I started The Gentleman by Forrest Leo. I’m not underwhelmed but certainly not wildly enthusiastic quite yet either. Our hero seems to be a bit of spoiled wretch…
Just finished Robert Harris’s novel Conclave. A very interesting, well-researched but occasionally farfetched look at the near-future election of a new Pope, with plenty of Vatican intrigue, secrets and political maneuvering. It also has a whopper of an ending.
Miracles on Maple Hill, by Virginia Sorensen. Part of my Newbery read. Sweet and charming. Nothing earthshaking whatsoever, but worth reading for me.
Murder on the Rocks, by Karen MacInerney. Cozy mystery with one of the stupidest protagonists I’ve ever seen. I think the author developed a list of stupid ass things a murder suspect could do and then sprinkled them liberally over the text. STABBY. The writing was pretty good, though.
Warlock Holmes - A Study in Brimstone, by GS Denning. Very funny send up of Sherlock Holmes reimagined in a world where he is a wizard and John Watson is the real detective. Best for people familiar with the original stories. I laughed out loud several times.
LA Confidential, James Ellroy. I can smell 1950s LA.
I forgot to add what I’m reading now:
Inside Out, by Maria V Snyder. A dystopia set inside a small, completely contained city with strict castes. Nothing really new so far, though it’s perfectly readable.
Rest You Merry, by Charlotte MacLeod. An old-fashioned cozy, which is often the best kind!
Just One Damned Thing After Another, by Jodi Taylor. History and time travel, I think. I’m not far into it, but I’ve gotten whiffs of Connie Willis. I like Connie Willis, mostly, though she has some really irritating habits that I hope Jodi Taylor will not emulate!
Vessel, by Sarah Beth Durst. A young woman has been preparing all her life to die when the goddess of her people takes over her body. But they have the ritual and the goddess doesn’t show.
Charlotte MacLeod is my favorite cozy writer EVER! Her characters are quirky and hilarious, her settings homey and I just adore everything about them.
I should have called out that I picked it up because of you. I have read a few MacLeods at various times, but I had pretty much forgotten until you mentioned her a few months back. Thank you! 
You are very welcome!
My favorite MacLeods are The Luck Runs Out and Wrack and Rune, if you haven’t read those yet. Thorkjeld Svenson is a hilarious character, much more so than in Rest You Merry.
Am reading at present, a novel which I’ve lately been surprised to find new to me. By M.M. Kaye, “British child of the British Raj in India”, and long-respected author of works “bridging the gap” concerned – also of murder mysteries set in sundry parts of the world. I’d read and enjoyed various books by MMK – including the first two volumes of her autobiography re time spent in India from her birth in 1908, onward (department “it’s an ill wind…” – World War I, with its making sea travel dangerous, delayed for a few years her being sent [the almost universal routine for British children-of-the-Raj] in early childhood, to fostering / boarding-school in Britain; allowing her a valued additional lease of time living in India, which she loved from birth).
Somehow – not intendedly on my part – I hadn’t read her generally-reckoned best-and-most-prominent novel, The Far Pavilions. Came upon it a few days ago in a charity shop, and expended the tiny sum for which it was selling. It’s immensely long –- almost a thousand pages in paperback – and I’m halfway through, and loving it. It’s set in India (British, and princely-state) in the mid / late 19th century. Can probably best describe it by the reviewers’ “blurbs” on the back cover: “A Gone With The Wind of the North-West Frontier”; “Rip-roaring, heart-tugging, flag-flying, hair-raising, hoof-beating… the very presence of India”. It isn’t Proust or Tolstoy, and it doesn’t claim to be; but I’m finding it a wonderful story and compulsive reading.
Totally YOUR fault I decided tothrow out my schedule and pull “The Palace Guard” - thethird Sarah & Max book - off my shelf and read half of it this afternoon… 
You probably knew there was a 1984 movie based on it: The Far Pavilions (TV Mini Series 1984) - IMDb
Today’s cozy read is Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman. I’m becoming fond of his quirky characters.
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I don’t really “do” films – my loss, I have no doubt – and am a total snob about any “film of the book”; knew about the film, but haven’t seen it, and don’t plan to. I recall that M.M. Kaye, then in her seventies – extensively consulted by the film’s makers – was very pleased at the opportunity this gave her, to lengthily revisit India. (She had a very long life – died aged 96.)
Jodi Taylor does not pull some of the Connie Willis stuff. And it did remind me of Willis, but in good ways for me. This was really good. Highly recommended if you like the idea of a time travel memoir being narrated by someone really snarky.
Wait, aren’t you the person who recommended that series to me? I’M SO CONFUSED.
Nah, it’s coool, I’m just being silly. It was time I checked in with Sarah & Max again, it’s been a long time since I read those books.
I just finished “Slow Horses,” the first novel of the Slough House series by Mick Herron, and I highly recommend it.
Slough House is where MI5 spies go when they have screwed up, but not so badly that they are fired or jailed. Maybe they messed up an op, or their substance abuse became a problem, or maybe everyone just dislikes them. They are supposed to be marking time until they decide to quit, or something else happens. In this book, something else happens at breathtaking speed, with smart twisty writing, interesting characters and a few insights into the reality of spy work (at least ostensibly). It’s sort of John le Carre meets the Goon Show. Sort of.
Pro tip: read them in order, because the Slough House folks don’t all make it to the next book, and if you have already read the next book you’ll have an idea who might be going to die before this one ends. There are apparently only 4 novels and a novella at this point, but I think he is continuing to write them. He also has a couple of other series, one more crime oriented, and one apparently straightforward spy action stuff a la Jack Reacher. I haven’t read any of those. Yet.
You had me questioning my sanity.
Me: Hey, sanity?
Sanity: Yeah?
Me: Still with me and all that?
Sanity: Who are you?
I finished reading “Soldiers Three”, another collection of Kipling short stories. On average they seemed even more racist than usual (and that’s saying something) – painful dialect, depictions of cunning/lazy/ignorant natives, etc. The stories were entertaining enough, I suppose.
The one thing that I thought was noteworthy was one story about miners trapped in a coal mine. When I was reading it, I thought of Zola’s “Germinal”. And then at the end of the story, one of the characters says:
So I guess the resemblance was intentional!
Finished Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Eternal Savage/Lover. Disappointing – the book meanders all over the place. Now I’m reading the anthology Murder Ink.
On audio, I just finished listening to Tunnel in the Sky. It’s been a long time since I read the Heinlein juvenile, and I’d forgotten parts of it. The reading featured multiple actors (although it wasn’t rewritten as a dramatization), and they did a great job of acting, for the most part. They purportedly changed the picture on the cover to reflect Heinlein’s assertion that his hero Rod was black. I’m not saying that it isn’t possible – Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers is clearly revealed to be Filipino at the end of that book, but the supporting evidence for Rod being black is virtually nonexistent. It feels like a “tacked-on” afterthought of a change, like J.K. Rowling’s assertion – after the books and movies were over – that Dumbledore was gay.
Now I’m on to Elaine Pagels’ Beyond Belief on audio.