What Fiction are you reading this week, December 2, 2018?

[hermetic]

Whatta week! I've been to parades and parties and all sorts of festivities. Consequently, not much time for reading so I'm still enjoying The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

I did finish listening to A Man Called Ove and must say that was one sweet, funny story. I'm always skeptical about books that become so popular so quickly but this one did not disappoint. Now I'm listening to I'll Be Gone In The Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara, which is not fiction, unfortunately. This is one very chilling tale.

I need to get some cheerful holiday stories. I'm thinking Connie Willis.

What are you thinking about reading this week?

[dlk]

1. Just Started "Lethal White" by Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling)

I've enjoyed the other books in this series and would recommend them if you enjoy murder mysteries.

[hermetic]

4. Oh, I do

And do plan on reading this series in the future. Thanks.

[PennyK]

16. I have to wait!!!

I'm getting for my birthday (Dec.20) and when I finally came up on the library's wait list I had to give it back!

[sfwriter]

2. Still grinding on science fictionm's Hugo winners.

I'm reading them as I track them down. I've just finished Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge and Foundation's Edge by Asimov. I've just started To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. The Big Time by Fritz Leiber and This Immortal by Roger Zelazny are in the wings.

Foundation's Edge was painful to read, dry, and dated. The dialog was excruciating with most scenes consisting of two characters, one who knows the answer and the other who needs the answer. From there it proceeds to torture the reader as the knower taunts or hints at the answer before giving it up. It is among the worst of the Hugo winners so far.

Rainbow's Edge was a wonderful techno-thriller set in the near future. Some of its 1996 predictions have already happened, and not quite how the author imagined. It had good characters and a fast plot revolving around the loss and rediscovery of identity in old age.

I'm going to fall about six short at the end of the year, but I should be done by February.

[hermetic]

5. Time well spent

The two you are reading now are among my favorites.

[Squinch]

3. My Dear Hamilton by Dray and Kamoie. My cousin tells me I gotta. It's teed up. Haven't started it

yet.

And on the headphones it's Stephen King with The Outsider.

[hermetic]

6. It DOES sound great

"In this haunting, moving, and beautifully written novel, Dray and Kamoie used thousands of letters and original sources to tell Eliza’s story as it’s never been told before -- not just as the wronged wife at the center of a political sex scandal -- but also as a founding mother who shaped an American legacy in her own right."

Ooh, and a new one from King...he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.

[dameatball]

7. "Deep Shadow" by Randy Wayne White.

I had taken a break from his Doc Ford series because I have read most of them and didn't want to have things come to an end. I still have 2 or 3 yet to read. C'mon Randy. Put out some new ones!!

[hermetic]

8. Underwater adventure!

Cool. I know how you feel. Some writers should go on forever.

[Ohiogal]

9. May I ask

who did the reading for the Ove book?

[hermetic]

10. Well,

I'm guessing it's voice actor George Newbern, though I don't find it listed on his Wiki or IMDB page. I got it thru Overdrive at my library and they called him an additional author.

[The King of Prussia]

11. Hardly read at all recently

Currently reading "A Painted Doom" by Kate Ellis.

[japple]

12. Ivy Pochoda's book, Wonder Valley, because it got such good reviews from

NPR and Book Page. But I don't know if I like the characters well enough to continue reading it. I love the writer's style and enjoyed her book, Visitation Street, though it was as gritty as this one.

When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles.

There’s Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to L.A. in search of his mother. Owen and James are teenage twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway over his disciples. There’s Britt, who shows up at the commune harboring a dark secret. Tony, an unhappy lawyer, finds inspiration from an unlikely source. And there’s Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts. Their lives will come crashing together in a shocking way that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city.

Thanks for the thread, hermetic. I love those naughty little kittens in your OP pic.

[hermetic]

27. Me too

And I have a house full of those right now. I love 'em but yikes. This morning I was awakened by the sound of furniture falling over.

Your book sounds interesting.

[Number9Dream]

13. Finished "The President Is Missing" - Bill Clinton, James Patterson

I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would. A very good action, page-turner.

[hermetic]

26. Yeah,

that was a good story. Glad you enjoyed it.

[Wawannabe]

31. I will be looking for this at the library

Thanks.

[yellowdogintexas]

32. I grabbed that on a one day special on BookBub.

I read enough to know I wanted it and couldn't pass up that price. Haven't read it yet, but it is safe in my Kindle cloud.!

[hostalover]

14. The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

This is a memoir that I never thought I would read, let alone finish--434 pages, small print. However, not too many pages in I was thoroughly hooked. It is a first person account of a young boy, basically fatherless, who grows close to and counts on many of the characters he encounters in The Bar in Manhasset, NY, in the 80's and 90's. His mother is phenomenal, sacrificing so that her son can prosper.

[Laffy Kat]

29. I enjoyed that book.

JR (no periods) lives here in Colorado, the Denver area, I think.

[PoorMonger]

15. We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix

In this hard-rocking, spine-tingling supernatural thriller, the washed-up guitarist of a ’90s heavy metal band embarks on an epic road-trip across America and deep into the web of a sinister conspiracy.

Grady Hendrix, horror writer and author of Paperbacks from Hell and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, is back with his most electrifying novel yet. In the 1990s, heavy metal band Dürt Würk was poised for breakout success—but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom as Koffin, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in obscurity.

Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western—she’s tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when a shocking act of violence turns her life upside down, and she begins to suspect that Terry sabotaged more than just the band.

Kris hits the road, hoping to reunite with the rest of her bandmates and confront the man who ruined her life. It’s a journey that will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a celebrity rehab center to a music festival from hell. A furious power ballad about never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, We Sold Our Souls is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, pill-popping, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul…where only a lone girl with a guitar can save us all.

[PennyK]

17. Just finished The City & The City by China Mieville

An award winner that was recently made into a four-part series. Kind of amazing sci-fi-ish detective noir.

[hermetic]

25. Cool

Sounds like a must-read for me.

[yellowdogintexas]

33. My husband is a huge fan of her writing

I have not read any yet; he insists I will be hooked.

[question everything]

18. Women under Sunlight by Frances Mayes (the author of Under the Tuscan Sun)

This is a hefty book; more than 400 pages, so will take awhile. It is about three American women in the second half of their lives who are looking, but not ready to move to retirement communities. (Why do these places have the Meadow as part of their names? Because they put us to pasture..)

They met at a presentation and clicked. Developed friendship and decided to rent - as a start - a villa in Tuscany. They and a dog.

But the twist is that their story is being narrated by another American leaving in Tuscany, a writer who had won several awards, wrote poetry and biographies and is now struggling to write a biography of a former friend, herself a writer.

At some point the narrator - Kit - notices how many individuals associated with writing live in that neighborhood.

I had to reread the first chapter - all of them are short - because Kit, the narrator, digressed so much that I lost the line of the story. (Starting a book before going to bed is not the smartest thing..)

"Kit" takes her time introducing us to each of the women: their lives before the changes and the reality that as one ages, one loses friends. Some die, some retire, some develop dementia... So while leery at first, they do welcome forming new friendship.

[hermetic]

24. This sounds lovely

I wouldn't mind doing that.

[question everything]

19. Oh, and I've read all of Louis Penny's books

"Discovered" her when readers of the Cozy Mystery blog said that they would love to live in Three Pines, Canada - the location of most of her stories, but not this one.

She describes several areas around Canada that makes me want to visit. Quebec City, Queen Charlotte Islands off Canada's Pacific Coast and others. And she provides interesting historical facts. All around the kind, intelligent, patient Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

[hermetic]

23. Three Pines

I used to live in a place somewhat like that. I loved it and her books make me really miss it.

Wait til you hear about her latest, which I will write about shortly in this week's post.

[Paladin]

20. Just finished "Past Tense," the latest Reacher novel by Lee Child.

Not the best of the Reacher series, but still worthwhile---particularly the climax, involving the slaughter of some deserving psychos by means of archery implements. Not for the faint of heart, as is the case with the rest of the Jack Reacher books.

[yellowdogintexas]

34. I am a huge Reacher fan. I read the other day that there

will be TV series and someone else will play Jack Reacher. Someone tall.

[Paladin]

36. Somebody who actually LOOKS like him? Swell.

[PoorMonger]

21. Kill The Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson & Kevin Hearne

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a hero, the Chosen One, was born . . . and so begins every fairy tale ever told.

This is not that fairy tale.

There is a Chosen One, but he is unlike any One who has ever been Chosened.

And there is a faraway kingdom, but you have never been to a magical world quite like the land of Pell.

There, a plucky farm boy will find more than he’s bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there’s the Dark Lord, who wishes for the boy’s untimely death . . . and also very fine cheese. Then there’s a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, the Dread Necromancer Steve, and a strange and wondrous journey to the most peculiar “happily ever after” that ever once-upon-a-timed.

[hermetic]

22. Mmmm,

sounds fun.

[PoorMonger]

28. Only up to chapter 5

But it’s definitely got a kind of silly charm to it. Fans of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books should give it a try!

[yellowdogintexas]

35. this popped up in one of those 'recommended for you' deals on Amazon

and I read the free sample. I definitely want to read this book. One of the authors has another book called No Country for Old Trolls .....

[Wawannabe]

30. River into Darkness

By Sean Russell

It was a little over the top in some areas But for a 600+ pg book I was able to stay with it.

[yellowdogintexas]

37. this week I was reading "Suspended"

a YA Circus Fantasy Adventure
It was quite good.
Book 1 of a series.