What are you reading the week of September 23, 2023?

I've been binge watching Foundation on Apple TV the past couple of weeks, so this week I decided to pick up Isaac Asimov's Foundation to read. I read it as a teenager about fifty years ago. (I'll turn 64 on Wednesday.)

fredbacon Asimov's Foundation sounds exciting. I may have to follow your example.

I actually launched my computer, because the touchstones don't work on my phone.

I'm reading The Travels of Marco Polo, Italienische Reise by Goethe, and Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. I must be in a traveling mood. Some of the reviews on Amazon said The Travels of Marco Polo was boring. I am finding it anything but. Interesting to learn that Christopher Columbus brought this book along on his voyage to try to find a western route to China.

I'm about 3/4 of the way through Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. Part of my "A Couple of Classics I've Never Read Per Year" informal custom. All this way along, I'm still puzzling out what I think of it. I guess I'll have to go back and read the editor's introduction after I'm done to try to find out what Defoe was telling his readers about English society and see if that matches up with what I'm understanding on my own.

As difficult as it is to do at this point, I'm putting As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson aside temporarily because I need to read Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke for book club next Saturday. I'm also looking forward to reading it, I'm just at an intense part of the other book.

>1 fredbacon: Happy Early Birthday!

>1 fredbacon: Happy birthday to you!

This week has been an intense one. I started a new remote job, and it's been Murphy's Law all week. If it can go wrong, it will. What a week.

I've re-instated reading in bed, and my goodness, does it make a difference to my sleep! I finished Susan Hill's The Soul of Discretion, which was really enjoyable. I've decided to read a John Grisham novel for the first time in years, and have picked up The Guardians to read. I'd forgotten how well-crafted his plots are.

Next up in the land of audiobooks is All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks, certainly a departure from my usual fare.

Continue to enjoy this audio via Libby ~

The Maid: A Novel (Molly the Maid, #1)
by Nita Prose
(Canadian murder mystery/Molly is on the autism spectrum)

>6 ahef1963: I read in bed a couple of times this past week and agree! I really slept better afterwards.

I'm slogging my way (and I hate to say that) through The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux after seeing the original silent movie with Lon Cheney a few weeks ago.

Also reading The Maidens by Alex Michaelides for a LT challenge.

>1 fredbacon: Happy birthday week, Fred!!

I'm enjoying my second Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Clouds of Witness. I'm anxious to finish it because I just picked up the latest Ann Cleeves', The Raging Storm, from the library.

I have just finished reading the novel White Noise by Don DeLillo.

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I finished the LTER, Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System. This is a frightening account of much of the evidence used to convict suspects of crime. Equally appalling is the reluctance to overturn faulty convictions and the snail's pace of our justice system. These failings are presented using a series of particular cases.

Cleared out the books I was lugging around on the beach trip with my siblings, apart from Fighters over the Fleet (that I'll be working on until the end of the month). Now starting Dissidence.

9/26: Having knocked off MacLeod's novel (and finding it somewhat wanting), the rest of this month's books will be The Normans, Russian Motor Vehicles, and Into the Riverlands.

Razor Girl – Carl Hiaasen
Digital audio performed by John Rubenstein
3***

I love reading Hiaasen’s ridiculously crazy plots, featuring the NOT-tourist-friendly Florida. In this romp, former cop Andy Yancy (now demoted to inspecting restaurants for health violations) is joined by a cast of eccentrics including: Merry Mansfield (a delicious redhead who specializes in staged fender-benders done while she is shaving her nether regions); Buck Nancy (star of a reality TV series); Martin Trebeaux (owner of a company that steals sand from one beach to replace erosion on another); Brock Richardson (Miami lawyer hooked on a product he is litigating against); and a possibly psychotic street person known as Blister.

The action is fast, furious, and totally insane. The bad guys are frequently three cards short of a full deck. The women almost always get the best of the men. Hiaasen has a gift for drawing this reader into his wildly improbable plots. And I enjoy the ride every time!

John Rubenstein does a great job of performing the audiobook. He has a lot of characters to deal with and really shines when voicing the bad guys.

>14 BookConcierge: I loved this book! Quite a hoot.

The Old Man and the Gun: And Other Tales of True Crime
David Grann
3/5 stars
Interesting book on true crime! There are three stories of crime in this book. The first one was The Old Man and The Gun which was made into a movie with Robert Redford. True Crime and The Chameleon were next. The second story was just okay but I really enjoyed the The Chameleon and The Old Man and The Gun. Crime

I finished Daniel Defoe's classic, Moll Flanders. Lower class life in early 18th century London was a tough go, all right, and Newgate Prison was a horrible place to land. But the novel is really a story of a tough-minded woman who survives on her own terms despite a dizzying series of setbacks and misfortunes. You can see my longer review on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next up for me will be The Other Side of Silence, the 11th book in Philip Kerr's glorious Bernie Gunther noir series.

Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film
Patton Oswalt
3/5 stars
Actor/Writer/Standup Comedian Patton Oswalt talks about his love of films and that he had seen three times a week through the nineties at the New Beverly Cinema. Interesting!

The Code Breaker – Walter Isaacson
Book on CD read by Kathe Mazur and Walter Isaacson
5*****

Subtitle: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

This is an engaging, interesting, informative, and thought-provoking biography cum history. While the focus is on Jennifer Doudna, Isaacson gives almost equal time to the many other researchers who contributed to the scientific discoveries and applications.

The book starts out with basic biographical background, moves into the excitement of discovery and the international race to obtain patents, and to publish first, then on to ethical questions surrounding the application of new technologies, and finally focuses on the ways that these teams of scientists worked to address COVID19.

Isaacson frequently puts himself into the narrative, writing in first person about his encounters and reactions.

The audiobook is narrated by Kathe Mazur, with an introduction and epilogue narrated by Isaacson. I was happy that I had the text handy because there are times when reading a passage helped me understand the science better than listening to it. But Mazur is a very talented voice artist, and she really did a magnificent job.

The new thread is up over here.

Thank you for the birthday wishes.

>10 Copperskye: I have a gift copy of The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves. I wanted to say thank you, but I am not sure who sent it.

If I wrote Hafez in my post, I misspelled it. This is the correct spelling. Sorry.