Finished Secrecy, by Belva Plain. Meh.
Now I’m reading A Curate for All Seasons, by Fred Secombe.
Finished How to Invent Everything and Shakespeare for Squirrels. I’m still reading Coriolanus.
I’m also reading Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, which was for a long time the only Authorized Tarzan Book Not Written by Edgar Rice Burroughs*. Fritz Leiber wrote it as a novelization of the 1966 movie of the same name. I’ve never seen the movie, but the book is excellent, thus far. I picked it up at a used book store yesterday.
*I think that the 1996 publication of Tarzan: The Lost Adventure based on an outline and written portions left by Burroughs at his death, and completed by Joe Lansdale means that there are now two authorized Tarzan books not entirely by Burroughs. I know a lot of purists aren’t hap[py with the way Lansdale filled in the blanks, though.
Actually, I see that there are a lot of Tarzan books on Amazon by non-Burroughs authors (including Philip Jose Farmer, but I thought his Tarzan Alive! and The Adventure of the Peerless Peer weren’t “authorized”. But even he has Tarzan books I wasn’t aware of). I don’t know if these are “authorized” by the Burroughs estate, or if they even bother with it anymore.
Reading “Bombs Away: The Hot War” by Harry Turtledove. It’s an Alternate History where the Korean War went worse than our Timeline so Truman approved using Nukes which turns into a mostly conventional WWIII in Europe and Asia in 1951 with the occasional Nuclear bomb here and there.
It’s typical Turtledove. Lots of POV characters on both sides, a bit repetitive as it jumps around but I like it so far. I’m actually midway through the second book in the Trilogy called Fallout but gave the first above in case someone wanted to read it.
I finished The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. It was a big disappointment. Usually, an author can say any fool thing, and I, as Wide-eyed Reader, will respond, “Really? Then what happened?” But as this tale unwound, I found myself saying, “No…that’s not right.” So many times, characters reacted in implausible ways, or it seemed like they should have reacted, but the author forgot to tell us about it. I started making a list of “nope” moments. I think the first one was [major crazy thing] happened, then Dad goes back to work (at night!) and Mom goes out also, leaving the kids alone. Well, that was obviously wrong. :dubious:
After a while it was like, “Character uses a whole bottle of shampoo on her hair” and I’m like, “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”
There were hardly any likeable characters at all. I tell you what, if these Southern Book Club gals were all I had, I’d let the vampire get me. There were some incredibly gross scenes too.
I liked Grady Hendrix’s other books so well that I’m going to forgive him this one, but I can’t recommend it.
Started today on Network Effect by Martha Wells. Surely I can depend on Murderbot!
Sounds fascinating! Thanks. Just might read that someday. I’ve read other Turtledove books and found him a bit uneven, but when he’s good, he’s very good.
Finished A Curate for All Seasons, by Fred Secombe. Meh. Best moment was when he’s assigned by his vicar to knock on the door of half the houses in town and introduce himself, with an eye toward getting Church of England members to attend services if they aren’t already, and to locate anyone else to evangelize on a later visit.
When he meets a woman who’s a Jehovah’s Witness, he’s annoyed that she tries to evangelize him.
Now I’m reading Dragon Precinct, by Keith R. A. DeCandido.
Finished Dragon Precinct, by Keith R. A. DeCandido, which I enjoyed.
Now I’m reading I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History, by Stephen Jay Gould.
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Good Lord have mercy this is an UGLY looking set up.
I’ve finished a few books over the last week:
- The Boy at the End of the World. You know that book where there’s an ecological apocalypse? No, the one where robots have gone mad and are attacking humans? No, I mean the one where robots are servile and dullwitted? No, I mean the one with plucky funny mutant animals? No, I mean the one where humans are in suspended animation? No, I mean the book where the boy is hypercompetent?
This book has it all. And if it’s the first time you’ve seen all these tropes, it’s not bad. But if you’ve ever read a postapocalyptic adventure novel before, you might find this one as tired and unimaginative as I found it. I checked out a bunch of Andre Norton Award nominees, and this was the first one I read. Fortunately, later nominees proved to be a lot better.
- Speaking of a lot better, the next nominee I picked up was the second in a series, so I quickly put it back down (after learning a major spoiler for the first book) and picked up the first in the series: Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword. On the one hand, the “child prodigy goes from poverty to an academy for special children, where they quickly make enemies with the rich entitled villain child while proving their own worth through hypercompetence and conspiracy-unmasking” is a pretty full subgenre these days. Thanks, Potter!
On the other hand, I’ve rarely had so much fun with it; nor have I ever read a book in this genre with such an appealingly weird premise. The main character is very good at what sh’e ssupposed to be good at, but she’s hardly a Mary Sue; and I found myself relating to her moments of weakness and cruelty even as I begged her not to be so awful.
I was so glad I had the sequel to hand when I finished this one!
- When schools closed in mid-March, I reserved an audiobook of David Copperfield from the state library system, figuring it’d be something meaty to listen to as I drastically upped my daily neighborhood walking regimen. Unfortunately, about 4 other people in the state apparently made the same decision I made, and the audiobook is 35 hours long, and I could only check it out for a week before each of those other people got it for a week. Yesterday, with 8% to go, I checked it out for the last time; and this afternoon, as I finished setting up my garden fence, Copperfield finally married Agnes and reminisced about life for the last time with Mr. Peggity.
I don’t have anything to say about Dickens that hasn’t already been said, although I came to the book by an odd path: last year, I read The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heap, and was so intrigued by the titular character that I figured I had to give Copperfield a try. I’m glad I did.
Finished I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History , by Stephen Jay Gould.
It has some interesting parts, but it’s not as good (IMHO) as The Panda’s Thumb or Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes.
Now I"m reading Skyfall, by Catherine Asaro.
Finished it last night. Meh. The story jumps back and forth between the present day and the early Fifties, as a political consultant to a Congresswoman from New York learns that the circumstances of his grandfather’s death - suicide by jumping from a hotel window - were not all that they seemed. Cameo appearances by Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Frank Costello, Dylan Thomas and Lyndon B. Johnson, among others, don’t save the book. A disappointment.
Next up: The Player of Games, a sf novel by Iain M. Banks.
Finished Skyfall , by Catherine Asaro, which I enjoyed.
Now I’m reading Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and People Who Cook, by Anthony Bourdain
I forget to update… which is sad since I’m OP here. 
Anywho, I finished Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch, it’s a good thing I reread it, I HAD forgotten several key points.
Right now, I am reading Not Dead Yet by Jenn Burke. It’s an m/m murder mystery with witches, vampires, umm a not dead but not exactly alive thief, astral plane and something vicious killing people. Slow to start but really moving now.
Dendarii_Dame:
Finished Skyfall , by Catherine Asaro, which I enjoyed.
Off to listen to Adele now…
Fiction reads in June:
I read The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley. It’s about this guy who writes his secrets down in a notebook and leaves it in a cafe to pass on to someone else, who does the same thing, and the notebook gets passed around. Oddly, the people decide to leave their names and other identifying information in the notebook, so the various characters find one another and become friends. It is a bit cheesy, but also charming and enjoyable.
Also read the sequel to Me Before You, After You by Jojo Moyes. I read the first book three years ago, so it took me a while to get back into the book and remember the different characters. But once I got into it, I liked it. Compared to most books I read, I feel like this book had slightly more relatable problems, rather than some sort of thriller where you’re escaping a murderer or something big like that. I related very much to the main character and was invested in the story line.
Going to post my nonfiction books in a separate post, after testing to make sure the linking works in this new message board because it looks different now.
One of my book clubs read Me Before You a few years back, and I hated it. Didn’t pass the 50-page rule for me, and hardly made me eager to read a sequel.
I had some rather bad luck with my nonfiction picks in the month of June. Last year, my friend recommended the book Psychocybernetics by Maxwell Maltz to me. It’s a self-help book written in 1960, and decides to delve into the topic of neuroscience. Which might not have been a problem if I knew nothing about neuroscience, but I enjoy reading books on that topic. Books written in the last decade. Not books written in 1960. So I DNFed that one.
Then I picked up Everything Happens for A Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler. It’s written by a theology professor who ran into some serious health issues (including cancer) in her thirties, and her thoughts on divine providence and if God sends us what we deserve and stuff like that. I’m not sure who her intended audience was, but the book kind of just felt like venting and complaining to a journal, and had long sections talking about her doctoral thesis on religion, and it really just didn’t hold my interest. So I DNFed that one, too.
Luckily, there was one nonfiction book that I actually enjoyed this month: The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. This book examines many different areas of our lives (body language, conversation, religion, education, art, politics … that’s all I can remember off the top of my head), and shows how a lot of our behavior is more self-serving than we consciously acknowledge it to be. It’s a little lighter on the science and heavier on the philosophy than what I’m used to from a book on human behavior; however, most of what they wrote sounded intuitively accurate, and it was fascinating to read it states so boldly. The only part of the book that really felt wrong to me was their explanation on why we humans lie to ourselves and are so often unable to recognize our very own true motives. They basically said it was so we could lie more convincingly, which is just a guess on their part, and I think their guess is wrong, but I can’t really offer a better guess so who am I to criticize?
Finished Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and People Who Cook, by Anthony Bourdain. Not bad, but not as good as Kitchen Confidential. Its final chapter was heartbreaking, after his suicide. He tells what happened to people he talked about in his previous book, ending with the words: “We survived. We did well. We’re still here.”
Now I’m reading The Frangipani Tree Mystery, by Ovidia Yu.