OK, Jellies, what are you reading now?

I’m re-reading old books I found in a box in the garage. I just finished The Riddle Master series by Patricia McKillip, I’m in the middle of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series by Stephen R Donaldson, and am just starting Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King.

I haven’t read the Covenants since they came out, and nothing past the 80s. Might be time to revisit!

A Time for Mercy by John Grisham.

The Hiram Key Revisited

I often have more than one book going. I’m reading 2 right now.

The Perfect Scent by Chandler Burr: a book following the development of 2 perfumes.

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy A. Lin: a look at the institution of gay bars.

I just re-read Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. I’m also reading a biography of MLK Jr. (King: A Life by Jonathan Eig), as well as a collection of short stories by Katherine Mansfield.

I also usually have multiple books going, though it often means I fall behind on one of them.

The Last Hour by Mary Stone. It’s an FBI detective type thriller.

I’m readin an old classic that my mother loved, prepping to lead a book discussion of it. The book is Precious Bane by Mary Webb and it is a story set in rural England in the 19th century full of country life details and dialect.

“The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappé, an Israeli-born historian and professor.

I am about half way through Cloud Atlas. Stuff is starting to come together and this novel is kind of brilliant.

The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, The Power Behind Five English Thrones

Circe by Madeline Miller

Somewhere I read that Miller called her work “magical mythology” – like magical realism, where novels are set in a skewed slightly unreal reality, but in this case the baselinet “reality” is the stories of ancient Greek theology.

An excerpt from Circe by Madeline Miller review – Greek classic thrums with contemporary relevance – The Guardian – Sun 8 Apr 2018:
Miller was seeking to popularise stories that were first popular three millennia ago, employing the tools of the novelist to reveal new internal landscapes in these familiar tales. In her Circe, Miller has made a collage out of a variety of source materials – from Ovid to Homer to another lost epic, the Telegony – but the guiding instinct here is to re-present the classics from the perspective of the women involved in them, and to do so in a way that makes these age-old texts thrum with contemporary relevance. If you read this book expecting a masterpiece to rival the originals, you’ll be disappointed; Circe is, instead, a romp, an airy delight, a novel to be gobbled greedily in a single sitting.

What’s a mac and cheese reread, lol?

As always, I am reading a number of books, including:

1) When True Night Falls, by CS Friedman (second book in an excellent fantasy series)

2) The Beekeeper of Aleppo, by Christy Lefteri (an excellent fiction book about Syrian refugees)

3) Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens (bit of a mystery and a story besides about a girl that grows up in the North Carolina marshes pretty much on her own)

4) Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier (an excellent movie as well, although I recommend the two-part series starring Charles Dance)

Also, the third Game of Thrones novel, whose title I am too lazy to look up at the moment. That one’s going slow mainly because it’s a huge hardback so it’s a lot more problematic to pick up and read.

@LifeQuestioner I’m almost sure @canidmajor meant “comfort food” reading.

@LifeQuestioner, @janbb is right, something that I have enjoyed, that doesn’t require a lot of concentration.
And now you’ve put Du Maurier into my head. Good job!

And damn, I haven’t read Friedman since my bookstore days! Maybe another to revisit!

@LifeQuestioner the third Game of Thrones novel

A Storm of Swords. It is worth the read, as the third in the series is by far the best. The next two are, well, I’ll let you evaluate them on your own. ;)

Speaking of Daphne du Maurier, I recently ordered a NYRB classics edition of Don’t Look Now, a collection of short stories (the titular story of which inspired a movie with the same name). Except I made the mistake of ordering from Amazon, so instead of receiving a brand new NYRB classics paperback, I received a worn, slightly dirty hardback with a sticker on it that said “new”. Needless to say, I’m ordering from somewhere else next time…

@janbb I thought that might have been what the OP meant, but thought I would make sure.

@canidmajor I really like Friedman’s writing and I want to read their other stuff when I get done this trilogy. And Rebecca is so good!

@Demosthenes I will definitely finish reading the third book, and those that follow after. It’s just a matter of logistics because I have eye problems so I hold the book up closer to my face than most people do. Which makes it a bit of weight lifting, lol!

John Adam’s biography
Bram Stoker’s biography
Wonder Woman comic-book by George Perez

Not asked but would like to share that as New Year’s gift to a friend, I gave him Keegan’s
“Small Things Like These.”
Great book.

Quit by Annie Duke, a former poker pro. It’s about the universally unavoidable biases against quitting and discusses how and why to develop skills that make quitting something both easier to do and easier to identify when it is likeliest to be the best decision.

I’m about three-quarters of the way though SJ Bennet’s Windsor Knot, a cozy mystery starring Queen Elizabeth herself doing a little private sleuthing over a murder that has taken place in her house.

It’s a marvelously original premise, and I think the author strikes just the right note (mostly) in giving us Her Majesty’s point of view.

Just before that, I finished Phantom of the Opera, the real thing, by Gaston Leroux. Curiously, the old (1925) version with Lon Chaney stayed truer to the book than later versions, including Claude Rains’. But none of the ones I’ve seen plumbed the reaches of this strange and unsettling book, least of all the musical version.

I’m due for a round of serious stuff after this, probably some nonfiction.

I’m reading Stiff by Mary Roach, following the advice of someone in the last question of this kind. I’m pretty sporadic when it comes to reading and haven’t gotten very far into it.

A book I’ve read twice is excellent and I highly recommend it: the magic strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom. “The novel’s protagonist, a guitarist, is introduced at his own funeral. Narrated by Music, the novel alternates between Frankie’s life and stories told about him by influential people in music during his funeral.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Strings_of_Frankie_Presto

Albom prides himself on the fact that his book is fictional yet historically accurate to the time period. Some of the people who speak at his funeral do exist and you’d recognize them as being quite famous.

@LifeQuestioner, the movie, Where the Crawdads Sing was very good.

“stories of ancient Greek theology.”

I meant to write Greek mythology. Though as I write this, I guess the words are synonymous if the Greek gods are factual rather than fictional in one’s mind.

A little light reading belated Christmans present from BIL, it was on back in December. Dogs Gonre Bad__. by Jack Russel lol.

Anecdotes about bad behavior by dogs

The “versions” of Phantom of the Opera that I referred to above were movies, of course. Sorry for my sloppy post.

It’s not the flex y’all are giving but the only book I can honestly say I’m reading right now is The Tale of Desperaux.

I got kids.

@Smashley Ha! I remember when I had memorized all of Seuss! ;-D

I’m slowly going through all of the Sharpe’s series by Cornwell

@Caravanfan Which Cornwell?

@canidmajor Bernard Cornwell. He does military historical fiction. The Sharpe’s series is about a fictional English infantryman during the Napoleonic wars. This particular series have over 20 books.

Thanks. I’ve read both Patricia and Bernard, but so many years ago, I didn’t remember who writes whom. :-)

Variants by Mason Bufkin on my Kindle app

The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes

The Lilac Bus by Maeve Binchy is my sleep time book. I can’t read anything new at bedtime because I won’t stop reading to sleep. :)

My husband is reading Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice. He’s in an online book club and needs to be halfway through by Wednesday.

Not reading much just now but making my way very gradually through the autobiography of Lynnette Fromme.

“the autobiography of Lynnette Fromme.”

That’s an outlier. Odd choice. Not judging.

Not mainstream but no less interesting for that. I recommend it if you remember the 60’s.

@flutherother How did that cross your sight line? It’s not something that it would occur to me to seek out.

Lynnette Fromme…wasn’t she one of Manson’s girls? Squeaky?

Rereading “All the Devils are Here” a mystery in the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny. It’s set in Paris so i’m loving revisiting it.

Now I’m reading The Holocaust, The destruction of European Jewry 1933–1945 by Nora Levin.

@canidmajor She’s always been a character who interested me.

The Holocaust, The destruction of European Jewry 1933–1945 by Nora Levin.

The most important books in my life are:

I Will Bear Witness 1933–41: A Diary of the Nazi Years by Victor Klemperer

I Will Bear Witness 1942–45 A Diary of the Nazi Years by Victor Klemperer.

The circa 2024 American Republican hatred towards immigrants, queer, gay trans, bi,liberal, female, colored, poor, & other people is an exact analog to the Nazi oppression of Germans in the 1930s.

Not “kinda” Nazi, not “like” the Nazis, but exactly equivalent.

We are facing a fascist movement. Good people are obligated to oppose it like good people opposed Nazi Germany.