What Fiction are you reading this week, Nov. 22, 2020?

[hermetic]

Still reading Wolf Hall. I discovered my library has the DVD of the BBC show they dd back in 2015 and I am really looking forward to getting it once I've finished the book.

I'm also reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson, online in PDF. I ended up doing this after a post I made yesterday about first paragraphs. Then I found and started reading the book, again, and it's so great I decided to just go with it, though I don't usually like to read two books at once.

Listening to David Rosenfelt's Bark of Night. Rosenfelt's charmingly clever wit and love of dogs are better than ever.

Hope everyone is able to enjoy Thanksgiving. For me it will be the same as it has been for some 10 years now. Just cook up some good food and watch movies. But I will be thinking of you all and feeling thankful for DU and your participation here.

[SheltieLover]

1. How to paint a cat by Rebecca M Hale

It is so-so. Not really captivating, but okish.

[hermetic]

2. Very carefully?

Or when it's asleep maybe?

[CincyDem]

3. Trump's legal filings...ok...maybe not what you were looking for but amirite? :-) n/t

[hermetic]

4. Meh...

If you've read one, you've read them all.

[dweller]

5. Well fiction for sure

but crossing heavily into fantasy ..

✌🏻

[Wawannabe]

7. You stole my reply!

Hehe! Good on ya!

[murielm99]

6. I am reading

Gideon's Sword, by Preston and Child. It is the first in a series about Gideon Crew, a prodigy and master thief. In this book, he sets out to vindicate his father, who was destroyed and murdered.

This book is copyrighted 2011. It involves government agencies and deep plots. Since this is pre-Trump, I will have to decide how credible it is. I checked out the first two books in the series to see if I like them.

I am only about forty pages in, so I will withhold judgement.

[hermetic]

8. One would think

that with Preston and Child you can't go wrong. I had planned to read that series myself, someday. So, let us know what you think, when you're done.

[The King of Prussia]

9. White Nights by Ann Cleeves

The second in the Shetland series. Excellent, but I'm less than 100 pages in and I'm very confident that I've spotted the killer already.

We're well into the second lockdown, and it seems to be working... a bit. Cases still seem terrifyingly high to me. But it also seems that deaths are nowhere near as high as in the first wave.

Stay safe one and all.

[hermetic]

10. You stay well, too.

Love Ann. She's done some interesting things. Here's a nice little interview with her

https://keeperofthesnails.blogspot.com/2010/07/sunday-salon-interview-with-ann-cleeves.html

[Karadeniz]

11. My fiction book is by D.J. Trump. It's about how he won two popular votes in two general elections.

[japple]

12. Thank you, hermetic, for hosting this weekly gathering. Love the thanksgiving display. Someone

did a jam up job with the paper turkey!

I'm still reading Silas House's book, Clay's Quilt though I have gotten a bit bored with the story line. He is a fine writer, but this story seems in need of editing.

Haven't had much time for reading books lately. There are too many news events. That, and the foster kittens who just had their operations this week should be ready to go to rescue before too long.

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Grasshopper & Cricket

[hermetic]

14. Such pretty babies

Hope they find wonderful, loving homes. I was just watching that video over in Pets of the 4 kittens. So cute! Baby animals are so good for the soul. My youngest two are a year and a half now. While they still romp and play, now it's always at 3 a.m. and there's often biting and growling involved. If I ever came into a large fortune I would buy an enormous house and have kittens around all the time. And puppies, too.

Stay safe and well.

[Hestia]

13. The new Lincoln Lawyer: The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly

I rarely buy new books but this one I couldn't wait until discounted price and the line is huge at the library.

I like the Harry Bosch books but love Mickey Haller. He's all the reasons people hate lawyers, always spinning but knows the law inside and out. His dad was a high muckety-muck defense lawyer.

His new character, Renee Ballard, is great too. Since Mickey is Harry Bosch's half-brother and Renee Ballard has worked with Harry off the books in a couple cases, I don't think there will be anymore Harry Bosch books. No reason, since he is an adjacent character in the Renee & Mickey books.

BTW, he explains that innocent is not a legal defense, that it is unprovable. All the law requires is Guilty or Not Guilty. It is why it is almost impossible to get an actual innocent person out of prison, there is no provision for it; you have to prove the actual guilty party did it.

Michael Connelly has a podcast (who doesn't?) called Murder Book. In his Harry Bosch books, it is where detectives put all the records on a murder case in a blue binder and called it the Murder Book or at least they did until everything went digital.

Michael Connelly is opening cold cases from LA that were never solved. He worked the police beat desk at LA Times even after he started writing his Harry Bosch books. Definitely gives his books an aura of authenticity. If you read the Harry Bosch books, read them in order, the timelines make more sense even though they start out pre-tech days. No cell phones or really anything digital.

Highly recommend

[hermetic]

15. Nice write-up. Thanks

I'm a big Connelly fan, too.

[nilesobek]

16. A little sample.

Classics, classics classics: Gogol, 'Diary of a Madman.

Lonesome traveler__ Jack Kerouac

Poor folks and Other Stories__ Dostoyevsky

Doctor Faustus__Christopher Marlowe

Shakespearean plays, dystopian SF novels and previously banned books. That pretty much sums it up. I'm a buyer now. Millions of books have been thrown away since the advent of computers. I'd put my inventory up against the local library selection. It seems they are really stuck on Nora Roberts.

[hermetic]

17. Good for you

I, too, am a firm believer in the value of a physical book as opposed to one in the ether. OTOH, the computer has given many of us much greater access to books we would have otherwise missed.

[nilesobek]

18. Gave away my computer.

Using an old typewriter and handwriting. Careening down the dark side, I decided to disconnect from the web minus a few phone communiques. And it paid off big-time. Upper five figures contract to buy a short novel because it's "unique, disturbing and grotesque." ( A compliment from my agent?). Never sold a book before, never had more than a few hundred bucks in my whole life. Spent 20 years wandering the highways of America, a homeless drifter. Felt triumphant for a few weeks but now I'm feeling a letdown. I made it. No more freezing, no more ditch, no more malt liquor and I might be able to fix my broken teeth and this embarrassing planters wart. They made me sign away ALL rights to the story minus a tiny percentage but I'm not worried. I did not rank this story very high on my stack, and there's plenty where that came from. My main worry now is trying to adjust, to adapt away from the life I led, like a released prisoner. I can't bring myself to buy anything nice. I can't change.

[tyrotoxism]

19. Rhythm of War, Brandon Sanderson

Hoo boy, the ending part about Odium!