This is a solid start to a “new” detective series (six books now in total published to date). IQ is a young Black man in Long Beach, CA who solves crime for the poor and the helpless. But occasionally he has to take on a paying gig. In this one, he and his would-be partner, the mouthy Dodson, help a local rapper who‘s the target of a hit man. Definitely to be developed for film or TV. The mystery is secondary to the characters and sense of place.

Thank you for the tag @The_Penniless_Author 😊

#WondrousWednesday

1. A former coworker nicknamed me Ruthiella
2. Walk my dog, housework, yard work…anything when I don‘t need to concentrate on what I am doing
3. He Shall Thunder in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters. Barbara Rosenblatt is a fantastic narrator.

One of my #Roll100 books for this month. I really enjoyed this, at times convoluted, story. It‘s been a while since I read any Kate Atkinson and I‘d forgotten how she loves to write layered plots which elegantly resolve at the end. This novel is set in 1920s London and focuses on crime matriarch Nellie Coker and the cops AND robbers who are both trying to bring her club empire down. Very entertaining and character-rich.

#weekendreads

I‘ll definitely finish the Nancy Drew for this months #NancyDrewBR this weekend as well as The Alternatives for #CampLitsy24. The Kate Atkinson will run into next week, however. But am enjoying it. She‘s one of my favorite authors.

Here‘s a snapshot from the charity meeting for the Aged Animals‘ Pension Fund. 😂

I thought this book was lovely. My only complaint is that the ending was a tad abrupt. Widowed Julia Dunstan inherits a house in the country settles herself in with the aim of improving the lives of everyone around her, regardless of their personal wishes. Shades of Barbara Pym and Mapp & Lucia, but still very much its own thing.

The theft of the honeycombs! 😱🤣

Here are all the books from the NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st century for all of us who can‘t get past the paywall. I‘ve read just over half of them. But plenty of those 51 books I didn‘t like! 😅

#WondrousWednesday

Thank you for the tag @The_Penniless_Author 😊

🌼 I recently re watched the first two episodes of Absolutely Fabulous.

🪻As a kid I liked board games like Sorry, Parcheesi, Chinese checkers, and Life.

🌹I don‘t like gridiron football but I did love “The Throwback Special” by Chad Bachelder.

This is what I have going this weekend. I‘m finding The Alternatives for #CampLitsy24 rough going. 😬 The Jeanette Winterson is also a bit of a drag. She was a favorite author of the very much missed Jenny of @ReadingEnvy . The Elizabeth Fair, however, is an absolute delight! 😍

No. 12 in the series-only eight more books to go and I will have completed it. This one was particularly good. I know many readers become invested in the relationship between Ramses and Nefret, but for me, more touching was the development of Amelia‘s relationship with her son. WWI has started and the Emersons are involved, naturally. My only complaint is that evil Percy does not suffer enough. I‘d have liked to see him in prison. #serieslove24

This is my #Roll100 pile for July 2024. The Winterson and Dickens titles have been on my shelves now for YEARS! It‘s high time to read them.

Hiya #FurrowedMiddlebrowClub reading buddies! It‘s almost time for our July 2024 pick by Elizabeth Fair. She‘s a new to me author and this story sounds like it‘ll be fun and cozy read set in a village with eccentric characters.

Please read at your own pace and post at will. We usually aim to be done mid month, but there‘s no hard or fast rule! Be sure to tag the group if you do post so we can join in on the discussion.

🚀 I thought I‘d post a couple questions on this month‘s book. Anyone who wants to be removed from the tag list (or added) please let me know.

🚀 Is the ending a happy one for human kind? Or is losing our individuality the price of peace?

🚀 I thought I‘d post a couple questions on this month‘s book. Anyone who wants to be removed from the tag list (or added) please let me know.

🚀 Mandella only sees action twice in his long career as a soldier. How is this an anti-war novel?

#LitsyHumor 😂😂😂

Definitely a challenging book. I ultimately found it rewarding but also hard work. In any case, I like this quote about reading from it.

#WondrousWednesday

I hesitate to call this a historical novel. It is a meta-fictional imagining and also a re-imagining of conquistador Hernan Cortez‘ meeting with Emperor Montezuma in 1519. What might have happened, what could have happened. It‘s also a slice of Mexico‘s (and more broadly Mesoamerica) rich yet complicated and contentious history. Not quite as entertainingly trippy as Sudden Death, IMO. A good companion to Laurent Binet‘s alt history“Civilizations”.

My weekend reading.

Re-reading the Mark Twain as prep for Percival Everett‘s James.
The Àlvaro Enrigue is a #CampLitsy24 longlister.
The Tochi Onyenuchi is this month‘s #LitsySciFiBookClub pick.

Who doesn‘t love book mail? 😂

I found it helpful to first listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson explain on YouTube what the Three Body Problem is re: physics, calculus and orbital mechanics before I started this book. This is a first contact novel where the aliens and the humans are at odds, but neither is especially superior technologically than the other at least at the outset. Translated from Chinese, which made it doubly interesting-seeing the world from a non-western perspective.

#weekendreads

Starting all three of these today. The Halderman is for #ClassicLSFBC , the Didion is for #Roll100 , and the Davis is for #CampLitsy24. Looking forward to diving in. I think they will all be winners in their own way.

#weekendreads

My Memorial Day weekend plans are set with these three books. I especially have to get more in to The Three Body Problem for #LitsySciFiBookClub. The other two are my #Roll100 picks for May.

I really enjoyed this slow burn mystery. As usual with Tana French, it‘s all about the characters.

Cal is a retired Chicago detective who‘s moved to rural Ireland for what he thinks will be a simple, quiet life. But his burgeoning friendship with a local kid who has a missing brother complicates things and Cal runs afoul of some of the locals.

I brought two physical books and my kindle with me for my one hour oil change wait. What if I run out of something to read? 😱😂

#WondrousWednesday

1. I‘ve accidentally set a book on fire, I doused another in coffee, and I left one out in the rain, but I have never read a book so many times, it fell apart.

2. I particularly loved John Irving in my 20s. I still love him now, but I was maybe a little more in love then.

3. I would love to experience discovering the plot of Rebecca anew! It‘s such a jaw dropper.

The writing was impressive, elegiac, beautiful even, but in my opinion, overkill in what should be a plot propulsive zombie novel. Many of the sections that were flashback scenes to the narrator‘s life on the run between Last Night and relative sanctuary in Zone One would have made great short stories. But as a horror novel, it was too slow for me. The end is great, however.

#weekendreads

Still plugging away at Snow Crash for #ClassicLSFBC !

The other two are squarely in my comfort zone/favorite genre : Mystery. Both are great in their own respective ways.

Thanks for the tag @Eggs 😊

#WondrousWednesday

1. Probably because of the #NancyDrewBR but I am having flashbacks to excitedly scanning the library shelves for a Nancy Drew mystery I‘d not yet read.

2. It‘s pretty evenly split between library borrows and thrifted/used/new books.

3. I just started the tagged book yesterday.

Only two books this weekend…both are rather slow going. I have houseguests this coming week, so not much time to read anyway. I‘ve got cleaning to do! 🧹🧽🧺🧼

#weekendreads

I read this as part of my decades long quest to read all the books from the RH Best 100 of the 20th century https://sites.prh.com/modern-library-top-100 .

As always with this kind of project, there‘re hits and misses and this was a miss. Certainly fantastic descriptive writing, but little plot and quirk without any heart. I did not find it funny. Cheever was really a short story writer and a few of the chapters could have stood alone as such.

Found this picture on a blog showing book covers with women running away from houses. Check it out: https://fantasy-ink.blogspot.com/2010/11/gothic-romance-covers.html .

I‘m sorry (not sorry) to be a curmudgeon-maybe it‘s all the Nancy Drew I‘ve been reading, but I found the mystery to be blindingly obvious and the hero & heroine to be about interesting as a paper bag & both too stupid to find their way out of one. 🙊

#FurrowedMiddlebrowClub

I‘ve got these three on deck for this weekend. The Clue in the Diary is for the #NancyDrewBR , The Wapshot Chronicle is one of my May #Roll100 picks, and Zone One is part of my ongoing (never ending) project to read what I own! All three are also for the #AwesomeApril readathon. 😃 #weekendreads

Hey party people! May is the month we read the next #FurrowedMiddlebrowClub book. We‘re delving in into our FIRST MYSTERY 👻 from Dean Street Press.

I‘m excited to try something new. As usual, the rules are, there are no rules! Read at your own pace and if you blurb or review on Litsy, tag the group so we can share.

A few questions about the book for those who have thoughts!

Q3: While clearly a product of the Cold War, the book ends on a hopeful note for humankind. This differs in its positive outlook from some other books from the same era. Did you find this a realistic outcome?

#ClassicLSFBC

A few questions about the book for those who have thoughts!

Q2: What did you think about Enoch‘s “relationship” with David and/or Mary? I was hoping Mary might somehow manifest and become his companion - alleviate his loneliness. 🤞

#ClassicLSFBC

A few questions about the book for those who have thoughts!

Q1: How do you think Enoch‘s experience as a soldier and veteran influenced his actions and attitudes as station master, if at all?

#ClassicLSFBC

I did it! I started this trilogy in 2016 and completely stalled on reading the third one. But this month I re-read the first two and FINALLY read the third book and it was great. Some complain about all the emoting that happens, but I loved it. I love that it is open ended. That no one has all the answers, least of all Breq. I love her platonic relationship with Seivarden and her parental one with Tisarwat. Great space opera. 🚀❤️ #SeriesLove24

My first foray into Maggie Nelson. This is a memoir of Nelson‘s life during which her aunt‘s alleged murderer was brought to trial 40 years after the crime. Nelson never knew her aunt, but this is also about Nelson‘s childhood and how her mother was affected by the crime and passed that on to her own children; about her father and his early death, about appropriating the lives of others for the sake of art… Very interesting and thoughtful.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

American Howard Campbell is brought up on charges of war crimes as a Nazi propagandist, 15 years after the war ended. Is he guilty or was he a pawn? In classic absurdist Vonnegut fashion, Campbell becomes a hero for US white supremacy groups. It‘s been a while since I read any Vonnegut, but this one felt more somber and realistic compared to others I‘ve read.

Kicking off the #AwesomeApril readathon today by hopefully finishing these two books this weekend. After that, who knows? I‘ve got plenty of group reads starting in May - #HashtagBrigade #ClassicLSFBC #LitsySciFiBookClub #NancyDrewBR & #FurrowedMiddleBrowClub - as well as my #Roll100 and #TBRTarot picks. So much great stuff to choose from! 😃

#weekendreads

📚Continuing with Rebecca for #PemberLittens #HashtagBrigade

📚Trying my first Maggie Nelson with some trepidation

📚My last #Roll100 for April is the next Aubrey/Maturin book in the series

📚Finally picking up Vonnegut again after almost five years.

Fascinating premise, but the execution was clunky - dialogue heavy instead of actually showing events, which made it seem longer than it was. Still fascinating considering it was published in 1937. In this envisioned future world domination is split between Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan. Women are treated as cattle, good only for bearing children. Homosexuality among men is the norm and Hitler is worshipped as 7 foot tall, blond Aryan god.

@BarbaraBB Saw this on Goodreads and wanted to share this with you Barbara. Seems like J. R. Lennon is a stand up kinda guy! 👍

Here are my nominations for #CampLitsy24

1. Mother Doll because I admired Apekina‘s debut
2. Piglet because I love a good “disaster woman narrative” TM pending
3. You Dreamed of Empires because I loved “Sudden Death” by Enrigue
4. I Love You So Much It‘s Killing Us Both because I love a good novel about female friendship and coming of age.

Horowitz‘ Hawthorn series, in which the author is a character, is fun fluff. In each book, Tony the character and the reader learn a little bit more about the reclusive detective. In this one, Tony is accused of murdering a critic who gave his play a bad review and while he was hoping to cut ties with Hawthorn, now he desperately needs his help to prove his innocence.

This is what I‘ve got on tap this weekend. I‘m enjoying them all! 👍

#weekendreads

#WondrousWednesday

Thank you for the tag @Eggs 😊

1. 🔪💀🕵️‍♀️for the tagged book

2. I‘m looking forward to the next Jackson Brodie novel “Death at the Sign of the Rook” by Kate Atkinson

3. I recently recommended “The Calculating Stars” by Mary Robinette Kowal to a friend. I think she‘d appreciate its feminist and scientific slant.

I preordered the newest Scarlett Thomas. I‘ve not read all her books, but I want to become a completist of her adult fiction at least.

This was a very entertaining and informative travel book along the lines of Bill Bryson or Tony Horowitz. Perrottet and his girlfriend Lesley travel along the same route as Roman tourists would have done during the Pax Romana era which made such journeys relatively safe. From Rome to Naples to Greece to Turkey and finally Egypt. Occasionally dated in language and attitudes, despite being published only 20 years ago.

This is a story of two women in Ghana and their different trajectories due their different familial situations. Akorfa and Selasie are cousins and the best of friends as children, but events eventually separate them. As with Medie‘s debut, the novel gives the reader insight into Ghanaian family life and the conflicting pressures and expectations placed upon women within that society.

All Litsy group reads this #weekendreads

Rebecca for #PemberLittens #Hashtagbrigade

The Secret of Red Gate Farm for #NancyDrewBR

Way Station for #ClassicLSFBC

Enjoying them all! 👍