Great. That’s a fascinating tale.
We spent our anniversary weekend at the canalside town of Amphawa. While there, I finished Micro, by Michael Chrichton and Richard Preston. Crichton’s final novel, found almost completed on his computer after his death and finished by science writer Preston after being hired to do so by Crichton’s publisher. Once again, the world is threatened with science gone out of control, this time with humans being shrunk to miniature size in Hawaii. It was okay. You could tell he envisioned a film version. The guy really was paranoid about technology.
Have started The Gallows Curse, by Karen Maitland. It’s the early 13th century, and the piss-poor English village of Gastmere is caught up in the Realpolitik of the day, with the Pope plotting against England’s King John by backing France’s King Philip against him. I’m a quarter of the way through, and it’s very good so far.
I finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant, which was recommended in one of these threads. I really liked the set-up, and I liked the forensic accounting approach to politics and intrigue. I was maybe a little disappointed by the reveal at the end, in that it didn’t seem surprising.
Right now I have two books going. At home it’s Agorafabulous by Sara Benincasa, and my commuting book is A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horowitz.
I read ‘continuing’ instead of ‘commuting’ and thought “Oh me too…” 
I’m hoping to finish it this week tho.
Wow, I haven’t posted in ages. Read some good books this month too. Highlights:
Currently reading:Kim by Rudyard Kipling and The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan. Chopra is a cozy, really - a light police procedural set in India, involving a police inspector who has just retired and, on the same day, inherited a baby elephant. Kim is Raj-era intrigue, the story of an Irish lieutenant’s orphan who is guiding a Tibetan lama to Benares and delivering secret messages along the way (at least so far: I’m 41 pages in).
Finished:
The Talking Parcelby Gerald Durrell (also called The Battle for Castle Cockatrice) - Classic British kid-lit wherein 2 boys and a girl follow a talking parrot and spider into a land called Mythologia, where they help a wizard regain control of the land from rampaging cockatrices. Delightful.
The Iron Jackalby Chris Wooding - Third in the tales of Ketty Jay, the closest I’ve come to the feel of Firefly with its colorful, emotionally developed characters rocketing around various planets and aiming to misbehave. These should be read in order, beginning with Retribution Falls, but this third entry is every bit as good as the previous two, IMHO.
Watchmen by Alan Moore. I can see why this graphic novel was ground-breaking. It’s colorful on the page and off, depicting the possible end of the world and the superheroes who may opt to end or save it. I love morally ambiguous superheroes and characters, so this was right in my wheelhouse. Wow, is it ever bleak!
Dead Wake by Erik Larson - Nonfiction that reads like fiction about the sinking of the Lusitania. I went into it knowing the fate of the Lusitania, but my heart was still in my throat as Larson gave the minute-by-minute contrast between the actions of the U-20 that sank Lusitania and the many doomed, and few saved, souls aboard ship. I could have done with less about President Wilson, but I learned a lot in each one of the narrative tracks here.
At the Water’s Edge by Carl Zimmer - Zimmer also writes nonfiction that reads like fiction, though this was one of his drier entries. I liked the first half of the book, covering how we emerged from water, much more than how whales / dolphins etc went back in, but this is still good evolution writing.
I finished a pretty good and unusual detective novel by an author I saw being read by the fictional detective in a John Sandford novel. It was called The Man From Berlin, by Luke McCallin. It was unusual in that the detective is a captain in the German Abwehr in WWII, who is posted to Yugoslavia. The book is rich in detail of both the infrastructure of the Nazi army, and organizations like the Ustase that tortured and murdered tens of thousands of gypsies, Jews and patriots. It’s clear that the author is very familiar with the geography of that area. This was the first in a trilogy that I will now have to finish.
I’ve just started a book called Above All Others, by Tanis Rideout. I mentioned to a neighbor that I enjoy exploration and survival books and she loaned it to me. I can’t figure out if I’m going to finish it or not, as I didn’t realize that it’s actually an historical novel with imagined dialog and situations mixed in with history. Not my favorite genre.
I finished Dead Things by Stephen Blackmoore. It started strong, Eric was what Sandman Slim should have been in the first book, but somewhere around 2/3 the book dropped off to a totally anti climatic ending. :mad:I had high hopes for this one but nope the sad sack loser left with nothing and the woman he loves hates him trope …
On the up side, if my tracking is correct, and it usually is, Stiletto will be here tomorrow morning!
I’m mid-Stiletto right now, and it feels good. 
My memory of Rook is a bit vague, but so far not a problem.
I am SO SO JEALOUS of you right now. 
Can’t wait for your full review!
Exciting!
I just jumped on here to tell you and Dung Beetle that my copy had arrived! I will start it this afternoon!
Yay, all my booksisters reading the same thing this month!
Just finished Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Miracle at Philadelphia, about the 1787 Constitutional Convention. A good overview of how the Constitution got written, with brief but deft word portraits of the major players including Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison, Morris, Lee, Martin, etc.
I also zipped through the YA nonfiction book We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler by Russell Freedman. Despite two minor errors, I enjoyed it and learned a lot.
I’m about 20 pages into Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by Bernd Heinrich, and have to say… I’m not feelin’ it. The author’s breathless enthusiasm for these birds, smart as they are, is kind of irritating. Right now I doubt the book will pass my 50-page rule.
George R.R. Martin’s early novel Fevre Dream last night leapt off the bookshelf into my hands. I see I last read it nine years ago. Good stuff - almost like what Bram Stoker and Mark Twain might’ve written if they teamed up to write about vampires on the antebellum Mississippi River.
I’m a big Watchmen fan, just recently learned of the Before Watchmen prequels, and am now partway through the Comedian/Rorschach edition. Not as good as the original, but worth a look if you need another fix.
New Lockwood & Co later this summer as well!
Secret shame: I have read Watchmen maybe a half dozen times and I skip the Pirate comic within the comic every single time.
That’s good to hear! I still won’t be able to start it for a while, but I was wondering how much of Rook I’d have to remember.
You are forgiven.
One hundred pages into Stiletto And it’s shaping up to be everything that one was and more. The new characters are fabulous, and the humour is the dry snark I adore!
(Grrlbrarian, there’s a new guy called Sanjay Chopra, and since I’m a One Piece fan, I always read Sanji and he definitely sounds like Hiroak Hirata in my head 
)
I finished A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horowitz and enjoyed it immensely. Thank you to whomever it was who mentioned reading it in last month’s(?) thread.