What are you reading the week of May 25, 2024?

I'm about a third of the way through Evolutionary Genetics: Concepts, Analysis, and Practice.

This week I re-read The Keeper of Lost Causes, which was great, and listened to She's Not Sorry, which was a drag.

This week I'm listening to Independent People, which is excellent, and I'm reading Gone with the Wind. I'm too new to the book to comment on the latter.

I've just finished The Three-Arched Bridge by Albanian author Ismail Kadare. I hope to have a review up in a couple of days.

I'm still unsure as to what I'll be reading next. I'll either be returning to Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica by Zora Neale Hurston or first reading Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, depending upon logistical questions that are too convoluted to go into here.

I'm about 100 pages into Billy Summers by Stephen King. It was my last week of school so I didn't have much time to read, but now I have my whole summer break ahead of me!

Good to know you liked it too Copperskye!

Re-reading Dragonflight by Ann McCaffrey (first read in my teens, 1980 or 1981), and also getting towards the end of The Once and Future King (also read in my teens, 1979). It's a pretty deep book in its observations of humanity, though I can see how its misogyny helped set the stage for Marion Zimmer Bradley's re-telling.

Having wrapped up Cahokia Jazz I'm now finishing Operation I-Go. As for the rest of the month I'm looking at The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria, Some Desperate Glory, and Dornier Do 217.

Enjoying this audio novel via hoopla ~

Liar's Point (The Texas Murder Files, #5)
by Laura Griffin

I finished The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadare, set in a village in 14-century Albania. You can see my review on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next up for me will be the second book in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time series, In the Shadows of Young Girls in Flower, a.k.a. Within a Budding Grove.

>4 PaperbackPirate: Happy summer break, Pirate!

I finished Peter May's Coffin Road this afternoon. It's been a while since I've read a book that I didn't want to put down. It was quite a page-turner!

Now I've started Georgette Heyer's The Toll-Gate.

Flying Solo – Linda Holmes
Digital audiobook narrated by Julia Whelan
3***

From the book jacket: Smarting from her recently canceled wedding and about to turn forty, Laurie Sassalyn returns to her Maine hometown to handle the estate of her great-aunt Dot, a spirited adventurer who lived to be ninety-three. Alongside boxes of Polaroids and pottery, a mysterious wooden duck shows up at the bottom of a cedar chest. Laurie’s curiosity is piqued, especially after she finds a love letter to Dot. As she works to uncover the mystery behind Dot’s duck, Laurie comes face-to-face with her own past, and has to make a decision about her future.

My reactions
This was a fun rom-com / mystery / heist caper! Laurie is a conflicted woman, resolutely a loner but clearly attracted to her old high-school boyfriend (who is now divorced). She’s assisted in her tasks by her best friend, June, as well as librarian Nick (aka old boyfriend), and one of her brothers, who is an actor. As she works to get answers to Dot’s past, she meets a variety of colorful characters in town, including several elderly residents who have a few stories to tell.

Julia Whelan does a marvelous job of narrating the audiobook. She has a lot of characters to handle and manages to give them sufficiently unique voices so that I was never confused about who was speaking.

Started this audio via Libby ~

The Bookbinder: A Novel
by Pip Williams

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Patrick Süskind
4/5 stars
This is quite an interesting dark story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille who was born in Paris in 1738. He has no smell of himself but has an absolute sense of smell. He has made as mission to identify and isolate the perfect scent of all - life.

The new thread is up over here.