Threadnsong Still Reads in 2023

After several years of using these categories to keep track of my yearly reading, I've decided it's time to update them a bit.

My new categories for 2023 are:

Category 1 - Quick Reads
Category 2 - Longer Reads
Category 3 - Book Group Reads
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series (reading Vol. III)
Category 5 - Classics

I've found that some books I read quickly, some are going to take a little more time, and some, like Tolkien's "History of Middle Earth" are more like a long-term commitment. And now that there are in-person and on-line reading groups, I figured a category all its own is just the thing.

Hope to reach my goal of 45 this year; if not, then that's OK too!

Best of luck with your reading this year, and Happy New Year 🎉

Thank you, sir! And Happy New Year to you as well.

>3 threadnsong: Thanks 🍾

January Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Bringing Columbia Home by Michael D. Leinback and Jonathan H. Ward
Category 2 - Longer Reads Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser
Category 3 - Book Group Reads The Lantern Men by Elly Griffiths
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac

January Current Count - 4
Yearly Count - 4

I know! I can't believe it either. "Lantern Men" only took a couple of days, and "Empire" I finally, finally finished last night. It's incredibly readable, even though it is such a large volume.

And I'm reading "Two Years" for a book challenge so even with in-laws visiting, I think I can pull together enough evenings and weekends to read this book this month.

There was also a book on my wishlist that DH found (and brought home) that was a very, very quick read so I'm adding it here. And boy was it timely! Hard to believe it's been 20 years since the "Columbia" disaster, but here we are.

I hope you find 45 enjoyable books, threadnsong - Happy Reading!

Happy Reading!

>6 Sergeirocks: >7 LibraryCin: Thank you both!!

1) January Category 3 - The Lantern Men by Elly Griffiths
4 1/2 ****

My first book read by Elly Griffiths and I enjoyed it very, very much. It is a murder mystery with an ongoing cast of characters, set mostly in the marshes of Norfolk and partly in Cambridge. One of the main characters, Ruth Galloway, is now living and teaching archeology in Cambridge and happy with her new life. Her former lover, Harry Nelson, is working a case involving the murder of two women by Ivor March, who is found guilty at the start of the book.

Yet as Ruth is pulled into this case due to her previous work in Forensics in Norfolk, and more intrigue surrounds where the bodies were found (the garden of a former partner of Ivor March), there also comes to light additional bodies and March knows where they are buried. And at the center of all of the intrigue is the house introduced at the beginning, where Ruth finishes the manuscript of her third book at a writing retreat. A cast of characters seems to swirl around this house and its visitors, several of whom have wound up dead.

A very quick read, and easy to dance into this mystery series due to the author's skill at providing bits of the backstory of each character without sounding patronizing or repeating character stories too often told.

2) January Category 2 - Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
5*****

This is a remarkable book for its scope and its readability about a very dark part of modern life: the opioid crisis. Rather than taking facts and figures, death counts and dysfunction, as his focus, he takes Story. The Story of Mary Jo Howard, defense counsel for the Sacklers during lawsuits. The Story of Arthur Sackler and his two brothers, Raymond and Mortimer. The boundless energy of Arthur Sackler is an interesting Story, as is his decision to create a magazine full of his writings, marketed to doctors. The Story of Valium and the Stories that supported writing prescriptions for it, back in the 60's and 70's.

One very interesting Story for me was that of Richard Sackler, son of Raymond and one of the family members who ran Purdue Pharma, told by his college roommate and friend. How Richard was oblivious to social or emotional or spoken cues from others that resulted in broken ties and hurt feelings. Applying that Story to Richard's leadership in a company that chose to reward doctors for writing more and more prescriptions for an addictive substance, and rewarding company sales reps for finding these doctors who would write more prescriptions because the company would have higher sales. The sense of preserving the company's (and family's) wealth through greater sales, instead of looking at the harm of opioid addiction, was a stark Story of how the opioid crisis has worsened due to one man's emotional abyss.

And on, and on, and on. And it is really, really hard to put down. Or decide to stop at a chapter when another chapter is just one page away. And yet, sometimes I just had to because we all know where this story ends (finished in 2020 and published in 2021, so pending lawsuits). My hat is off to Keefe for writing such a readable and necessary book.

January Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth, The Lays of Beleriand

Section II - Beleg

In The Silmarillion and other writings of the First Age he is referred to as "Beleg Strongbow" and is a friend of Turin son of Hurin. (Backstory: Hurin is chained to the highest mountain of Thangorodrim by Morgoth and is watching his children's tragic lives, since he was a brave warrior against Morgoth.)

Again told in Anglo-Saxon meter, with the divided lines and alliteration throughout, it is a poem evocative of mead halls and deeds of the warriors. Yet it is in substance a tragedy as so many of Tolkien's works of the First Age really are. And as is the Third, but I digress.

Turin has fled the halls of his foster parents, Melian the Maia and Thingol (parents of Luthien Tinuviel) due to his slaying of Orgof during a feast. What makes this earlier telling different than other published works is Turin joining a band of outcasts/outlaws (instead of creating one himself), the outlaws swearing an oath similar to that of the Sons of Feanor, and the name, background story, and mindset of the one who betrays the band to the Orcs.

Also different is how Turin's friend, Beleg, comes to be part of this band, his wounding during the Orc battle where Turin is captured, and details about the search and Beleg's companion, Flinding, during this search.

It is so very interesting to read the details that differ in this earliest work from what had been published up until that point: how the land was shaped; how Beleg used his Elf bow-prowess to shoot Turin's guards in the dark; Flinding's lantern and how the lanterns were of greater importance than they are in the later published works. And thank all the Deities of Middle Earth for Christopher Tolkien's notes at the end of each section that verify that I was reading something different, and what was different about it from what I had read earlier.

Hi Posting this here in case you haven’t seen it.

It seems there might be an issue with a message getting through to some for the Group Read of Lantern Men.

For those interested this is the group : https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/23896/Book-Discussion-The-Lantern-Men-by-El...

And this is the schedule :

Thursday 12th January : Prologue - Chapter 8
Friday 13th January : Chapter 9 - Chapter 17
Saturday 14th January : Chapter 18 - Chapter 25
Sunday 15th January : Chapter 26 - Chapter 35

>12 Andrew-theQM: Thank you again for posting this! It was a great deal of fun participating in this group read. I think next time I'll read the book closer to the group reading dates, so that details stay fresher in my brain.

And it was a great book. I decided to leave my review until after the book discussion; sometime next week I think!

>13 threadnsong: Keeping the details fresher in our minds is the reason we split the reads into sections, threadnsong, and we can answer the questions as we go along. I know for a fact, I’d forget half that went on in the first half of the book if we had to wait ‘til the end to discuss it! 😂

>14 Sergeirocks: Yes, that is very true! When I began participating in the group read I made sure I had a copy of the book close by, so that I could refer to the details when I answered Andrew's questions.

And referring back to the book was also essential to knowing what were clues to the previous histories of the characters or finding references to what other readers had found.

3) January Category 1- Bringing Columbia Home by Michael D. Leinbach and Jonathan H. Ward

An astounding book, written by a former NASA launch commander and an Ambassador connected with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Both authors combine their skills to create a history of the shuttle Columbia as the backdrop to the awful events of that day. They also include a well-described layout of Kennedy Space Center (and the photos help tie all that in) with brief bios of the crew and their mission. Interspersed were detailed "what-ifs" that show, from the moment of the launch, what went wrong and how. Such as pictures from the launch that were never downloaded; had they been, the ground crew would have seen a large chunk of foam missing from the left-hand side of the rocket.

I also found invaluable the minute-by-minute events of that morning, with both shuttle mission information (what happens normally) and what people saw when. As Columbia began her entry, she was last seen zooming past California towards Nevada and Utah. Then, suddenly, the sensor readings begin to look different and temperatures go up. And then eye-witness accounts from Dallas and eastern Texas, along the path that Columbia broke up and the sonic booms that everyone in east Texas heard. What their reactions were. What caused them. Where debris landed. All of that, answering the "What happened?" questions not just from a mission normal narrative, but also the people who saw it disintegrate. And the reader who remembers the glowing streak across the sky and where I was that day.

The other thing I appreciated was that while there were scientific explanations, the story does not bog down into great scientific formulas. I did have to look up a few flying terms but that was all. And also that authors described the great outpouring of help and support from the people in east Texas who helped with setting up command centers, finding hotels, and feeding everyone who came out. There were as many as 22,000 people who helped with the recovery effort.

Also interesting was the help from all facets of the US Government. The Texas Forest Service brought in wildfire crews: they bring their own camp, tents, cooking, all that gear, and they are used to working on all kinds of tough terrain. And many of them are Native American tribes members. Or the National Transportation and Safety Board, who dispensed the advice, "Let the evidence show the cause of the accident; don't try to make the theory fit the evidence." Much praise is given to these agencies, and conversely sufficient blame is laid where it is deserved.

As with the Challenger disaster, improvements were made to launches, and with one visit to the Hubble Space telescope, all future missions included docking with the International Space Station in order to ensure that the shuttle was safe for the return flight, and to provide future shuttle astronauts safe haven in case the shuttle was not capable of returning back to Earth.

4) January Category 1 - Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

A very, very good book with such detail about ships and sailing and masts and jibs and what-not. Young Richard Dana find that his life has left him with no choice but to enlist in the Merchant Marines. I've heard that term and never really understood what it meant until now. The ship to which he signed sailed cattle hides from California to Boston. And it sailed out of Boston in 1834, before the railroads were built.

Dana was college-educated and kept a detailed diary on which he based this book. He does not shy away from his first days with sea-sickness, to the quarters where he and his shipmates lived and slept on hammocks, to the times of watches and what was expected, to the perils they encountered bringing hides from one port of California to the other where they were stored prior to shipment. His descriptions as well of how a sailing vessel was laid out, the masts, the work of furling and unfurling sails in all kinds of weather (such as rounding Cape Horn in the Antarctic winter), keeping watch, and how sailors ate were exacting and well-written.

He also goes into great detail about how the hides were "droughed" (carried on the head) to the rowboats from the various ports to the ship, transported to port where they were again off-loaded to be stored until a certain tonnage was achieved. The tonnage was determined by the company to whom Dana and the ship were contracted for the duration of the voyage; hence the "Merchant Marines," as they were sailing from the port of Boston to ports in California, in order to provide goods (in this case, hides) for the company that owned the ship and saw to their pay.

And yes, there is a flogging on board the ship, as is an attempt to force Dana into greater time on board his old ship from his new one, leading to a life of sailing instead of a point in time worked as a sailor. The descriptions of California and its coast, when it was still a Mexican territory, are fantastic and make me a bit sad for what we have lost over the centuries with Development and Progress.

The troubling parts of this book, though, are the ethnocentrism. He refers to the inhabitants of the various coastal cities, both Mexican and Native Americans, as lazy, as half-hearted in their work (which, yes, means the same thing), and as something wholly "other" than his Yankee work ethic. He makes a distinction between the Mexicans and the Spanish, giving a bit higher recognition to the Spanish, who had colonized California originally. Strangely, though, he has good rapport with the Sandwich Islanders (modern Hawa'ii) and even helps save one from the disease that they too often caught from interaction with the White voyagers (the disease is not named but was probably not smallpox by the description).

All in all a good book and most deservedly a classic of literature.

February Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads The Unbroken Web by Richard Adams, Burning Water by Mercedes Lackey
Category 2 - Longer Reads The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser
Category 3 - Book Group Reads (pending February - book unavailable)
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand - Canto III - Failivrin
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac

February Current Count - 4
Yearly Count - 8

February Category 4 - The Lays of Beleriand Canto III - Failivrin

Another stunning bit of writing, again in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse, of what Turin Turambar does after he kills his Gnome/Elf friend, Beleg. Beleg's, and Turin's guardian, here named Flinding (in later publications Gwindor), begins to lay Beleg's body to rest and pulls the grieving Turin away (remember, Turin had been captured by Orcs and when Beleg went to rescue him, Turin stabs him in the confusion). As Flinding leads him through Dor-lomin, Tolkien gives greater descriptions of the River Sirion, even given narrative voice to this mighty river as it winds its way through Beleriand. There is also mention of the River Narog, which enters into the Tale of Tinuviel (it is on an island in its eastern reaches where Beren and Luthien live out their days) and the first mention of "the willowy meads,/Nan-Tathrin's land" which later becomes part of Treebeard's lament in The Two Towers: "In the willow meads of Tasarinan/I walked in the Spring./Ah, the sight and the sound . . . in Nan-Tasarinan."

There is so much more depth and detail in this re-counting of the grief-stricken Turin than what was published in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, though credit is due to both books for bringing to light Tolkien's earlier work. Details are given on how Turin crafts his lament for Beleg on the shores of the pool of Ivrin, and greater detail is given to the daughter of the King of the Kingdom of Nargothrond, frail Finduilas. She had been a great friend to Flinding when they were young, until he was taken prisoner by the Orcs and forced into great labor. She had always held out hope for him in her heart, and Flinding's love for her kept him alive during those years. Yet he is old and weathered when at last he returns to Nargothrond, and he brings young and handsome Turin. For whom Finduilas begins to fall in love, even though Turin chooses not to return her love out of his friendship and gratitude for Flinding.

I did not remember this until the notes at the end of this section, but Orodreth is given much more depth and description here than in later published writings.

This book is a much quicker read than the previous two, perhaps due to narrative tales instead of different segments of the earliest writings of Middle Earth. It is certainly a long way from "The Cottage of Lost Play" and begins to weave in the immense tragedy that forms the foundation of Middle Earth.

5) February Category 1 - Burning Water by Mercedes Lackey
3 1/2 ***

An early work in the urban fantasy genre, this one includes a Wiccan and the paranormal branch of the Dallas PD as they search for clues to a string of mass sacrificial killings. What stood out for me was the range of people who formed the "extras" in this book, everything from a young girl on her 17th birthday who meets the great evil at the beginning, to the cigar-chomping Chief of Police of Dallas, to a pesky reporter who ventures a little too far into areas he was exploring. And the characters in the extras were a good mix of men and women, something that was burgeoning in the late 80's when this book was written.

The idea was an original one: "something" is woken from a long slumber and it begins its rise to power through its old way of blood sacrifices. We see a few of the victims, dislikable types who wish to harm others or who do not care what harm is done to others as long as they get their way in the world. Detective Mark Valdez is a likable fellow who knows that what he is facing is way out of his league, so he brings in his long-time Wiccan friend, Diana Tregarde, with her paranormal abilities. And having two main characters who are just friends is a relief, and means that the plot is about solving the killings rather than "will they or won't they."

I also enjoyed Diana's networking into different areas of Dallas' paranormal community, and how they confirm that what she is facing is bigger than anything she has experienced before. Many of them have fled or gone into hiding because of the reach of this great evil that is working in the City. And both she and Mark are treated as valued members of the Dallas PD without any hesitation for their paranormal work.

What did not work well for me was the amount of time spent detailing Diana's inability to solve what the Great Evil was. I could have done with less reading about mass killing/ritual sacrifice and more about how they worked to defeat it. It was not until 3/4 of the way through the book that Diana and Mark meet with a professor who states the obvious, and it is only then that the spell of confusion surrounding Diana melts away. Which of course puts them on the right track, and good triumphs over evil. A good re-read and a good venture into this genre for this fantasy author.

6) The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
5*****

Wow, what a fantastic book. Maybe because of recent events, maybe because of the writing style, but all things being equal this was one that I read in about 2 days. It was really that gripping.

Stephen King wrote one of the book blurbs on the back and he may have said it best: "The first chapter of "The Hot Zone" is one of the most horrifying things I've read in my whole life . . . and then it gets worse." And really, he's not kidding. Richard Preston details the journey that Charles Monet makes from his home in Western Kenya where he was one of the managers of a sugar factory. A Frenchman by birth, he decided one Christmas week to explore Kitum Cave, an innocent enough adventure. Then he goes home, totally unknowing that he was carrying a very quick and lethal virus called Ebola. What makes the chapter that ends in his death so horrifying, as King writes, is the great amount of suffering he endured, his physical changes, and how quickly he succumbed to it. Preston writes this chapter like a good mystery, providing minute details on the physical suffering Monet endured drawn from victims of Ebola. He speculates on the mental anguish Monet must have suffered, not knowing what was wrong with him but knowing he was horribly sick.

As the Ebola virus is explored, starting with the Marburg strain and moving into the Reston strain that is the bulk of this story, Preston expands his storytelling abilities. He describes in a matter-of-fact manner the use of monkeys in medical research; the horror is in their capture from the wild and their imprisonment into cages to face certain death one way or another. The numbers are staggering. And whether or not their use is justified, theirs is a story that needs to be told.

In late 1989, a shipment of macaques from the Philippines came to a clearing house of research monkeys in Reston, VA, outside of Washington, DC. They were not injected with any virus, as they were destined to various simian research facilities throughout the US. However, a few succumbed to an illness whose virus had the same look under the microscope as the Ebola virus. And through a series of events, the humans who were caring for the monkeys or performing the necropsies carried this virus into the greater DC area by interacting with others over the Thanksgiving weekend. The only reason there was no mass outbreak was that this particular strain of Ebola does not jump from monkeys to humans. The Ebola vaccination was only licensed in November, 2019, ironically enough.

Having emerged from the COVID protocols and lockdown and masks, knowing what words like "super spreader event" mean, and finding out just how quickly a virus can jump from one person to another without either party knowing, adds another layer of realism to events from 30 years ago. It is extremely detailed and well-written and absolutely horrifying.

7) One for the Morning Glory by John Barnes
5***** and a ❤️

Yes, this book is definitely in the "favorites" category. The idea of a Kingdom and what it takes to be a Good King to rule it, and the power of friendship and Story. And the Wine of the Gods. While the reviews reference "The Princess Bride," I found the feel of this book more in keeping with "Once and Future King" as well as writings by Neil Gaiman. But I digress.

The story is one of a young boy who drinks the Wine of the Gods, which is never supposed to be tasted until one is an adult, and loses his left side. Barnes describes the work that goes into making the Wine as part of setting the stage for the events of that day and the role of the Companions that come into the young Prince's life shortly afterwards. For Amatus learns from them and from his friends what a Young Prince must do, especially since he is destined to rule the Throne. He learns good lessons and hard ones, and they are described with an appreciation for fantasy as a genre as well as a bit of tongue in cheek humor.

Add in four friends to the four Companions who are with Prince Amatus through nearly every adventure, and the sad reality of what the Companions are there to do in the Prince's life that provides the balance of not just happy endings. The friends and Companions find this out when they undertake the first Quest, while Amatus later learns humility and the value of friendship afterwards.

The mysterious Waldo, who is the nemesis to the orderly Kingdom, becomes less a mention and more and more of a threat, until he invades the Kingdom with an army of Undead and Living and Goblins. And as in any good fantasy battle, there are lessons to be learned, swashes to be buckled, and heroics to be performed. Which they are, and characters come into their own place in the story in the most unexpected of ways.

8) February Category 1 - The Unbroken Web by Richard Adams
5***** and a ❤️

What a truly extraordinary collection of tales, from all over the world and with so many different ideas and cultures! All of them involve animals, as one would expect with Richard Adams, and this edition also has beautiful color and black and white illustrations. The exact location of a story is not given, and the time is only hinted at in some of them (holidays in Brighton, a Native force during WWII from Nairobi), which makes the reader find the universality of these stories regardless of how they are written down.

Don't be fooled that this is a tale of sweet bunnies, though; some of the tales have explicit adult themes and any reading aloud to children should be done at the adult's discretion. There is a re-telling of the mice in the field of corn from The Mabinogion; the Moddey Dhoo from the Isle of Man (and with a reference to Adams himself, as he moved there after his writing success); a tale of the Esquimau (ibid) about the Crow who brings back daylight, and the Iron Wolf from Eastern European lands. And yet, change the telling a bit, and any of the tales can be transported to any culture that the teller wishes. The Prince who seeks eternal youth, finds a magic horse, and thereby breaks his parent's heart when he rides off; the Language of Animals that allows a good-hearted man to find comfort and some measure of wealth are all re-told as only Richard Adams can.

Adams says it best in his Introduction: he envisions the earth as the astronauts see it, rotating on its access, yet enclosed in a gossamer-like sphere (what he calls the "unbroken web") in which we live, and to which "the story-teller reaches up, grasps that part of the web which happens to be above his head at the moment and draws it down . . . to touch the earth. When he has told his story--its story-- he releases it and it springs back and continues in rotation."

March Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads Roses are Red by James Patterson, Head On by John Scalzi, Children of the Night by Mercedes Lackey
Category 2 - Longer Reads The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser
Category 3 - Book Group Reads The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly (for LT Mystery Group read)
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

March Current Count - 4
Yearly Count - 12

So to update, I'm about halfway through Fraser's astounding research on women warriors. The typeface is a bit small, and she does tend to meander with her own private references to events, but it is a good read for all that. Plus, her research is impeccable and I finally, finally learned the details of conflict between Maud of Britain and her cousin, Stephen, not to mention the other great women leaders in history.

And Balzac - he must be my favorite author aside from Tolkien. His ability to see into the lives and motivations of human beings is what drew me to him in college. And it's a good way to keep my knowledge of French working well. This one is about greed and avarice and the damage it does to others. Seems a bit timely.

Due to some fantastic murder mysteries, I was not able to get to the Jacqueline Winspear book. No worries - it is ready to go for April! And I'm still amazed that I read through 4 whole books this month!

9) March Category 1 - Children of the Night by Mercedes Lackey
3 1/2 ***

This installment of Mercedes Lackey's Diana Tregarde series features a young Diana fresh out of college and covering for her friend's occult shop in the early 70's Manhattan. At least I think that's the timeframe - she references Nixon a couple of times, so either it's pre-Watergate or it's an alternate timeline. I'll go with the former.

Diana is becoming a successful romance writer, lives in a lovely brownstone with dancers of several different genres, and helping out at her friend's store during her friend's final stages of pregnancy. Several visitors enter the store who are not among the normal customers, and one is a young Gypsy boy with the Sight.

The concurrent story involves an ex of Diana's who's in a burgeoning rock and roll band. While at a party he takes one of the proffered pills and wakes up a couple of days later with very little memory of the rest of the party evening and a deep and gnawing hunger that just won't go away.

Add in Diana's good friend Lenny from the apartment, Lenny's new boyfriend Keith, and a rather sexy vampire whom Di has no idea if he's the killer of the Gypsy boy or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you've got a pretty good cast of characters.

What made this book lose half a star was the constant inner dialogue, in italics, that gets in the way of the storyline or action or events. Just tell the story already, and let the character's actions determine their intent! Diana's right-turn into her panic attack and how Andre is able to talk her through it seemed more like the author's need to self-reveal than a vital plot point. Plus, and I realize I'm talking about a story that involves vampires and other elements of the strange and weird side of things, being 18 months out of college and already an accomplished brown belt in martial arts and already a signed, successful author does not lend itself to the "realistic" side of Diana's story.

So, it still shows, in the early 90's when it was written, a gutsy heroine who has fears and doubts and still faces them and helps those in need. And has friends among the human as well as the not-quite-human race.

10) March Category 3 - The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly
4****

A very well-written police thriller, with the rogue cop Harry Bosch on leave due to assaulting his superior in the department. While on leave he has to undergo therapy with a psychologist trained for working with police and that is where this book starts.

Along the way, we watch Bosch struggle to stay in house house, condemned after a recent earthquake, and make a decision to investigate the death of his mother when he was only 11 and living in a home for troubled boys. This was the early 60's, and Bosch was also drafted to Vietnam. His mother's death had never been solved so he uses his police detecting skills and contacts to start looking.

As one would expect, he finds more than he bargained for: several former cops, a pimp who "ran" his late mother and was later killed in a hit-and-run, a contender for District Attorney who drops out of the race, and all kinds of twists and turns and dead ends and branches leading to more places than the LA Freeway system that Connelly describes.

I recommend this book as a standalone, and a good one to start with on the Harry Bosch series as it gives a lot of detail about his background.

11) March Category 1 - Head On by John Scalzi
5*****

Oh, how I have come to love John Scalzi! There is a view of the world that is something between snarky and brave, hopeful and jaded that I find so compelling in his writing. His take on his futuristic world where threeps are the bodies of those with Haden's Syndrome is almost drawn from the headlines of today's events.

The continuation of his world from "Locked In" now expands into the speculation of what would sport look like, if threeps were the ones who played instead of humans? How much punishment would the robot called a threep take, including having one's head removed to be used as a ball by the opposing team? Yes, that is the speculation which leads to the challenge which leads to the mystery that is the bulk of this book.

Chris Shane is the threep/human who works with Leslie Vann on this FBI case, and during their search the use of different threeps by Chris makes their investigation take some interesting twists. Like, what happens when Chris' threep that he borrows from a different field office is so low on power that it affects his hunt for clues? And the use of the personal space called the Agora that all threeps create and personalize for their inter-threep communication becomes a vital part of what led to several murders that begin this book.

Add to this police procedural the funding of a sports franchise in order to take it global, the corruption of wealth, a rescued cat, and a master storyteller to weave these threads into a fast-paced, intelligent read. That sums up this book. And you will have a hard time putting this book down for any reason!

12) March Category 1 - Roses are Red by James Patterson
4 1/2 ****

A terrific, humanized, police procedural that picks up soon after "Pop Goes the Weasel" leaves off. Christine is traumatized by her ordeal by the Weasel though her little boy with Alex is the apple of everyone's eye. Still, Alex is still a detective and works the streets and his personal life has to pay a price.

The premise is a series of bank robberies where sometimes hostages, sometimes bank employees, are shot. And the reader is in the mind of the robbers as well as The Mastermind, the evil human being who selects the robbers and plans the murders. There is a repetitive counting and exactness for the timing of each robbery that makes the psychological bent of the killers and the Mastermind the forefront of the episodes.

And then shortly after each robbery is a twist. And a woman is attacked by the Mastermind. And still some clues just don't lead to any results. It is one of those mysteries that did not take pity on anyone, hostage or bank robber alike, and just when things couldn't get worse, they do. Till the very end where a clue just leaps off the page and gets the reader ready for the next book!

April Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear, The Boomerang Clue by Agatha Christie, War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches by Kevin J. Anderson
Category 2 - Longer Reads The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser
Category 3 - Book Group Reads
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

April Current Count - 6
Yearly Count - 18

I really am looking forward to reading "Maisie Dobbs" - it's been on my shelves for years, and I am interested in a historical fiction from this point of view about the Great War.

And I also want to make more inroads into "Eugenie Grandet" this month. I am getting into the dynamics of la famille Grandet, M. Grandet's avarice and his downtrodden wife, and I don't want to lose my momentum. Which is easy to do when I pick it up and put it down for a while.

And here we are and I've managed to read 6 whole books this month! I admit, 2 of them were abridged versions of "Alice in Wonderland" but they still count. And it was great to revisit the mind of Ray Bradbury (still no one like him) and also plunge into a great idea for a book incorporating "The War of the Worlds" through the (fictional) eyes of different famous figures from 1899-1900 as envisioned by different sci-fi authors.

13) April Category 1 - The Boomerang Clue by Agatha Christie
5*****

To be fair, I read this in 1989, re-read a few stories in 2007, and then read "The Boomerang Clue" this year for a challenge.

That said, these stories are a twist on the usual Agatha Christie reads, in that both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot only show up in one mystery each. There is even a long-ago Egyptian mystery set in 2000 BCE! I chose to read "Boomerang Clue" as it seemed to present the typical Agatha Christie elements: a twisty, curvy strange set of events that still manage to present elements of the British class structure, the time in which it was written, and a view of the British countryside. Though honestly, the travel by 1920's era Bentley between the coast of Wales and London seemed a bit quicker than I would think possible at the time for the storyline and conversations that ensued.

Young ne'er do well (at least in his Vicar father's eyes) Bobby, and Lady Frances (Frankie) of Marchbolt are two friends keeping strong their friendship from before the Great War. During a golf outing, Bobby loses a golf ball over the side of a particularly nasty cliff in Wales and descends to find a man on the ledge below with a broken back. His companion, the local Doctor, comes and assesses the situation, and they dying man utters his last breath, "Why didn't they ask Evans?"

This mystery evolves to a local manor house with a young family and a father who seems to have an addiction to opioids. His wife takes in young Frankie after her (borrowed) car has a nasty accident against the manor wall, and Frankie becomes the confident of Sylvia, the young wife and mother. There is also the charming Roger Bassington-ffrench, brother-in-law to Sylvia, and the evil-seeming Dr. Nicholson who runs the local nursing home (sanitarium) for the medically addicted. And let's not forget Dr. Nicholson's lovely wife, Moira, who bears a striking resemblance to the photograph found in the deceased's pocket.

Add in several inquests, mistaken identity, a chauffeur's suit and hat, and you have the elements of a quickly moving, always interesting whodunnit that is quickly and easily readable. Great to re-visit Dame Christie's genius!

14) April Category 1 - Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
5***** and a heart

What a beautiful, heartbreaking, hopeful, amazing book. I have had it on my shelves for a number of years and many times I looked at it, thought about it, then put it back. Until now. And zowie! I am completely blown away by this book. The story covers the post-war years in England, then zips back with stunning clarity into the years just before the outbreak of the Great War, and wraps everything up in stunning fashion.

Maisie Dobbs has begun her own private investigation firm. Her first client is a gentleman of the upper classes who suspects his wife is having an affair, so hires Maisie to follow her. Which she does with great detail to present to her new client. And through the interactions Maisie has with this husband, and the caretaker of her building, and her internal conversations about her ever-cold feet, we begin to see that she has been impacted by the Great War.

When Maisie follows the young wife to a soldier's graveyard, the first hint that this book is different comes fully to light. Here we are in 1929, what America sees as the Roaring Twenties, watching two women tending the graves of the fallen soldiers in England. One no longer has a surname on his grave, and this leads to revelations about The Farm, where wounded and disfigured soldiers can go live in peace. To contemplate a situation wherein the shells were so powerful, faces were mutilated but the soldiers lived only to be shunned or receive "those" looks from their beloveds is heart-wrenching. And told with such compassion as the after-effects of the Great War.

The middle section details Maisie's growing up as a maid in service to a wealthy suffragette who thinks that maybe, just maybe, she can change the life of one person, even if she can't change the world. Well, she does. She recognizes the need Maisie has to read, to study, and enriches her mind by providing her with a tutor as well as the time she needs to study. And added to this idyllic reading time is the prevalent class consciousness of Britain that causes Maisie to doubt her own calling to education.

We do get to the War, and Maisie's service in Britain before finally being called to France, where she deepens her relationship with Simon, a gifted wartime doctor. And her life as a battlefield nurse, with the mud, the sleepless nights, the close quarters, the endless wounded, are so very well described. When they abruptly end and we are back in the modern era, there is still a mystery unfolding about The Farm and the repercussions of the battlefields, at home and abroad.

15) Prince of Annwn by Evangeline Walton
4 1/2 ****

This is a brilliant re-telling of the First Branch of the Mabinogion, that mysterious tale of ancient Wales that has been translated both well and not-so-well over the centuries. Evangeline Walton does a marvelous job building out the drama, the language, and the tension that the bards conveyed. It is a tale as hold as humanity: human Pwyll, Prince of Dyved, meets with Arawn, Lord of Death and the Underworld called Annwn. Here, they switch places and both their aspects are changed. Pwyll even rides the Grey Horse of Arawn while Arawn rides Pwyll's horse. And there are the tasks that only Pwyll can do in place of Arawn in order to save humanity from destruction of warring tribes while Pwyll also gets to take Arawn's seat in his kingdom for a year and a day.

As the tale of Pwyll unfolds into the tale of Rhiannon with her birds, Pwyll brings his Ninety-Nine Companions to the Mound of Gordsedd Arberth where they seek, in charmed slumber, to join the first King of Dyved and his daughter, Rhiannon, so that Pwyll might marry her and thereby gain a Queen and an heir. Three times they climb the Mound, and three times the Old Druid seeks to murder him with his sickle, only to be thwarted in his lust for absolute and continued power and control. Walton's ability to bring ancient tales to a modern audience are most welcome with this volume.

16) The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
4****

Original review:

What great stories, what interesting twists, and what true innovation in seeing the world. For anyone wanting to know what the science fiction authors thought "back in the day" in the Golden Age of Science Fiction writing, this is a prime example. Some of the characterizations of women are sadly 1950's, but others are much more elevated. I think my favorite is the priests who discover the real Martians and step down from thinking they need to teach them about God.

2023 review:

Still a great set of short stories, told with compassion for the vagaries of humankind. Yes to the characterization of women as wives or mothers as being part of the 1950's culture, and with greater clarity to the ways in which homes are more likely to be automated to great detriment to the inhabitants, humans try to escape from oppressive regimes with greater or lesser success, and the aspirations of humans are not that much different from what they were (or will be) when we took walking tours of Wisconsin or get cut off from our space ships and are doomed to free fall or endless space wandering until our oxygen runs out.

17) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

This is one of my all time favorite childhood books, and even adulthood books! For this month's reading challenge, I read 2 versions: the version I've had since as far back as I can remember, illustrated by Marjorie Torrey, and a newer version, illustrated by Paolo Barbieri. Both are abridged which made them a good, fast read for April.

1) Illus. by Marjorie Torrey:

An abridged but marvelous re-telling of this story. It shows a smart girl in a green pinafore with an apron who strives to make sense of an uncertain world. She is courageous and undaunted. And the illustrations are soft and sweet, a contrast to the satire and confusing themes in the original.

The little girl face is definitely an original and not influenced by the famous Disney film. There is a feeling of honesty, of what a little girl would think in a confusing place and how would she react to each new situation. Definitely a guidebook for life!

2) Illus. by Paolo Barbieri:

This modern illustrated classic is phenomenal: the genre is "steam-punk" meaning that the sweet little girl with the pinafore is transformed into a modern, 21st century version of the heroine. Her hair is cropped short, her pinafore is a pair of black pants with heavy boots and a leather belt. She wears gauntlets around her wrists - with lace cuffs - and her face shows an intelligence that could only be accepted now.

Oh, and there's a stuffed white rabbit from her childhood attached to her belt. Which makes perfect sense to the White Rabbit in her dreams.

I give 5 stars to the illustrations that bring this heroine of childhood into the time of cars and asphalt and cynicism of the 21st century. But, and this is big, the chopping up of the story itself to fit the illustrations? Only a 3.5. It's far too disjointed to make sense, and additional pages should have been included to tie the storied illustrated pages together. Maybe the second edition of this volume will include those changes.

18) April Category 1 - War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches ed. by Kevin J. Anderson

The premise for this book is simple: the Martians did come to Earth on their spaceships, destroyed many things and places, then died from the bacteria. So as an alternative to Wells' book/timeline, it also is written as a series of dispatches from writers around the world in 1899-1900.

The first dispatch is by Theodore Roosevelt as he sees a mechanical monster in the jungles of Cuba, in 1897-1898. The second in order, both in the book and chronologically, is Percival Lowell, who sees through his astronomy research the series of canals on Mars and duplicates them on the sands of Egypt in order to send a signal to the Martians. Whether they see his signal and that causes the launch, or not, is open for debate.

The remainder of the dispatches are told as though they were written by writers of the era: Joseph Conrad recovering from a fever near the Congo river; Jules Verne walking the streets of Paris as they are destroyed by the Martians coming down; Mark Twain escaping from their destruction on a steamship crossing the Atlantic; and even a Dowager Empress of China trying to withstand the destruction to her people and also her social structure.

Because at the heart of this book is destruction, despatch by despatch, and a few have "postludes" in that they describe how humanity rebuilds itself in the aftermath. While it reads as a series of short stories, each author to the volume writing in the voice of their chosen author, it is much easier to read it a few at a time and letting a couple of days pass. Because really, the destruction, though fictional, overwhelmed me if I read it for long periods of time. Highly recommend this book and its originality, and kudos to Kevin J. Anderson for bringing this set of authors together.

May Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
Category 2 - Longer Reads The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser
Category 3 - Book Group Reads The Bishop's Pawn by Steve Berry, The Maid by Nita Prose (F2F)
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

May Current Count - 4
Yearly Count - 22

So I'm changing things up a bit this month. I really want to finish "Warrior Queens," and then start another fairly involved book about a woman who was a Viking Explorer.

I'm still enjoying "Eugenie Grandet" and want to devote more evenings to it. There is something about Balzac's ability to pull in the universality of people that just grabs me, even 200 years after the words were written. We really haven't changed that much.

As far as Tolkien goes, there will probably be a weekend within Atlanta's festival season that will lend itself to a coffee shop for an hour or so. I love exploring the earliest versions of his writing to see what he included and what he left out of his final work, even the later version of the same work.

Ed. And, 4 books read, including some of Tolkien's work! Can't believe it, but here I am!

May Category 4 - The Lays of Beleriand - The Second Version of the Children of Hurin

The title of this month's offering kinda explains why reading this volume is an undertaking I do bit by bit. And why the work Christopher Tolkien did to sort through his father's extensive papers was monumental.

This portion provides more detail on the chaining of Hurin, both during the Battle of Unnumbered Tears ("Their troth alone//unmoved remembered in the mouths of Hell/Thalion Erithamrod and his thanes renowned.//Torn and trampled the triple standard//of the house of Hithlum was heaped with slain") and when Melkor has him brought before his throne to torture him ("The Hurin answered, Hithlum's chieftain--//his shining eyes with sheen of fire//in wrath were reddened"). The poem is still in the Anglo-Norse style of alliterative verse, with breaks in each line as is this particular style.

When we come to Turin's fostering into Doriath, there is more emotion, more tears from Turin, and more detail in his mother's suffering after Hurin's disappearance ("and men unmindful of that mighty lord//in Dorlomin dwelling dealt unkindly//with his wife in widowhood"), before the section breaks off while Turin is a man grown and feasting in the caves of Thingol's Hidden Kingdom.

So all this is to say, that the stops and starts, the writing about the same event from another angle and with more detail in certain parts, has been an eye-opener into Tolkien's creative processes. It's so easy to just think of his Hobbit and Lord of the Rings writings were done and famous and influenced movies and songs and the imagination; and yet everything he imagined had a backstory and fit into a greater narrative. And the narrative could be worked and re-worked and added to and embellished.

Next up: "Poems EarlyAbandoned," Section II

19) May Category 3 - The Bishop's Pawn by Steve Berry
4****

This book was part of LT's group read for May and was more than just a police/detective procedural. Instead, it delved into the murder of an iconic modern hero, Martin Luther King, Jr. from so many angles: his work in the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's, the beginning of the fracturing of that movement, his surveillance by and antagonistic relationship with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, and the unanswered questions around his death.

While not the first in the series of books about Cotton Mather, this book is the first in Mather's journey into his role as an agent of the Justice Department from being a JAG wondering about his future. He witnesses a friend's murder, draws his weapon on the friend's wife, and finds himself in jail. In comes Stephanie Nelle to take him away from all that and into a fifty-year old mystery.

His initial assignment is to recoup an extremely rare (and illegal) Double Eagle US coin from the deck of a ship. All goes according to plan until unexpected visitors show up underwater, out to either gain the Double Eagle themselves or shoot Mather (or both), and then the boat he rode in on blows up. From there, events begin at a rapid pace.

Realizing that somehow, the rare coin and a set of documents about the FBI's investigation into Martin Luther King, Jr. are connected, Mather meets Coleen Perry, a young cop who is the daughter of one of King's inner circle. The documents shed light onto the FBI's plot to assassinate King and how James Earl Ray comes to be the shooter. While some of the action seems more in the James Bond vein, the desire of retired FBI officials to keep the documents from coming to light are as much a mind-game as they are a thrill ride. Events happen in and around St. Augustine and Disney World, and Berry has done excellent research into the Civil Rights movement and what could maybe have happened all those decades ago.

20) May Category 3 - The Maid by Nita Prose
5*****

This was the choice for a F2F book group and as with others I've read for this group, I was quite pleasantly surprised. The plot is a locked-room mystery, even though it takes place in a posh hotel, and the who-dunit is told through the eyes of Molly Gray.

Molly is one of the hotel's maids and she struggles with emotions, reading people, and friendship. Her inner life is rich and she has lived her entire life in a small apartment with her grandmother. So for her, a clean and neat place meshes with her view of the world "as it should be" and makes her the ideal employee. Since her grandmother died about a year before the book opens, her life is not as filled with episodes of "Colombo" and "National Geographic" nor is her bank account full as it once was. Interspersed with these observations of her life and thoughts is the murder of a rich tycoon whose second wife befriended Molly.

When Molly becomes a suspect in the murder plot her naivete does her no good with street-wise Detective Stark. Just the opposite - it lends credence to her guilt since she was the person who found and touched the body. Molly knows how to be honest; she does not know how to use guile. And so the locked-room mystery begins: we know that Molly did not kill the tycoon, but who did? And who could have framed this young, trusting, hard-working soul?

This is a good, quick read that has a couple of good spins and plenty of "a-HA!" moments.

21) May Category 1 - The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
4 1/2 ****

It is a classic and deservedly so in so many ways. Once, when life was a bit slower, people traveled the world on ships. And the ships stopped at many ports, and at one of those ports young Alec Ramsey sees a magnificent black stallion that can barely be contained by his handlers. Somehow, he manages to come onboard the ship where a specially-built stall is constructed for him, and Alec manages to befriend him with a cube of sugar, a bit of apple, and the adventure begins.

What captured me as a young, horse-mad girl, at a time when horse pastures were being "zoned" out of existence in and around Atlanta, was the solitude that Alec had with his horse on the desert island. I was so very glad that the movie captured the look and the feel of living there, only the two of them, learning to trust one another, and eventually Alec climbs on The Black's back for that marvelous ride around the island, feeling joy in existence and possibilities.

What I noticed now was the publication date: 1941. This book was written before the US entered World War II, horses were still kept near people's homes, and the return Alec makes to his home is not quite as jarring as it once was. The training that Alec goes through with Henry is intense (how on earth did Alec stay awake in class??) but again, there is that sense that *this* is the most wonderful of horses ever and adds a bit of apprenticeship to the magic of The Black Stallion.

22) May Category 2 - The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser
4 ****

Part of me wants to give 4 stars for the absolute brilliance of Fraser's research into these women's lives, and the other part of me wants to give 3 1/2 stars for the writing style. I think, though, that the importance of the meticulous research she has done merits 4 stars. And I've read other books by Lady Antonia and the research she has done still rattles around in my brain.

She begins with the history of both Cleopatra and Boudica (heroically "Boadicea") as the earliest examples of women who led their nations in wartime, and how they as warriors fulfilled Goddess imagery in their respective cultures. Her research into Boudica forms the main narrative for how warrior queens are remembered and changed by history. Lady Antonia also pulls together Syndromes (archetypes) to show how women who lead are viewed by their contemporaries and by history: Voracity, Shame, Appendage, Figurehead are examples.

What little we do know about the historical Boudica comes from the writings of Tacitus and Dio Cassius and, interestingly enough, from modern era excavations starting in 1915 of a "red layer" attesting to the burning of Londinium from the time of Boudica and the Iceni wars with the Romans. Fraser then continues with her research into Matilda, Maud, Zenobia, Catherine the Great, and the other women warriors with the legend of Boadicea as her backdrop. Which is a good way to tie the history together with a common thread, instead of having a thousand years and a host of countries and disparate lives.

The distracting part of reading this book, again, is the writing style. Lady Antonia can tell a straightforward tale as she does with Cleopatra and Boudica; she seems to fill an inner need by making asides and references within sentences again and again, thus filling in pages with writing but failing to advance Story as a whole. And maps - when will book publishers insist on maps when geographical locations are as varied as they are here?

June Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads The Children of Llyr and The Song of Rhiannon by Evangeline Walton, Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
Category 2 - Longer Reads The Far Traveler by Nancy Marie Brown
Category 3 - Book Group Reads
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

June Current Count - 4
Yearly Count - 26

As busy as my weekends are set to be this month, I am excited to see what I will finish and in what direction my reading will take me. The Evangeline Walton series are fascinating, and while I may have started them out of order (who knew the Fourth Branch would be the basis for the whole tetralogy?), her ability to reach in and grab the essence of the Mabinogion is extraordinary.

And having finished Chapter III (per the notes) of "Eugenie" we are in the meat of the story and the greed that M. Grandet incorporates as his cold-bloodedness towards others, even his own family.

Ed. After reading "Children of Llyr" I decided to stop Ms. Walton's storytelling with Book 3, "The Song of Rhiannon." It was a much-needed breath of fresh air after the terror and horribleness that was part of the Llyr tragedy.

And I read "Wintersmith" quite quickly since that is Pratchett's style (and it fit with this month's June challenge), and "Far Traveller" is so lyrically written that I was able to complete it. Plus (and this will come out in my review), when Ms. Brown starts describing Gudrid's travels *and* the needlework of the era, I could not put the book down. Someone who geeks out on the weights of threads - definitely great reading material for me!

23) June Category 1 - The Children of Llyr by Evangeline Walton
3***

I gotta be honest, I did not like this book. I'm giving it 3 stars because it is a necessary re-telling of this branch of the Mabinogion that brings characters and motivations and inner dialogues to the modern reader. And there are parts where Walton's language is still so sparse that the action kind of slips by the wayside.

Really, though, I think it is the story itself. One horrible tragedy, after another, evil and damage to innocents, harm with no hope. There are just some things that I don't need to read about. The story does not glorify violence, far from it, but the violence just does not stop. All that is good and lovely is crushed: Branwyn, sister to Bran the Blessed, High King of the Isle of the Mighty, accepts the marriage proposal of Matholuch, King of Ireland. Which starts a series of events that culminates in Bran, his brother Manawyddan, and all the forces of the Isle of the Mighty traversing the Irish Sea to get retrieve Branwyn from her abusive husband and end her enslavement in the kitchens of the King. And the terror and bloodshed does not end there.

Anyway, if you are interested in the larger "Mabinogion" then this book spells out the details in all of the other translations of this story. So be aware and read with caution.

24) June Category 1 - The Song of Rhiannon by Evangeline Walton
4****

This is a much gentler book than its predecessor, and comes from the Third Branch of the Mabinogion. With Walton's ability to look into the personae of myth, she finds a theme within Manawyddan: that of the sole remaining brother who has served his elder brother, Bran all his life. And what is he to do now? It is a good theme for the middle years of one's life.

This is the homecoming that Mandawyddan has when he returns to his old haunts with Pryderi, and Pryderi convinces him to come home to Arbreth where his widowed mother, Rhiannon, lives quietly and alone. Of course there have been looks between Manawyddan and Rhiannon over the years, and as time together passes, and Pryderi and Kigva have their reunion, the older couple realizes they have much to learn from joining their lives together.

The bulk of this re-telling, and it is artfully done, is the seven years after the storm that passes over Arbreth and leaves all the humans and the castle devoid of life. The four main characters find themselves the only people in the land, and while they are certainly able to hunt and fish and they have shelter, they find it all a bit dull. So they set out for far away towns to make their livelihoods.

Again, Walton's storytelling ability takes the lines from the "Mabinogion" of how they lived during this time and creates dialogue, thoughts, actions, and brings both tension and story to this portion. Her details of day-to-day life, as well as the final culmination with the mice in the fields of wheat, are masterful and bring the story to life.

25) June Category 1 - Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
4 1/2 ****

Such a great book and filled with such warmth and humanity and memorable events. There are laughs from the Nac Mac Feegles (helps to have heard at least one audio recording from this series), some eye rolls at the various Granny's and Witching crones (there were so many that it was hard to keep track of, hence the half star), and some great story telling to boot.

Humorous bits include Miss Treason's dialogue with the Nac Mac Feegles when they come in to check on her young ward, Tiffany Aching of The Chalk. Miss Treason is portrayed as the curmudgeonly old blind Witch who can curse with just a finger, yet when she speaks to her unexpected visitors in their language and they jump to mind their manners, hilarity ensues.

And one passage I wish someone had slipped into one of my books during my teen years that occurs after a fight between Tiffany and Miss Treason: "(Miss Treason's) voice was kindly. There had been shouts, there had been things said that might have been better put, there had been temper and defiance. But they were there together, with nowhere else to go. The quiet voice was a peace offering, and Tiffany was glad of it."

So yes, a very good "coming of age" story, or adventure story for a young Witch, or a lot of fun nonsense, or all of the above. Highly recommend to fans of Terry Pratchett, and fortunately one that can be read out of sequence in the Wee Free Men/Tiffany Aching series.

26) June Category 2 - The Far Traveler by Nancy Marie Brown
5*****

This book is why I only use 5 stars for an absolutely splendiforous book. This is one of them. Ms. Brown does not try to write a historical fiction novel or a speculative "who she must have been" book. Instead, she takes ways to research a life and puts them all together: Icelandic sagas, Viking history, archeology, and needlework. And creates a rich book that explains how Gudrid, a Viking wife, mother, and daughter, made a voyage across the Northern Atlantic ocean in about the year 1000, gave birth to a son, and made it back to Iceland 3 years later.

Along the way, we learn about Viking ship building techniques, how the forests yielded the particular tree with the particular V-shape to it to serve as the ship's ribs. Several trees, in fact. And a tree with a straight trunk, about 36' high, to serve as the mast. And how the nails were cut off once they were embedded, instead of bent down.

Then there is navigation through the Northern Atlantic, perhaps when the sun barely sets, without astrolabes, through the thick fog and possibly in pitching seas. Much of the archeological evidence about Vikings is from a prosperous farm, inhabited between 1000 and 1400, called "Farm Beneath the Sand" that was discovered in Greenland in 1991. It was later claimed by the Greenland tides 6 years later.

The map that accompanies this book is a brilliant viewpoint of an Icelandic voyage to Vinland, "Wine Land" which could be anywhere along the Eastern US coast. And Ms. Brown provides quotes and papers for all the researchers who claim what they think was *the* place where Vikings settled because, well, grapes. But the best evidence comes from northern Newfoundland in L'Anse aux Meadows where a sharpening stone and other Viking relics from the proper timeframe were found.

And the needlework! Thank the Goddesses of Threads that Ms. Brown put as much research into thread and cloth as she did into all the other discoveries and explanations! For the general public to know the painstaking way to take a shorn fleece, wash it, card it, then using a drop spindle to create thread. And the different whorls (disks) that are used to create the different thicknesses (or weights) of thread in drop spinning lends credence to the excavated homesteads where these whorls are found. They pinpoint the room, usually to the side of the Viking longhouse, where the women sat and spun, And wove. While I don't have a complete visual of a Viking loom, it is not a treadle loom. It's a walking loom. An estimate in the book is that a "hardworking weaver walked 23 miles every day."

What makes this book work on so many levels is the story-telling, the lyricism, of the words on the page. It is carefully crafted to give the history of a woman who lived a thousand years ago, who went on a dangerous voyage, and came home to create a prosperous farm, Glaumbauer, in northern Iceland that was excavated and researched in the early 2000's.

July Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads Island of the Mighty by Evangeline Walton, Jinx High by Mercedes Lackey, Controlled Descent by K.M. Herkes, Flight Plan by K.M. Herkes
Category 2 - Longer Reads Dangerous Rhythms by T.J. English
Category 3 - Book Group Reads The Gathering Dark by James Oswald, The Measure by Nikki Erlick
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

July Current Count - 3
Yearly Count - 29

Depending on my travels or work schedule, these books may change over the course of this month. There's another I've put on my reading stack that I picked up at DragonCon a couple of years ago and I don't think I've added it to my LT books.

Hope to join the LT group read this month, and finish some others while I'm at it. And the book on Jazz is from a LT friend's reading list. It sounded too good to pass up, so DH found it for me for Christmas.

Ed: This is a month where the "planned" reading suddenly comes to a screeching halt and other books jump to the front of the queue. I *was* going to re-read Jinx High until I started reading Controlled Descent. And was blown away by Herkes' writing and characters and plotline (even though futuristic apocalypses are not always my preferred genre), so I added the sequel "Flight Plan" to this month and moved "Jinx" to next month's reading list.

And sadly, I was not able to find "Gathering Dark" anywhere, either in my library or in one of several used bookstores, so will not be able to join this month's book discussion. Wrong side of the pond I guess!

My library's F2F group was another book I had to drop from my reading list. I needed the time instead for some personal, at-home time. Nothing bad going on! Don't want to give that impression, just needed to finish what I was doing and stay on track.

27) July Category 1 Controlled Descent by K.M. Herkes
5*****

I did not know what to expect when I started this book; I had read the knitting-themed tie-in Weaving in the Ends first about a year ago and figured I'd get to this one eventually. So I did, and blown away would be only the start of my reaction to it.

The story starts with young, rich Justin Wyatt, who's made his fortune in hi-tech, wrapping up his latest adventure and getting on a plane. The dialogue and character development begin easily enough, and Justin's mentor, his corporate lawyer William, hints at a time called Restoration that brought considerable upheaval to the US. So we think we know the characters and the storyline, and then suddenly events turn on a dime.

Concurrent with Justin's storyline is that of a contemporary, Alison Gregorio, who lives a completely different lifestyle: she mentions being on Subsistence and having enough education to almost make it on her own as a by-product of the Restoration. And she lands a corporate Admin job working for Justin's company with several smart lawyers who know they need someone who can hold all the threads of their work and schedules.

Events happen, we are introduced to characters who are as well-formed as one would hope, and brothers Carl and Parker show up both as bodyguards and reality checks for the interplay between the characters. Because not everyone gets along, just like in real life, and sometimes corporate greed results in terrible tragedy.

What helps this be not just a sci-fi futuristic apocalyptic book (which I feared it would be) is that Herkes uses technology that is just a tad more advanced than right now but still relatable. And each character has sections that are their own POV that mesh seamlessly into the action going on. And each character has their own foibles and inner struggle with sparks flying as they do in real life.

>48 threadnsong: Need to search this one out clearly.

>49 Andrew-theQM: Yeah, it was really really a fast read. The humanity was what drove it for me, not so much the futuristic elements.

28) July Category 1 Flight Plan by K.M. Herkes
4 1/2 ****

This continuation of the Restoration series takes place a little while later and starts with a bang. Literally: a building in San Francisco that houses Subsistence tenants blows up, and we are introduced to two new characters who are both affected by this disaster, Naomi and Serena. Naomi is the Physical Therapist to Parker (from "Controlled Descent") and Serena was released from Active Duty and may have been in the same Neuropsychiatry program as Parker. They have been lifelong friends and Naomi seems to be the only one who can calm Serena's spiraling thoughts.

And familiar characters are back: Justin, Allison, Tyler, along with a bit more about life in the current time period. There is a celebration called Restoration Week with different themes for each day (Remembrance, Faith, Duty, Sacrifice) that include celebrations or observances, depending on the day. The action in this book takes place during this week and each section is named for these observed days.

There is also a lot more corporate intrigue and machinations of the policing force, along with technical gadgets and action. The interplay between characters is still well-done, even as more new characters come into the story including several from the CSB (Citizens Service Bureau, the Restoration's law enforcement arm). There is friction here as well, with CSB agents being called on their condescension towards those not in the Bureau. And there is also pairing up between characters, though physical descriptions are kept to a minimum; instead, it seems to deepen the characters and their thoughts and motivations.

Still, it is a good follow-up, a bit choppier in pacing, but also gives a lot more background to what the Restoration looks like and the universality of humankind no matter the time period.

29) July Category 3 Island of the Mighty by Evangeline Walton
4 ****

Of the entire Four Branches that Evangeline Walton has re-told, this comes in second behind Prince of Annwyn. It is denser and thicker than the others in this series and deals with the machinations of Gwydion, Prince of Gwynedd, in the waning days of the reign of Math Mathonwy.

Many of the familiar bits of "The Mabinogion" that are more familiar are here. They could almost be a series of fairy tales were it not for the continuum of characters. Told here is the story of the attempt by Arianrhod to become the footholder to Math; how Gwydion took pigs that had been a gift from Annwn from the hero Pryderi; and the son of Arionrhod, raised by Gwydion, called Lleu Llaw Gyffes and his raising.

Once again we have a group of deities who still succumb to the human passions of love and learning and revenge. And the human-ness of the characters, their scheming and their deceit, was still a turn-off for me. Yes, it does show that some attributes transcend the centuries, and it was written down so that the tales could be preserved, but I prefer a bit more compassion and wisdom when reading about the deeds of deities.

August Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads Jinx High by Mercedes Lackey, The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum, Night Train to Mother by Ronit Lentin
Category 2 - Longer Reads Dangerous Rhythms by T.J. English
Category 3 - Book Group Reads Hunting Evil by Chris Carter
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

August Current Count - 2
Yearly Count - 31

I'm really not sure where my August adventures are going to take me. "Jinx High" has never left my reading pile, and "Dangerous Rhythms" is a book I need to read in frequent bursts in order to keep up with all of the names and events. It is still very good.

And I hope to join this month's on-line LT reading group! It's been 3 months now that I haven't been able to join in the chats and threads and all. Since "Hunting Evil" is not at my local library, I'll call one of my two local book shops to see if I can procure a copy; the other one I can visit in person.

I also just came home from a friend's moving sale. His late wife was an editor and also a close friend, and she turned me onto both the Temeraire series and the Jasper Fforde series. Guess what I came home with! We had many books in common, even some of the obscure titles, which says a lot about our friendship. I added to my TBR list this afternoon but I also think I'm doing her proud by giving a home to some of her treasures.

30) August Category 1 Jinx High by Mercedes Lackey
3***

In this third book in the Diana Tregarde series, the events happen in and around the lives of rich teenagers in Jenks, outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Most of the book is told from their point of view: Deke, the son of one of Diana's former college friends; Fay, who is the most popular and the most ruthless girl in school; and Monica, Deke's maybe-girlfriend who is new to the area.

Diana is called in to help teach a class on writing and getting published, and thinking that there is nothing going on in the sleepy bit of the country still sees shielding of Deke and his home courtesy of his dad, Larry. When Diana comes and settles into the family home as a houseguest, the two adults go off into private space leaving Deke wondering if there is an affair in the making (mom being in Japan on business). Deke himself is involved with Fay in a creepy kind of way: every time he mopes to Monica how much he dislikes Fay, the minute Fay comes into his sight he forgets everything and follows her like an obedient puppy.

What surprised me and brought my review down to 3 stars was the lack of awareness that Diana, as a Guardian, has for what is going on in the high school. She senses that something may be amiss, but while the undercurrent of Fay's magic is pretty unmistakeable, Diana is clueless until Monica encounters a something of Fay's and Diana pulls the story out of her. There seems to be more story going on with the teenagers than there does of Diana's involvement, and it almost felt like the author wanted the story to go in one direction, the editors in another. Maybe that's the reason for the disconnect between supernatural events and the Guardian doing very little till the very end.

And the ending has such little build-up throughout the book that it seemed an ending because Lackey had to get the book to the publisher's by the deadline. Plus, the ending left the whole build-up flat, since the great Blow Up of the Evil did not conquer the evil. Not sure if there was supposed to be a sequel, or Lackey was trying to send a message, or she just needed to finish the book to get it out the door.

31) August Category 1 Night Train to Mother by Ronit Lentin
3 1/2 ***

This was a decent book that told a story of three generations of Romanian Jewish women from the Bucovina region. It was written in the 1980's, so the perspective is also an interesting moment in time when Bucovina is no longer a place name, and Chernovtsy was the place name for Czernowitz.

The story begins with questions in a stream-of-consciousness manner, where the narrator places bits of her ancestresses' stories in with her rumination during her journey by train. The grandmother's story begins in 1895, with Dora on her wedding day. Then it moves forward to her mother, Rosa, through various points in the 20th century, and also to her aunt Hetti both pre-and post- Soviet occupation.

The threat of war and the rise of fascism are undercurrents in Rosa's later story, and that of her sister Hetti who survived polio but with damage to her leg. Unlike Rosa, who marries and raises a family and helps move the family business along, Hetti lives with her boyfriend who meets her at the local Communist Party gathering. Rosa is the only one of the family to escape the camps by fleeing to Tel Aviv in 1937, and the experiences in both the Nazi and Soviet camps are told in retrospect.

The family reunites after World War II in Tel Aviv, and the final portions are the mid-70's from Hetti's perspective, as well as the narrator's final ruminations. The gem of this book is the different women's voices that are so well-crafted; the part that left me distracted was the lack of a foundation for much of the storyline.

And I decided, about 230+ pages in, that I just was not going to like The Bourne Ultimatum. I had picked it up probably at a bargain table somewhere, having liked the movie series, and thought I would read this tie-in. I realize there are many Bourne fans out there, and it seems I am not one of them. So, it's off to a fresh start at my local used book shop where I am sure it will find an appreciative reader.

So, this one is in the DNF category and I crossed it off my list above.

And, despite devouring the first have of The Eternal Ones in late August, I did not finish it until earlier this week. So I'll keep my count accurate and my books finished, and post it to my September reads instead.

September Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, Violets are Blue by James Patterson, Murder Past Due by Miranda James, The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
Category 2 - Longer Reads Dangerous Rhythms by T.J. English
Category 3 - Book Group Reads
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac, Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

September Current Count - 6
Yearly Count - 37

This month has started quickly! Finished The Eternal Ones (which I thought I put on my August list but I guess not), started Patterson's "Violets" and am halfway through it as well. It's the perfect book for reading whilst waiting for the auto mechanic to diagnose what my car needs.

I'm also making great headway on "Dangerous Rhythms." It's a great book, fairly easy to read in that the author makes reference to many of the names and nicknames of both the mobsters and the jazz musicians. I had no idea until I read this book that they were intertwined at all.

Sadly, I did not make it to the Vendor's Rooms during DragonCon. There's a point at which my TBR pile keeps growing, and I see TBR books on my shelves that I had every intention of starting at one point in time. Plus, the Rooms are several floors of concrete that brings physical exhaustion to a whole new level.

So we'll see what September brings for this list!

Ed: I attended a showing of the silent "Phantom of the Opera" during DragonCon, complete with an electric double bass as the musical accompaniment. It was a very good melding of the old with the new, and wow, was the Phantom's face ghastly! So I decided to let my local library loan me a copy of the original so that I could read the basis for this movie myself.

32) September Category 1 The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller
3 1/2 ***

What started out as a quick, fun read about a teenager who has visions of her past life and love in the first section, became an off-the-rails mess in the second half. Which is a shame, because so much of the teenage angst Haven Moore takes place against modern cultural conflicts. Her overbearing, God-fearing grandmother is only too ready to blame her troubles on Hellfire and brimstone. Her best friend is her classmate Beau, who is both gay and the star of the football team. They are smart kids who don't quite fit into the small-town mentality of their high school.

Haven and Beau have created a successful business for making prom dresses for their schoolmates and they are looking forward to using their earnings to help put themselves through college. But after Haven sees the face of Iain Morrow on TV, and her childhood visions are brought back to her from her late father's notes, things begin to change swiftly for them. And not for the better, so Haven takes her earnings and heads to New York City where she hopes she can solve this mystery once and for all.

In the second half of the book, she meets Iain who has a clearer understanding of their past lives together and that part is fascinating. Instead of continuing a cohesive narrative, however, the book suddenly takes a turn into doubt, then drama, then even more crazy turns when members of the Ouroboros Society play a larger and larger role with Haven and Iain. Characters are introduced who played a role in Constance and Ethan's past lives and rather than dealing with Haven and Iain as competent young adults, Haven goes on the run in NYC for no good reason other than maybe just adding pages.

Great idea and in the same vein as the Twilight and Hunger Games series, but just falls apart with the teenage tour of NYC takes over.

33) September Category 1 - Violets are Blue by James Patterson
4****

Another good, solid read in the Alex Cross series that finally, finally solves the MasterMind mystery! Whew!

This slightly creepy thriller delves into the world of vampires, both of the blood-sucking type and the type known as "psychic vampires" when a series of murders occurs. These murders include bite marks and a young pair of brothers who were raised in a Santa Cruz commune and are now out causing mayhem and murder.

There is also a pair of magicians who use a white tiger (along with several other animals) in their magic acts, and they, too, have a vampire cult following. The question comes up time and again: are the two sets of murderers linked, and if so, how?

Detective Cross is putting back his life after Christine has left, with young Alex joining his family with Nana. And he once again is pulled into investigating this series of murders at the expense of time away from his family and broken promises. It's a chorus only too familiar to this smart, driven family man and his son, daughter, and grandmother Nana.

The ending takes some interesting twists and turns, and wow! is how it resolves in the end.

34) September Category 1 - Murder Past Due by Miranda James
4****

It has been a while since I've read a book in an afternoon, and this was just the book for it. Guess that's why cozy mysteries are such a hit!

In a small college town, Athena, Mississippi, Charlie Harris has moved back to his hometown and now lives in the home he inherited from his beloved Aunt Dottie. He is the new Athena College library archivist and the proud adopter of an abandoned Maine coon cat named Diesel. Charlie takes in boarders from the local college, one of whom is a freshman and the son of a friend who never left the town, Judy.

The action starts with another Athena local, Godfrey Priest, a renowned author of horror novels who is coming in for a book promotion tour. He was also a bully to his classmates. Including Charlie. So when Godfrey comes into Charlie's office, makes a gift of his notes and works, and drops a bombshell of some personal information, Charlie sees a different side of his former nemesis. And then Godfrey is murdered, so the murder mystery and solving begins.

It is a challenge for Charlie to navigate this murder, since he is by nature an inquisitive sort, and he early on runs into challenges with the Deputy assigned to the case, Kanesha. Not only is she a black woman in a predominately white male position, she's also the daughter of Charlie's housekeeper, Azalea. Sparks fly towards the end of the book, and my guess is that Charlie will be a much greater help in the next murder investigation. And besides, how many cats are a help in solving murders?

35) September Category 1 - The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
3 ***

I read this in the mid-80's, after the movie and song came out, and again this year for a book challenge. I remember not feeling very connected to it then and I can see why now: there is a piling-on of characters, peoples, and adventures in Fantastica that seems over-done. This may be in part because every chapter begins with a different letter of the alphabet, and Ende has to keep the story moving.

While the first half of the book is Bastien's adventures getting the book, reading the book, and Atreyu's journey, the second half, starting with the letter "M," goes into Bastien's decisions and wishes and his darker side. The idea that a children's book would start by taking the child into the realm of Fantastica, save the Childlike Empress, encounter different beings and lands, then delve into what happens when one makes selfish decisions is a good one.

Probably a book that should be a bed-time read for a young person, pre-Tween years, conveying the wonder of Fantastica and lots of creatures with the teaching of what happens when we wish for bad things and act out of selfishness.

36) September Category 1 - The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
5*****

Talk about a book that takes you to unexpected places! Based in Cambridge University and partly in London, the multiple murders are as difficult to figure out as the potential suspects and their motivations. And the landscape is so integral to the fictional St. Christopher's College that it, too, becomes another character.

Mariana is a widow of a year, missing her dear Sebastian, when she gets a call from her adopted niece attending St. Christopher's College. Zoe's close friend has been murdered at the point of a knife and Zoe needs some consolation. Mariana is trained as a group therapist and cancels her sessions for a while to handle her remaining family member. One of the group members does not take it well.

Once Mariana makes it to St. Christopher's she is certain that she knows whom to blame for the murder of this young woman and the others who follow. The problems come when she interferes with the investigation, as one would expect, and mainly from the head constable who takes an immediate dislike to Marianna and her prying questions.

The most obvious choice for a suspect is Professor Fosca, whose class study group is named "The Maidens." It is his students who are being murdered, but then there is the strange Fred who shares her initial train ride, and then maybe her disgruntled former patient could be the murderer. I did become a bit impatient with Mariana for several reasons: she is so stuck, both in the past and in her decision of who the murder suspect has to be. She brings people into her life with no idea where they fit, but her bad choices also make her more human.

So, no more clues. It is a fascinating read, an investigation of dysfunctional family dynamics and how they affect the adult, and a true page turner with a shocking ending.

37) September Category 5 - Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
2**

Oh my gosh. I decided to finish this because it was not too long, but holy cow. It is nothing like any of the movies which is what I had hoped to glean from it. I had seen the silent "Phantom" again over Labor Day weekend and was very intrigued by the origins of the Phantom. The labyrinth under the famous Paris Opera house used as torture chambers? Had to go find out what happened, and how the Phantom became who he was.

But I did not find it, sadly, in the original book.The melodrama! The misogyny! The gasping for breath! The clutching of bosoms and of shedding tears for one's beloved! I mean, I do like me some good Victorian-era literature, and certainly get that it was a much different time for expressing one's views, but wow. This little novel has withstood time because Lon Chaney. And Andrew Lloyd Webber. And a chandelier.

The best part of this book was towards the end when The Persian tells the story of Erik (the Opera Ghost) and how his face was ugly from birth, he was rejected by both his parents, learned ventriloquism as an act in traveling circuses in Europe and Asia, and became a monster famous for mirrored rooms and trap doors. Still, that final expose does not make up for the bulk of the book. Christine and her beloved, Raoul, being discussed as children was really beyond what I could deal with.

Glad I read it, and glad it's going back to the library.

Also, this edition does not list the translator, sadly.

October Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin, Ganymede by Cherie Priest
Category 2 - Longer Reads Dangerous Rhythms by T.J. English, The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Category 3 - Book Group Reads What Darkness Brings by C.S. Harris
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

October Current Count - 3
Yearly Count - 40

I have some busy weekday evenings coming up, and I started busking again on the 1st. Gosh, how I've missed that close interaction with people stopping and listening to my tunes! This month's reading list is a little shorter (and some of these books I need to add to my library, note to self) in recognition of shorter reading times.

But! There are still coffee shops, and post-busking afternoons are a great time to pick up a French classic.

October Category 4 - The Lays of Beleriand, Chapter II "Poems Early Abandoned"

This short chapter is a fascinating look at the creative process and the working of idea.

The first selection is entitled "The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor" and is in the heroic poem format of "Beowulf" with its divided lines of poetry. Existing in this fragment is the Two Trees of Valinor, Ungoliant, and Feanor. What is still in formation is the descent of the nobility of the House of Finwe. Feanor has seven sons, though some of the names differ slightly, and his mighty Oath to pursue the Silmarils is in its earliest stages.

The second is a fragment of the "Lay of Earendil," making mention (evidently the only time in Tolkien's writings) of Wade of the Helsings. Wade was mentioned as late as the Middle Ages in Chaucer's writings, and was a character in a very early Old English poem who is thought to have been a sea-giant in the North Sea and Baltic regions. According to Christopher Tolkien's notes, he replaces the character of Tuor in this Lay.

The third is a series of notes about "The Fall of Gondolin" in various fragments. While there is no poem or poem fragment given, Christopher Tolkien presents the research of genealogy that changed between this writing and later publications and later place names that shifted as his father continued writing his texts.

38) October Category 3 - What Darkness Brings by C.S. Harris
5*****

A great introduction to this series, and a series that I intend to start from the beginning. The primary character and investigator is Sebastian St Cyr, youngest son of the Earl of Hendon and husband to Hero. As the book opens, a young prostitute and a very old, eccentric rich man are preparing to initiate their evening until an intruder breaks in, the girl is shoved into a priest hole, and the miser is shot.

Concurrent with this murder is the discovery of the body of one of St Cyr's closest mates, who had fought alongside him in the British Army and had succumbed to Walcheren fever during the campaign. His sufferings made him a pauper and his wife and daughter forced to live in straightened circumstances.

However, while his friend's death is emotionally devastating, so too is the recent arrest and imprisonment of his former mistress's husband, Yates. The mistress, Kat, states Yates as being at the scene of the murder shortly after it happened as the cause for his incarceration. Also added to his charges are the theft of the giant blue diamond that had once been on the Coat of Arms of France. We have come to know this diamond as the Hope Diamond, and its history is detailed in the course of this book.

As St Cyr conducts his inquiries into how Yates was framed, his wife, Hope, is interviewing the young street sweeps of Regency London to learn about their lives. While she was raised with all the wealth and power that the daughter of the chief counsellor to the Prince Regent could bring, she is also drawn to document the lives of these young children who are left to fend for themselves as best they could.

Well-written, characters explained well, relationships from other books detailed in a few phrases, this is a good standalone book that is also a guide to the intrigues of the Regency period and the streets of its London.

39) October Category 1 - Ganymede by Cherie Priest
4 1/2 ****

Another look at Cherie Priest's alternate reality, full of airships and zombies where the Civil War did not end in 1865. It is the third book in her Clockwork Century series but exists well as a standalone.

There are two separate main character storylines: Andan Cly, an airship pilot and pirate who smuggles sap (more on that later) and is based out of the Seattle area. The other is Josephine Early, madame of a bordello in New Orleans, a city now occupied by Texians (as spelled in the book). They were once lovers a decade ago, and now their lives intertwine in a truly steampunk way.

Cly is called to Early's city as a pilot, a journey of about a week, to help her and her brother with bringing a submersible to the Federal forces anchored in the Gulf of Mexico, as a way to end the War. As Cly makes his way to this city, the Texians decide to launch a siege on the hideaway near Barataria Bay where the famous pirate, Jean Lafitte, had his headquarters for years. The Texians suspect that the submersible is there and they want to seize it first.

Along with the occupation, the citizens of New Orleans have to contend with zombies and a sunset curfew. This is all new to Cly, who remembers the nightlife of New Orleans and has come from the underground of Seattle. Readers of this series know that the poison gas released during the events of "Boneshaker" caused Seattle to become a city surrounded by zombies; it turns out that the sap Cly has been running creates more zombies and most of them are ordinary soldiers in the Federal and Confederate armies who become addicted to the stuff.

The lives and times in this alternate history are well-drawn and the steampunk dress leaves costumers' imaginations full. There is a note of caution for readers: Priest uses the term "colored" throughout her descriptions of the non-white residents of New Orleans, in keeping with the norms of the time. Otherwise, the characters of the many human races in this novel are well-respected and each has their own part in the mystery and drama of these events.

40) October Category 1 - The Word for the World is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin
4****

What a work this novella is, varying from gut-punch to joy and back again. I've heard about this story of hers for years and something always held me back from reading it. Now I know.

Written in the early 70's when Vietnam was still at its height, the story begins with on a planet colonized by Earth-based humans. In this future dystopia, there are no more trees left on Earth and a colony has been established on New Tahiti or World 41 or Haimish. The humans in their outposts have made servants of the Atheans, the native humanoid species, despite their slowness and because of their passivity.

Davidson, one of those authoritarian military types, simply does not understand why these furry sub-humans are seen as valuable by the Terran and Intergalactic Councils. There are instances of unprovoked attack that are reminiscent of the worst atrocities during the Vietnam War and it was heart-wrenching to read them. Also brought forward is the culture of the Athsheans by the Terran Captain Lyubov who has befriended and saved Selver, though he could not save Selver's wife.

Drawing on her background in anthropology, Ms. Le Guin has created a difficult though beautiful work of writing in the science fiction genre that could as easily be written about Earth and any human species at any time in our history.

November Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads Double Knit Murders by Maggie Sefton, What Angels Fear by C.S. Harris, Merlin's Booke by Jane Yolen
Category 2 - Longer Reads Dangerous Rhythms by T.J. English, The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Category 3 - Book Group Reads The Night Hawks by Elly Griffiths
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

November Current Count - 4
Yearly Count - 44

November is one of those months that you think you know what's going on, until you start it! Now that the Halloween decorations are down I've gone off to an Irish Music Festival, attended a house concert, and the Symphony is also on the agenda. And that's just the early part of the month. Let's not forget that festival of feasting, Thanksgiving, and travel this year to visit in-laws. Cozy mysteries are perfect for this sort of back and forth and reviews are coming as I finish up these books.

Also, it was wonderful to jump onto another group read with this group, this time reading "The Night Hawks" and learning more about Norfolk, England. Seems that there is a legend about the Black Shuck, a mysterious giant black dog who is the harbinger of death. Similar to the folk legends of "The Lantern Men," an earlier read, Norfolk might just become an out-of-the-way place to visit in England.

41) November Category 1 - What Angels Fear by C.S. Harris
5*****

The first in the St. Cyr mystery series that takes place just as the Regency period of (future) George IV is being installed.

The book starts from the POV of a young woman who is brutally murdered; the final thought in the prologue is "she knew she'd made a terrible mistake." This thought proves a foundation to who could possibly be the murderer and lends credence to Sebastian St. Cyr as he tries to solve her slaying.

Main characters in the series are introduced: Jarvis, who knows his mind is better than anyone else's; Sebastian St. Cyr; his father, Hendon, holding the office of Exchequer; Kate, an actress who has shared her heart with Sebastian in the past and now; and the landscape of 1811 London with all its class structure and a burgeoning police investigative arm.

One of the more refreshing parts of this book is the main characters' reactions to Rachel. She is an actress whose rooms are paid for by a paramour, and she has a past and a brain that has helped her get away from her past. The characters on her side do not discount her for being an actress and a paid companion in order to earn money; it's the characters who sneer at her who are the dislikable ones in this tapestry.

The mystery is engaging, the characters are well-done, and the ending was quite shocking. Just the perfect thing for foggy London nights!

42) November Category 3 - The Night Hawks by Elly Griffiths
4 1/2 ****

The events in this murder mystery, once again set in northern Norfolk, England, happen a few years after her previous "The Lantern Men." Ruth Galloway has accepted a position as head of department at the university which Phil Trent, her old boss, once held. And immediately into her new office comes her new hire, David, who seems intent on talking his way into Ruth's office and his own research way past professional boundaries.

Adding to her stress is the nearness of her true love, Nelson, who still lives in Norfolk with his wife, Michelle, and three-year old son, George. Ruth and Nelson have a daughter in common, Kate, and she is bringing Ruth kicking and screaming into the world of things like cell phones. Which can be handy, even for a HOD and archeologist.

The murder mystery is part of this family dynamic, taking place in the prologue and then swinging quickly to the murder/suicide of the Noakes, an older couple. They were not a happy couple as we come to find out, not least with naming their isolated farmhouse "Black Dog Farm" in recognition of the local Norfolk legend, the Black Schuck. Like the Lantern Men of the previous book, the Black Shuck is associated with death, although the form is that of a large black dog with red eyes.

How the archeological research of a body washed up on the shore interacts with a group of amateur archeologists (the "Night Hawks" of the book title) and the murder/suicide in the isolated farmhouse is hinted at and added to, right up until the very end.

43) November Category 1 - Double Knit Murders by Maggie Sefton
4****

This two-in-one edition of the first two Maggie Sefton mysteries was quite the find. It comprises "Knit One, Kill Two" and "Needled to Death" and both mysteries involve young accountant Kelly Flynn coming back to her hometown of Fort Connor, Colorado from Washington, D.C.

Her first mystery comes with the death of her aunt who was found dead in her own living room. Kelly is able to take time from her corporate D.C. job to help settle her aunt's affairs and is staying in a motel while she does so. Her Rottweiler, Carl, comes with her to her aunt's farmhouse to run around in the backyard while she does her sleuthing. While she has her suspicions about the police story that her aunt's death was a burglary gone bad, as well as a cash withdrawal her aunt took on her home from a sleazy lender, she also comes to grips with the new layout of her aunt and uncle's farm. Part of the farmland was sold for a golf course (and Carl likes to dash through it stealing golf balls), and the original farmhouse is now a knit shop with cafe that serves plenty of high-octane coffee.

Also included is the farmhouse-cum-knit shop, featuring a cast of customers/characters and loads of soft, fuzzy, amazing yarn. This book was written in the mid-2000's as the knitting boom was taking off, and the variety of fibres, colors, and soft textures attests to that time. Kelly begins to dig into her aunt's murder while also voicing her concerns to her aunt's friends that includes the knit shop owner and customers. Who, of course, entice her to take up knitting.

The second book in this set, "Needled to Death," comes a few months later when Kelly has begun to work remotely (novel idea for its time!) in her late aunt's home with Carl. Who has had to give up his penchant for golf balls and is now living in a backyard with a newly built escape-proof fence. The cast of characters expands with a couple of alpaca ranchers (both women!) and a new property of sheep and cattle ranch in Wyoming that also became Kelly's through a family member in the second book.

And by now Kelly is knitting away (as one would suspect), enjoying herself and starting to put down roots in the community. Which leads to the question of how can she quit her corporate job, since her condo is subleased for a little bit, and still live in Fort Connor? I can kinda see where that query resolves itself in the next book or two.

Both books have the murders solved in the "I confess" method by the murderer, and Kelly is a sensible and sensitive young woman. Plus pretty darn smart and open to new possibilities in her life. I'll continue with this series since they are a fun, quick, and knit-themed read.

44) November Category 1 - Merlin's Booke by Jane Yolen
5*****

Such a great way of re-telling the many facets of Merlin within the Arthurian legend! Jane Yolen has crafted her wit and abilities in a way i've never seen before.

Each chapter tells of a character in Merlin's legend: Merlin as an infant, a wild child, a young boy seeking his way in the world. Then there are chapters that tell of other characters in the cycle, such as Gwenhyfar, Arthur, Lancelot, Sir Kay, with Merlin serving as a character behind the scenes. Geoffrey of Monmouth or Mallory is the heading in each chapter, which then tells a tale Merlin's birth while scribing the last words from Father Blaise, or capturing the thoughts of a wild boy as he lives a year in the wild, or the birth of a white child called Gwynhfar that the Old One knows is destined to unite a kingdom.

In the telling of Elaine's tale, Guenevere is called Veree; her true name of Gwyneth is not revealed until the end when Merlin comes to take the sword from her on the Isle of Women. Or he is doddering old Master Linn, seemingly everywhere, and bringing young Artos to a cave where he can learn from a dragon.

The final story is more present-day, and involve the archeological dig that uncovers a skeleton from the early Bronze Age in the fens that could, just maybe, be that of Merlin. It's told from the POV of a trio of journalists present at the unveiling, complete with the Crown Prince of England who helped direct the archeological dig.

Reading the many versions of the Arthurian myth has got my interest back to reading and re-reading all the many books I have about King Arthur. It points out, in its slim volumed way, that there is no one true version of the Arthurian cycle.

December Reading Log

Category 1 - Quick Reads Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle, Irish Knit Murder by Peggy Ehrhart, My Effin' Life by Geddy Lee
Category 2 - Longer Reads Dangerous Rhythms by T.J. English, The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Category 3 - Book Group Reads
Category 4 - Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Vol. III The Lays of Beleriand
Category 5 - Classics Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

December Current Count - 4
Yearly Count - 48

After finding Eric Idle's Sortabiography a few years back when I dashed into my local (chain) bookstore just to use the facilities (and emerged with several books, as one would expect), this seemed like the time to finally crack it open.

And I've spent some time reading "Dangerous Rhythms" and "Secrets" over the past few months. There is a lot going on in both books, and I'm finding I want to sip "Secrets" as one would a good wine. It's beautiful but heart-wrenching.

I'm more than half-way through Balzac's work; I've just gotten to the part where nephew Charles is swindled by the miser, M. Grandet himself, and it seems that misers both then and now have not changed a bit. They harm those who rely on them (love them?) in such petty ways.

Ed: So I finished 4 books this month, including 2 that were "pending," and of course when I went into a bookstore to find this group's group read, what did I find but Geddy Lee's face staring at me from his book cover? I'm also really, really glad I finished Balzac and Prescott this month.

45) December Category 1 - Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle
5*****

Yes, getting five stars from me, and not just because I'm a fan of Monty Python. It's also because Eric Idle is a very good writer (as one would expect) and he puts his childhood out there as well as his fame. And the famous people he became close friends with who were as famous as he without setting out to be icons: George Harrison, Keith Moon, Ron Wood are a few among many.

He is unstinting on his father's ironic post-War accidental death and his years in boarding school that were pretty darn traumatic. He's also brutally honest about his first marriage and relationship with his son, Carey. But then he got better, in no small thanks to his fellow Pythons and the comedic art they made.

And he dishes on their work sessions, his contributions of music to the troupe, the cold and wet that was Scotland during the filming of "Holy Grail" and how much George Harrison contributed to making sure that "Life of Brian" got made. There are also hilarious tales of their tours, including "Live at the Hollywood Bowl" and late plane arrivals and zig-zagging across Canada because they did not realize when they booked the tour how vast things are on the other side of the pond.

In short, a great read, insightful and honest and a glimpse into a life that was forever impacted by his work as a young man. And "Always look on the bright side of life" is the most requested song at British funerals, so that's gotta be something.

46) December Category 1 - Irish Knit Murder by Peggy Ehrhart
3 1/2 ***

I picked this one up because I liked the cover (yes, really!) and the idea that here was yet another cozy mystery with knitting involved. The fact that it opens with a St. Patrick's Day singalong was an added bonus. And it's #4 in the Knit and Nibble series with a pattern for a Knit Egg Cozy and a recipe for Irish Coffee Truffle. All in keeping with this genre.

Sadly, I was not that impressed. While there was a knitting group that meets weekly (I think), with a really diverse group of knitters, the main crafty details were the cooking. From the first few chapters with a St. Patrick's Day dinner, to the main character's breakfast and watching the drip coffee every morning, to pies and cookies, the details about knitting seemed to take a back seat to all the sweet treats Pamela and her best friend Bettina ate constantly.

Pamela lives in a small New Jersey garden-area town with a job as an editor for a Fiber-oriented magazine. Which is great - she gets to review articles on the Shakers and a medieval depiction of the Virgin Mary knitting in an anachronistic method, then send them to her editor. Her daughter is at college, she is widowed and still living in the home she and her husband fixed up after he died, And she had a romance with the guy next door, till it ended, and now some new romances seem to be blossoming.

I liked the fact that Pamela is a woman in her 40's, her best friend is an older woman who writes for the weekly town paper, and the diverse characters: a guy knitter (a lawyer whose therapist is encouraging him to relax), a Wiccan in the town who explains how St. Patrick was not necessarily a great guy towards women in his world, and the murder victim who was a bit of a wild child in the (gasp!) long ago 60's. Oh, and there's the abundance of cats. Always good to have a kitty or two in a cozy mysterday!

But I was really not that infatuated with the vast amounts of food consumed, described, and prepared, and the constant visiting that Bettina bestows on Pamela seems a bit excessive. I like my neighbors in the area, but if they came to my door every day at breakfast, and then later in the afternoon when they think they've maybe solved the case? I would quickly set some boundaries.

47) December Category 2 - The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
5*****

What a truly amazing book, one that works on so many levels. As historical fiction, it pulls from the files of the CIA and the experiences in Soviet "re-education" camps. As a book about women in the workforce, it nails the reality of being just as talented as men and offered menial roles. As a look at LGBTQ+ issues, it describes what life was like when being in the closet was a choice between existence and non-existence. And most of all, it describes the steps taken by so many to publish Boris Pasternak's literary masterpiece, "Dr. Zhivago."

The story takes place in two locales, clearly labeled: East and West, and during roughly the same time period of 1949 - 1961. In the East, Boris Pasternak is putting the finishing touches on his masterpiece, while Olga, his mistress, is visited by the KGB to inquire about her involvement in his work. This visit eventually leads to the Gulag; Boris is ruminating about his fellow writers and poets who have met a similar fate. The difference is that Stalin loves Boris Pasternak's poetry and his hand has protected Pasternak.

Meanwhile, after the Second World War ends, the women in the OSS who performed admirably are given jobs at the Agency. As typists. Despite their talents, despite their successes, they are asked to type memos and notes and letters, day after day. They form a camaraderie and one of them is Irina. Her mother left Soviet Russia without her husband, and at his death in the USSR she begins to ply her trade as a dressmaker to the community. Irina lives with her and most of the story from the West portions are told from her POV.

The 3 years Boris and Olga spend apart are described, and when the book is finally, finally completed the manner in which it was published would interest the most diehard John le Carré geek. What resulted was pure Soviet machinations to try to explain why the rest of the world read it before it was published in Russia.

In the West, Irina is befriended by Sally, and Irina is engaged to Ted who has a passion for all things Russian. Which is what attracts him to Irina. There are details about life as a working woman in Washington, D.C. in the 50's that are not too different from our own time. The details about life in the Agency as an LGBTQ+ person are horrendous and also, sadly, timely.

I found that this was a book I needed to savor, like a fine wine or heady beer. Pick up, enjoy, then put down.

48) December Category 5 - Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac
5***** ♥️

An amazing look at the arrogance and evil of greed. Not "I want a good position in a company and will work hard to get it so I can have the best things" greed, but the egotism and absolute focus on the having wealth at any cost. Even one's family. The precision with which Balzac zeroes in on his human subjects and makes them as relevant today as they were when the book was written (1833) is why I love this author.

Full disclosure: I read it in the French folio edition to maintain my language skills and to catch the nuances of Balzac's writing. There was one place, where I took to Wikipedia to make sure I understood a certain plot point. And basically Wikipedia confirmed what I had suspected: that M. Grandet was more interested in building his already massive fortune at the expense of his nephew's future. But more on that further on.

The famille Grandet lives on vast holdings in Saumur, near Tours along the Loire. M. Grandet made his fortune as a cooper and he marries an heiress and they purchase vineyards with their combined wealth. All well and good, and life progresses with the birth of a daughter, Eugenie.

Yet Mme. Grandet is only allowed 6 francs at a time for her household expenses. The house is large and old, and is falling into disrepair because Felix does not wish to spend the money to fix it. They have one servant, Nanon, who has the strength to support her mistress and deal directly with the avarice of Felix in her household duties. And the town is betting on who will take the hand of Eugenie: la famille des Cruchot, or la famille des Grassins, each of whom has an eligible son.

These are also the only two families allowed to visit la famille des Grandet, along with the town's Abbot, and it is while they are celebrating Eugenie's birthday (at low light due to the cost of firewood) that Felix' nephew, Charles, arrives on his uncle's doorstep with a request from Guillaume, M. Grandet's estranged brother. Guillaume requests Felix' help for his son Charles to travel to the Indies to set up his fortune. What is revealed to the reader, and later to Charles himself, is that Guillaume is deeply in debt and has taken his own life in his shame.

Eugenie, living as she does in her isolated family, falls in love with her cousin and as one would expect, pledges are trothed and love is spoken, and Charles gifts her with a prized gold dressing case of his mother's. In return, Eugenie gifts him with her rare gold coins that her father gives her every year for her birthday. And Felix offers to "help" Charles sell his jewels since Felix knows the townsfolk and can get a good price. This was the part where I turned to Wikipedia because of the interest rate, timeframe, etc. While Eugenie helps her beloved with his future, Felix swindles his brother's son out of his family's fortune.

What happens next is brilliant and full of realistic actions and observations of the characters and their motivations. For Felix, it is gold; for Eugenie, it is love and pride in herself and her actions, and for Mme. Grandet, she has lived in fear all her married life and now it overcomes her.

One passage that forms an essence of the book is below (in its original, to gain the nuances and beauty of the language):

Tout pouvoir humain est un composé de patience et de temps. Les gens puissants veulent et veillent. La vie de l'avare est un constant exercice de la puissance humaine mise au service de la personalité.

49) December Category 1 - My Effin' Life by Geddy Lee
5 ***** ♥️

OK, so, yeah. Geddy Lee. A rock legend and the voice of my breaking out of the norms of high school thru prog rock in the early 80's. Rush's audacity of combining lyrical folk-guitarist openings like "Closer to the Heart" or the messaging of "Trees" with pounding drums and break-out rock rhythms was novel in the world of AM and FM radio play. Or not, in the case of Rush. I mean, to end the problems between the oaks and the maples ("The oaks are just to greedy/And they grab up all the light") with the iconic "The trees are all kept equal/With hatchet, axe, and saw" at a time when the North American landscape was being clear-cut for the "Subdivisions" that are part of the problem? So incredibly foresighted.

Geddy has not had an easy life; he reserves Chapter 3 to describe the horrors of the work camp of Wierzbnik, Poland, during World War II where his parents met and, somehow, fell in love is a brilliant piece of research, and he gives fair warning to the reader that *this* is the chapter they may or may not wish to read. And if so, Geddy will pick back up with them in Chapter 4.

Losing a father (and a faith) at such a young age was also traumatic, and the fact that he had music to turn to is a Gift to the rest of us. He describes his earliest band and the fact that he could "apply studs and shiny sequined bobbles" as a nod to his many talents. The book is chock full of pictures, captions, and anecdotes from these and later years.

What also helped humanize Geddy Lee were his stories of the road. This was not the touring band that had girls on every arm and leg, or chartered flights on private jets; this was the band that packed up their gear and took turns keeping the driver awake to the next gig on the tour van. Or the van that had the flip-down beds that they thought would work better but didn't. Or the marriage dynamics of coming home, not saying anything about what might be wrong for the weeks that one is home, and then finally, by the time the tour is ready to start, having *the* fight on the way out the door. His wife, Nancy, whom he met while still very young, plays a central role in this book throughout the years, and Geddy takes time to describe her burgeoning career in fashion, along with their children who take her time, and how he is not really there during most of their marriage.

Each of their albums is covered at length (thank you Geddy!!), with more detail at the beginning of how the lyrics came to be, to the recording, to the mixing, to the producer and the search for a producer, or mixer, or studio, and all these details give me, as a fan and listener, a greater insight when the album notes say "recorded at . . . " "mixed at . . . " "produced at . . . ". Zowie! What a lot of work went into what I used to listen to on my turntable and wonder how I could ever be good enough. Now I know. And I am good enough.

And the tragedies. Holy moly. Geddy is very honest about these as well and goes into great detail about former bandmates, photographers, publicists, friends, and what their loss has meant to him. Which of course brings up the most well-known loss, that of Neil Peart's family's deaths, Neil's new family, and then Neil's death. It's OK - I skipped to the end to read a bit of that part, too. I'm sure Geddy knew that would happen.

This book was written during lockdown and Geddy is honest about the impact lockdown during Covid had on him and on his mom. And how being at home and retired has led him to a new understanding of life and how it continues despite the odds.

For a fan of Rush or prog rock, or how the trauma of the Holocaust is multi-generational, or a burgeoning musician who dreams about life on the road, or a spouse of a traveling musician, or . . . I could go on. If any of these are your checkboxes, I highly recommend this book. It is a treasure, and I am grateful for it.