What Fiction are you reading this week, March 10, 2024?

[hermetic]

Does anybody really know what time it is?



I finished reading Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly. Great courtroom drama. Couldn't put it down. Teared up a bit at the end.

I've just started Chenneville by Paulette Jiles, a novel of murder, loss, and vengeance. I really liked her other books and this one is starting out great.

I just listened to The House of Wolves by James Patterson and Mike Lupica. The Wolf family is the most powerful and ruthless family in California. They own the San Francisco Tribune and a pro-football team, the Wolves. Then someone kills the father and the eldest daughter inherits it all. Her three brothers are not happy about that situation. This book was one nominated for the International Thriller Writers Award for 2024 audio books. I quite enjoyed it.

I am now listening to It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. I was surprised, but happy, to find it had been released in audio. It's kind of amazing how it lays out exactly what the Repugs are planning for our future. Just goes to show that what's old is new again. Or, some thing never change.
“The novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump's authoritarian appeal.” -- Salon
A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression,... it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press." One of the "plans" is that women will only be allowed to work as nurses or hair stylists. Wish there was some way to leave this on park benches for passing strangers to pick up and maybe get a clue. Yeah, a girl can dream, right? Anyway, amazing book.

So, what books will you be finding time for this week?

[CrispyQ]

1. You could leave copies in Little Free Libraries & laundromats.

Have the book banners targeted the Little Free Libraries yet?

I just happen to be reading fiction this week, a book I read decades ago, King Rat by James Clavell. They redid Shogun & there was a DU thread about that & a sub-thread on Clavell's Asian series. Someone mentioned Whirlwind which I had never heard of & have on order from the library. Anyway, I remember really liking King Rat & I'm enjoying it again.

[hermetic]

5. I seem to recall when that came out

1962. Caused quite a stir...

"Here is an epic novel that strips human beings down to the most naked passions and elemental survival needs, as all distinctions between East and West fade before the all-conquering force of one man's thrust for personal empire .."

Intense.

i never heard of the other one, either. Not a lot of info out there about that one. You'll have to tell us about it after you read it.

[rsdsharp]

8. I read King Rat in about 1965 or 66. I haven't reread it; I find it the darkest of the Clavell books.

It’s autobiographical to a degree, as Clavell was a Japanese POW in World War II. George Segal played the title character in the movie.

[MontanaMama]

2. I will find It Can't Happen Here on audible so I can listen to it.

Thanks for the recommendation. I have some travel coming up and need to download things to keep my mind busy.

I amreading The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A woman risks everything to end her family’s centuries-old curse, solve her mother’s disappearance, and find love in this mesmerizing novel from the author of Spells for Forgetting.

It was on the NYT bestseller list and when I read their little teaser, it didn’t sound interesting to me but I had a neighbor recommend it and I’ve enjoyed it. The curse described in the teaser is really the ability of the women in the Farrow family to time travel and the repercussions of that ability on the women themselves and of course, those that love them. It is no surprise that people familiar with the Farrow women throughout all timelines believe that they are mad…because isn’t that the go-to criticism when women aren’t understood? Sheesh. Anyway, I’d recommend the book. It’s entertaining for sure.

[hermetic]

3. Thanks for your rec

I definitely want to look that one up.

Wishing you safe travels and good times.

[CrispyQ]

6. Oh, I liked that book!

Not the story I was expecting but very enjoyable!!

[MontanaMama]

14. Same! It wasn't at all what I was expecting.

I’m almost finished with it and have enjoyed it.

Did you read Spells For Forgetting? Same author. I wasn’t going to read it but I put it back on my list.

[japple]

4. I'm still slogging thru William Kent Krueger's book,

This Tender Land but not enjoying it very much. I've been tempted to quit, but have invested too much time in the story and want to see what happens.

So happy to see that you're reading Chenneville and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

There is a group called Book Crossings where members release books into the wild and track them. https://www.bookcrossing.com/join I used to belong, but it was 20 years ago, when I worked for a university, and I can't even remember my account settings. Will have to see if I can retrieve my account.

Hope everyone got enough sleep last night! I didn't, as there was some redneck (and maybe his friends) who lives down the road from me exercising his/their trigger finger last night. He/they must have fired off 300 rounds within about an hour. It sounded like a war zone.

[hermetic]

7. Yikes! That's awful.

Are you in a city/town limit? I live in a super red state and everyone has guns but it is against laws to fire a gun in town. Even in self defense.

Sorry to hear you're struggling with the Krueger book. I've read a few, newer ones, and enjoyed them. I did live in Minnesota, though, so I always like getting out into the countryside there.

Book Crossings sounds like fun. I've bookmarked it for if I ever find myself with some free time again.

[justaprogressive]

9. "The Bezzle" by Cory Doctorow

came out in February..

Hugo winning and NYT best-selling author keeps on knocking it out
of the park, while teaching us real-life economics (swear to God)!

[hermetic]

11. Oh wow

I've always held Mr Doctorow in the highest regard though haven't read anything lately. That's about to change...

"The Bezzle is a high stakes thriller where the lives of the hundreds of thousands of inmates in California's prisons are traded like stock shares... A seething rebuke of the privatized prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash.."

[Bayard]

10. I'm about halfway through, "Solitude Creek,"

By Jeffery Deaver. Its okay, drags a bit.

[hermetic]

12. Ah, yes

I felt the same. Started off good but then kind of bogged down. Don't think I ever did finish it....

[niyad]

16. Happy 20th DUnniversary!

[hermetic]

17. Hey, thanks!

Shoot. I thought it was tomorrow. Oh well, 20 years goes by just like that: poof

[NanaCat]

13. Just started King of the Dragonflies

By Kacen Callender. Chapter 1 told me that Klanned Karenhood would hate this book. {Googles title} I was right. They hate it. So I'll probably love it.

Will give Prophet Song by Paul Lynch a go, if I have time. It's the newest Booker Prize winner, and is about the Irish troubles in Belfast. I'm getting shades of Sophie's Choice from the cover blurb, but in far fewer pages.

Edit to add:

I read It Can't Happen Here last year. That gave me some sleepless nights.

I've also put off reading Resurrection Walk, even though I had my copy on day of release. I have a feeling I know how it ends, not for the main plot, but for something else in the Connelly universe. I don't want to read that.

[yellowdogintexas]

15. Sequel to last week's book with attorney Marc Kadella

The first one, The Key to Justice was really good with a big shocker ending. I went straight to Book Two

BOOK TWO – DESPERATE JUSTICE

After winning the case of a lifetime, Minneapolis criminal defense lawyer Marc Kadella welcomes the new energy his career is receiving. Another lawyer asks him to represent the co-defendant in a murder trial resulting from a petty crime that spiraled out of control—the somewhat “accidental” murder of the nephew of Vivian Corwin, grande dame of the influential Corwin family. Disarmingly charming and still downright sexy at sixty-eight, there’s more to Vivian than meets the eye. You just gotta love a society doyenne who can toss off, “… if I wasn’t a lady, right about now I would say: f--- you.”

Marc has no illusions about why he’s being brought into the case, or what will happen. What he doesn’t know is that he’s gotten on the wrong side of a crooked judge; he just knows the guy hates him and will do everything he can to make life miserable for Marc and his client.