Hmmm. That does look pretty good, AuntiePam - I’ll have to check it out!
Purgatory Chasm was quite good, and I’ll be looking for his other books. The premise: a recovering alcoholic and parolee belongs to an AA group whose members will do anything for each other, and they call on him when somebody needs a little ass whuppin’. One old guy says he took his classic car into a restoration shop for some work, and they’ve had it for a long time and haven’t done any work and won’t give him his money back, and he want the narrator to go over there and get his car and money back. But things aren’t always what they seem! and he steps in a big ol’ pile o’shit.
I like imaginative plots instead of just the usual “I’m a PI and this is my case,” unless those are extremely well written. Now starting A Fountain Filled with Blood by Julia Spencer-Fleming, second in a series about a female Episcopal priest; here, one of her acquaintances has been the victim of a gay-bashing. I’m just starting so I don’t know if that’s the main plot.
Starting today on Cold in July, by Joe R. Lansdale, who continues to cement his place as my second favorite living author.
One of my very favorites. 
Let me know if you want to discuss it!
I’ve been reading some YA books to compensate for my weakened attention span. Last week, I finished Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue, which started out gripping and…uh…ended up dripping (with overwrought emotion). What a let-down.
I just finished the second book in James Dashner’s Maze Trilogy, The Scorch Trials, which was a disappointment after the really decent first book, The Maze Runner. Same “kids trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world in a rigged scenario” vibe as the Hunger Games, but much better written (and the similarities end there).
Today I’ve started Patrick Ness’ The Knife of Never Letting Go.
Then you’d probably like Hell or High Water by Joy Castro. I’m not finished yet but it’s shaping up to be a five-star read.
The main character isn’t a PI (and doesn’t want to be), but as she does a newspaper story on registered sex offenders, she’s asking around about an active serial killer. Mixed in with this are her memories of growing up in a housing project, being neither black nor white in a black or white society, having friends with privileged backgrounds, and being sexual but so afraid of relationships that she carries condoms and picks up guys in bars.
The interviews with the RSO’s are intriguing, and scary, and educational without being preachy or judgmental.
Finished this, and also Robert Lacey’s The Queen: A Life in Brief, a very short (166 pages) bio of Elizabeth II. If you want a once-over-lightly of Her Majesty’s life, this is a good one.
Oddly enough, there is a film version being made. Has a trailer out:
Wow, that will be something if they can pull it off.
Okay- I am almost done with it and I’ll PM you.
The trailer looks great - but how they plan to put it all together, I dunno. I am cautiously optimistic …
It gets better - hang in there! I read it about two years ago and it’s still in my head when many I’ve read since have flown.
Ha! I had this on reserve at the library and picked it up yesterday! I finished A Fountain Filled with Blood – don’t bother – and am about 2/3 through The House at Sea’s End by Elly Griffiths, third in a series about an English anthropologist who works with police. I’ll look up her previous books. And I’ll start Hell or High Water tomorrow!
Mostly through New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, a compilation of new(er) Cthulhu stories. The Neil Gaiman story A Study in Emerald is excellent and can be found on-line for free. I also liked Old Virginia and Another Fish Story, among others. Down to 4 stories left.
I finished Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns earlier this month, and I actually liked it more than The Kite Runner. I found the historical material interesting but the characters rather flat in Kite Runner, but I thought this one was much more well rounded and compelling.
I’m now working on Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo. The movie is coming out in a few weeks, and I like to read the book first whenever possible. So far, it’s . . . interesting. DeLillo’s style might not be quite my thing, but I do like the writing, even if I’m rarely ever sure of What It All Means.
“Ya looked like ya might be thirsty!”
Old joke.
I’m reading Beany Malone, by Lenora Mattingly Weber, a teen read published in 1948. Cozy and wholesome to the max.
I just finished listening to the audiobook version ofThe Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Jacob de Zoet, a stubbornly honorable clerk, is at the center of the story, as he tries to acquaint himself with Japan of the year 1799. It’s an exotic land, both geographically and psychologically. Jacob is surrounded by an unsavory lot of fellow tradesman, a group of sycophantic Japanese interpreters and the beguiling burned midwife Orito.
This was my first experience with David Mitchell and I’m incredibly impressed with him as a craftsman. The amount of research that he must of done to create this novel is astounding.
I finished The Diary of Anne Frank last week - a really good read. I do rather wish that she would’ve focused more on politics and what was going on for Jews, but she was also a) 13 - 14 and b) stuck in the Annex all of the time, and thus might not have known. Very sobering, and very tragic.
I read the first four books in the series again a few years ago and thought they were fun and nostalgic, rather than dated, though I think the second and third books (More Tales and Further Tales) hold up better than the first.
I’m reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and listening to The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection. No, not at the same time, but when I fall asleep listening to The Limpopo Academy, I have dark violent dreams in hot lyrical locations.
Two more Laura Ingalls Wilder books down—The Long Winter and Little Town on the Prairie. Working on These Happy Golden Years now, then just The First Four Years to go.