What Fiction are you reading this week, Nov. 15, 2020?

[hermetic]

Finally reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Martel. With a bit over 500 pages this should take me a while. And there are so many characters to keep track of. At the beginning of the book is a listing of them all and it is 8 pages long! And so many are named Thomas, and Mary. It's quite amusing. Easy to see why it is so highly acclaimed, and disdained by the Catholic Church.

Listening to The Cat Who Moved a Mountain, more crime-solving by the intrepid team of Koko and Yum Yum, with a little help from their human, Qwill. Fun stuff.

What will you be reading this week?

[Atticus]

1. Just finished "Beau Geste" by P. C. Wren. Michener's "Texas" is "in process". nt

[hermetic]

10. An epic

The remarkable lives of four families spanning four centuries and two continents and charting the dramatic formation of several great dynasties. TEXAS is James Michener's most magnificent achievement. Enjoy.

[Atticus]

33. This is a re-read for me. I love all of Michener's works and would be hard-pressed to pick

a favorite, but I am very fond of "The Tell" and "Chesapeake".

[japple]

32. Thoroughly enjoyed TEXAS, having familial ties to the State. It was very

Last edited Mon Nov 16, 2020, 08:12 AM - Edit history (1)

interesting to read how he and his team did the research on the project. He turned that project into a great story. I think of it every time I drive from Georgia to Texas, esp. thru Nacadoches (and Natchitoches.) Good reading!

[mercuryblues]

2. trump & co. tweets

[Ferrets are Cool]

5. You beat me to it

[murielm99]

3. I am reading

The Bright Lands by John Fram. It is a book about small-town football in Texas, where high school football is the real religion.

It is about the terror and ostracism experienced by gay football players. It is also a horror story. It is also a first novel. It is also not that great, IMO.

I will finish it because it is a quick read.

The book I read last week, The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate, was fantastic. I would recommend that one!

[hermetic]

11. Another epic

The dramatic story of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post-Civil War South. Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual “Lost Friends” advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as newly freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold away. Sounds great.

[leftieNanner]

4. Just finished the fifth Galbraith book

Wonderful murder mysteries. Galbraith is a pen name for JK Rowling. Need to read them in order.

[hermetic]

12. Good advice

about reading them in order. Thanks.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

16. I didn't know there was a new Galbraith book out.

I will probably go ahead and get it from the library, but I was very disappointed in the earlier one in the series.

[leftieNanner]

17. It came out at the end of September

Troubled Blood.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

24. Thank you.

I did just go ahead and put it on reserve. Several people ahead of me on the wait list.

[Ohiya]

6. I had several of my library reserves come in at the same time this week.

I've just finished the new Tana French book - The Searcher, and the new Ian Rankin book - A Song for the Dark Times,

I've started the new Carl Hiaasen book - Squeeze Me, and also Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. I also have a Japanese mystery by an author I've ben wanting to try, The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo.

Happy reading!

[murielm99]

8. I will look for the Tana French book

and the Ian Rankin book. Thanks!

[hermetic]

13. A new Rankin!

I really love his books.

[Ohiya]

19. You are the one who introduced me to Rankin.

Thanks, keep up the good work!

[PennyK]

7. Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

This is a follow-up to his Magpie Murders of a few years ago. He can write (and make great TV too)!

[hermetic]

14. I love Horowitz, too.

So I will definitely be getting this one.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. Okay, I just put that one on hold at the library.

This is why I will sometimes go for weeks without checking this group. Far too many good book suggestions. Sigh.

[MOMFUDSKI]

9. Fair Warning

Michael Connelly. I believe I've read all of his books.

[hermetic]

15. I just read that one

Good thriller. Fair Warning is an actual website and other places mentioned in the book are real, as well. Which makes it even scarier...

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

20. Right now I'm finishing up

Fallout by Lesley M.M. Blume, which is about how John Hersey came to write "Hiroshima", which was first published in the New Yorker in 1946, a year after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It blew the lid off the lie that not very many people were dying from radiation poisoning, and that such a death was an easy one.

The actual 30,000 word piece is available to read on line.

I'll finish it later today, and then it's on to some fiction.

[The King of Prussia]

21. "Mist over Pendle"

by Robert Neill.A story about witches in 17th Century Lancashire. Not my usual sort of thing at all.

[hermetic]

23. Well,

A classic tale of witches, first published in 1951, and based on a real 17th century trial and execution. I know a great deal about what went on in Salem but not about witchery in England. I imagine it was the same sort of thing but I would like to read this book and see how it goes. Thanks.

[Chainfire]

22. Another Michener novel here

The Novel About half way through and I am liking it.

The book is centered on personalities in the Pennsylvania Dutch country and it details the process of novel building from writer to editor, to critic and to reader.

My Grandmother's family left that part of the country and she was born in a wagon on the way to California in the 1880s. It is very interesting that I have learned where some of the words and phrases she used came. Although the family had been in the US for decades before leaving Pa., my Grandmother learned English in grammar school. I think that I have pretty much figured out that the family must have been Mennonite, although I always knew her as Baptist, which was my Grandfather's faith. The remarkable woman lived to be 104 and was caring for an old maid daughter, in my Grandmother's home when she became ill and died. She was never sick until two weeks before she died.

It is interesting what truths can be learned from well written fiction.

[hermetic]

26. Sounds like a great book

My grandfather's family all lived in Hershey but I don't know much of anything about them. Hey, we might be cousins or something.
Since I am so involved with reading I guess I really should read this novel. Thanks.

[Ponietz]

25. Lots of Michener posts -- finishing Poland, here

[hermetic]

27. I know, right

I guess great minds really do think, and read, alike.

[Ponietz]

37. No great mind here, just one that had a clue

[northoftheborder]

28. I love Michener, one of my fav authors. BUT "Poland" is the saddest book I ever read.

The history of that poor country is devastating.

I'm about to finish Camel Club, by Baldacci. Typical Baldacci, the narrative not as tight as some of his others, a lot about national security, CIA, FBI, etc. and their inter-organizational fights. I think the ending is going to be surprising though.

[hermetic]

31. You can pretty much depend on Baldacci

to get involved with the feds and surprise you at the end.

[Ponietz]

36. Devastating is the right word

I’m going back to some Patrick O’Brian novels I’ve been saving — just for leisure.

[ironflange]

29. City by Clifford D. Simak

Nice doggies.

[hermetic]

30. Sci Fi, 1983

On a far future Earth, mankind's achievements are immense. Society is breaking down into smaller communities, dispersing into the countryside and abandoning the great cities of the world. As the human race dwindles and declines, which of its great creations will inherit the Earth? Hmmm, was your post a clue?

[japple]

34. After reading Silas House's book, Southernmost, a friend suggested that I start

at the beginning and read his books in order, so that is what I am doing. I started on Clay's Quilt earlier in the week. What a writer!

[Staph]

35. Last week I read The Grapes Of Wrath for the first time.

So very appropriate for our time! The Joad family of Oklahoma lose their farm to the bank, and it's bought by a corporation that sets up what we'd call a factory farm. The family head to California in hope of good jobs picking crops. The Okies of this novel are the illegal immigrants of today, hated by the locals, not even paid a living wage, chased from town to town by the local sheriffs when they are out of work.

It is a disturbing book. It is an amazing book. It is a sad, sad story.

This week I'm reading The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson. What would have happened if the Black Death had killed 99% of Europe instead of one-third? The book starts in the time of Tamerlane (about 1400) and continues forward in jumps. The main characters are the same throughout the years, because they have been reincarnated over and over. That part is a little confusing, figuring who is who in the next time jump. But it's history of China and India and the Middle East and north Africa, history I don't know well at all. It's a good story and I'm learning a lot at the same time.

[birdographer]

38. Just finished

The Speed of Souls by Nick Pirog. Never read anything by him before, I gather this is different from his usual. Downloaded a sample of another one. Loved The Speed of Souls.

[hermetic]

39. Hello. Welcome to our little book club.

I'd say you are off to a great start here. I never heard of Pirog before but he has just joined my must-read list and I imagine some others here will feel the same.
To wit: The Speed of Souls is the heart-warming, often hilarious, often outrageous, journey of Hugo (a dog who dies and comes back as a cat), Cassie (an aging rescue dog coming to terms with her own mortality), and Jerry (a once popular sci-fi writer in the midst of a cataclysmic mid-life crisis).Hugo was a dog. He died. Now he's a kitten. Hugo adjusts to his new body, his new home, and his sudden urge to sit in every box he sees...Told with Nick Pirog's charm and razor sharp wit, The Speed of Souls is at once a hilarious, moving, and transcendent work of storytelling.

Thanks!

[birdographer]

40. If you liked

A Dog's Purpose (and A Dog's Journey) and the Chet & Bernie books, you will like this one! Yep, I teared up a bit near the end, but in a good way.