Been listening to a bunch of Jim Butcher’s stuff lately, and there have been a few doozys that were missed in editing. My favorite so far is the guy who cuts off the lower half of his shin to escape a trap and then charges at Our Hero. Only Monty Python did it better!
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Just finished Louise Penny’s latest, The Madness of Crowds, as good a read as always. One of the few authors we go out and buy as soon as the new book is available.
And at the other end of the spectrum I also recently finished Nora Roberts’ Legacy and it just irritated me in all kinds of ways-the heroine makes exercise videos, she is “fit and fabulous!” There are a few mentions of people who aren’t fit, but they are described as “a bit chunky”. No one in rural Maryland is obese, I guess. The hero’s wife is killed in a school shooting and his kids-students at the same school, are apparently fine after moving from NYC to said hometown in Maryland. No therapy needed but country living! The author seems to have no grasp of social media, online video marketing, etc. etc. At least in this one, when someone mentions having sex while in high school they mention using “protection.” It’s look been a beef that romance novels often skip even mentioning birth control, or have anyone talk about getting pregnant. Usually, if it happens, it’s just a happy adjunct to the marriage proposal.
And at the very end, the bad guy “wasn’t right in the head”. The whole mental illness=violent bullshit. Sigh.
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I’m most of the way though this as an audio book:
Good so far. There are some funny “misses” (like, it’s present day, so she won’t ride the metro due to covid, but they go out to eat and she’s flying on airplanes…?) but overall good and twisty-turny mystery-crime puzzle.
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(By John Scalzi)
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Agreed. Glad he took on TFG and his awful wife.
Thus far, Jemisin is still on her awesome roll. Karens are an Eldritch Horror (in the book and in life).
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What a great pick Margaret Atwood is to write the intro for this finally published novel!
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Sympathy for the down and out gets whitewashed again.
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Just blasted my way through Nicci French’s Frieda Klein series, starting with Blue Monday and ending with Day of the Dead, eight books in maybe five days. Only one was an audio version, I hated the readers choice of voice for one of the main characters. It was nice to read a series that had a definite ending. They aren’t terribly long, and I read fast, so just moving along was simple. Klein is a psychotherapist who gets involved with a kidnapping, then the kidnapper gets fixated on her and keeps reappearing in her life.
I had several visitors over the last month and recommended the Adams two books to them all, and they all liked them! One was Sourdough by Robin Sloane, the other Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon. Both are fun, neither is too long, definitely worth a look in.
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Just re-read both Ocean at the End of the Lane and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman… Both books are just lovely reads. Always happy to return to his work…
Gonna read some old racist Howard Phillips L., probably In the Mountains of Madness… Me later…
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I’ve been reading Glen Cook’s Black Company books, which I’ve always ignored, because I read a couple of his Garrett PI books and found them a bit twee & silly. I’m cross with myself for ignoring them for so long on that basis cos they’re great.
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Amazing! Such cool worldbuilding (society building?) ! Really enjoyed this, starting the next immediately.
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Good book, though it left me feeling vaguely creeped out. I still can’t pinpoint why though.
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I couldn’t get away with it last time I tried to read it. I should probably try again. most likely I just wasn’t in the mood.
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Greatly enjoyed Suzanne Palmer’s Finder and its sequel Driving the Deep. Picked up the third book at WindyCon this weekend, along with the newly released in English Stanislaw Lem collection, so I should have a great week of reading ahead of me.
Listened to an audiobook mystery where autoerotic asphyxiation plays an important part in the plot, and then the author goes and describes and perverse and disgusting and so on. Sure, when used as described it was an inventive method of murder, but mostly it’s dangerous to people who do it while alone. Also, another author whose grasp of the geography of their setting seems a bit weak.
Well, the narrator, especially after you find out who they are and what they have done, yeesh. Then the world itself turns to be about as sinister.
There was a pretty solid breaking point for me where I went from “Meh, I will try to finish this” to making extra time to read because I didn’t want to stop. It’s like the world/time it is set in solidifies into something interesting past a certain point.
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That happened with me too. Slow start but then it got hard to put down.
yeah, everything turns sinister towards the end. This utopian world that is actually really messed up
The discomfort didn’t stop me from reading the second in the series, Seven Surrenders. But I haven’t read any others yet. Just not in a emotional space to read a book that gets into my head in that way.
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The Expanse 9… IT’S OUT!
I think it is a testament to Ada Palmer that I will not be dropping the last Terra Ignota book and immediately picking this up. I am so impressed with this series. Also, I really don’t want the Expanse series to be over, so maybe there’s a tad of melancholy dread involved, too.
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Just finished binging this during my lunch break today. The epilogue was perfect, IMO.
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