Marion…” I really didn’t, and it wasn;t the embezzlement issue. It’s because she abandoned her kids. Abandoning her husband, no big deal, he was kind of a jerk, and anyway he’s a grownup. Defrauding the school, well, not a virtue, but Marion is sketched out well as a character and you can understand where she’s coming from, maybe… But she left her daughters behind, never told them where she was going, made no effort to communicate with them, and, well, no, I did not find myself rooting for her. And I’m not sure I could root for anyone under those circumstances. Anyway, I found it interesting that others apparently had no problem with that.
Finally, read Julia Glass’s novel A House in the Woods. Morty Lear, noted children’s weriter (think Sendak) has just died. The book focuses on the effects on the people around him, especially Tommy, his longtime assistant; Nick, a British actor hired to play Morty in a movie about him; and Meredith, who works for a museum that Morty will be giving his papers etc to (she hopes). There are lots of flashbacks. Very, very well written, and great attention to detail, and some of it is quite compelling. But there isn’t much in the way of plot, and unfortunately the central character–Tommy–just isn’t all that interesting. A little too passive, a little too obscure where motivations are concerned; Tommy never really comes to life. Not sorry I read it, and I recommended it to a friend who I think will like it better–but I was kind of disappointed. Oh well!
I’m now reading The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker, a novel written in French that takes place in the US. It’s a very readable mystery about the death of a 15-year-old girl, her affair with a much older writer, and his possible involvement in her death (which only comes to light 30 years later). For some reason I missed this book when it came out a few years ago. It could easily be pared down by half but I’m finding it quite enjoyable nonetheless.
I gave up on God’s Demon, don’t quit the day job, Mr Barlowe.
Finished 101 Stumbles in the March of History: What If the Great Mistakes in War, Government, Industry, and Economics Were Not Made?, by Bill Fawcett, et al. Had some interesting parts, of which my favorite was the time Germany missed a chance to win World War I early, because they thought that tens of thousands of troops from Russia were in Britain, intending to attack Germany from the west. Turns out they were far fewer, and Scotsmen, from “Ross Shire.”
On the other hand, Fawcett repeatedly says that if one war or another hadn’t happened, we’d be living in a “science fiction” world now. He also doesn’t seem to know about how infection diseases brought by Europeans devastated indigenous peoples even without being attacked by colonizers.
Just started Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik.
Finished The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin ’ Dixie out of the Dark by Trae Crowder, Corey Forrester and Drew Morgan. I honestly could not say what I expected of the book but what i got was a surprisingly hard hitting look at poverty, racism and alcohol/drug abuse in the American South. The others pulled now punches talking about their own experiences while still extolling the wonders of Southern cooking, Southern music and Southern hospitality.
I finished reading Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky. It’s probably my new favourite of his works because (a) it’s relatively short, (b) it’s pretty funny in parts, and © it didn’t have any really schmaltzy parts (which are my least favourite parts of Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot).
Sorry you didn’t like it. I think I may have been the one who recommended it here.
You might have, I don’t remember. It was just too much description and not enough plot for my taste.