Finished Cujo, by Stephen King. It was okay. A little slow-paced. I knew the basic story but never saw the 1983 film version. One surprise for me was the dog being a Saint Bernard. I expected Cujo to be a Rottweiler or Doberman pinscher, some breed like that.
Next up is End of Watch, also by Stephen King. The final installment in his Bill Hodges trilogy.
Finished Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, which I enjoyed a lot.
Started Rejected Princesses: Tales of History’s Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by Jason Porath and also Memoirs of Solar Pons by August Derleth.
This morning Amazon told me that David Baldacci will have a new book out in November, this time another entry in the Will Robie series (End Game). I read the first Will Robie book three years ago, but even though I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads I don’t seem to have ever read any others…I might attempt to remedy that over the summer.
Ahhh, ok. Gotcha. 
Hmmm. Well, since it’s not very long I’ll still plan to read it when I’m on vacation. Plus now I’m extra curious!
I loved that book/series!
Bzzzt. It failed. Implausible, frustrating, overwritten. Back to the library it goes.
Just started the two-novella collection Exiles/Passage to Ararat by Michael J. Arlen, whom Hemingway praised in A Moveable Feast. Arlen’s style reminds me a bit of J.D. Salinger’s, but I can’t say I’m wowed so far.
I also just began The Sherlock Holmes Book, edited by David Stuart Davies and Barry Forshaw, part of DK’s “Big Ideas Simply Explained” series. It concisely describes, explains and puts into context all of Conan Doyle’s 56 Holmes short stories and 4 novels. Nicely illustrated, too.
Read 86 pages of Burntown by Jennifer McMahon this morning. Now I’m done. I’ve liked her other stuff but this one was just too weird and I wasn’t buying any of it.
I finished Deadly Games the third Emperor’s Edge book by Lindsay Buroker. Each book gets better and better and more fun to read.
I don’t remember who recommended them, but the series is JUST what I needed right now.
Read a good chunk of The Gentleman by Forrest Leo. Even after being warned by DZedNConfused, I gave it a shot. It was meant as humor, but wasn’t funny, and the footnotes were beyond tedious. Ditched.
Recently found the first Robert Parker Spenser novel on a take one-leave one shelf and thought I’d re-read it. Went through the Spenser novels maybe 30 years ago until I got to the one where he and Hawk go on a bloody murdering rampage in an attempt to get Spenser’s girlfriend back, even though she wasn’t so much kidnapped as just got tired of Spenser’s shit and ran off with some bad dude. But I digress…
So, “The Godwulf Manuscript” was a very by-the-numbers PI/noir start to the series. A tough and needlessly wisecracking and irreverent PI gets hired to investigate the case of a missing manuscript. Note that this is almost the last time we ever hear about the manuscript – it’s later returned and Spenser never even lays eyes on it. The manuscript is just a MacGuffin to get Spenser involved in a series of murders and felonies, many of which are committed by Spenser himself. During the course of the book, Spenser commits crimes ranging from breaking and entering, burglary, interfering with a police investigation, tampering with evidence, assault, discharge of a firearm, trespassing, numerous acts of drunk driving, and he double parks a lot. He also sleeps with a client’s wife and daughter and shoots a few guys who mostly deserve it. What he doesn’t do is a ton of detecting. There’s really no time, what with all the quipping, drinking, and sexy times. Fortunately for Spenser, the perp is the most obvious guy in the room
The book is often hilariously dated. Everyone smokes continuously and drinks bourbon by the glass. Spenser describes how people are dressed informally and I think we’re supposed to infer that they’re filthy hippies, except that everyone dresses that way now. Also, the police are ludicrously casual about Spenser’s many infractions of the law; I think in 2017, a PI who shoots a couple of guys doesn’t get a bottle of bourbon from a friendly cop and then allowed to check himself out of the hospital and head home.
But within all the skeeziness and cut-and-paste noir, there are a few germs of a good series there. You get a few of Spenser’s trademark recipes. There’s a lot of local color – mentions of Boston and the North Shore that I appreciate more now that I live there.
Apparently, even forty years ago, getting to Marblehead was a giant pain in the ass.
Based on Charlotte MacLeod’s books from the 80s & 90s, it appearsso.
Finished Rejected Princesses: Tales of History’s Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by Jason Porath. Some interesting stuff about women in history you don’t always hear about. The overly breezy tone could be off-putting, and the book itself (the ink, I suspect) had a bad aroma.
Started Gone with the Woof, a cozy by Laurien Berenson.
Started today on Bloodchild and Other Stories, a collection by Octavia Butler. I’ve read the title story before.
I just finished Kim Robinson’s New York: 2140 and I must say I really enjoyed it. It’s science fiction but not with rocket ships and death lasers…it’s NYC in 2140 after massive climactic changes, the city is mostly underwater, people still live in the buildings, travel is mostly by boats and airships and it just really intrigued me.
This is a decent summation of the book, although I find this critic to be a little heavy-handed: Book Review: 'New York 2140,' By Kim Stanley Robinson : NPR
If this is the kind of quality work Mr Robinson churns out on the regular, I may have a new author to explore as this was the first time I’d read him.
I reread TGM a year or so ago, and agree with most of your criticisms. Hard to believe it first came out in 1973! Fortunately Parker learned from his mistakes, and some of the later Spenser books are quite good. He’s specifically described in TGM as a Korean War veteran, as I recall, but that would make him too old these days. Like James Bond, he became conveniently ageless.
Me, too. “Bloodchild” is one of my favorite sf short stories - a fascinatingly creepy tale of a human-alien symbiosis. You probably know it won Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards.
Finished End of Watch, by Stephen King. Very good, and a fitting end to the Bill Hodges trilogy. This installment I would say was better than the second one but not quite as good as the first. And I noted with some amusement the brief refernce to another of his works, Cujo. I read Cujo and End of Watch back to back – in the former the fictional Sharp Cereals plays a major role, while in the latter the cereal company rates a brief mention as a concert sponsor.
Next up is The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer.
Over the long weekend I finished Mindbridge by Joe Haldeman, a short 1976 novel about teleportation to distant star systems and first contact with an (initially) very hostile race of shapeshifting aliens. Good stuff. I’ve also started Haldeman’s latest novel, Work Done For Hire, which is about a struggling writer hired to write the novelization of an as-yet-unproduced horror movie. An large, unwelcome package left at his front door sends the story in a very different direction. I’ve also begun the audiobook of Michael Crichton’s 1996 novel Airframe, about the investigation of a lethal in-flight incident aboard a Chinese passenger jet flying into Denver.
Spring flowers, summer temps and baby birds: June Thread
So I had a two and a half hour car repair today and thus made decent headway on the fourth Harry Hole book, Nemesis.
Finished Gone with the Woof. Meh. Am currently reading The Weird Wild West, an anthology of fantasy/SF set in the 1800’s in what is now the western U.S. There are a couple of really good stories, especially the first, “Abishag Mary”, by Frances Rowat.
Also, I’m reading Off the Menu, more Chick Lit by Stacey Ballis.