What are you reading this week of January 3, 2016?

[hermetic]

Happy New Year, my fellow readers. Hope it's a good one for us all.

I practiced some Outlander interruptus to enjoy Gregory Maguire's latest, After Alice. I'm a big Maguire fan; Wicked is one of my all time favorite reads. The reviews say this is a story about Ada, who follows Alice down the rabbit hole to Wonderland, but it's about many other things, as well. Not all readers are happy about that, but oh well. Maguire did his usual great job of evoking Carroll's time and place. I found it quite amusing and with wonderful bits of wisdom, like:

Our private lives are like a colony of worlds expanding, contracting, breathing universal air into separate knowledges. Or like several packs of cards shuffled together by an expert anonymous hand, and dealt out in a random, amused or even hostile way.

How's your 2016 reading starting out?

[TexasProgresive]

1. Guilt by Jonathan Kellerman

Last edited Mon Jan 4, 2016, 08:47 AM - Edit history (1)

Finished Old Man's War good story but the characterization was weak. I never got a real sense that they could be real. I will read the whole series.

The Kellerman book is very good so far. I have to be careful not to compare Jonathan to Faye. Both are very good.

[dhill926]

14. great characters in this series....

esp. Milo Sturgis. Fun, entertaining reads...

[pscot]

2. The Amphora Project by William Kotzwinkel

The library summary says, "Hilarious, wildly inventive, and featuring a fantastical cast of mutants, quasihuman robots, intergalactic mercenaries, and two-thousand-year-old immortals". Kotzwinkel is best known as author of the screen play for E.T and Walter the Farting Dog. If you like science fiction, or even if you don't, I recommend this book. Walter TFD is good too and has pictures.

[Matariki]

15. I'm a big Kotzwinkel fan!

lovely to see other folks reading him!

[murielm99]

3. I just finished an Easy Rawlins book.

I have a new Alice Hoffman book to read, and Jacqueline Mictchard. That should keep me busy for awhile.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. One fiction , one non-fiction

The non-fiction:
The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History
by one of my favorite authors of social history, William Klingaman

"a sweeping history of the year that became known as 18-hundred-and-froze-to-death. 1816 was a remarkable year―mostly for the fact that there was no summer. As a result of a volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora in Indonesia, weather patterns were disrupted worldwide for months, allowing for excessive rain, frost, and snowfall through much of the Northeastern U.S. and Europe in the summer of 1816.

In the U.S., the extraordinary weather produced food shortages, religious revivals, and extensive migration from New England to the Midwest.
In Europe, the cold and wet summer led to famine, food riots, the transformation of stable communities into wandering beggars, and one of the worst typhus epidemics in history.
1816 was the year Frankenstein was written. It was also the year Turner painted his fiery sunsets.
All of these things are linked to global climate change―something we are quite aware of now, but that was utterly mysterious to people in the nineteenth century, who concocted all sorts of reasons for such an ungenial season.

"

Fiction:

Inside Out, by Barry Eisler.
Eisler wrote the Rain novels, Rain being the name of his James Bond like character.
Inside Out is the 2nd of a series featuring Ben Treven, the book is
"based on true events: 92 missing CIA interrogation tapes that allegedly included recordings of prisoners being tortured.
Eisler's latest offering doesn't reinvent the genre, but it certainly pumps it full of adrenaline."

He is a very intelligent writer, with a CIA and Gov't background, and in this book, there is a list of books and films in teh Appendix that reads like a DU wishlist.
so yeah, I like him....

[pscot]

16. I liked the Rain books

I'll definitely look for these. Thanks.

[dixiegrrrrl]

17. The author, Eisler, is on Twitter

and in answer to my question, said his third Treven book would be coming out in the future, the one in which Treven is looking for Rain.
You will find his 2 Treven books as good as the Rain series.

Eisler's blog is here:http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/

very interesting reading.

[japple]

5. Thanks, hermetic, for starting the 1st thread of the year!

Still reading Church of Marvels by Lesley Parry. The plot has gotten a bit confusing and murky at this point, but am slogging on through because the writing is so good. The setting, historical facts, characters are all very well developed and I think that all will become clear in the end.

Hoping that my next book will be Amy Stewart's, Girl Waits with Gun from the library. If not, there is plenty to choose from.

Here's a review of Girl Waits with Gun which I found intriguing. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/books/review/girl-waits-with-gun-by-amy-stewart.html?_r=0

[Number9Dream]

6. "Beyond Words - What Animals Think and Feel" by Carl Safina

Thanks, Hermetic. Since other regulars to this ongoing thread have mentioned non-fiction, and it has been okay with Hermetic, I thought some might find this book interesting. Though the main sections are about elephants, wolves, and killer whales, the book, in general, examines the similarity between human and non-human consciousness, self-awareness, and empathy. Got this as an inter-library loan, which allows a month to read it.

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. the similarity between human and non-human consciousness, self-awareness, and empathy.

YES!!!!

I swear, mankind walks around so blindly.

Gonna look for that book...thanks.

[shenmue]

7. "Eeny Meeny," Matthew Arlidge

It's a little more schlocky than I like, so I'm moving on to a cozy mystery next. I'm beginning to like cozies more these days. "Copy Cap Murder" by Jenn McKinlay will be next.

[SheilaT]

8. The Ice Twins by S.K. Tremayne

After the sudden death of one of their twin daughters, the parents move from London to an Island off the coast of Scotland. Things do not go well.

[scarletwoman]

9. I read that one last year.

I thought the author did an excellent job of describing the environment. I won't say anything more because I don't want post any spoilers - but I'd be really interested in discussing it with you after you finish it.

[SheilaT]

11. Yeah, I'd like a bit of a discussion also.

I absolutely agree about describing the environment.

I should finish it up sometime tomorrow, and I'll PM you.

[scarletwoman]

10. I've been hanging out with the Brits.

Because I so loved Ann Cleeves' Shetland series, I decided to check out her Vera Stanhope series. And I'm so glad I did! They are fabulous! I'm utterly in love with this author! I've ended up reading the Vera series out of order, but I don't mind at all because they have been so wonderful! I've also read two of her stand-alone novels, and they have been wonderful, too. I think she is my new favorite mystery author.

Interspersed with Ann Cleeves, I've also started on a mystery series by another British author, Stephen Booth. He writes Police Procedurals set in the Peak District of Britain, and they are quite engaging and well-written. I've finished the first four books, and have the next four at hand. So far he's written 12.

The thing I like and appreciate about both these authors is that their crime novels don't involve graphic violence, serial killers, gruesomeness, or sadism. There are generally just one or two murders to be solved, and the emphasis is on the characters and the painstaking search for clues, and not on graphic bloody details about how the murder victims met their ends. No car chases, no gun battles, no American-style cinematic suspense tropes.

Just solid crime detection amid a milieu of ordinary people with their very human flaws.

[SheilaT]

12. I am now reading "Saturn Run"

by John Sandford and Ctein.

It's 2066. A space telescope has just spotted an object approaching Saturn. It's decelerating. Must be artificial, since natural objects don't behave that way. I'm all of 20 pages in and I'm hoping it stays as good as it is so far.

[OxQQme]

13. Sinclair Lewis binge currently

reading "Main Street".
"Babbit" (think Trump wins the election) was around christmas time , followed by "Free Air' and "The Job"

Looking for a free full length e-pub of Elmer Gantry.

Mr Lewis was a socialist down to his core and his stories reflect that.