Started a Roger Zelazny fantasy about parallel worlds last night,* A Dark Traveling*.
After a few false starts with some library books, I am reading The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro. I read The Muralist, and it was a mildly interesting enough read for me to check out another book by the author.
I just reread Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, about researchers in the Amazonian jungle. My favourite thing about this book is hard to define, but here’s the gist: the MC is a reluctant visitor to the camp, and starts out intimidated by the lurking dangers. Then, subtly, throughout the story, her attitude shifts. It’s masterful. I also wonder what kind of research AP did to find the sense of place. Maybe I should reread Bel Canto too.
In NF, a diversion for me, I bought an actual paper copy of Georg Steller’s Journal of a Voyage with Bering 1741-1742. I think there’s an amazing untold story in it - Steller steps onto Unalaska, sees a blue bird, remembers an illustration he saw ten years previous, and makes the mental leap: this is America. Something nobody was sure of at the time. It’s like a biogeography puzzle. The Steller’s jay is one of my favourite West Coast birds, and I love this little snippet attached to it. If I had a better (or any) platform, maybe I’d try and write the book. Could also include other neat biogeo stuff, like the Wallace line, canids in Asia and Australia, chimps and bonobos separated by the Congo River… Or maybe more about Steller, like the sea cow and the cryptic sea monkey. Pipe dreams, sigh.
I reawakened my Goodreads profile to better keep track of my reading.
I love Goodreads so very much.
I’m still reading cozies. In the past couple of days I’ve read books 1 and 2 of the Benni Harper series by Earlene Fowler. They violate some of my major rules in cozies (don’t have an idiot sleuth who hides everything from the police, for example), but I still really enjoyed them. I think partly because the MC’s bossy, overprotective love interest reminds me of a certain moderator whom I adore.
Finished A Dark Traveling by Roger Zelazny. He’s written some great stuff, but this isn’t it. The narrative is filled with words like “seemed”, “appeared”, “maybe”, and “possibly”. The overall effect was very annoying. Also, the plot was boring. The main character was a werewolf, but that plot felt like it was stuck onto the main one to make it long enough.
Next: Room for Improvement, by Stacey Ballis.
Goodreads is the bomb 
Between that site and this thread, I will NEVER read everything, I buy, let alone ad to my Want to Read list.
I finished reading Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. It had two mostly unrelated stories: one about a proud woman who makes a bad choice and gets involved with an amoral, controlling man, and one about the goody-two-shoes Daniel Deronda who helps a beautiful Jewess find her long-lost family. The first story started out well enough, but it kind of fizzled out. The story about Mr. Deronda was presumably supposed to be a Really Important treatment of the Jews, but it felt implausible and patronizing and the characters were cardboard cutouts.
The moral of the story (as far as I could tell): Even if the common Jew or Jewess is an oleaginous, money-grubbing huckster, the finer types are just as good as an English gentleman.
I’m reading A Spool of Blue Thread and I’m not loving it. 
I live in a small town with a sad little library, and I can’t afford to buy books often. E-books are about all I can get, and I’m scraping the bottom of my preferred author list. Just read a Tess Gerritesen Rizzoli and Isles short story (Freaks) and a John Grisham short, Partners. Ive got another Rizzoli and Isles short, and while I wait for holds and inter-library loan, I have Sara Rosett’s Murder on Location series. If you couldn’t tell, I prefer mysteries.
Oh hi, I friended you. 
I also love Goodreads, it took me a little while to warm up to it, but once I figured out how it worked the best for me, it’s become indispensable.
I finally finished up The Name of the Wind, which I see why people love it as a fun adventure story, but it came across as too testosterone-packed for me.
I see that!
Look up my review of it I was a bit snarky I fear.
Work has been even more insane than usual for the past couple of months, and I didn’t post at all in the March or April threads. 
A little while ago I finally sat down with my Kindle and got caught up on Goodreads…now it’s time to catch up here!
I’m still deep into the various legal thriller series that I follow. Since February I finished:
[ul]
[li]The Reversal (Michael Connelley)[/li][li]A Crime of Passion (Scott Pratt)[/li][li]The Fifth Witness (Michael Connelley)[/li][/ul]
I am currently halfway through The Fix (David Baldacci), book #3 in the Amos Decker series, which was recently released. I like this character, and so far the mystery is solid.
I’m sticking with my “comfort food” thrillers while work remains stressful, but next month I’ll be taking 2 weeks off – and spending one of those weeks at a Cape Cod beach – and I’m looking forward to breaking out into other genres then. In particular, a co-worker recommended Lincoln in the Bardo: I’m not much for historical fiction, but the supernatural element is intriguing. I have 40+ samples on my Kindle, and am hoping to get through several of them by the end of June.
I went to add you, but we’re already friends.
Yes, yes we are!
Reversal has been my favorite Mickey Haller so far… I need to catch up but I also need to read some of the stuff piling up here! Bookworm dilemma #1
It is a book crying out to be snarked upon.
Practically begged for it…
Stranger was just okay. It doesn’t tell much of a story, because the guy who lived out in the woods didn’t feel much like talking (duh) and his family didn’t either. That was the weirdest thing, that this 20 year old vanished off the face of the earth and nobody even looked for him. Those wacky Mainiacs, huh? :dubious:
Starting on Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett. Non-fiction about a missionary who lived with a tribe of primitive Indians in the Amazon and lost his faith. I’m in it to hear about his spiritual journey, but the adventure part is interesting too.
I just finished Borne by Jeff VanderMeer. I read the Southern Reach trilogy and was underwhelmed, but this sounded intriguing, so I gave it a shot. I’m starting to think I’m just not a fan of his work. Way more atmosphere than substance, which was my main problem with Annihilation et al.
I didn’t connect or care about a single character, pages of flowery descriptions. It’s weird, (ha!) because I like other authors in the weird fiction family. Mieville, Gaiman, Barker, Lovecraft, Kiernan.
I just started a re-read of The Name of the Rose and I have Stonemouth, Iain Banks’s last novel on Deck.
I decided to tackle Ed Hamilton’s City at World’s End instead, and I am about three quarters of the way thru. Unfortunately [spoiler]Everyone involved is incredibly stupid.
The premise is that a super-atomic bomb has knocked the little town of Middleton a billion years into the future. Okay, that I can just accept as the plot device. And the sun is dying and the earth is losing its heat at the core. Okay, fine.
First, the population of Middleton, who have a collective IQ just barely in double digits, don’t want to leave Middleton for the domed city they have found a few miles off. They have to be persuaded/driven/forced/cajoled into not staying in their old city, and dying of freezing and starvation. So finally they move, and the hero of the novel figures out how to work a transmitter (nothing else - the generators which used fission don’t run) and sends out messages for help.
Sure enough, help shows up, in the form of the Federation. Some of the help are aliens. Instantly the people of Middleton react in terror to the prospect of receiving help, and have to be persuaded not to stone the arrivals on sight.
So the Federation reps turn on the generators, get the heat going so they don’t freeze, get the water turned on, and generally save the Middletonians’ collective bacon. However, they let slip that the Federation plans to relocate these folk to another planet. Because Earth is dying.
There is some discussion of how the Federation types look down on the primitives of Earth, which is supposed to gain sympathy for the Earthlings, except it doesn’t, because they start pitching a fit over having to leave Earth, and bring out the field guns and planning war against the Federation. So they are stupid, ungrateful, and apparently unconcerned with the fact that they are going to die on Earth. It is really hard to feel sympathetic towards them, although the author tries valiantly to bring it off, because, well, they’re idiots.
Of course the Federation goes into a dither about it. Which makes me think they aren’t so fucking bright either - turn off the generators, wait a month or so, and see how the noble attachment to Earth lasts while the Earthlings are starving and freezing in the dark. No shooting necessary. But no - our hero is off to Vega to argue their case before the Council.
And the crowning touch - the hero is now involved with a plot of some of the other primitive planets to set off a bomb at Earth’s core to reheat the planet. A brief discussion brings out that this idea has been tried exactly once before, and blew up the asteroid it was tested on. But it sounds like a Good Idea to our hero!
So that’s where I stand at the moment - waiting to hear the Hero argue his case of “No, we want to die on our native Earth, but if you let us use unproven technology that will likely kill us all, that’s our second choice.” Not sure how he is going to bring that one off.[/spoiler]
Regards,
Shodan
Finished:
The Gladstone Bag by Charlotte MacLeod, it’s not one of myfavorites but I did enjoy Theonia getting center stage for a change.
Dark Currents by Lindsay Buroker, the 2nd Emperor’s Edge book is as much fun as the first and there was a surprising amount of character development.
I’ve been zipping through Joe Haldeman’s 1977 collection of interrelated future-espionage sf short stories, All My Sins Remembered. I’m enjoying it, although not as much as when I first read it many years ago.
I just gave up on Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay after my customary 50 pages (actually over 60 when I finally put it aside). It won the Pulitzer but just didn’t do anything for me; overwritten and gave me the sense that Chabon was mighty impressed by his own cleverness.
Next up: Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, which looks like an interesting supervillain spoof.