What Fiction are you reading this week, January 15, 2023?

[hermetic]

This looks cozy.

Still reading Elementary She Wrote by Vicki Delany. Just started listening to Body on Baker Street, also by Vicki Delany. It's a cozy bonanza!

What's your reading look like for this coming week?
Wishing you all a peaceful Martin Luther King Day.

[Basic LA]

1. White Noise by Don DeLillo

I read it in the 80's when it came out. But with all the publicity about the new movie, I wanted to read it again before seeing the film. I forgot how funny it was!

[hermetic]

2. Never heard of it

Sounds good, though.

[The King of Prussia]

3. Night Shadows by Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir

An Icelandic thriller. Third in the series. I read number 2 earlier in the week and the first one last year. Wholeheartedly recommended.

[hermetic]

6. Wholeheartedly welcomed

Sounds terrific. "Beautifully written, spine-tingling and disturbing"

Cheers!

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. I just finished

A Letter From Nana Rose, by Kristin Harper, which was a so-so romance that was promised to be a family mystery. NOT. Before that I had read They Could Have Called Her Anything, by Stephanie Rodriguez, which left me with real mixed feelings. As a coming-of-age novel about a Hispanic girl from Queens attending a private school in Manhattan on scholarship it had its moments, but not really enough to make it worth wading through messy friendships and what I felt was a really unnecessary injection of attempted sexual abuse by someone's father. Plus a really inconclusive ending. It was advertised as a real "breakout" book by a new author, but I wish she'd learned to put a novel together properly. I have just started a new YA called Seven Ten Third by Sara Mack which is sort of promising---it's about a girl who accidentally ran over and killed a popular athlete at her high school when he was drunk and what she has to face when she goes back to school the following year. (This was a recommendation from a friend who is also a writer and knows what I'm writing.)

[hermetic]

7. Yikes

Hope you have better luck with your reading this week. I really hate when a book lets me down. After all, I invest a goodly amount of time in them. You just never know. Hey, didn't I just say that somewhere else?

[CrispyQ]

5. "The Gods of Guilt" by Michael Connelley, another Lincoln Lawyer story.

Not quite as good as "Law of Innocence" the latest LL story, but still good.

I committed on GoodReads to read 30 books this year. We'll see how that goes. This will be #2 & I'm almost finished.

[hermetic]

8. Good for you!

A worthy endeavor. You just might want to avoid those 700+ pagers, though.

[yellowdogintexas]

9. The Women of Chateau Layfayette

by Stephanie Dray

An epic saga from New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray based on the true story of an extraordinary castle in the heart of France and the remarkable women bound by its legacy.

Most castles are protected by men. This one by women.

A founding mother...
1774. Gently-bred noblewoman Adrienne Lafayette becomes her husband, the Marquis de Lafayette’s political partner in the fight for American independence. But when their idealism sparks revolution in France and the guillotine threatens everything she holds dear, Adrienne must renounce the complicated man she loves, or risk her life for a legacy that will inspire generations to come.

A daring visionary...
1914. Glittering New York socialite Beatrice Chanler is a force of nature, daunted by nothing—not her humble beginnings, her crumbling marriage, or the outbreak of war. But after witnessing the devastation in France firsthand, Beatrice takes on the challenge of a lifetime: convincing America to fight for what's right.

A reluctant resistor...
1940. French school-teacher and aspiring artist Marthe Simone has an orphan's self-reliance and wants nothing to do with war. But as the realities of Nazi occupation transform her life in the isolated castle where she came of age, she makes a discovery that calls into question who she is, and more importantly, who she is willing to become.

Intricately woven and powerfully told, The Women of Chateau Lafayette is a sweeping novel about duty and hope, love and courage, and the strength we take from those who came before us.

I am about 50% through this one. It is a good and quite interesting read. Each of these women is formidable in her own right, and the historical context is spot on. I never knew how much Lafayette was involved in the French Revolution.

[japple]

10. It's not fiction, but I thought maybe others in this group would

like. Alex Kershaw's Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family's Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Paris.

From amazon:

From his office at the American Hospital, itself an epicenter of Allied and Axis intrigue, Jackson smuggled fallen Allied fighter pilots safely out of France, a job complicated by the hospital director's close ties to collaborationist Vichy. After witnessing the brutal round-up of his Jewish friends, Jackson invited Liberation to officially operate out of his home at Number 11—but the noose soon began to tighten. When his secret life was discovered by his Nazi neighbors, he and his family were forced to undertake a journey into the dark heart of the war-torn continent from which there was little chance of return.

This book is very well written. It reads like a spy thriller and biography rolled into one. Can't wait to get into it again tonight.

Love the cozy reading nook in your OP. Looks like there might be a little kitty or pup in the chair on the righthand side of the pic. I could spend all day in that room.

[hermetic]

13. I also just read

a nonfiction book: Dewey the Library Cat. Dewey Readmore Books, as he became known, for nineteen years never stopped charming the people of Spencer, Iowa, with this enthusiasm, warmth, humility, and, above all, his sixth sense about who needed him most. His fame grew from town to town, then state to state, and finally, amazingly, worldwide. Very sweet and, of course, sad.

[japple]

20. I LOVED that book. I read it several years ago. He

was a very good boy and good at his job.

[Srkdqltr]

11. I'm reading Shooting Season by David J. Gatewood. A Grim Up North

3rd book in the series. Not too bad and easy to read.
Finished The Cloisters by Katy Hays . Interesting story. I ended up not really liking any of the people in it but understanding their motives. I thought the story was interesting.

[hermetic]

15. Mystery

Could not find any book or author on GoodReads but did find this: https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/david-j-gatward/ He wrote a book titled Shooting Season and several others. Sounds like a really interesting guy, best known for the “DCI Harry Grimm” series of novels. He was born in Bristol and was brought up between Lincolnshire, Wensleydale and Cotswolds, so totally British.

[Number9Dream]

12. Finished "The Librarian Spy" by Madeline Martin

Thanks for the thread, hermetic. Glad you're enjoying the Vicki Delany books.

It is WWII (1943), and American librarian Ava takes an intelligence job which takes her to Lisbon. At the same time, a French woman, Elaine, gets involved with the French Resistance. Their paths cross. This turned out to be one of the best books I've read in a long time.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58787295-the-librarian-spy

[hermetic]

14. Just out last year

Sounds quite good. Thanks for telling us about it.

[SheltieLover]

16. Just finished "The Cat Who Saved Books" by Ssuke Natsukawa

Protagonist is a high school boy who has just inherited his grandpa's used bookstore.

He is described as a Hikikimori, a person who is a willful recluse & pretty much a book nerd.

I really enjoyed this book a lot because of the Japanese culture underpinnings & the character development being astounding.

Also was enjoying Cole & Pike adventures & more Sisterhood, then my library zeroed out my checked out list!



Hopefully, they will fix it soon!

I tried Amazon's Kindle books, but it's too confusing.

I loved Vicki Delany's books. I think I've inhaled all of them.

Enjoy!

[mike_c]

17. just read "Observer" by Robert Lanza and Nancy Kress

The perfect Saturday novel--I couldn't put it down and my head is still full of it today. I just picked up "Trust" by Hernan Diaz, so that's probably next in the queue.

[hermetic]

18. Oh my

A startling, fascinating novel...Observer will thrill you, inspire you, and lead you to think about life and the power of the imagination in startling new ways.

That sounds remarkable. It just came out so may not be easy to find yet. But I'm sure going to try.
Thanks.

[mike_c]

19. yep, delivered yesterday

It portrays fascinating questions about the nature of reality. There's a bit of clumsiness among characters sometimes, but the underlying story is enthralling. What if...?

[japple]

23. Kindle download on sale for $4.99. That's a good deal!

Thanks.

[Polly Hennessey]

21. Just started a new bedtime cozy, Shop Till You Drop

by Elaine Viets.

“Working for a living can be Murder….”

“If you’ve ever been in a dead-end job, this book will ‘slay’ you!”

[hermetic]

22. Yeah,

that's a good one.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

24. I'm currently working on two.

Final Girls by Riley Sager. Quincy Carpenter is the only survivor of a killer who murdered everyone else at the cottage she and some friends were staying at one weekend. There are two other such Final Girls. Quincy more or less has her life together, but then things go awry. So far, so good.

Alternities by Michael P. Kube-McDowell. It's a novel about parallel universes, and probably the very best of a tiny sub-genre. This is a reread for me, and I'd forgotten a lot of the specifics, so I am very glad to be rereading it.