What are you reading the week of October 16, 2021?

I'm currently reading To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. I remember someone mentioning it in this group a few years ago. It's a wonderfully funny book. I've been raving about to everyone at work this week.

Enjoying this audiobook via hoopla ~

Last Girl Ghosted: A Novel
by Lisa Unger

So, at a certain point last week I switched out to The Toleman Story, I'm all but done with The Avars, I'm about a third done with The Echo Wife, and I expect to be starting Into the Storm.

Having knocked off all those works I'm starting How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It.

I've just finished the marvelous novel The Human Stain by Philip Roth in time for my book club, which meets tomorrow. Now it's back to Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby, which I had to set aside about halfway through in order to finish the Roth in time.

I started reading Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia on Thursday. I'm not too far along but it already has the makings for a spooky story.

still reading Constance, The Last Graduate, and The Midnight Library.

The Body At the Tower – Y S Lee
3***

Book Two in the YA historical mystery series about “The Agency” – an organization of female detectives in Victorian London – and featuring orphan and former thief, Mary Quinn.

There have been significant delays in the construction of the clock tower at Parliament, and after a worker falls to his death from the 300-foot tower, rumors swirl that it is haunted by a ghost. Mary goes undercover as “Mark” to work as a helper on the site, and to try to find out what is really going on.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. It was somewhat repetitious in places, but Mary is a wonderful heroine – bright, resourceful, compassionate, observant and mentally strong. I like that Lee has made Mary half-Chinese, and that her ethnicity poses additional problems (and opportunities) for her in mid-19th-century England. I haven’t read the first in the series yet, so was a bit behind the curve when it came to the relationships between characters, but I didn’t feel lost. I’ll go back and read book # 1, A Spy in the House, and might continue the series from there.

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play by Nick Offerman

"Chirp"-ing through Britannia Mews after long lay-off. Story just took a very unexpected twist.

Finished listening to the excellent Mortal Fear.

Next up for listening is State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Just about finished with The Man Who Died Twice. It’s been a lot of fun!

Anyone interested in my review of Philip Roth's The Human Stain can find it on my 50-Book Challenge thread. Cheers, all!

Reading Goldwyn: A Biography - great book on him and the history of Hollywood. Kinda long but enjoying it!

The sarcasm in State of Terror was over the top. I set it aside.

Next up for listening is My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson.

finished Constance by Matthew FitzSimmons. Meh. Added The Dark Veil by James Swallow to my rotation.

I finished the Anne Quindlen book Alternate Side. Most of the book felt like it was setting up for the real story, which was at the end and was that life goes on and changes occur without disaster. There were, however, good description of NYC life and human situations.

Finished John Vernon's The Last Canyon, historical fiction about the exploration of the Grand Canyon by John Wesley Powell in the late 1860s. It really never caught fire for me, and I found the parallel story line about a Paiute family searching for a lost child in the desert surrounding the canyon, to be much more compelling.

Next up is a re-read of Joanna Russ's The Female Man, which I read decades ago. Should be interesting to see if it has held up over the years.

finished The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik and The Dark Veil by James Swallow. both excellent reads.

next up Piranesi by Susanna Clark and Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz.

My Invented Country– Isabel Allende
Audiobook narrated by Blair Brown
3.5***

In this memoir, Allende looks at her own family history as well as the history of her native country, Chile. She explores the social conventions, politics, natural terrain, geographical difficulties and advantages of this unique land. It’s a story full of mythology – from national legends, to her own family’s stories. Here are the roots of her ability to seamlessly weave elements of magical realism into her novels. Her own family history is rife with examples: a grandmother who could move furniture with her thoughts, ghosts and hauntings, and larger-than-life ancestors.

Blair Brown does a fine job of narrating this memoir. I’ve listened to her narrate a couple of Allende’s books and this is a good partnership.

Finished listening to My Monticello, a short story collection plus a novella.

Next up for listening is Finders Keepers by Stephen King.

The Best Of Adam Sharp – Graeme Simsion
1*

From the book jacket: Adam Sharp is content. He gets on well with his partner, Claire, he does the occasional consulting job in IT to keep busy, and while he doesn’t play the piano much anymore, he is the music expert at the local pub’s trivia night. Life may not be rock ‘n’ roll, but neither is it easy listening. And yet, something has always felt off-key. And that’s his nostalgia for what might have been, his blazing affair more than twenty years ago with Angelina Brown, a smart and sexy, strong-willed actress who taught him for the first time, as he played piano and she sand, what it meant to find – and then lose – love. How different might his life be if he hadn’t let her walk away?

My reactions
Meh.

Is this the best of Adam Sharp? Probably. But it’s definitely NOT the best of Graeme Simsion. I really enjoyed Simsion’s The Rosie Project, but this did absolutely nothing for me. Neither Adam nor Angelina seemed at all mature enough for a real love relationship. They were both self-centered and closed off from genuine connection with another person. There was no great love here that I could see. I saw two people fall in “lust,” act on it and then walk away, only to reconsider decades later. They seemed motivated by boredom (and perhaps revenge). The whole situation when they re-connect twenty years later was just strange and creepy and distasteful.

I did enjoy all the music references, though I still wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

The new thread is up over here.