What Fiction are you reading this week, June 30, 2019?

[hermetic]

Small Frank?

Today I plan to start reading A Question of Blood, an Ian Rankin Inspector Rebus mystery. I discovered there is/was a Rebus TV series and my “new” library has the first season. oboyohboyohboy

I just listened to French Exit by Patrick deWitt who also wrote The Sisters Brothers. I really enjoy deWitt’s stories so I got a copy of The Sisters Brothers movie which sounds like it will be quite good. Today I read that French Exit is being made into a movie as well. I will definitely want to see that. =^. , .^=

Now I am listening to Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris and literally howling with laughter. It’s even funnier as he is the one reading it. Made me cry a little bit, too. He is such a fantastic writer.

What is your planned reading for the week?

[dameatball]

1. "By Force of Arms" by James L. Nelson

First in a series of naval adventures during America's war for independence. The author knows his stuff regarding sailing ships.

[hermetic]

2. A Revolution at Sea Saga

Tall ships are so cool.

[cloudbase]

3. The Art of the Deal

by you know who.

[Backseat Driver]

4. Oryx and Crake

Book #1 of a trilogy by Margaret Atwood

[hermetic]

5. Great stuff

And it just keeps getting better.

[Ohiogal]

6. Northern Lights by Nora Roberts

My first ever Roberts book. Given to me by a friend. I didn’t think I’d like it, but so far (I’m into 100 pages). ...it’s not too bad!

[hermetic]

7. After all, she is

one of the most prolific and beloved writers in the world, with more than 200 novels and 300 million copies of her books in print. That looks like a pretty long one, over 600 pages. Enjoy!

[northoftheborder]

8. The Overstory, by Richard Powers

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2019

A monumental novel about reimagining our place in the living world, by one of our most "prodigiously talented" novelists (New York Times Book Review).

The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another.

These and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by trees, are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest. There is a world alongside ours - vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.


This may be one of my top favorite books. Beautifully written.

[hermetic]

9. Wow!

That sounds amazing.

[japple]

10. Kim Michele Richardson's excellent new book, The Book Woman

of Troublesome Creek. Here's a brief description cribbed from amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Woman-Troublesome-Creek-Novel-ebook/dp/B07LGD67ZZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3ACLM60I1SVUU&keywords=the+book+woman+of+troublesome+creek+by+kim+michele+richardson&qid=1561979972&s=books&sprefix=book+wom%2Caps%2C222&sr=1-1

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything―everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter.

....

Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman's belief that books can carry us anywhere―even back home.

It has been a long, hot, difficult summer with little time for reading. We are barely into the season and are drowning in blackberries, peaches, and too many cats/kittens to get into rescue.

Thanks for the weekly thread, hermetic. I love the pic in your OP. I'm also happy to read you are enjoying David Sedaris as much as I do. His writing is wonderful, but listening to him read his own work is a real joy. I wish he still frequented NPR.

Happy early 4th of July to all the DU readers.

[hermetic]

13. I did my best yesterday

to ignore the date. Worked out pretty well until dark. Then it was like a battleground. This was my 5th 4th ( ) here and it was never this loud before. Considering what fireworks cost, I'm surprised my neighbors were able to buy so many. Sure hope they have enough money left to feed the kids and dogs this month.

It has been quite a cool summer so far here. So not much of anything growing in my yard yet, except weeds.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

11. Just finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I actually listened to the audio version. I started it on a recent driving trip then listened to the last two CDs today. Really good. Because several different readers were used, it was probably easier to follow this way rather than reading it.

[hermetic]

12. What a great title!

Sounds like a great story, as well. "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society--born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island--boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all."

I like audibles that use more than one reader. Oftentimes you will find a one-reader who uses different voices. That can be good, BUT listening to French Exit, the reader sounded like she was in her 90s for our protagonist who was in her late 60s. That set my nerves on edge since I know I sound nothing like that. Oh well...whatever.

I for sure want to get your book, though. Thanks.

[mainer]

14. There's a movie based on the book

it was charming.

I found it interesting that it was the older author's debut novel -- and she died before it was released.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

15. I actually watched the movie yesterday.

They made the changes necessary for adaptation to a movie, but I sort of wish it had been done as a mini series.