What I'm reading Wednesday...

Forty-eighth challenge finish of the year.

This one has been on my Kindle since early 2018, when I bought it at a Kindle special price.

This is a compilation of blog posts by the author.  I've enjoyed the author's work in the past, and I like that this is blog posts.  The first is about a survey the author was asked to take inquiring about her spare time (hence the title).  Some essays/posts were over my head.  But my favorites were Pard and the Time Machine and Exorcists.  Many were very enjoyable, but those two stood out to me so much that I remembered their names.

Forty-ninth challenge finish of the year.

I read this when I was in high school.  Every once in awhile I've thought of it and wondered how I would feel about it on a second read through. I really didn't remember the young men in the book very much...and it's pretty much only about them.

Let me just say that coming-of-age stories are not my favorite.  I read A Separate Peace by John Knowles, and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger as an adult, and they were a struggle for me to get through.  The self absorbtion of pubescent boys is painful to read.  I have long said that, "I didn't even like teenagers when I was one."  Holds true.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

No Time to Spare:  Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin

I haven't finished either of the books I'm working my way through this week.  This one (above) has been on my Kindle since 2018.  While I have read some of the author's science fiction, this one is a complilation of some of her blog posts.  

I've not had a lot of reading time this week; and I'm dividing it between the above, and also...

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

This one is my book club's selection this month.  I read it back in 2021, so to refresh my memory I checked out the audio book from the library, and while I'm cleaning and getting ready to hold book club, I'm listening to this one.  A story of Appalachia and the remoteness and the poverty of the people, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt traveling library program to reach and educate them.  It is excellent, and I am enjoying it all over again.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

 

Forty-seventh challenge finish of the year.

This one has been on my Kindle since 2017.  It was a pretty good story, I just couldn't go a full four stars.  It was an interesting depiction of a friendship between these two women from American history, and I did believe that it was a true friendship.  I just didn't fully engage with it somehow (but I have been busy and had other things on my mind too).

The actual dressmaker wrote a memoir, Behind the Scenes; Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley, which I have added to my wish list at the library.  

What I'm reading Wednesday...

 

Forty-sixth challenge finish of the year.

As I made my way through this book, I thought many times that I would just stop where I was and move on to another book, but I stuck it out.  It wasn't great, but it's been on my Kindle since 2014, and now it's read.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Forty-fifth challenge finish of the year.

This one has been on my Kindle since January of 2024, so not the oldest, but still I am so excited to have another one with the "Read" banner across the corner of its cover's thumbnail on my Kindle's home screen!  In this case the storm was the non-human antagonist.  The subject was the 1900 hurricane that had a death toll of more than six-thousand (some say eight- to twelve-thousand) people.

Reading this so close upon the heels of the flash flooding that occurred so near us was a bit difficult.  The descriptions of the storm's suddenness, the children and families lost, the loved ones searching and waiting for news.  So very sad.

I feel like a traitor just giving it three and a half stars, because I really admire the author's work in literary non-fiction.  But this one was very history, technical, and climate science heavy and bogged me down a bit in the first half, and I found myself playing on my phone rather than reading.  But the second half was really gripping.  The very well researched descriptions of the violence and devastation the storm assaulted the island with had me reading with one hand covering my mouth.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Forty-fourth challenge finish of the year.

I knew exactly which book I wanted to read for this prompt, as it technically has zero letters in the title, just numbers.  :)  This one has been on my Kindle since 2013...11/22/13 to be precise.  They must have offered it at a special price on the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's assassination (I paid $2.95).  

I've read a lot of long books over the years: all of Jean Auel's Earth's Children series books, all of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series books, AND all five of the Kingsbridge series books by Ken Follett, four of which were over 900 pages each (and one of those I've read three times).  But I don't think I've ever read as many long books in a single year as I have this year!  This one came in at 877 pages, and I loved every one of them!

You may ask if I loved it so much, why did I only give it four stars?  Well, because I only give five star ratings to books that I love so much I want to read them again sometime in the future.  The majority of the books I've read this year I have rated four stars.  That kind of amazes me, usually I have more clunkers mixed in.

(Wouldn't you know that as I was refreshing my memory as to how many books were in Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series and their lengths, I see that he has a new book coming out in September of this year which will be 704 pages, and is a novel about the building of Stonehenge...right up my alley!  So there may be another fairly long one in my reading for the year.)

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Forty-second challenge finish of the year.

This is another one that has been on my Kindle since 2014.  Subject matter was about the sudden death of a man, and how he and his family grieved the end of life as they knew it, and grew through their grief.  It was okay.  The formatting was a little confusing.  

Forty-third challenge finish of the year.

When I chose this book (on my Kindle since 2023) I had intended it for the 'starts with the letter M' prompt, but before I got to the first page, I realized that it had an epigraph and that that prompt hadn't been filled yet either.  There were others on my Kindle that started with an 'M' so that prompt got put on hold for a bit.

I enjoyed it.  The story started in early 2020 with the beginning of Covid.  The two main characters were a resident of an assisted living facility and a nursing assistant at that same facility.  Both were in difficult personal situations, and the pandemic brought them together.

It's amazing how I had blocked the beginning impacts of Covid from my mind...the toilet paper, disinfectant, sanitizer, and mask shortages...the quarantining of the aged in facilities...the effects on essential and non-essential workers...the lack of hugs.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

 

Fortieth challenge finish of the year.

Has been on my Kindle since 2019.  I'm not sure how to describe this one.  I did enjoy it, because the four main characters were so entirely likable.  Well, one of the four might not have been entirely likable, but his relationship with his dog kept him in the likable category for me.  :)

The title character was terribly injured in a fire when he was sixteen years old.  The relationships around him deal a lot with loneliness, grief, and self-imposed solitude; and yet it is told with humor.  Since one of the main characters is a nurse (as was the author), there are some stories of strange hospital/patient happenings.

Forty-first challenge finish of the year.

I read somewhere recently about how much someone (I can't even remember who it was) loved Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, so I looked to see if it was available through our library, and it was available, so I decided to fit it into the challenge reads.  I enjoyed it.  I've read some of Shakespeare's sonnets and a few of his plays, but didn't really know much about about him or his family.

This is a work of fiction, but was engaging and made me think about the life (and times) of Shakespeare the man.  The author did a good job of presenting him in an interesting and entertaining way, as long as one remembers that it is not necessarily all fact.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Thirty-eighth challenge finish of the year.

You may remember that I found this at our library's used book section awhile back.  I don't think the author would necessarily consider himself a celebrity, but he is very well known for an act of heroism one tragic day in Texas, and one of the facts that I learned about in the book is that he and his wife were portrayed in a movie about the event, so I think that counts as enough of a celebrity to use for this prompt (even though he thought the movie was so bad that he and his wife sued over the inaccuracy and the racially stereotyped portrayal of his wife in the movie).

I really enjoyed reading this one!  I knew parts of it from talking to the author.  We met a couple of times years ago and talked about spending time in a common location...him working in the location on a case, and me living nearby...so it was really interesting reading more about his work there.  And I was impressed by how well written it was (unlike my crazy run-on sentences in this post); as I understand it, he did the writing himself.  It was very well organized and presented, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Thirty-ninth challenge finish of the year.

This one has been on my Kindle since 2014.  The first half was good.  The second half I kept rolling my eyes, because these characters never seemed to learn from their experiences!  Then the ending was infuriating.  The main character--The Flyer--was in the middle of an air battle, and it ended.  I'm giving a HUGE spoiler here, but I do NOT recommend anyone read this book, so I just don't care.  He was almost in range of his enemy target--he gripped his trigger--and that is where the damn thing ended!!!  Was he beamed up by aliens?  Geesh!  Then it went to an epilogue where he was just missing, and a couple of othe characters were discussing him.  It did have a slight sense of closing at the end of the epilogue, but what a CHEAT!  

I gave it 2½ stars because I liked the first half, but boy was the second half lame, and I hated the ending.  I will NOT be reading the sequel.

I'm about halfway through my current book, which has also been on my Kindle for years.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

 

Thirty-seventh challenge finish of the year.

I think I've read all of this author's work.  It's been a decade or so I think, and as I started this one, it occurred to me that maybe I've outgrown this type of book.  It was good, but had a slightly insipid start.  I kept reading.  

The characters were likeable, and it definitely finished stronger than it started.  And the author's notes at the end were excellent, discussing how she found a resource book that brought inspiration, and explained some of the history of the Royal Messenger service, couriers of important documents for the monarch.

In case you are not sure what a "sprayed edge" is (I had no idea), it's when the edges of the book are decorated.  This photo doesn't give much of an image of the edge, but hopefully will give you some idea.  I believe only the first run (or some limited number) actually had the edges decorated.

What I'm Reading Wednesday...

Thirty-sixth challenge finish of the year.

I had a really hard time selecting a book to fit this prompt.  A friend has been recommending this series for about a year now.  It's not a genre I usually reach for, but for historical/magical fiction it's done well.  I like the characters.  I like the writing.  Good story.

On the other hand, it is long at 694 pages.  It has a lot of wizard, dwarf, elfen, and magical creatures that have names that are hard to decide how to pronounce, and I believe I've said here before that if I don't have a fixed pronunciation in my mind, I stumble over it every time I come across it in the story.  It makes a long book even longer for me.

I'm not ruling out reading the next in the series sometime, but I don't think it will be this year.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Thirty-fifth challenge finish of the year.

Alice Hoffman's "Once Upon a Time Bookshop Stories" series, books 1 through 4.  Included titles:  The Bookstore Sisters, The Bookstore Wedding, The Bookstore Keepers, and The Bookstore Family.

All four were available through Kindle Unlimited.  I like Alice Hoffman's work, so I tried the first one and liked it, then I read the rest of the series.  I believe they contained from 36 to 54 pages each.  I remember when I added them together they totaled 153 pages.

Now I'm reading Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan.  Not my usual genre, but I was struggling to fill the prompt "a character is a magician," and a friend recommended this one.  It is almost 700 pages long, so that will make up for the short Alice Hoffman series.  :)

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Thirty-second challenge finish of the year.

Though "Prompt #31 - Audio Book Has Multiple Narrators" seems to be a direction to listen to it as an audio book, I checked the list of rules, and as long as there is an audio version that has multiple narrators, it is allowed to read the the physical book.  I wasn't in the mood to listen, so I checked out the hard-cover book from the library.

I found it difficult getting used to the format the author used, of laying out the chapters in only quotes of the characters...as if the author/interviewer asked each of the characters about a particular event, and then transcribed all of their answers and grouped them on the page...prefaced only by the speaking character's name.  I may not be describing that well, but it took me over a hundred pages to get somewhat comfortable with it.  It was interesting seeing how the different characters each interpretted a memory from their own (and sometimes conflicting) viewpoint.

I did like it, but it was a little challenging.

Thirty-third challenge finish of the year.

When my friend, the other Kathleen, finds out I liked, no loved this one, she will not believe it.  Why?  Because I have told her so many times that I never want to read another book hyped as a literary award winner or finalist.  I might not have read it if it wasn't our book club's selection for July.  Generally I find award winners either really depressing, or too high brow to enjoy.  

This starts out with the characters of Huckleberry Finn and Jim hiding out on the Mississippi River, and it is a true adventure story.  Two or three events were far fetched, but probably no more so than Mark Twain's version. 

I could not put this down.  I read about a quarter of it in one evening, and then the next morning I picked it back up, and could not put it down until I got to the end.  At almost the end, another character said, "Who are you?"  By now,  James was seeming like such a super hero to me, that in my head I almost expected him to growl out, "I'm Batman!"  LOL   Now, this is in no way a super-hero story, but the character of James started out strong, and grows throughout the story, hence to me he almost seemed like a super-hero by the end.

Thirty-fourth challenge finish of the year.

I read the first book in this series in 2016, and this one has been on my Kindle almost that long.  So, I'm extremely happy to have finally gotten to it.  Very likeable characters (except for the villain), and easy reading escapism.

What I am reading Wednesday...

Thirtieth challenge finish of the year.

I started this one in 2024, but with the news cycle of the campaigns and all, I had to put it down; I was just not in a place where I could deal with the topic.  (There were a couple of other books that I had to push to the bottom of the pile also for similar reason.)

Once I got back to it (for the 'Climate Fiction' prompt of the challenge), it took FOR. EVER.  I read it in ebook form, but the hard cover and paperback both indicated 576 pages; and reviews indicated the font size on those pages was very tiny, so no wonder it took forever to get through. Long.  Long.  Looooooong  Like Moby Dick, it seemed as if the author got paid by the word.  Also like Moby Dick, I had to resort to reading a few chapters of it in the morning, and then read other books the rest of the day.

It started out strong with a traumatic fictional heat event that killed millions.  But after that, it kind of wandered off course.  It jumped around, and the characters weren't really well developed.  It gave a TON of scientific information which was over my head.  Sometimes I read reviews of books after I finish them just to see what other people thought of them.  One review mentioned, "as a story it gets 2 stars, but I added another star for the subject matter."  I can completelty agree with that statement.

 

Thirty-first challenge finish of the year.

As the title indicates, this book IS actually about a feather thief.  A young American man who has an obsession with tying fly-fishing lures, burgles a natural history museum in England to obtain a lifetime supply of feathers that are illegal to obtain on the open market due to wildlife conservations laws, and also to sell some of them to raise cash.

Very interesting, and I read it within two days.  I kept stumbling over the word 'tiers' which I heard in my head as TEE-ers (like the levels of a structure), but which in this case is pronounced TIE-ers.  Turns out that is the preferred spelling for those who tie fly-fishing lures.  

Does anyone else stumble over word pronunciations while reading silently?  Don't even get me started on unusual name pronunciations!  (Dr. Zhivago took me forever to get through.)

Looking forward to reading more of this author's work in the future.  He did a good job with the literary non-fiction (blends historical accuracy with compelling narrative).  I love authors who do a great job with this genre...Tracy Kidder...Erik Larson...Brian Hicks...to name a few.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Twenty-seventh challenge finish of the year.

I do love Louise Erdrich's work.  This one is set in a small farming community in South Dakota where sugar beets are the money crop, and the pesticides and growing practices are damaging the land and wildlife.  The characters are so well crafted, so multi-faceted.  

Twenty-eighth challenge finish of the year.

This is the sequel to Moloka'i, which was about a child (Rachel) who spent her life in the leper colony on the Hawaiian island.  The sequel follows the life of Rachel's daughter (Ruth) who was manditorily separated from Rachel shortly after her birth to keep from passing on the leprosy to the baby.

She lived in an orphanage until she was five, and then adopted by a very loving Japanese family.  Eventually they moved to the mainland, and suffered the internment of the Japanese during WWII.  The racism and removing of families to camps brought current events to life for me.

 Twenty-ninth challenge finish of the year.

Another one that has been languishing inside my Kindle waiting to be read for at least a couple of years.  This book is the next to the last in this cozy mystery series.  Generally I'm not a fan of the cozies, as they are usually pretty formulaic, hence the authors can pump them out regularly.  This is the only book I had in my Kindle stash that fit the prompt, that the author has released more than one book per year.  Originally this series caught my attention because they are about a group of quilting friends.  Easy read.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

 

Twenty-sixth challenge finish of the year.

This one is an audiobook that I started last November at the quilt retreat, and then never picked back up.  Till Monday.  

I'm doing a closet purge, and emptied everything out, then listened to the audiobook as I sorted through every item, and boxed up donations.  

It really wasn't my cup of tea.  Storyline:  an author who writes wildly popular YA novels of a fantasy genre (think maybe JK Rowling-esque) is diagnosed with early-onset dementia, and resorts to using a young super-fan to help her finish the series remembering backstory events, etc.  Not believable.  No characters that I could really like or empathize with.  Two stars.

Still reading The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

 

Twenty-fifth challenge finish of the year.

Dual timeline.  I could have done without the current day one.  It was a just a romance story, and not a great one.  But the past timeline was about Johanna Van Gogh Bonger, the wife of Vincent Van Gogh's brother Theo.  It was beautifully written and seemed to be well researched.  I gave it three stars only because I've about reached the end of my patience with dual timeline stories.

And I'm about a third of the way through this one currently.  Love Louise Erdrich.

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Twenty-second challenge finish of the year.

('Found family trope' is defined as characters who choose to make unrelated people [characters] their family.  You may know this already, but I had to look it up.)

This was very good.  I enjoyed this sequel every bit as much as its predecessor.  And I was really excited to see that the author has decided to make this a trilogy.

Twenty-third challenge finish of the year.

('Breaks the fourth wall' is defined as one or more characters breaking from the story to address the reader directly, ie Jane Eyre saying, "Reader, I married him."  You may know this already too, but my friend, the PhD, didn't, so I thought I'd mention it also.)

This was my new book club's May book.  I'm counting it for the challenge as well, since I was able to borrow it from the library.  

I was a bit perplexed by what prompt to put it under.  Google says it does not break the fourth wall.  I disagree, as I felt that the character of Marcellus was always talking to me directly.  :)  When I saw that another challenge participant also listed it as 'breaking the 4th wall prompt,' I decided I could too.

I really liked this book so much.  The only reason I didn't give it five stars is because I don't believe I will go back to it to read it again.  But if the author ever comes out with a sequel, I will definitely read it.

Twenty-fourth challenge finish of the year.

Again, I really enjoyed this book.  The only reason I didn't give it five stars is because I doubt I will go back to it to re-read.  

It doesn't exactly have a diary entry, but it reads like one.  Having only 66 pages, it is a fast read.  The forward, illustrations, and editorial comments add to it.

It has been on my Kindle since 2014, so I am elated to have given it its due by reading and appreciating it finally.

Tuesday treasure...

I think I'm going to be doing a new post for Tuesdays.  Just about the best things I find or experience on Tuesdays.  That is usually the day I volunteer at the library, so often it may be about books.

I was looking through some recently donated books while I was working there today, and was SO excited to see this one.  They Call Me Ranger Ray by Ramiro "Ray" Martinez, retired Texas Ranger.  He is a bit of a legend in Texas, and he lives in a nearby town.  I was filling in at a business in that town when he came in with his wife, and both of them are incredibly personable and pleasant to talk to.  We chatted about the small town where Carey and I obtained our marriage license at the courthouse where Ranger Ray Martinez worked on a big political corruption case.  At the time, I had no idea that he was famous for a case that had nationwide coverage.

And what makes it an extra special treasure?  It's an autographed copy!  I mean not to me, but still.  LOL

Just thumbing through the book, I wanted to read it cover to cover right then.  But I have some other must-do priorities at the moment, so will have to wait awhile.  If I was a loving wife, I would let Carey have first dibs on it.  No promises.  ;)

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Twenty-first finish of the year.

Part of the Agatha Raisin Mystery series.  Quick, pleasant read for light escapism.  Don't have to put a lot of thought into it.

The Hunter by Tana French

Now I'm reading this sequel to one I read last month.  Happily, I was able to borrow this e-book from the library.