What Fiction are you reading this week, April 19, 2020?

[hermetic]

The pleasure of reading is the greatest solitude. — Lailah G Akita




Still reading Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. This will take a while. It’s listed as being over 500 pages (512) but you can’t really tell from the book itself because of the special way it’s written. That’s all I can say since I don’t want to spoil it for anyone.

Listening to Wolf Pack by C. J. Box. I was lucky to find this through the library as it’s brand new. Good story. Joe Pickett finds himself in the most violent and dangerous predicament he's ever faced. Gets pretty brutal.

What good stories are filling your solitude this week?

[Bayard]

1. Lightening

Dean Koontz, and when I finish that one, I have Watchers.

My favorite used bookstore is closed now. I've been ordering from Amazon with good results.

[hermetic]

7. WATCHERS is a good one, too

I like thriftbooks.com, just for the money-saving aspect.

[Srkdqltr]

2. Plan for The Worst, by Jodi Taylor.

I laughed, I cried. A totally excapest story.

[hermetic]

5. Oooh, good

The eleventh book in the bestselling Chronicles of St Mary's series. Brand new. SciFi. Fun!!

[pamdb]

3. what I'm reading

The Mirror and the Light 3rd in the Hilary Mantel books on Thomas Cromwell and Jenry VIII

[hermetic]

8. This sounds fascinating

I have a friend from the Cromwell line. 27th cousins or something remote like that. But enough that I've heard some things about him. I should read these.

[The King of Prussia]

4. Still on "An Air That Kills" by Andrew Taylor.

Have the attention span of a gnat at the moment. Stress.
Did a little bit of writing but wasn't happy with it.
Still cataloguing our books on "Librarything".

Entering our sixth week of lockdown. No end in sight.

[hermetic]

6. Hang in there

I know this isn't easy and is starting to feel like forever.

[murielm99]

9. The Recipe for Revolution by

Carolyn Chute.

I read some of her earlier books set in rural Maine, and did not like them that much. Maybe I have grown. Maybe she has.

Things happen slowly in this book, and they are told from several points of view.

Gordon St. Onge, "The Prophet," rules over a controversial settlement in Maine. He meets Bruce Hummer, CEO of a multinational corporation.

A teenager named Brianna. who lives at the settlement, writes the Recipe for Revolution. It sparks future events.

When I picked this up at the library, I was looking for new, fat books. I had a feeling we would be in quarantine, or shelter in place. If I had been paying attention, I would not have picked this title. I might learn something.

[hermetic]

10. You sure hit new and fat

with this one. 700 pages and not many reviews out there yet. This is evidently a pretty complicated story. "..a theme Chute returns to repeatedly, the basic problem of just describing something accurately, of giving form to reality. The events of the novel take place circa-Y2K, but Chute’s concerns seem very 2020: how reality is named, created, fragmented, trolled, distorted."

The New York Times has an amazing article which certainly piqued my interest so I thought I'd link it here in case others want to learn a bit more about this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/books/review/the-recipe-for-revolution-carolyn-chute.html

[lark]

11. Allen Dean Foster Spellsinger series.

Fun escapist fantasy books with social justice themes throughout.

[hermetic]

12. That does sound

like a fun series. Lots of animal/people.

[AZ8theist]

13. What fiction am I reading this week?

Trumps tweets.

[japple]

14. Paulette Jiles' book, Simon the Fiddler. It's a prequel to News of the World and I am

deeply immersed in this story. I love Paulette Jiles' writing style, described as "spare yet lilting." She is a great storyteller, always does her research, knows her subject (esp. of horses, Texas history and landscape,) and loves her characters, all which make for an authentic voice. I usually get in bed with my book every night and have found myself going to bed much earlier since I started this book.

Happy reading, everyone. Thank you, hermetic, for hosting this weekly thread in such a lovely style.

Stay safe, dear book friends. Our local semi-annual Friends of the Library book sale has been cancelled as was our local string band festival, both of which I look forward to every spring. I can't wait until we can hit the library once again, go to the pub for a local brew, and listen to music under the trees!!! Hope it happens this summer.

[hermetic]

17. News Of The World

Such a great book! Somehow never heard of the Simon tale so I guess I'll put that on my list.

Yeah, I find I'm hitting the sheets 7:30 - 8:00ish so I can read for an hour or so before nodding off. Once in a great while I then get to sleep til 6:00. More often, though, my "kids" decide to take a wild romp throughout the house around 2 which wakes me up so much I have to read for another hour or so to get back to sleep after they wear themselves out. Ah well, 4 of them are just "teenagers" now so soon enough they should start to settle down.

Hoping for the same. What I miss most right now is going to the local pub for a good micro brew and some good local music.

[lark]

20. Yes, missing the socializing of meeting family/friends at the local watering hole is the worst.

Don't get me wrong, I know I've got it good. I live in a house in an old growth oak forest on 1/3 acre of land. Yes, I have neighbors, but there is a nice bit of space between us. I am retired, so don't have that nightmare to deal with and my husbands part time job was deemed essential and they changed how they do things to make it safe for them. So no money issues so far. We haven't gotten our stimulus money, but we aren't fretting, it will be a vacation fund and we can't travel safely now anyway.

What I do miss most is having dinner every Sat. with our daughter and her husband and having my son come over and spend the day with us once a week. I miss the fun and laughter and change of pace but mostly I miss them. My daughter is a GM at a restaurant where they still do take out and delivery and is at the window every day interacting with between 50-100 customers. She's at the beach, so now that it's reopened, they are slammed and have added back more staff = more chances for infection. I'd probably risk it, but she doesn't want to infect me as I've had many health issues over the last year, so we are being smart and just doing FaceTime.

Hang in there and stay safe.

[Staph]

15. I just finished the Longmire mystery series by Craig Johnson.

Walt Longmire is a sheriff in a fictional county in eastern Wyoming, and solves crimes with his deputies and his best friend Henry Standing Bear from the nearby Cheyenne reservation.

I guess I got onto a theme, as, after a recommendation from my sister, I've started the Father O'Malley and Vicky Holden series by Margaret Coel, that take place on the Wind River Arapaho reservation in western Wyoming.

I guess I'll have to reread the Tony Hillerman books next!

[hermetic]

18. I love the Longmire books!

I have read them all. Hillerman is great, as well.

[pscot]

16. The Children of Men by P.D.James

Dystopian fantasy for a dark time. Our library is closed and I've been scuffling to find fiction reading. I went to Amazon used books for this one. I'm also reading DeFoe's Journal of the Plague Year, courtesy of Project Gutenberg and I'm going to download the Decameron as well. I sense a theme developing.

Keep safe, Hermetic.

[hermetic]

19. You too, pscot.

We are so fortunate to have so many reading resources available to us during this time. Knowing that the library would be closing, we got 30 books and DVDs back at the end of March. It was a good plan.

[bif]

21. Rereading a collection of John O'Hara short stories

What a brilliant writer. Definitely ahead of his time.

[yellowdogintexas]

22. silly little piece of fluff "Hexed In Texas" A Baba Yaga mystery

this was basically just a hoot. I love silly supernatural fiction and this one definitely fills the bill

Baba Yaga is a witch from Russian legends. She is badass. If you have ever seen "Spirited Away" she is the witch in that movie.

So Baba Yaga travels through her magic mirror from her cabin in the Russian woods to modern San Antonio, following a strange scent she has detected.

Strange glowing rocks with messages are being pulled out of the construction work at the Alamo.

Another witch from New Orleans smells it too and heads for San Antonio.

These two women wreak all sorts of havoc as they duke it out trying to find the source of the smell. The regular people who get caught up in the wake of this feud suffer a variety of insults and injury

The descriptions of Baba Yaga trying to figure out modern American life are hysterical. She has great fun casting bizarre hexes on everyone who even looks at her.

There are more to follow. I can't wait to find out Baba Yaga's next target.