What are you reading the week of August 12, 2023?

I have almost finished Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet. This has been an interesting entry in the series. It has a large cast of characters who's stories are very intricately intertwined. Great plotting and character development.

I've also begun Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World's First Author. This is a very nice popular work on the poetry of Enheduana, the daughter of Sargon the Great. After Sargon, an Akkadian, conquered Sumer in what is now southern Iraq, he made his daughter a high priestess of the temple at Ur. When an uprising frees Ur from the Akkadians, Enheduana is forced to flee into the wilderness. From there she writes an extended poem invoking the goddess Inanna to hear her case and restore her place at the temple at Ur.

Currently working on Three Miles Down, the first Harry Turtledove novel I've touched in ages. After that, my expectations are that I'll be reading Armoured Trains & Stars and Bones.

While I expected to be virtually riding the rails this week, circumstances mean that I've now started The Queen's American Rangers.

I am going to begin Lost and Found by Suzanne Woods Fisher that I won on LT.

I'm still reading The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson.
And you're right, Copperskye, compelling is a good word for it.

>4 PaperbackPirate: The Wilkerson book was fascinating, and yes, compelling is the right word.

This week I have been busy going back to work after months unable to find a job. It has not gone well. Books have been my go-to solace, but I did not choose the right books! I disliked the true crime book I read (can't remember its name), and for the life of me can't understand why The Phantom Tollbooth has the popularity it does.

I'm now listening to Lisa Jewell's The Family Remains, which is the sort of thriller that completely engulfs a person. The full-cast recording is excellent. As for reading, yesterday at the end of a bloody awful week I rewarded myself with Jo Nesbo's latest Harry Hole novel, Killing Moon, and will start that today.

Started this audio via hoopla ~

Murder at the Breakers (Gilded Newport Mystery, #1)
by Alyssa Maxwell

>4 PaperbackPirate: >5 ahef1963: It should be required reading.

I just started Ann Patchett's latest, Tom Lake, and I know I'm going to love it.

Buried In a Good Book – Tamara Berry
3***

First in a new cozy mystery series featuring Tess Harlow, a mystery-book author. Newly divorced, Tess decides to move to the remote cabin her late grandfather left her. She has kinda fond memories of a summer spent there when she was a child. Her teenaged daughter, Gertrude, is not enthused – no WiFi, no electricity, no indoor plumbing! And then there is the explosion and the “rain of fish and body parts” ….

Tess certainly has the imagination to go with being a mystery writer, even though she has difficulty actually sitting down to write, because she’s so focused on solving the crime. She’s also distracted by the hunky Sheriff Boyd, who is a dead ringer for her imaginary Detective Gonzalez she writes about.

There’s no shortage of suspects, including “Bigfoot,” to keep both Sheriff Boyd and Tess busy. Supporting characters and/or suspects include the local bookmobile librarian, the Peabody triplets and a female deputy on Boyd’s team who writes sci-fi in her spare time. This tiny community in upstate Washington near the Canadian border may have spectacular natural scenery, but there’s plenty of political infighting going on as well, pitting logging industry and “developers” against those who want to maintain the town’s “backwoods” feel.

I was as surprised as Tess to discover who the murderer was. There’s at least one more in the series and I’ll probably read it.

I just finished a cute little mystery last night by Bernard Farmer, Death of a Bookseller. It was an enjoyable little mystery set in the early 1950's in London. I've been in a desperate struggle to break my reading slump and this gave me hope. I hope I can find another one that keeps me involved to the end!

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
Denise Kiernan
4/5 stars
Interesting story about the women who left their homes to come to Oak Ridge, Tennesse in the Appalachian Mountains to help with the winning of the World War II effort. The women did not know at the time what they were doing at this secretive site till the end of the war. Well written!

The new thread is up over here.