What Fiction are you reading this week, September 9, 2018?

[hermetic]

Trinity in Dublin

I'm halfway through Lamb by Christopher Moore and loving it.

Listening to Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbo. The story a renegade hitman who goes to ground far above the Arctic circle, where the never-setting sun might slowly drive a man insane. Pretty good although the reader isn't very expressive.

There, There has come back around to me so I'm looking forward to finishing that this week.

What's on your list this week? I have to leave shortly; going to see Mama Mia on stage and really looking forward to it. I will check back in later to see what you all have been up to.

[dameatball]

1. "Fathomless" by Greig Beck

[hermetic]

4. A thriller!

A creature from Earth’s primordial past is accidentally released into today’s oceans. The giant Megalodon shark follows its instinct and a genetic memory of a home that once existed millions of years ago along the Californian coast. Nothing is safe on or below the water as the monster stakes its claim on the world’s oceans. Now Cate and her team must do battle with a creature that has no rival, knows no fear, and regards humans as nothing more than prey.

[LisaM]

2. "The Idiot" by Elif Batuman.

I'm laughing all the way through it.

[hermetic]

5. Sounds wonderful

With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself.

[Bleacher Creature]

3. The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

[hermetic]

7. Ursula

is one of my favorite writers ever. Love everything she has written.

[Bleacher Creature]

17. This is my first time reading anything she's written.

It won't be the last. I love the prose, the detailed and vivid world she created, and the characters. Do you have any specific favorites?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

31. The Left Hand of Darkness

is excellent.

[Bleacher Creature]

34. Thanks. Do I need to read the earlier books in the Hainish Cycle first?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

36. Doing a bit of online research

I see that a bunch of her novels seem to be set in a "Hainish" universe, and what they have in common is that they take place in a distant future in which interstellar travel has been achieved. Other than that, so far as I can tell, they are not in any way linked. The Left Hand of Darkness stands totally alone.

[Bleacher Creature]

37. Got it. Thanks again.

I looked online as well, and the author herself actually noted that the only real connections between the various books just involve the "world" and setting, and not really the stories.

The Left Hand of Darkness is definitely next on my list!

[dweller]

6. Hollow Man by Oliver Harris

debut novel about Nick Belsey, London investigator ... 2 more in the series to follow

[hermetic]

9. Another one for my list.

Combining dark humor, dazzling twists, and a sharp narrative style, The Hollow Man is a tour de force of suspense -- and the debut of an extraordinary new writer.

[Atticus]

8. Besides the "Rasmussen polls"? nt

[Ohiogal]

10. I enjoy Jo Nesbo's books, too.

Right now I am reading "The Whore's Child" and Other Stories" by Richard Russo. Given to me as a birthday present. Finished the first story last night, so far, so good.

[hermetic]

13. Russo is a great writer

So many enjoyable books from him.

[northoftheborder]

11. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn

About half way through; a page turner; have several others I am reading intermittently - need to finish those, but they are not as gripping as this one.

[hermetic]

14. Gripping, indeed

That book had me just

[whathehell]

27. The book was much better than the movie..

I don't always subscribe to that trope, but in this case it was yrue.

[northoftheborder]

30. I'm about 2/3 through and..

can't put it down - can't see how it possibly ends well for Nick.

I agree about most movies do NOT live up to the book. One only, comes to mind: the book about the woman who cooked her way through a Julia Child cookbook (can't remember the name). The movie was an improvement, inserting some of Julia's personality and story into the theme. I just watched "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." A total failure of a movie as far as story development and plot. Too much material to condense into a short movie. The Harry Potter movies also - too condensed.

[SeattleVet]

12. "Air Force One Is Down" by Alistair Maclean

Stumbled on it recently in Kindle format. Not his best work, but readable, if somewhat disjointed in places and predictable.

Just finished "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline, and that was one I had a hard time putting down. Just added the movie to the top of my NetFlix queue to see how they managed to adapt part of it.

[hermetic]

15. Let me know

what you think of the movie. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to buy it.

[Harker]

16. Rereading Hermann Hesse's "Knulp."

It's short, and I'll finish it today. I think it would make an interesting operetta, with a contralto as the voice of Knulp's god.

[mainstreetonce]

18. The Wife Between Us

Hendricks

[Runningdawg]

19. Lamb is a classic

We keep having to buy new copies because we give it away so often.
I am just about to start Unfu*k Yourself - Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop

[murielm99]

20. The Known World,

by Edward P. Jones.

It is a very talky book.

[snowybirdie]

21. The

Tweets of Donald J. Trump

[OxQQme]

22. Having recently read "The Bee Keepers Apprentice"

as recommended here last week, I'm now into the 2nd Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel entitled "A Monstrous Regiment Of Women".
Wonderful writing from Laurie R. King.

btw hermetic, ALL of Moore's books are equally excellent humor.

[PennyK]

23. I've read that whole series

I loved these books...I went on to read most of King's other books. What a talent!

[PoorMonger]

24. The Book Of M by Peng Shepard

WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE UP TO REMEMBER?

Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.

Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.

Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.

As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.

Like The Passage and Station Eleven, this haunting, thought-provoking, and beautiful novel explores fundamental questions of memory, connection, and what it means to be human in a world turned upside down.

[japple]

25. Taylor Brown's book, Fallen Land.

Fallen Land is Taylor Brown's debut novel set in the final year of the Civil War, as a young couple on horseback flees a dangerous band of marauders who seek a bounty reward. Callum, a seasoned horse thief at fifteen years old, came to America from his native Ireland as an orphan. Ava, her father and brother lost to the war, hides in her crumbling home until Callum determines to rescue her from the bands of hungry soldiers pillaging the land, leaving destruction in their wake. Ava and Callum have only each other in the world and their remarkable horse, Reiver, who carries them through the destruction that is the South. Pursued relentlessly by a murderous slave hunter, tracking dogs, and ruthless ex-partisan rangers, the couple race through a beautiful but ruined land, surviving on food they glean from abandoned farms and the occasional kindness of strangers. In the end, as they intersect with the scorching destruction of Sherman's March, the couple seek a safe haven where they can make a home and begin to rebuild their lives. Dramatic and thrillingly written with an uncanny eye for glimpses of beauty in a ravaged landscape, Fallen Land is a love story at its core, and an unusually assured first novel by award-winning young author Taylor Brown.

Great writing from this author and I look forward to reading his other books.

Also up to my ears in figs and kittens. Have been making fig-walnut jam with honey, fig jam with honey, walnuts and cardamom, fig conserve with pecans, honey & bourbon. With the kittens, I have just fostered and transported them.

[pscot]

38. "up to my ears in figs and kittens"

You have a wonderful title. The book will probably write itself.

[MyOwnPeace]

26. Nothing right now............

waiting for Trump's new book to come out!

[rzemanfl]

28. Christopher Moore-

Noir: A Novel set in 1947 San Francisco.

[Olafjoy]

29. Angie Thomas

“The Hate U Give”
“If ‘The Hate U Give’ makes you uncomfortable, that’s because it should,” Christian Science Monitor. Young Adult book about police violence in the African American community. Outstanding.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

32. Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter.

Towards the end of the 21st century a grad student makes a discovery of a distant star which is quite strange, and an expedition is mounted to go there and find out what it is. Because the voyage, even a near light speed (maybe FTL, that detail isn't spelled out) will take over a hundred years o subjective time (thousands back on Earth), rather than have a crew that reproduces normally, it's stocked with clones of the original voyagers, who will be "born" to replacing the aging originals. Complications ensue.

The word "noumenon" means a thing that is real, but unmeasurable.

I'm about a third of the way in and it's very good so far.

[lsewpershad]

33. The book trump will write

Ha ha.

[TexasProgresive]

35. A little slow replying this week- "Dead Eye" by Mark Greaney

I picked this up off the rack for something different and that's what I got. The occupation of the characters are not something I care for, assassins one working for a black funded covert corporation and the other with a shoot to kill order on his head by his (US) government. It is more gripping then I would think.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

39. Finished "Noumenon"

and am now reading Gone to Dust by Matt Goldman. I think someone here had recommended it not too long ago. Minneapolis PI looking into a murder. Very good, and excellent sense of the setting. It's Goldman's first, and I've put the second one on hold. Hope he writes a bunch more in this series.

[hermetic]

41. Author Goldman

was a TV writer for Seinfeld, Ellen, et al. Won an Emmy for his writing. So I can imagine his books are good reading. He lives in Minnesota, too; my old stomping grounds. Gonna have to read these for sure.

[Paladin]

40. David Mamet's new novel, "Chicago."

S-L-O-W read, but worthwhile, like most of Mamet's stuff, mainly because of his idiosyncratic treatment of the English language ("Glengarry Glenross," the screenplay for "The Untouchables&quot . About a 1920's-era newspaper reporter and his seeking revenge for the murder of his girlfriend; lots of vivid characters. It'll make a better movie than it is a book. Bonus points for the raunchy lyrics to "Frankie and Johnnie," and the ending, which involves the Leopold & Loeb murder trial.

[hermetic]

42. Excellent