WHAT ARE YOU READING? - Part 3

In the last day of March (I refuse to start a thread on April 1), with the world in the middle of a pandemic, what is everyone reading?

Just finished The Sunday Potluck Club and getting ready to start my challenge books for April.

I'm heading into Q2 partway through La Terre and I've nearly finished A history of South Africa by Frank Welsh.

I've gotten hooked into a reread of Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series - currently reading #4, Bone Crossed. I just got #12 from the library, and realized I have but have never read #11...so two new ones as a treat when I finish the series.

But I'm going to have to fit in a few more books in between, because I'm limiting rereads - I have to read a BOMB (Book Off My Bookshelf) for every reread. I had 8 paid for, but that still leaves me two short - so I have to fit in a couple more (short) books before I can finish the series.

I'm a little more than halfway through my reread of Wolf Hall and a third through Mrs. Dalloway—a friend had an all-day Dalloway read planned on Sunday (because the book takes place in a day) but I started late and had to break to cook dinner, plus I'm a slow reader, plus oddly enough I've never read it before, and it takes some pretty close and careful reading. So I'm only a third in, but really loving it. So I guess not much in the way of light reading, but I'm of the mind that the denser the text the more it distracts me from the rest of the world.

>4 jjmcgaffey:

If you are not reading them yet, you may want to pick also her Alpha and Omega series - while the two series are mostly independent, they do reference each other here and there, especially in the later books...

Last night I finished the fascinating Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History by Steven J. Zipperstein. Zipperstein does a great job of placing this horrifying 1903 anti-Semitic riot firmly within the context of history, showing both what led up the the tragedy and how the event has resonated, in many surprising ways, over the past 117 years. You'll find my more in-depth comments on the book's work page and on my own CR thread.

>4 jjmcgaffey: The Mercy series are my current go-to for sheer enjoyment, but I didn't like the Alpha and Omega series nearly as much. I'm only two books down on that one, so maybe it will grab me. Charles is certainly a wonderful character.

Managed to finish Lady Chatterley's Lover just before midnight last night! I'm happy because I've been reading really well from my TBR pile, even reading some purchased years back, and I've been reading a lot of my bigger books! Granted out of my English language selection, I pretty much only have large page counts left but still, it's great to finally be clearing some of these out. And I seem to be on a classics kick which has been fun to revisit especially since last year I read so many books published in 2018/2019.

I grabbed Middlemarch this morning on my way to work as my next book. Again, wasn't planning on reading yet another big book so soon but that's all I have left on my pile and I'm still in a classics mood.

>5 lisapeet: I love Mrs. Dalloway, Lisa. I'm glad to see another fan.

I am starting The Most Fun We Ever Had.

>6 AnnieMod:, >8 sallypursell: Oh, I've read Alpha and Omega too. I'm noticing, on this umpteenth reread of Mercy, how much it does intertwine - the thing that started all of Mercy's adventures (finding Mac) also sent Charles to Chicago to meet Anna, for instance

I like both series. But I still prefer her earlier, high fantasy books to the urban fantasy - I _love_ the Hurog series, Dragon Bones and Dragon Blood. And the Raven series, and the Hob (which is currently a standalone)... She talks, every now and then, about going back to one or all of those. But the urban fantasy was her breakthrough, and so far she's stuck with it.

I've finished the fourth book of the Mercy series (about one a day - gobble gobble) and stopped to read a couple short BOMBs. I now have enough rereads paid for to finish the series. Then I'll need to read some more because I keep wanting to reread...comfort reading.

Hmm, are touchstones messed up again? I even put in the numbers and it's not finding the Hurog books.

ETA: Actually, when I hit Post, it worked fine; it's just the sidebar that's not coming up with anything. And failed on editing - maybe I need to let it time out?

I'm now reading the novel Maravilla by Laura Del Fuego. I'd certainly never heard of book or author when I bought this at an excellent bookstore in Santa Cruz, CA, a few months back. It was published by the independent Floricanto Press, located in Encino, CA, in 1989. It's a coming of age story about a young Latina growing up in East LA.

Here's what I found online about Del Fuego. This was posted in 2008:

"Laura del Fuego, a California Arts Council Fellowship recipient for Literature and past featured poet in the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, has won several awards for fiction, and is the author of Carmen Garcia Was Here C/S (which describes growing up Chicana) and Maravilla, (a story of coming of age in East L.A.). Del Fuego's poetry, essays and stories have been widely published in journals and anthologies. She is also a screenwriter and an editor for Sonoma County Women's Voices."

I've been in a bit of a funk for the last few weeks and haven't felt very chatty. I'm still reading though (of course!) and have made my way through Nine Perfect Strangers, Resurrection Bay, The Scholar, Lies Sleeping, and Zoo City.

My first book for the new quarter is Persepolis Rising.

I am about to start on another Elizabethan play Mother Bombie by John Lyly
Swiftly followed I hope by Bestiario, by Julio Cortázar

Have several books ongoing, but the one being most consistently read (just before bed) is a short story collection, Phantom Limbs by Margo Lanagan -- labelled as horror, featuring a haunting cover image; the stories are, more or less modern equivalents of Grimm's tales, this collection for adults. I think of her as a literary child of Angela Carter :-)

I'm reading Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan, but it's not impressing me much, and it's going kind of slowly.

I am reading a short story collection Amish Picnic for NetGalley.

I didn't even know about the Hurog books, etc. Oh, good. And if you like them better, even better.

I just finished The Deerslayer and have moved on to People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

>19 sallypursell: Yeah. She was writing epic fiction for quite a while before she wrote the first Mercy Thompson - but that was her breakout book, and she's been in urban fantasy since. It took me a while to warm up to it, and I _still_ prefer her earlier books. Have fun!

So I was reading through Mercy Thompson and hit the one where events at the beginning of the book are predicated on stuff that happens in the second or third Alpha & Omega book. Oops. So now I have to read A&O interspersed with MT...which means I need more BOMBs, too. Currently reading Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery - it's a quite decent book, but so much _not_ what I'm in the mood for. Good enough I'm getting through it pretty fast, though, and a BOMB. I'm far enough ahead on my BOMBs that I could read a chunk of the two Briggs series - but if I recall correctly, there's several (more) books where one follows immediately on its predecessor, and I don't want to have to stop to fill in BOMBs at that point. So I'm scouring my boxes for quick, light, at least mildly interesting books that I can read and deal with.

So this multiple reread is being very good for my BOMBs goals...

I finished Our Musseque by José Luandino Vieira and started Greetings from Grandpa, a poetry collection by Jack Mapanje.

I finished Maravilla by Laura del Fuego. This is a coming of age novel about a young Chicana living her teen years in the Maraville housing development in East LA during the early and mid-60s. The story is told in first person through the eyes of Consuelo Contreres, known as Cece. We see her home life, with caring but imperfect parents and siblings both older and younger. All and all, it seems like a normal family, happily (for the reader) not over-dramatized, but on the other hand trouble enough for a teenager to handle. But mostly what we see of Cece's is her social life. First, as a young teenager, it's the other girls she hangs out with. Then as she moves into her later teens, her friendships solidify and boys enter the picture. What we get for a while is a seemingly endless parade of cruising, parties, drinking binges and worries about who was dancing, or out cruising in their car, with whom.

High school exists on the peripheries. Thoughts of the future are mostly absent. At first I took this for a weakness, but as time, and the narrative, went on, I began to think this was meant to represent the issues of the societal constraints that the culture inflicts on this relatively poor community of color. Things get more serious as Cece's story moves along, she grows into her sexuality, and the people around her start dabbling in, and sometimes succumbing to, harder drugs. The police become more of a presence. Watts explodes. And Cece begins struggling to break away from the continuing patterns of futility. Though parts of the novel dragged, overall I found it was well worth reading. I've written about this book in a bit more length on my personal CR thread.

Next up, some "between book" reading, followed by a Istanbul Passage, a spy thriller by Joseph Kanon. I very much liked his book, The Good German, which I read a few years back (I haven't seen the movie), so thought I'd give him another go. Cheers!

Finished La Terre (Zola as usual doing his best to outdo himself...) and a short Zimbabwean historical novel, Year of the uprising.

Now reading Javier Marías's debut early novel El hombre sentimental and Breyten Breytenbach's memoir Dog heart.

ETA: I thought for some reason that it was his first — turns out that it was the fifth!

For all you multi-linguists out there. I want to start reading in Spanish, but my Spanish is mediocre. Can any of you make a suggestion for me. I don't want educational, necessarily, so no Don Quixote, but something fun and light, maybe? That's really how I learned my English, I think, so it seems a good way to get over the hump to better Spanish.

>25 sallypursell: My first go at reading in Spanish was La sombra del viento, which was the most obvious recent Spanish book I could think of, but it's quite long, and I found it rather cheap, false romantic writing, and ended up not liking it much. So I wouldn't necessarily advise that.

I enjoyed Eduardo Mendoza's comic detective stories, starting with El Misterio de la Cripta Embrujada, and also Arturo Pérez-Reverte's historical novels — they are two of the most popular Spanish authors at the moment, so should be easy to find, if you like that sort of thing.

Como Agua Para Chocolate is fun, if you like Mexican food, and not hard to read, but you've probably read it already in translation.

Older classics that are fairly accessible: Miguel Delibes, e.g. El camino; Unamuno, e.g. Niebla; and the lovely (but not very cheerful) short post-Civil-War one-off novel Nada by Carmen Laforet.

>25 sallypursell: I bet Harry Potter could easily be found in Spanish....

I've finished the wonderful The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. She really wrote something special with this entire trilogy. I highly recommend it.

Now I'm about half way through The Five, a nonfiction book that focuses on the victims of Jack the Ripper with no attention for the murderer himself. It's such an interesting look at women's struggles in Victorian England.

And I'm starting Lady Audley's Secret as a group read led by lyzard in the Virago group. Her group reads are always packed with information if anyone is interested.

I finished Tierra Del Fuego a set of nine exquisite short stories by revered Chilean author Francisco Coloane. My review is on the book's work page and also on my own CR thread.

I've now moved on, as mentioned above, to the fun if not particularly deep spy thriller, Istanbul Passage, by Joseph Kanon.

A few people mentioned Cold Comfort Farm under the humorous reads question, therefore I've decided it's been languishing unread on my shelf for too long and this is the perfect time to read it.

Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell proved to be a disappointment to me. I had heard great things about this book, but it did not deliver for me. Will runs wild on a plantation in Zimbabwe, loving her outdoor life. When her father dies and her guardian marries a much younger woman, Will is sent to England to a boarding school. She is unable to cope with the bullying and strictness of the environment with its many rules and regulated lifestyle. She makes some decisions that are at times pathetic and hilarious. Touchstone for this book is not coming up. 3 stars

I wanted to continue riding my classics mood so I picked up Middlemarch but after realizing it took me about 5 days to read 40 pages I decided it wasn't the right book for right now and put it down to make sure it wouldn't lead me into a reading slump.

So as an emergency measure I picked up a mystery, The Tattoo Murder Case, to make sure I'm still reading and this is definitely working! I started it yesterday and am already halfway done so I can see myself finishing this tomorrow. The question is what I'll read after this one!

>25 sallypursell:

If you do not think you are ready to jump with a real book, there are graded readers out there as well. If you are ready to jump in, a book which you know is always a good start - a classic mystery or a children/YA book usually has an easier language.

I'm finally reading again, after a lull of almost two months. I've been reading Lost Children Archive sporadically for the past couple of weeks, but this weekend I started reading Afropean: Notes from Black Europe by Johny Pitts, which has captured my attention. Pitts is a mixed race Englishman in his early thirties, born to an Irish mother and an African American father from Brooklyn who was a member of an R&B group, The Fantastics, that was moderately successful in the UK in the 1970s. He grew up in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, and struggled to fit into either the White or Black British communities. He wanted to explore everyday Black culture in Europe, saved up money for several years to finance a trip, and embarked on his trip in 2016, I think. The book starts with his childhood in Sheffield and experiences in London, and then takes us to Paris, including the well known banlieue of Clichy-Sous-Bois, home to a large community of impoverished and isolated African immigrants, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow, Marseille and the French Riviera, and ends in Lisbon, as I hoped it would. It's an enjoyable trip so far, as Pitts' writing style makes the reader feel as if he is alongside him on his journey, and I should finish it tomorrow.

I needed something silly today, so I read The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss. That one counted for a BingoDog square and AlphaKit challenge. I really liked the story about the empty green pants that scared the main character, until he/she realized the pants were also afraid of him/her/it. Being a scaredycat myself, this was such a fun story. Most of what I fear is in my mind.

>27 avaland:. I'm not much of a Harry Potter fan. No doubt I can think of some alternatives. I have been reading a Goosebumps novel "El Sangre de Monstruo" for awhile, but it isn't gripping.

Not reading quite as much, busy making masks and doing yard work. But when I do pick up a book I'm still alternating between the science book Laterality, and the two short story collections.

I've finished South wind, which has been on my TBR since forever (and is an excellent escapist read for troubled times, as it was meant to be), as well as another short book from Zimbabwe, Charles Mungoshi's story collection The coming of the dry season.

I'm listening to This mournable body by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe again!) and just about to pick something else off the TBR.

I've recently finished Ducks, Newburyport and Basti. Still reading Anniversaries and have started The Golden Notebook.

>39 ELiz_M: Are you interested in this group read? Not a big crowd, but I'm planning to join in.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/318218

I finished An Amish Picnic: Four Stories and The Gracie Guide to Naples both for NetGalley. The touchstones are not showing up for either of them.

My reading has ground to something of a halt. That never happens to me. Could it be covert anxiety? Family have some been calling me to discuss risk. Maybe that's it. Sometimes I will have a day or two like that in the middle of my worst fibromyalgia flares, but I had been seeming to get a lot better.

I did just start The Warden, the first Barchester book from Anthony Trollope, which was part of my reading plan for the year, so that's something.

I was trying to read some modern romance comedy fiction, but I had to actually stop and get rid of the ebook. I almost never stop books in the middle, but this one was worth it. It was called The Dare, and I hated both protagonists.

>41 LadyoftheLodge: Not only are the touchstones gone, but the Search doesn't work for me, either. Don't leave us, LT!

>30 AlisonY: It’s years since I read it, but I remember Cold Comfort Farm with such affection. I reckon it’s perfect for these strange times. Hope you enjoy it.

I’m reading Natacha Appanah’s En attendant demain (Waiting for Tomorrow) - when Appanah is on form, as she is here, her writing is sublime. And Faïza Guène’s Un homme, ça ne pleure pas (Men Don’t Cry). It’s coincidence that I’m reading them at the same time, but Appanah and Guène are both female immigrants to France, and these two novels deal in different ways with the immigrant experience in France. I also have the second of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels on the back burner; I was doing quite well with it, but put it aside a few weeks ago as I couldn’t cope with something so immersive on top of the real-life drama in which we were all immersed (and reading it in Italian called for mental energy that I just didn’t have). I’m getting back into it now.

>44 rachbxl: Will look forward to your thoughts on the Appanah, Rachel.

I'm reading The French Lieutenant's Woman for my book club. We're going to try a virtual meeting.

Totally changed direction and put aside what I have been previously reading but have managed to discover the excellent Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire, read completely out of order: Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Every Heart a Doorway, and In an Absent Dream. I look forward to the rest of the stories in this series and her other works.

Now on to The Hole I'm totally retreating into my old reading themes.

I've recently finished Blandings by P. G. Wodehouse, because Wodehouse is always good for the stress levels, and Jim Henson: The Works, a nice, big, colorful coffee table book about Henson and the Muppets. Now reading The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, the new Welcome to Night Vale novel by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor.

I've had a hard time feeling like reading much or enjoying the books I do read. I decided to start Romola by George Eliot in hopes that her beautiful writing will take me away from everything.

>43 sallypursell: I am glad it is not just me. I have not had luck with the search feature either. Staying in touch with my LT friends is important to me, since we have no family near us (and unfortunately my husband's grown up kids could care less about us).

Re. contemporary romance fiction that you mentioned, I have also deleted several ebooks or taken print copies to the Little Free Library near the grocery store. They seem to get more traction there. They are just not my thing, I guess.

I am reading Pink Flannel by Ruth Park which was a BB from another thread.

I'm rereading Knock by Jules Romains, a twenties play about a quack. I needed something light and funny, and it caught my eye when I was browsing my bookshelves. I know there's an edge to this play - it's about a manipulative, money-loving doctor who swindles his patients - but it's sort of a comfort read to me. It reminds me of my childhood and of mum who used to quote one of its lines - "ça vous chatouille, ou ça vous gratouille ?" (does it tickle or does it itch?) - when we were poorly.

I finally finished Ducks, Newburyport yesterday morning. So, I’m actually starting a new book - The Luzhin Defense, Nabokov’s 3rd novel.

I've just started Of Love and Other Demons, a short novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's been a long time since I read any Marquez and I'm looking forward to revisiting his world.

I've also added two new books to my "between books" rotation. One is Cape Horn and Other Stories from the End of the World by Chilean writer Francisco Coloane. I just finished his collection Tierra Del Fuego and enjoyed those stories so much that I decided to immediately begin this other collection of his. Of few stories appear in both, but I'll be happy to reread those.

The other newly started short story collection is Foreign Shores by Haitian writer Marie-Hélène Laforest. I seem to be the only LT member with this book in his or her collection, unless there are multiple listings for it that I'm not aware of.

Cheers all!

>54 rocketjk: I really enjoyed that Márquez. A lot of playful parallels to Rapunzel.

Completed Mata Hari: A Life from Beginning to End in the Hourly History series of biographies of women in history. This book did double duty for the MysteryKit challenge of Espionage and the NonFiction Cat for Law and Order. I like the Hourly History books for a quick read and overview of different people and events in history. Mata Hari was certainly a fascinating and outrageous woman, even though she did not seem to be a very successful spy. Yes, I read it in about an hour!

>38 thorold: Still listening to This mournable body (autocorrect turns it into "mountable body"....!) — it's going to take a while, with only a short walk outside and a session on the exercise bike every day for audiobooks.

Otherwise, I finally got around to Cry, the beloved country (excellent, but old-fashioned even for a book that came out in 1948), whilst from the dustiest parts of the TBR I fished out and finished the posthumous Sebald essay-collection Campo Santo and Meneer Beerta, the first part of the Dutch mega-novel Het Bureau.

Just started Dublinesca from the TBR.

I just finished Pink Flannel by Ruth Park. This was a sort of memoir of a young girl who lived with her aunts in New Zealand. The unique thing about this book is that it had no chapters, just like a running narrative. The descriptions of the Maori people with whom Jenny was acquainted were interesting, as were her various adventures. The story was alternately hilarious, sad, and nostalgic. I had some trouble at first with some of the "slang" terms, but figured them out within the context of the story. Once I got into the book, I could not put it down.

I finished Love and Other Demons by Garbriel Garcia Marquez. Basically, I inhaled it. I posted a short review on my own CR thread and the book's work page.

I've added one more to be "between books" stack, The Death of Methuselah, a short story collection by one of my favorite writers, Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Today I'll be starting Prague Fatale, the seventh book in Philip Kerr's excellent "Bernie Gunther" noir series.

I just finished My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, which I found just as enjoyable as everybody said it was, and am now reading How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler by Ryan North.

I just finished The Warden by Anthony Trollope, and it was so very good. Now I reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the very first Poirot appearance.

>60 bragan: Betty, those sound wonderful! Thank for the most recent addition to my TBR. The Braithwaite was already on it!

>44 rachbxl: Rachel, I did enjoy Cold Comfort Farm. It didn't blow me away, but it was good fun - a perfect novel to lose myself in for a few hours.

Congratulations to all the Duck-survivors!

I finished listening to This mournable body this morning (and only realised then that it is actually the third book in a trilogy...), also finished Dublinesca yesterday — both enjoyable in quite different ways.

I've started my next Zola, Le Rêve, which should be a bit calmer than La Terre.

>61 sallypursell: So far I'm a bit more lukewarm on How to Invent Everything than I'd hoped to be, but it's at least mildly interesting and mildly funny, so I'd still say it's worth a look if it sounds interesting.

I just finished The Little Palace from Early Reviewers, which took me a bit to get into. However, I loved the talking animals and the setting. I would like to dine at the Le Minipalais with the animals and people there.

I have four very different books going: The Decameron, by Boccaccio, The Finishing School by Muriel Spark, Italy Out of Hand by Barbara Hodgson, and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catheryrnne Valente. The last one will probably end up in the did-not-finish pile.

Yesterday I started Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. It's a non-fiction account of the life of 4 teenagers in the Bronx in 1980s / 1990s, written by a journalist who immersed herself with a number of families for 11 years. So far, so interesting.

>66 Nickelini: Oh, I'm glad it's not just me. I have five going, which is a bit over-the-top even for me.

Now that I've read (and reviewed) Afropean: Notes from Black Europe I've resumed reading Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, along with Ualalapi: Fragments from the End of Empire, a historical novella by the Moçambican author Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa about Mudungazi, the last ruler of the Gaza Empire, whose capture by the Portuguese colonial army in 1895 marked the end of the empire, and the beginning of complete control of what is now Moçambique by Portugal.

>69 kidzdoc: I'm looking forward to your reviews of Lost Children Archive and Ualalapi. They're both in my wishlist.

I've finished Mireille by Frédéric Mistral and am half-way through Le larron qui ne croyait pas au ciel ou l'Épopée des Andes vertes (Maladrón : epopeya de los Andes Verdes) by Miguel Angel Asturias, which is like prose poetry and better read slowly. I've also started The Heart of Redness by South African author Zakes Mda.

Finished Le rêve this morning — very short by Zola standards, only 250 pages. So only four books to go in the Zolathon!

I’ve started listening to another recentish Zimbabwean novel, The stone virgins, and — on the basis of “if not now, when?” — brought in some heavy lifting gear to get down The Quincunx off the TBR shelf.

>71 thorold: Oh, man, I've been asking myself "when?" over bringing The Quincunx down off the TBR shelf for years, and somehow never managing to get to now.

>72 bragan: Mine’s been sitting there nearly eight years...

>73 thorold: Mine is coming up on nine.

I needed a break from Persepolis Rising so I pulled out A Second Chance which is the third book in a series about time-travelling historians. I liked it so much I immediately picked up A Trail Through Time which is the fourth book. Sadly I don't yet own any of the remaining books so I will need to hit up my friendly bookseller.

>63 thorold: 🦆 💪 🦆 🦆 Four of us have finished, but there are still 2-to-4 (??) readers making their way, or planning to.

>67 AlisonY: I’ll want to read your review of Random Family. I’ve been thinking about reading that for years (I haven’t gone so far as to actually hunt down a copy, though...)

I finished Julius Caesar and, miraculously, without commuting, my audiobook, The Yellow House. Which meant for a moment I was only actively reading one book (The Luzhin Defense, Nabokov’s really only ok 3rd novel). Alas, I’ve now started a new audiobook, Educated. And I’ll start a reread of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop later this week, tomorrow or Thursday.

>76 dchaikin: it was another book off that 'best non-fiction titles' list I found over Christmas. It's working for me so far.

>67 AlisonY: I've had a hardcover copy of Random Family on my shelf for probably 15 years. One of these days... Plus it would be an interesting contrast to read about the Bronx of two decades ago, when things were much different.

Finished Coronavirus and Christ, by John Piper. Review in my thread.

>78 lisapeet: I'm sure you'd particularly enjoy it, Lisa - the locations mentioned would probably mean something to you, whereas I'm reading it blind (but really enjoying it, nonetheless).

>71 thorold: I also have The Quincunx languishing on my shelf. . .somewhere . . .probably not going to read it right now though.

I am reading The Farm Stand for NetGalley, but the correct Touchstone is not coming up here. It is the second in a trilogy of Amish novels that involve members of the same family.

I finished up Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr. This is the eighth book in Kerr's addictive "Berlin Noir," World War 2-era detective series featuring Bernie Gunther. It is 1941 (a flashback in terms of the series), and Gunther has been called by Reinhard Heydrich, the real life "Butcher of Prague," to solve a murder that's taken place in Heydrich's headquarters during a gathering of top Nazi officials. While not quite up to the top standards of the series, this is still a very entertaining entry, full of fascinating--if horrifying--history and historical conjecture. My review on my own CR thread is a bit more in-depth, for anyone interested.

Next up for me will be Stone Junction: An Alchemical Potboiler by Jim Dodge. Evidently, this is a cult favorite that has escaped me up until now.

>66 Nickelini: >68 avaland: I almost always have five going at once. It's not just you.

I just finished the Mercy Thompson and Alpha & Omega series(es) by Patricia Briggs. I've been reading them (the story moves between the two series, same world) since the end of March, interrupted only by a few BOMBs (to allow me to do the rereads - 15 of the 18 books). It's a very rich story. I haven't been reading multiple books, though I usually do, because I really wanted to read the Briggs - to the point of staying up way too late a couple times to finish a book.

My normal pattern is one (usually fiction) ebook, one big chewy usually non-fiction at the table (read a chapter per meal, and think about it between times), and sometimes another fiction book in paper (which often gets read slower than the big non-fiction, because I don't have a set time and place to read it). I've picked up an ebook I was in the middle of when I started the Briggs, and am reading a paper book that's a BOMB. Haven't found a new table book yet. I have several I started and laid aside, but I don't count those as currently reading, usually.

I am starting Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line.

Well, I had to give up on Stone Junction about 70 pages in. It was too much like a Tom Robbins book. Not quite as bad,* but close enough. Too many groovy, quirky characters. Nobody who seemed like a real person. I don't mind out-sized characters and such, but at this stage of the game I want characters to act as if they were anchored to reality in some shape or form, even if they're in spaceships or Middle Earth or a posse chasing after them dern rustlers. If the book were 300 pages, I probably would have stuck with it, but at 513 pages, it was too much of a time commitment for something I was really enjoying. Too bad. If I'd have read this when I was about 25 (or ten years before it was first published in 1990), I probably would have liked it.

Well, I've not quite decided to go for some gritty realism instead, as I've decided to have some real fun and pick up my 1946 (second printing) Ballantine Books pulp edition of Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. I think I read this when I was in junior high.

* No offense meant to Tom Robbins fans or anyone who enjoyed Stone Junction. Personal preference only. No facts were harmed in the writing of this post.

>86 rocketjk: Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

I grew up with his books - this one and the two Captain Blood ones (apparently there was a third I had never seen) and the Sea Hawk. :) Had not read him since I was 12-13 or thereabouts... maybe time to pick him back up and read the ones that were never translated.

>86 rocketjk: Tom Robbins doesn’t show much in CR, but I enjoyed the few I read many years ago, especially Jitterbug Perfume — would I even like it now? not sure. I still might.

>88 dchaikin: I loved Another Roadside Attraction and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues when I read them during my college days, in the mid-1970s. About six years later, I was living in New Orleans and absolutely nuts about the woman I was dating. She gave me Still Life with Woodpecker to read, telling me it was her favorite book. All about the desperately romantic outlaw and the "environmentalist princess." (quote from the book's wikipedia page). Everybody's beautiful and ethereal and romantic and stuff. I thought, "I'm never gonna live up to that." And sure enough. Well, we stayed friends, though. Anyway, looking back from that point to the other Robbins I'd read, I realized that I'd never met anybody in his books who I even vaguely recognized from real life. That's just me, though, of course. Mileage may vary, as they say.

I've started Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, which seems particularly relevant now.

I'm just over halfway through The Quincunx — I've crossed off nearly everything on my 19th-century-plot bingo card, except "Body in the Thames", "Cotton-mill child labour", "Electoral reform" and "Religious Doubts". But I'm hopeful that those will still come up in the remaining 500 pages. :-)

I resisted the temptation to jump straight into Tiamat's Wrath and instead started The Huntress.

Finished Nabakov's The Luzhin Defense, which was only ok. It has its moments. I've begin re-reading Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop with a group on Litsy. And i need to choose a next book...might be time to start Dante's Purgatory.

I just finished Gutshot: Stories by Amelia Gray, which was... interesting? Next up is The Ionian Mission by Patrick O'Brian, because it's well past time I got back to that series again.

My next book is from my TBR bookshelf and it is Vox by Michael Baker. I probably bought this in a charity shop in the dim and distant past. It is described as an erotic classic, perhaps that is what attracted me.

>95 baswood: I enjoyed several Nicholson Baker novels, including Vox, beginning back in the late 90s. I thought him clever and amusing. Now that I check, it seems I've read most of his input, the most recent read was in 2011. I'll be interested in your thoughts of the book (if you liked it, The Fermata would be a good followup).

I've finished Pepita Jimenez and am a third of the way through The Golden Notebook. It goes without saying, that I continue with Anniversaries.

I finished Random Family, which was like a train wreck that you can't help but rubberneck at. An utterly hopeless story, yet completely mesmerising. Thoroughly recommended.

I think I'm going to start The God of Small Things later.

I finished The Farm Stand (An Amish Marketplace Novel) by Amy Clipston. I am currently reading The Happy Camper by Melody Carlson for NetGalley and The Story of Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting.

Finished Wolf Hall, with a little added slowdown thanks to the most excellent Washington Post–hosted online Wolf Hall book club—it's still going, and I plan on following it to the end. Now reading Sarah Pinsker's A Song for a New Day, which is very creepily—but impressively—written about a post-pandemic world that is totally believable, but was published last fall.

Finished The Quincunx and The stone virgins — one of them a major physical challenge (my poor wrists...) and the other somewhat harrowing mentally. I’ve picked a Simenon off the TBR pile to unwind whilst I decide what to read next!

I finished Flowers of Mold by Seong-nan Ha, a 1999 short story collection just translated from Korean last year and published by Open Letter Books (Rochester University). I had started it in October and then put aside for 6 months. So finishing has me fully convinced I will read all my unfinished books. !!

I started The Reawakening ( ake The Truce) - Primo Levi’s sequel to Is this a man (aka Survival in Auschwitz).

Halfway through Deathless Divide, the sequel to Dread Nation, which I loved. I'm not quite as impressed with this one (mostly the pacing), but it's not bad.

My next book is 1950's science fiction Time and again, Clifford Simak

I just finished The Plight of the Living Dead by Matt Simon, which was good, but repetitious, and Smoke Bitten by Patricia Briggs (candy), and now I'm in the last half of Death at Victoria Dock by Kerry Greenwood.

It's been harder to read more recently, I think. But, I'm finishing up Paul Yoon's excellent Run Me to Earth.

I am reading Happy Camper by Melody Carlson for NetGalley as well as In Praise of the Useless Life by Paul Quenon.

After reading the Japanese mystery I ended up going back to American fiction and read two additional books this April.

Cormac McCarthy : Child of God
Carson McCullers : The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Not too sure what I'll read next yet so not sure if I can fit in another before the end of April. While I read the McCarthy in one day, the McCullers surprisingly took almost a week and a half to read.

I also have yet to post reviews for the last 5 books on my thread. I just haven't been motivated at all.

I've mostly been going for escapist over topical at the moment, but Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues Out of the Present & Into the Future by Frank Ryan kept sitting there on my shelves giving me this look, like, "Don't you think now is the time to finally read me?" So I am. It was published in 1997, so we are definitely in its future now. But I'm actually finding that reading about the diseases we were concerned about in the 90s is a surprisingly good distraction from the disease we're concerned about today. So far, anyway.

I've finished La Marie du Port, Pilgrimage 3, and two more South African books, A dry white season and Dusklands.

After the recent discussion of science-fiction in "Questions for the avid reader" I thought I'd better make a token gesture to reduce my ignorance slightly, so I've started listening to The left hand of darkness. Too early to say whether it will "take".

I think I'll take something short off the TBR, then maybe another Zola (La bête humaine is next!).

>108 lilisin: curious how you liked that McCarthy. (I thought he was trying very hard to be provocative.)

Having finished the romance/adventure Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (reviewed on my individual CR thread), I've begun a fun mystery, At Death's Door by Robert Barnard.

Also, I finished the March 1936 edition Scribner's Magazine (review coming shortly) and have added the April 1958 edition of Argosy Magazine to my rotation.

I'm reading the new Department Q novel, Victim 2117.

I'm just coming to the end of Le ciel par-dessus le toit by Natacha Appanah, which I'm finding to be nice enough, but not one of her best. I'm also reading Antonio Skarmeta's Los dias del arco iris (The Days of the Rainbowà, set in Chile during the Pinochet dicatorship, as well as the second of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels.

I've started Antony and Cleopatra with the Litsy Shakespeare group. I'm using Shakespeare Online until my paper book shows up.)

Finished A Song for a New Day, a dystopian (and, surprise! post-pandemic) rock'n'roll novel, and now on to some work-adjacent reading, Jill Lepore's upcoming If Then: How Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

I finished and reviewed (see my individual CR thread) a breezy English murder mystery, At Death's Door by Robert Barnard. Bouncing now from the mystery genre to Westerns, I've started Gone to Texas by Don Worcester. Time setting-wise, this is an uncharacteristic novel, as it begins in 1800, much earlier than most Westerns. Not counting the short Marquez novel I read a little while ago, I seem to be in genre-land these days, as I've read a spy thriller set in 1945 Turkey, a murder mystery set in 1942 occupied Prague, an adventure/romance first published 99 years ago and set during the French Revolution and a English countryside murder mystery over the past several weeks. And now a Western! Oh, well. Maybe I'll feel like digging into some weightier material soon.

>117 rocketjk: Well, that didn't last long. Sadly, I found Gone to Texas to be so poorly written as to be unreadable. It wasn't the sentence-level writing, but the plotting. It only took me about 20 pages to know the book had to be set aside. So I switched to a novel about the Civil Rights movement in New Orleans, A House Divided by Fredrick Barton. I knew Rick Barton pretty well when I lived in New Orleans back in the 1980s. I've read his first two novels, but never his third (this one) or his fourth. I'm looking forward to reading this.

I finished La bête humaine yesterday (also taking the opportunity to re-watch Jean Renoir's film version).

Also finished a couple of waifs-and-strays from the TBR, John Buchan's well-meant but not very good Scott pastiche The free fishers and last year's Boekenweek gift, Jan Siebelink's Jas van belofte.

Still crossing glaciers with Mrs Le Guin on audio; it's probably time to start another African book from the TBR.

Finished The Reawakening this morning. I plan to start Nabokov’s The Eye next. (Thursday I’ll start Dante’s Purgatory)

I finished and reviewed these:
The Happy Camper by Melody Carlson
Thursday's Bride by Patricia Johns
Art Workshop for Children by Barbara Rucci

I am currently reading In Praise of the Useless Life by Paul Quenon and also The Stolen Letter by Paige Shelton.

I'm now reading Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, which I've been meaning to get to for quite some time. So far it's more low-key than I was expecting it to be, somehow, but I'm enjoying it.

Managed another one in April because it was such a slim book but I really enjoyed reading it. I think I'm going to try now to finally update my own personal thread with my thoughts and comments on the books I've read recently.

Donald Keene : Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan

>111 dchaikin:

I really enjoyed the McCarthy and felt that he managed to fall beneath the line between trying to be provocative and just being provocative. I think it suited the idea of the book being about people who are who they are without any real provocation needed.

>119 thorold: it's probably time to start another African book from the TBR.

...or I could just let myself get distracted by interesting but probably irrelevant sidetracks: I'm revising what I've forgotten of semiotics with Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things from the Springer list of (temporarily) free textbooks, and I've started dipping into Natalia Ginzburg — a fascinating writer I didn't know about until someone suggested one of her essays for our book club's "a short story a week" lockdown project — with Le piccole virtú.

I've started Lars Kepler's the Hypnotist for the "before bed" read. He's a new author to me, so far so good. Not thrilled with the spare prose style (could be the translation), but we shall see if the story overcomes it.

Otherwise I began another Olaf Olafsson novel, One Station Away and it has already pulled me in.

>124 lilisin: interesting take. I need to catch up your thread and read your longer post there.

>125 thorold: Thanks for the mention of the Springer books - I found some very interesting ones there. Math, probability, computers, archaeology, and your semiotics book.

in the past 3-4 months:

"Encounter" by Milan Kundera
"Castaways" by Ibuse, Masuji (LAST, FIRST)
"The Plague" by Camus (re-read original edition of this book)
"The Garden of Eden" by Hemingway
sections from magazine Anthology called "The Evergreen Review Reader"
all four books of The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence G. Durrell, thanks to a friend who first loaned me "Justine" in Dec. 2019

Much to read, and never enough time...sigh.

Managed to squeeze in another short one, Les Indes Noires (The Child of the Cavern) by Jules Verne. Verne books are definitely a comfort read as they transport you to other worlds with such whimsy. They are also a great palate cleanser when you need something light while you figure out your next read.

>129 benbrainard8:
I need to check out that Ibuse!

I have just finished The Victim by Saul Bellow and now it's back to those Elizabethan Playwrights and the last play that I will read by George Peele 'The Old wives tale'

I really enjoyed Le piccole virtú, which probably means more Natalia Ginzburg to come...

I've also started listening to Lost children archive, which promises to be as good as everyone says it is on the evidence of the first couple of chapters. I actually did some non-essential ironing today to fit in a bit more audiobook time...

But I probably need to get back to Africa and the TBR pile now.

Finished Let It Burn by Steve Hamilton last night (the 10th Alex McKnight novel) which was unusual for the series but did fit it. And I am back to posting in my thread - being May 1 and so on, I figured I had stayed hidden long enough...

Now reading the 7th Sueño and Bascom novel: Mr. Kill set in the 70s in South Korea (and the US army stationed there).

I'm finishing up Sovietistan by Erika Fatland, which is a fascinating, but necessarily cursory, look at life in the central Asian countries of Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. There's too much ground to cover and the author is trying to do far too many things at once, but I've found each thing so interesting. There's a museum in Nukus I'd really like to spend time in.

I'm also reading The Missing American by Kwei Quartey, a crime novel set in Accra, Ghana, and Lydia Millet's newest, A Children's Bible. Millet is an extraordinary writer.

>I love Millet—she gets people in such a good way. I have A Children's Bible in e-galley and am looking forward to it.

I am also a big Millet fan. I am waiting for A children's Bible to become available.

I am reading Girl.

I feel somewhat relieved to have reached the end of The God of Small Things. I'm now getting into Gut: The Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ by Giulia Enders. As someone who's been plagued with bad gut health for the past two years I'm reading with much hope (but probably, in reality, little expectation).

I finished In Praise of the Useless Life by Paul Quenon, which is a monk's memoir. This is for the "based on a historical event" square for BingoDog, since it includes information on the death of Thomas Merton, as well as essays about several historical figures who visited Gethsemani abbey. It also counts for both letters for May AlphaKit.

As well as Gut, I've also started the last instalment of Knausgaard's My Struggle series (book 6). It's bigger than Ducks, there's the 400 page segue on Hitler to get to grips with, and the overall reviews that pan this volume most out of all the 6. I'm really hopeful I still get a good ending to what has been a magnificent series.

Yesterday I started reading a particularly timely book, Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison, a professor of the History of Medicine at Oxford. Needless to say this has direct relevance to the current COVID-19 pandemic, and I should finish it by early next week. I'll also read Petals of Blood, a novel by the great Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o that dealt with the corruption of a postcolonial African country which was so controversial after its publication in 1977, along with his play I Will Marry When I Want that it led to his arrest and imprisonment by Kenyan authorities at the end of that year.

I've finished The Priory by Dorothy Whipple which I found very enjoyable and Loving by Henry Green which I also really liked.

Now I'm finishing up The British are Coming by Rick Atkinson, a new history of the Revolutionary War that is very well done. And then I'll start La Reine Margot.

I'm still picking through the Decameron, and also Italy Out of Hand, and starting Becoming by Michelle Obama. I started it once before and didn't get very far, but now I need to read it for book club

I finished A House Divided by Fredrick Barton, a family drama set amidst the Civil Rights movement in 1960s New Orleans. I've now started a reread of Hardwired, the first book of a science fiction series of the same name by Walter Jon Williams. I first read this book several years ago and enjoyed it a lot. I meant to get back to the series relatively quickly, but it took me so long to finally decide to read the series' second book that I've determined to reread this first book so I wouldn't be lost. About 20 pages in, I'm already remembering why I liked Hardwired so much.

I finished Jill Lepore's upcoming If Then: How Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future, which was a really interesting chapter out of 1950s-60s computing/political/sociology history that I knew nothing about before. If you're in any way geeky about any of those areas, pick this up when it comes out. Now on to Mychal Denzel Smith's Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream.

If Then sounds terrific.

I'm reading Sula for my book club.

I'm reading Before They Are Hanged, the second book in his First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. Terrific, although the first book certainly took its time to get going. It was a very complex set-up, though, with many important characters.

edited because I had forgotten to mention the author.

>146 BLBera: i hope you enjoy Sula, one if Morrison’s best. Expect something dark. : )

I've finished two more short African novels: Juggling truths by Unity Dow (Botswana) and The purple violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas (Namibia). Both very good.

Whilst I was in an Italian mood from Natalia Ginzburg, I picked up Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana again, but I'm still finding the Roman dialect hard going. It may take a while. In the meantime I've also started a Persephone from my pile, Someone at a distance by Dorothy Whipple, which is a bit more fun.

Still enjoying Lost children archive on audio.

Took a break from movie watching and 1001-book reading for a couple of contemporary novels: All the Birds, Singing and American Spy. Now continuing on with As a Man Grows Older and The Golden Notebook (and Anniversaries, as always).

>149 thorold: there’s discussion of a LCA group read in July. See Darryl’s thread (kidzdoc).

>151 dchaikin: Yes, I saw. My timing for these things always seems to be out...

Recently finished The Mirror and the Light, which was niot quite as good as the first two books in the trilogy but still a very satisfying conclusion. I've been reading a collection of short stories, If You See Me, Don't Say Hi. I'm not particularly enjoying it, but as I'm at 86% on my kindle, I'll finish it.

I've recently finished Turtles All the Way Down by John Green, which was not bad, but probably not the right book for me for the current moment. Also Swearing Is Good for You by Emma Byrne, which was interesting but clearly not really aimed at readers on this side of the Pond, and A Grimm Warning by Chris Colfer, the third book in a series of kids' novels, which I didn't find as much fun as the first two.

I'm now about to start Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich, as she is one of those writers whose books are starting to pile up embarrassingly on the TBR shelves.

>143 rocketjk: I also read Hardwired years ago and really enjoyed it. I've had the second novel sitting on my shelves waiting to be read Real Soon Now for far too long. I'm very much hoping a re-read of the first volume isn't actually necessary in order not to be completely lost, for whenever I finally do get to it. Maybe you'll let me know.

>148 dchaikin: I love Sula! It packs a punch for such a short book. I expect a great conversation on Friday.

>154 bragan: I'm about 2/3 of the way through Hardwired now. It had been five years since I first read it and I'm happy to be rereading it because a) there are a lot of details I wouldn't have recalled and b) I'm enjoying rereading it.

>152 thorold: unless you’re itching to reread it. 🙂 Like you, I listened. So I’m looking forward to reading this time.

>155 BLBera: I love Sula too, but it felt wrong writing that for the kind of book it is, especially in case you hadn’t read it before.

>157 dchaikin: I'll keep the option open. You never know how desperate we will be for entertainment by then.

Finished Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana and Someone at a distance today: I hadn't noticed when I picked them off the pile, but both authors were 1893 babies. I can't think of anything else they had in common, though.

I've started The good doctor from the African pile. Probably to be followed by Mine boy, which came in the post today.

I have just started two books today:
La Voie Royale by André Malraux
The Crystal Man by Edward Page Mitchell

I just finished Sula, which is wonderful and recommended. I am starting Actress.

I am reading Murder on the Orient Express (even though I know the story and have read it in the past, but still enjoy it). Also Ask the Astronaut which is a book of Q and A about space travel, and Miss Austen for NetGalley.

I'm just starting The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, but I'm not sure I'll keep with it. It's been hard to settle to my reading and it's a long book. We'll see though.

I finished my re-read of Hardwired the first book in Walter Jon William's early cyberpunk series of the same name, and I'm going to jump right into the series' second book, really more of a novella, Solip: System.

Still storming through the pile.
Finished The good doctor (disappointing) and Mine boy (excellent) yesterday, and another lovely Angus Wilson novel, Late Call, today.
Next, I think, will be El ruido de las cosas al caer for the book-club, but there's also a temptingly-thin volume of short stories by Alex La Guma that came in the post yesterday, and a few other things...

Completed the wonderfully romantic geology apologia on time => Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World

And finished with Seanan McGuire's re-telling of Jack and Jill for now => Come tumbling Down

I'm about a third of the way through yet another Olaf Olafsson novel; this time I'm in wartime Tuscany with Restoration, another great story. Still reading the Kepler a few pages at a time at bedtime.

I just finished Miss Austen by Gill Hornby. It was interesting, a rather melancholy read though, about the relationship between Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra, and also about Cassandra's rather unfulfilled life. Still reading Murder on the Orient Express and Ask the Astronaut.

Finished two books recently. Last night I finished Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, for a Litsy buddy read. And on audio I finished Educated by Tara Westover, which I thought was terrific.

Then this morning I started a new audiobook, The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. I'm already into it, and have no idea where it's going.

Others in progress include Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Nabokov's The Eye (which has not been drawing my attention), and Dante's Purgatorio.

Well, I sped through the second entry in Walter Jon Williams' seminal cyberpunk "Hardwired" series, Solip: System. It's barely even a book, more a novella. It seemed actually to be more of an additional chapter to the first book of the series, Hardwired, and Williams' introduction bears this out. Anyway, the short piece was fun, and I hope to get back to the series sooner rather than later. After that, I read James Baldwin's searing play, Blues for Mister Charlie, in one afternoon and evening. I've written more about that in my individual thread here on CR.

Soon I'll be moving on to Knut Hamsun's Nobel Prize-winning novel, Growth of the Soil.

I finished Mychal Denzel Smith's Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream, which was short and serious—very good critique of the state of the nation and call to arms. Now reading Eula Biss's Having and Being Had, which is about consumerism and things and class, all subjects that interest me.

I finished the excellent Actress and will start Your House Will Pay, which I've heard good things about.

Got hooked into another series - Marie Brennan's Lady Trent. I'd read the first two and stalled, then my library produced Turning Darkness Into Light, the latest one (I think). I glanced at it and found myself a good chunk of the way through - stopped and went back to the third Lady Trent. I'm now finishing Turning Darkness Into Light.

I finished a couple more in-between reads: The unfortunates, B. S. Johnson's randomly sequenced novel-in-a-box, and the rather more conventional Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín. Both very good. Also the very interesting A walk in the night, and other stories by Alex La Guma for the Southern Africa theme.

I also finished listening to Lost children archive — I was afraid I wasn't going to be grabbed by this because it seemed to be so specifically American, but it turned out to go way beyond that kind of provincialism. As good as everyone says it is, not just an attention-raiser for a social problem. I've moved on to a completely different sort of audiobook: Simon Winchester's The perfectionists. Which, needless to say, is irritating me because of its little imprecisions...

I'm currently reading El ruido de las cosas al caer and Fanny Trollope: the life and adventures of a clever woman.

Hmm. Mechanical engineering, nineteenth-century socialists, and Central America in the nineties — I'm sure there's a link there somewhere...

>173 thorold: "thorold's interests"? A lot of my reading has that kind of link...

>171 BLBera: Looking forward to finding out what you think of this.

>173 thorold: Lost Children Archive really is an extraordinary novel. Scenes and sentences from it are still moving through my brain and i'm looking forward to rereading it in July.

I just finished two novels involving protagonists who blow up their own lives, Apartment by Teddy Wayne and You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat. It's been a very good reading week.

I'm currently reading Forensics by Val McDermid, which is very interesting, and The Missing American by Kwei Quartey, a mystery novel set in Ghana.

I am reading The Comedy of Errors William Shakespeare.

I started reading a Japanese book but decided I wanted to read the book out loud to try and smooth out my speaking a bit but since I can't read anywhere else now that became my at home book. Then I started reading another Verne as I wanted to continue the adventure from the previous Verne I had just finished but this one is less whimsical and fun (the characters are all quite detestable) so afraid that this would lead me to a slump it has now become my at work book so that I can finish the last 80 pages or so during lunch. While cooking Monday night I suddenly got inspired to read a nonfiction so I pulled out a Chinese nonfiction about the Tiannemen event and that has now become my book of inspiration and it has greatly pulled me in. So these are the three books I am currently reading and hopefully shouldn't take too long to read.

Jules Verne : Robur le Conquerant
乙一 : 夏と花火と私の死体 (Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse)
Yiwu Liao : Des balles et de l'opium (Bullets and Opium: Real-Life Stories of China After the Tiananmen Square Massacre)

I'm starting two new books, The Pioneers by David McCollough about settling the Ohio River Valley post-Revolutionary War, and Inland by Tea Obreht

>168 dchaikin: Dan, The Dutch House is next up for me - a library e-book, downloaded ready and waiting. I would normally have started it already, but unusually for me I'm only reading one book at the moment, Léon and Louise by Alex Capus (an avaland recommendation from last year or so which I'm really enjoying).

Right now? I finished Mistborn last week and I started with Diplomat of Uram. I love reading fantasy when the weather is like this.

I'm reading The Long Call, the start of a new series by Ann Cleeves. I've heard good things about it here.

I just finished Botched Butterscotch for NetGalley and Murder on the Orient Express.

I finished Fanny Trollope: the life and adventures of a clever woman, which filled in a few gaps in what I knew and made me want to read some of Mrs Trollope's novels.

For the South Africa theme I found the 1968 collection Come back, Africa! Short stories from South Africa, which had some good things in it.

I finished Simon Winchester's The perfectionists (on audio) and Christopher Hill's The world turned upside down : radical ideas during the English Revolution (on paper) — two books that didn't have anything obvious in common, but both talked a lot about levelling, perfecting and the limits of tolerance...

Still reading El ruido de las cosas al caer, but it keeps getting put aside.

I've just started The Golden city by Enver Carim, another South African book from my recently arrived East German pile.

Having finished Léon and Louise, I've started The Dutch House, as well as a lovely (so far) short novel by Alina Bronsky, a Russian who writes in German (I'm a Brit reading it in French translation), called Le dernier amour de Baba Dounia (Baba Dunja's Last Love), about an old woman who defies the authorities and returns to live in her native village in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

Last night I finished Eula Biss's Having and Being Had, which is a very interesting exploration of her relationship to capitalism and its many incarnations. Just started Becky Cooper's We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence.

I'm reading Farley Mowat's The Farfarers - as usual, I find his concepts fascinating but his execution overly dense. He does love his details. So I'm deliberately interrupting my reading to insert (short) books I know will be good - read The Physicians of Vilnoc by Lois McMasters Bujold last night, the newest Penric and Desdemona. Great story. All of these (these two and the four or five I have lined up) are ebooks, I'm trying to get through some more paper kids books for BOMBs. They're short, but often turn into a slog anyway - just finished Double Trouble by Barthe DeClements, and the level of coincidence was just ridiculous.

I am reading Wolf Hall and loving the style and wit.

I just finished Daddy-Long-Legs for the RandomCAT and BingoDog challenges. Thoroughly enjoyable.

>169 rocketjk: Here I actually thought Voice of the Whirlwind was the second book. That's the one I already have. I wonder if it's OK not to read Solip: System before it. Or if it even particularly matters, given how little I remember the details of Hardwired, anyway .

I feel like I'm back in the reading groove these days, which is nice. Since I last checked in here, I've read:

The Poetic Species: A Conversation with Edward O. Wilson and Robert Hass, which was very, very short, but interesting enough.

The Walking Dead: Compendium One by Robert Kirkman, which I think I actually didn't like as much as the TV series, even though I've gotten kind of tired of the TV series.

And The Book of Dragon by Steven Brust, containing a couple of books in his Vlad Taltos fantasy series, which are always fun.

I'm currently reading Futurama and Philosophy: Bite My Shiny Metal Axiom, because I can somehow never resist this pop-culture-meets-philosophy stuff, even when I possibly should.

Finished my 2011(!) Christmas present, P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters and of course had to follow it up with a re-read of an actual Wodehouse novel, so I picked one of his "lockdown" books, Joy in the morning. It's tempting to go on and re-read the other 90 or so I've got on the shelf, but I'd better not overdo it...

I've started a new audiobook, Adam Savage's Every tool's a hammer. Alex La Guma's And a threefold cord is next on paper, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez is still hanging about in the billiard-room.

>189 bragan: I'm pretty sure that Voice of the Whirlwind originally was the second book. In Williams' introduction to Solip: System he explains that this short work was crafted from a chapter or two he'd written for, I think, Hardwired but ended up cutting out of the finished product. I think you could skip it entirely and never know you'd missed it. I went back and reread Hardwired first anyway, as I've written here. With luck I'll get to Voice of the Whirlwind before I forget the whole tale once again.

I've finished the classic early 20th-century Norwegian novel Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsen. My comments are on my individual thread here on CR.

I've now started The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923 by Charles Townshend. This is a follow up to Townshend's terrific history, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion, which I read last year.

>191 thorold: I love Wodehouse! I am sure I have Wodehouse: A Life in Letters on my shelf, along with my many Wodehouse books. Thanks for reminding me.

>192 rocketjk: That makes sense. Thanks!