What Fiction are you reading this week, August 25, 2024?

[hermetic]

There's a happy family!

Reading A Rule Against Murder // The Murder Stone by Louise Penny. After spending several days trying to escape an erupting volcano and an approaching sea of lava, it's refreshing to now be in the cool pines of Quebec with Inspector Gamache and his wife as they celebrate their anniversary. Though it sounds like things are going to heat up here, too, in a short time. Ah, well, it's good to be back in the company of my favorite characters in this book from 2008 which I somehow missed when reading all the others. And I am really looking forward to Penny's new one due out in November, The Grey Wolf.

Listening to Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. Sci-fi. Another story set in Canada, but many years from now. Published last year so you know there's going to be Covid in the plot. And a cat.

This ISN'T fiction, fortunately: Harris/Walz YAY, Hallelujah, At Last!!. It was a pretty good week, eh?

So, what will you be reading this week?

[Delphinus]

1. Two books

Loneliness & Company and
The House in the Cerulean Sea

I usually don't like novels but I'm getting into these two.

[hermetic]

3. Both sound terrific

T.J. Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea is an extremely popular fantasy from 2020, "an enchanting love story, masterfully told, about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place―and realizing that family is yours."

Loneliness & Company by Charlee Dyroff is brand new, "A warm hearted, beautifully written debut novel set in near future New York about a young woman who finds herself tangled in a secret Government project combating loneliness."

[Moostache]

2. I am mixing it up.

Been slow-reading two challenging tomes... "100 Year of Solitude" and "Don Quixote". My aim is to have them both finished in September.

Also continuing to work through Stephen King's collected work and specifically "The Dark Tower" series. I am up to volume 5: "The Wolves of the Calla" now and should be on to volume 6: "Song of Susannah" by Labor Day. Initially I set out this year to read 100 novels and I sit right now at 63, so I have fallen off pace a little during the summer months. The good news for me is that I am going to be getting back to some fast moving thrillers and crime novels in September, so that will up the total book count this fall!

I recently finished Fonda Lee's "Jade War" (The second of three in the "Green Bone Saga" ) and find the series to be highly enjoyable and recommend it to anyone that likes "The Godfather", "The Matrix"-style fights, and some fantasy elements as well...at its core, the saga is a family story in a fictional universe that plays heavily on the themes of family and loyalty as windows to the inner workings and decisions of essentially a mafia-style crime syndicate war and a magical substance called 'Jade' that can imbue people with super-human power, but at a potential cost of madness and death.

[hermetic]

4. Lotsa good stuff there

Thanks for sharing.

[TexLaProgressive]

5. 2/3rds through "Lucifer's Hammer"

This is a reread from long ago, long enough that I can only remember a few bits.

Apocalyptic, large ensemble of characters, plots and subplots, love, fear, desire for survival, power and more- I recommend it.

Recent supply chain problems would just be a taste if our fragile and complex infrastructure failed.

[hermetic]

8. A big, ol' comet would do that

Good story.

Hope you are all well now. Sadly I've read several people who attended the convention now have the damned virus.

[TexLaProgressive]

15. I heard that Raymonvillle, TX had to close some schools

If my oncologist approves I’ll get the latest booster next month. She has already advised me to wear a mask and avoid crowds.

It’s funny on of the few things I remember from my earlier reading of the Hammer. Is a minor character with type 1 diabetes. It was probably before I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and certainly before beginning insulin.

Someone newly diagnosed on one of the diabetes forums asked, “If the economy collapsed and the apocalypse started, and you couldn’t get your supplies, how would you manage your diabetes? How would you survive?” I immediately remembered, “Lucifer’s Hammer” and Dan Forester the diabetic scientist. Searching that title lead me to a list of 8 or 10 novels featuring diabetes, two apocalyptic “Sugar Scars” and Lucifer’s Hammer.”

I was glad to post these 2 books in answer to the question as I didn't want to be a complete downer.

[Jeebo]

22. Niven and Pournelle wrote some great science fiction.

I have a first trade edition of "Lucifer's Hammer" signed by Niven and Pournelle because they were the guests of honor at a science fiction convention I went to back then. It is a very entertaining read.

-- Ron

[Bristlecone]

6. The 8th book in the Aubrey/Maturin series(Master and Commander series)

By Patrick O’Brian

The Ionian Mission

Just finished the Surgeon’s Mate(7th) on Friday.

Love this series.

[hermetic]

9. Action adventures on the high seas

Very highly rated. Just 13 more and you'll be done. No doubt you will be sad when they do end, though.

[Bayard]

7. Only one book this week

Spent evenings watching the convention.

Finished an old John Sanders last night, "Winter Prey," a Lucas Davenport story. Engrossing, as usual.

[hermetic]

10. Sure, and

kind of amazing. There are 35 of those now, all highly rated. Quite an accomplishment.

[japple]

11. Very cute kitty family in the OP. Thanks, hermetic, for hosting this weekly

group. I am still reading Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and still enjoying it, though I'm busy with cats. A small, stray female is on my front porch at the moment. She is so skinny that I've named her "Twiggy." She will be getting spayed ASAP as she has already had a litter this summer. Such a sweet girl.

[hermetic]

12. Aww, that's great

I have a newbie, too, keeping me busy. Calling him Mewey. A wee kitten who started hanging out by the feral food dish, always saying, "Mew. mew!" Hence, the name. Two weeks ago lured him into the catio so he could get kitten chow. Then he started coming into the house and playing with the other kids. Last night he slept with me, along with 4 others. He's all gray with a bit of white on the legs. And he's very smart with a super loud motor.

[Jilly_in_VA]

14. I'm working with a foster

a blue cream (dilute tortie) stumpy Manx whose shelter name was Spaghetti but that didn't fit her very well. She told me in a dream that her name was Sarai so that's what I've been calling her. She's still pretty skittish and I haven't been able to pick her up but she loves to be scratched behind the ears and on the back. She's kind of talkative but still hides a lot.

[hermetic]

16. That's wonderful!

Thanks for being one of us "cat ladies."

Love that she told you her name in a dream.

[iemanja]

13. I read A Sea of Tranquility a couple of years ago

I received it as a gift. I enjoyed it. I'm currently reading Yellowface by RF Kuang.

[Zoomie1986]

20. Read both of those earlier this year

Preferred the Kuang, because it fit the snarky mood I was in at the time, LOL.

[Jilly_in_VA]

17. Still struggling through

Gerald Bellett's Age of Secrets, which I hope to finish this week. Interesting, but long and slow. Tells me more than I ever wanted to know about Howard Hughes, Richard Nixon, and the CIA, but is mostly about a guy I never heard of called John Meier, who dealt with all of them. If even half the stuff in the book is true, holy crap! This, BTW, is NOT fiction!

Also sort of reading, on my other Kindle, To Fail with Flying Colors, by Paul John Adams, which purports to be a psychiatrist's casebook of some of his most fascinating cases. Haven't had the time to devote to it as we're getting ready for a gem show next month.

[rsdsharp]

18. I've been on a Bernard Cornwell kick this summer.

Last edited Sun Aug 25, 2024, 04:48 PM - Edit history (1)

I’ve been reading the Saxon Tales (The Last Kingdom) series. After finishing the third book, I went to buy the fourth, Sword Song, and found something different: Fools and Mortals. It’s historical fiction, like almost all of Cornwell, but it’s set in 16th century London, in the theater scene, which is opposed by the Puritans.

The protagonist is Richard Shakespeare, William’s younger (fictional?) brother. Richard is a struggling actor in William’s company. and a petty thief. Much of the book involves rehearsals prior to the first performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I finished it, and have now started Sword Song.

[Zoomie1986]

19. The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

Tan (family name) is a celebrated Malaysian novelist of historical fiction. The House of Doors will be my first read of him. From the blurb:

The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When “Willie” Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert's, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one.

Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is beleaguered: Having long hidden his homosexuality, his unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings-and the freedom to travel with Gerald. His career deflating, his health failing, Maugham arrives at Cassowary House in desperate need of a subject for his next book. Lesley, too, is enduring a marriage more duplicitous than it first appears. Maugham suspects an affair, and, learning of Lesley's past connection to the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, decides to probe deeper. But as their friendship grows and Lesley confides in him about life in the Straits, Maugham discovers a far more surprising tale than he imagined, one that involves not only war and scandal but the trial of an Englishwoman charged with murder. It is, to Maugham, a story worthy of fiction.

Sold!

[Jeebo]

21. "River God" by Wilbur Smith

This is one of the best historical novels I've ever read. I read it the first time about 30 years ago. I was still working then, and I read it in the middle of a work week. It was just about impossible to put down, and I had to go to work with very little sleep a couple of days. It's set in ancient Egypt, hundreds of years before the Egyptians ever saw a Hebrew or a horse or a chariot. The central character is a true Renaissance man, 3500 years before the Renaissance, but he's a slave to the royal family. It was so good, it's about time I was re-reading it.

I gave up on "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons, which I was trying to get into last week. One of the posters here said s/he had also tried to get into it, but it was a real slog. I found it to be a slog, too.

-- Ron