What are you reading now?: October 26, 2024.

Well into Strategy Shelved, will be finishing up the month with the Siege of Strasbourg and The Blighted Stars.

Starting The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands, which I expect to knock off before I go on a trip.

>1 Shrike58: Thank you for starting us off!

I've not been reading much this week. Mainly I've re-watched the entire series of Downton Abbey. When I could pull myself away, I started Invisible Murder and listened to Nothing To See Here.

I just finished The Overstory by Richard Powers. I'm wiped out from it. I had to give it five stars because I couldn't give it six.

>3 fredbacon: Looking forward to reading it!

This week I'm reading The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett. First time I've read a book by her and I'm loving it so far.

Elvis And the Dearly Departed – Peggy Webb
1*

Book number one in the “Southern Cousins” mystery series is a bust.

Elvis is a basset hound owned by Callie Valentine Jones. Well, she and her soon-to-be ex are fighting over custody of Elvis. Callie is a beautician whose claim to fame is preparing the recently deceased for the family viewing at her uncle’s funeral parlor in Tupelo, Mississippi. But when the corpse of a prominent physician goes missing, Callie and her cousin Lovie (who is the funeral parlor’s caterer) head to Las Vegas to retrieve the body. The chief suspect is the doctor’s mistress, Bubble Malone, a Vegas showgirl. Needless to say, the road trip doesn’t go as planned and the cousins hightail it back to Tupelo.

I like a cute and sassy cozy mystery as well as any reader. I love eccentric characters and outlandish plots. But I DO expect at least a semblance of a coherent plot. And at least SOME law enforcement involvement. In this case, I think the author was trying way too hard to make this “cute” and “sassy” and failed to deliver any plot worth remembering.

I would rather have had more info about Elvis’s assignation with the cute French Poodle in heat. (But he’s too much of a Southern gentleman to kiss and tell.)

Feel free to skip this one.

Today I finished The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett and it was so good. Definitely will be reading more by her.

Switching into Halloween mode, now I'm reading The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. Also really enjoying it so far. Be careful who you invite into your home!

>4 PaperbackPirate: >6 PaperbackPirate: You have a lot of great books to look forward to! I love Patchett.

I’ve started Georgette Heyer’s Frederica. I never thought I’d love Regency romance but Heyer is very fun.

I'm just about halfway through Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life by Joshua Leifer. In my view (I'm Jewish and about 20 years older than Leifer) is an interesting and valuable but flawed book. There are enough generalizations and pronouncements that I think are mostly right but off just enough to make me uncomfortable with the idea of someone coming to the topic without any foreknowledge of the topic and thinking they were getting a fully accurate account of the history and evolution of Jewish life in the U.S. I'll have more to say when I finish the book and write my review.

One Of Us Is Next – Karen M McManus
Digital audiobook performed by Maria Liatis, Holly Linneman, Fred Berman and Karissa Vacker.
2.5**

This is a sequel to the immensely popular One of Us is Lying. I understand the pressure, especially in the YA market, to produce series, especially when you have a hit with the first effort. But I think the author should have quit when she was ahead.

It’s a year after the events of the first book and those students have moved on to college or careers. But social media needs to fill the gossip void and all sorts of copy-cat apps have appeared in the meantime. Simon may be long gone, but someone seems determined to keep his legacy alive. And this time it’s a challenge game: Truth or Dare.

If you refuse the dare some “truth” about you will be revealed, and after the first student is targeted and her dark secret is revealed, everyone quickly decides that the best way to deal with whoever is running the game is to take the dare. And then the game turns deadly.

I really did not like this sequel. I was never invested in the kids and thought the plot was manipulative (although, that was probably the point). Just way too much drama for drama’s sake, in my opinion.

The ending leads me to believe a further sequel might be in the works. If so, I won’t bother to read it.

The audiobook was performed by four talented voice artists, which helped in determining which of the characters was narrating.

The Spamalot Diaries
Eric Idle
4/5 stars
This is story of Eric Idle's creation of his play Spamalot. Our family had seen the play in Chicago and it was very enjoyable and so was his book!

For Halloween,The Magic of MinaLima by Nell Denton (NF)
How graphic artists, Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima, made the books, flyers, banners, and other print items for the "Harry Potter" and "Fantastic Beasts" movies. I brought this book over a year ago and didn't get around to reading it until now. Really fun pictorial book!

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
Erik Larson
3/5 stars
Erik Larsen's newest book looks into the beginning of the Civil War and the events surrounding it including the election of Lincoln. Not my favorite of his books but I still learned a lot about that time in history! Non-Fiction

Miss Julia Meets Her Match– Ann B Ross
3***

Miss Julia is back in the 5th book of this charming series about a Southern lady of a certain age and her household. This time practically the entire town joins Miss Julia in her favorite “exercise” – jumping to conclusions. From Hazel Marie to Pastor Ledbetter and his wife Emma Sue everyone is ready to act on suspicions.

Of course there is some real drama going on as well. An itinerant “pastor” has convinced Miss Julia to lease him some land just outside town so he can build a “Walk Where Jesus Walked” theme park. He seems to be backed by a rather oily door-to-door salesman with a private jet. Before Miss Julia can get to the bottom of this, she gets embroiled in several closer-to-home scandals, including the return of her friend’s prodigal son, back home from ten years in New York, now calling himself Tonya and wearing designer dresses. And Lillian’s five-year-old granddaughter has come for an extended stay. So, Miss Julia has her hands full!

Not to mention that Sam will not stop asking her to marry him and she is just not ready to say yes. At least not until she discovers that SHE is the subject of unfounded rumors of “unseemly behavior.” So, she decides to give them something to talk about and asks Sam to get her a fake ring that will stop tongues wagging. He couldn’t be happier to comply and comes up with a real whopper!

I love this series. It’s like spending time with old friends you haven’t seen in a while and relishing all the news and gossip over a nice glass of lemonade (perhaps fortified with a little extra something).

The new thread is up over here.