I recently finished Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, which I read for a book club. It certainly kept my attention - I wanted to learn the answer to the mystery of 10 people dying off one by one - but I certainly didn’t sympathize with any of the characters. I’m not in a hurry to read more Agatha Christie.
I’ve just started Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend. So far, all I know is that it’s about the mysterious murder of a child in Mississippi and the repercussions for the family. I’m not finding it gripping, but I will keep reading for a while.
I finished The Apothecary Rose by Candace Robb. It’s a pleasant enjoyable series set in York in the late 1300s. The author concentrates on the mystery and doesn’t try to impress us with her research. I will go on and read more of the series.
but first, I started The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly today. I’m eager to meet the “other” brother now that I have become so well acquainted with Harry Bosch.
I grew up on the edge of that neighborhood so I’ll have to check it out. Coney Island is a fun place but they’re trying to turn it into just another mall which is sad.
I am reading **The Women of the Cousin’s War: The Duchess, the Queen and the King’s Mother **by Philippa Gregory, David Baldwin and Michael Jones. It’s a look at three important women: Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort. The book is non-fiction as opposed to the Tudor fiction that Gregory usually writes. I am finding it interesting and a little mind boggling that we don’t know more about some rather strong historically important people.
Jacquetta was a young woman from a powerful family who first married against her will to a more powerful English duke and then for love to a minor courtier who gave her fourteen kids. Elizabeth Woodwille was her daughter who married Edward IV after her first husband died. He was a reigning monarch at the time and it upset lots of other people at her sheer cheek. She was said to have been one of the most beautiful women of her day. She bore her husband eight children include the two princes in the tower who were probably murdered. Her eldest child later married Henry VIII, Margaret’s son who fathered the infamous Henry VIII. Margaret had given birth to Henry after being brutally raped at the age of twelve.
The three of them are the stuff of Shakespeare and high opera. The book gives them their due, at least as much as we know of them.
I finished The Kestrel Waters, don’t ask me why. I hated it. I should learn that when everybody at Goodreads gives it five stars, run the other way. But he also has good reviews at Amazon! I guess the author has 55 friends. There was a blurb by William Peter Blatty! He must be one of the 55. The writing was very quirky and unusual, which kept me reading, thinking something would happen. But then everything just kind of ran down, and some of the things that happened, well they didn’t* really.* Ugh. :mad:
No better luck this morning, reading Hellhole by Gina Damico. I wasn’t expecting much from a fluffy little YA novel about a nerdy kid battling a demon who turns up in his basement. But it couldn’t even meet those standards.
Said no nerdy kid ever, as he sold Slim Jims to a cute girl at the convenience store. Edgy. :rolleyes:
I originally came across this novel while working at an all-girls Catholic school back in 1994. It was assigned reading for one of the classes, and as I was helping get ready for the start-of-school book sale, I borrowed a used copy. I have since picked up the Kindle version and that’s what I re-read.
Despite being written in 1940, and looking back at the turn of the century, I found myself identifying quite clearly with Francie at times. If I had read this book when I was her age, I would have absolutely adored it. (As an adult, I perhaps empathize more with her mother, Katie) Both women are wonderfully well-drawn as they live their lives in the slums of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Francie knows she is poor, yet it is not the core of her being; her imagination and the books she checks out from the library provide a welcome escape. She loves and admires her father desperately, even as he continually fails as the ostensible head of the household. Her relationship with her younger brother, Neeley also rings true (though my younger brother is 5 years separate, not just 2).
The word pictures Smith paints of daily life in Francie’s Brooklyn neighborhood are rich and detailed - with side characters each playing their parts. The novel is an immersive look at a time and place that left its stamp on our country’s history; but it also takes an occasionally critical look at The American Dream, and the conclusions written between the lines are as valid today as in 1940. The writing is superb, IMHO - perhaps slightly dated in someways, and yet timeless. I can see why it was selected as assigned reading for the classroom, and I wish I had encountered it earlier in my life. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in strong female characters set in turn of the (20th) century New York City.
I need to revisit that book too, Politzania. I read it two or three times in my early teens and loved it. I can still bring a lot of vivid snippets to mind; it’s the kind of book that settles in your subconscious.
Well, I gave up on Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin because it felt like it was trying too hard. Also, there was too much false suspense, and I stopped caring.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is prominently featured in this recent history book, about mass-produced books being sent to U.S. armed forces personnel during WWII, to entertain them and to draw a contrast with Nazi censorship and book-burning. Smith got a lot of fan mail from GIs who appreciated the reminder of life back home. The military publishing program is also credited with giving Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby a major boost.
I loved A Tree Grows in Brooklyn also, though I was an adult when I first read it. It gave me a glimpse into what my grandmother’s life might have been like, though she grew up in a different part of the country, albeit quite poor.
I’m still on my Book Grounding kick and haven’t cheated yet. Recent reads:
George R.R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows. I understand perfectly that this covers all the action taking place during A Storm of Swords but focuses on other characters. It still kept my interest, and I developed a little more sympathy and interest in Brienne of Tarth (though I see the developing fixation with a Certain Fellow, and it makes me want to slap her). All the deaths of major characters that were presented as a “by the way…” were rather startling, as I’m sure he intended. I’m still enthralled with the series but agree that this volume wasn’t as compelling for me as most of the others have been.
Just finished Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal, one of my long-time bookshelf goodies. And good it was! I enjoyed the detailed anecdotes of chimps, bonobos, and other primates, though I found de Waal’s writing a bit repetitious at times. He’s no Sapolsky but makes some good points about the extent to which chimps and bonobos share qualities, behaviorally and physically, with humans.
Currently on to **Skeletons on the Zahara**by Dean King. I’ve barely begun but am caught up in the adventures of the ship Commerce so far, as well as its captain, James Riley. People from 200 years ago were tough if they survived childhood, and they certainly had to be, even if they weren’t shipwrecked, taken as slaves, or marooned in the Sahara. Good heavens.
I was sure I wouldn’t finish The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly until next week, but dayum that book grabbed me by throat and DRAGGED me along!
One question however remains: Why do all the writers feel the need to kill my favorite side characters!!???
So up next is The Lady Chapel by Candace Robb, back to the 14th century I flee
Brienne and the Onion Knight are two of my favorite characters in all the books - flawed but honorable people trying to do the right thing under very difficult circumstances.
After binge-reading the first three Louise Penny Inspector Gamache books (the first two are miles better than the third) I’m taking a Break from the series and reading Stephen King’s Revival. I like it so far, but then I’m a sucker for unapologetic Baby Boomer fiction.
I just finished The New Annotated Lovecraft with notations by Leslie S. Klinger, and am starting The Original Frankenstein, a truly amazing book that I didn’t realize existed. Apparently it hasn’t been published in the States, and I was lucky to stumble across a British edition. It’s a sort of “Book of J” version of Frankenstein. It includes the draft copy that preceded the publication of the 3-volume 1818 edition ()the first printed version), along with the draft copy with the additions by Percy Bysshe Shelley removed, so that you have the original text (so far as is possible) that Mary Wollestonecraft herself wrote, before Percy made emendations and additions.
You would’ve thought that Leonard Wolf’s Annotated Frankenstein, which used photoreproductions of pages from the 1818 edition, would’ve been the best previous edition, but this one says that:
I’m surprised that, even when they were photographing the book, they still managed to get it wrong. The editor of this edition (Charles E. Robinson) evidently edited a photofacsimile of the earlier text, and that edition points out all the errors – but not the edition IO have.
