Papa Jim (jim53) reads in 2021, part 2

Hi all, I'm back from the yuckiness of shingles and trying to remember how to read again. I had a lot of trouble finding something to stick with for a while there; I would start a book and lose interest fairly quickly, even if it was pretty good. I finally managed to stick with Theft of Swords, a bullet from Narilka. I was finding it quite long, but then I realized it contained two separate but linked stories. So it enabled me to keep reading for a long time without having to adapt to a new world or a totally fresh set of characters. It was also quite good, nearly as good as Curse of Chalion, which was the best fantasy I've read this year. I seem to be enjoying fantasies more recently than in the last few years. I've got the sequel, Rise of Empire, ready to start soon.

After getting revived a bit by Theft of Swords, I managed to get through Circe, next month's book for our community book club. I found the beginning quite a slog, but of course we had to get an idea of her place among the gods. Seeing her come into her own as an herbologist was interesting, and her time with Odysseus was well done.

>1 Jim53: Do they do shingles vaccinations in your part of the world? After I returned to the UK and registered with my GP practice, almost the first thing they did was offer me a shingles vaccination. I remember my late wife having shingles and it was Not Fun.

>1 Jim53: Delighted to hear the shingles are behind you and you found something to read that suited you.
Keep well.
Be excellent to yourself and party on, dude!

Had you had chicken pox as a child? I have, and I've not been offered the vaccine by my GP.

>1 Jim53: Glad to hear that's over for you, sorry you had to go through it. For some reason, my doctors never recommend that vaccine, they just never bring it up.

>5 Maddz: I have and it was suggested I consider the vaccine. I will probably do it at some point. I understand the reaction to the second dose of that is pretty unpleasant. (Obviously better than getting shingles, though.)

>5 Maddz: >7 clamairy: over 70s get offered it, in England anyway. And they seem to use the single-dose vaccine. I had no particular reaction.

>8 haydninvienna: Ah, I've another 7.5 years to wait before I get the offer, then. However, another person we know who's around my age (if not younger) has just had shingles...

>7 clamairy: Around here, I think they offer shingles vaccine to everyone over 50, but at that point I got the one-dose shot that was less effective, so a couple of years ago I got the two-dose version. The reaction to the second shot was worse than the first, but it only lasted a few hours, and as you say, better than getting actual shingles. I'm Team Vaccine!

>7 clamairy: My doctor started recommending it when I turned 50, I finally got it last year, the 2 dose version. The only problem for me was the sore arm which lasted for over a week. I couldn't sleep on that side. My son had shingles when he was about 20. He wanted to die it hurt so bad.

>1 Jim53: I am glad you are back among us, and may you never experience anything like it again!

Thank you all. I had had the shingrix vaccine (two shots; the shots themselves were painful but no other reaction), and it never occurred to me that I could get shingles. The doc that diagnosed it thought that it was because I got two cortisone shots in my back, which further lowered my immune response. Live and learn. At least my back is better so far. Now I'm trying to resume my exercise routine. At my age, six weeks of doing nothing is quite a setback.

Question: is JK Rowling on the list of writers that people avoid? A neighbor was passing out books and gave me a copy of The Cuckoo's Calling, which was a decent read, but I don't want to go getting more of them if she's on the sh!t list.

>12 Jim53: I'm still reading her. She's said some thoughtless things, but if that were the only deciding factor I'd be in deep poo myself.

>12 Jim53: I will give you the issue, so that you can make up your own mind, rather than judging someone on third party say-so. Will put behind spoiler tags because graphic (NOT hate) language is involved:
>
As a victim of sexual assault herself, JKR is of the opinion that women's refuges should be a safe haven from "people with penises".

Note that she has neither denied the validity of transitioning nor that transgender people can also be victims of sexual assault; she simply takes the position that it is the possession of the penis, rather than their gender per se, that makes a person seen threatening to an abuse victim.

For context: this is not an abstruse hypothesis. There are currently specific pre-op male-to-female transitioned within the UK penal system who, on being assigned to female prisons because of their declared gender, then used their penises to rape and sexually assault multiple other women prisoners. Whether these are genuinely transgender women, or men who have successfully lied in order to gain access to vulnerable women, is unclear.

But it makes the point that this is a means by which men may attempt to gain access to abused women - and that it is the penis that commits the assault, not the gender of the assaulter.

I believe that, as a representative of a breast cancer charity who lost her mother to cancer, she has expressed concern that political correctness is putting people's lives at risk, when people who have transitioned are not being contacted by their GPs to be offered preventitive screening for those cancers to which their birth gender has rendered them genetically predisposed, for fear of giving offence. (i.e. A man who was born a woman is not at risk of prostate cancer, but remains at higher risk of breast cancer than other men for the rest of their life. Therefore it breast cancer screening that they should be offered, not testicular.)

And I think that recently she has been concerned that young women who are unhappy with how society treats them are being pressured into considering gender reassignment as the solution to their issues (i.e. that rather than being urged to combat societal misogyny they are being urged to change themselves)

JKR has not denied the validity of transgender experience, or that the transition is real, but she does argue that biology has relevance in certain circumstances. And this has made some transgender people feel not fully accepted.

She has certainly never been guilty of hate speech towards any group.

But the fact that she acknowledges that there can be biological differences between transgender people and those who were born in their current gender means the she has been accused of treating transgender people as a separate gender, rather than as full members of their gender of choice.

Just an FYI, I'm pretty sure JK Rowling's mother died from Multiple Sclerosis, not cancer. Not sure where your quoted text came from.

>15 clamairy: I have extremely limited and Internet connectivity at the moment, which means that I cannot check sources currently, as I usually would. Hence the rather repetitive tagging of "I believe", to indicate that I am working from my memory of British press articles of six months or more ago.

Hopefully there is enough information there for those with sufficient interest and Internet connectivity to find further detail.

ETA: I am not a particular fan of JKR, and have never followed her pronouncements on social media. I am, however, interested in the issues of adequate provision of refuges for domestic abuse victims, formulation of cancer screening programmes (as someone whose cancer was detected late), and the biases young women face in going through the education system, particularly when their interests do not conform to gender-, stereotyping.

I have thus listened to and read JKR's interviews when I have noticed her speaking on topics that interest me, rather than hanging on her every word. On the other hand, my summary is based on my recollections of what she actually said, not on how others have summarised her position.

>14 -pilgrim-: Thank you. I knew there were issues related to things she had said about transgender people but not in this much detail. What you describe sounds more nuanced than what I had seen in the press (gosh, that never happens, does it?), and it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would make me want to avoid her.

>13 clamairy: something for me to remember too!

>1 Jim53: Glad you're feeling better :)

>18 Narilka: Thanks. I've just started Rise of Empire. I tend to grimace when I see Thrace's name. It's a perfectly lovely name, and I like her as a character, but it reminds me of Miles Gloriosus.

I can't remember where I first heard of The Widening Stain, but I couldn't resist the title and description. It's one of Otto Penzler's series of American Classic Mysteries. As a mystery it's middling, but the characterization, particularly of the lead character, is well done, and there's a good bit of humor, including numerous (clean) limericks. These are the sorts of thing that made me chuckle:

Our heroine, Ms. Gilda Gorham, is the lead cataloger at a university library. She looks reflectively at a stack of recent donations and acquisitions awaiting classification: "Eyak Indians of the Copper River Delta; Variations and Diseases of the Teeth of Animals; Anglican Humanitarianism in Colonial New York; Rural Waste Disposal. So inspiring to work with the great productions of scholarship. Yeah."

One of her assistants asks for help: "I have a thesis called 'Retroactive Inhibition as a Function of the Length of the Interpolated Lists.' I've been trying to read it, but it doesn't make any sense at all. I don't know where in the world to classify it."
Ms. Gorham tells her, "Put it under Education and you can't go wrong."

Recommended primarily for those who enjoy limericks and other silliness. Three and a half stars.

>19 Jim53: She goes on a rough character arc. Good luck. I ended up enjoying her story the most at least in part one. I'm still working through part two.

Concerning shingles, I'm very sorry you had to suffer through that. I had both Shingrix shots and had no ill effects. From what I hear of shingles, it's way, way worse than the shots. Years ago, before Shingrix, we had an earlier vaccine, and my husband paid $200 for his. To me that was a no-brainer. I asked him, "If you got shingles, would you say 'I'd pay $200 not to have this?' Then get the shot." Mine was covered by insurance. His mother had an especially nasty case of it, so we were ready to take the advice to ward it off.

And yes, we both had chicken pox as children. Back then, it was very common.

>22 Meredy: Ok, I'll get the shot! :) That's a great way of explaining the value of the shot.

When I was in my early thirties I got an itchy rash on my thigh. The doctor couldn't identify it until my wife came down with chicken pox, but for me it was never more than an annoyingly itchy rash.

I finished Rise of Empire, the second volume (i.e., novels 3 and 4) of Michael J. Sullivan's fantasy opus called the Riyira Revelations series. It was largely enjoyable, but slightly less so than the first pair, which were published as Theft of Swords. I'd give this set a four minus, compared to the four plus I gave the first set.
I see there are a total of eight novels in this sequence, plus a series about this gang's earlier adventures, and another about their world's distant past.

Rise of Empire presents us with wild adventures of Hadrian and Royce, in alternating chapters with the more contained stories of Modina, Amilia, and Arista. The alternating chapters worked OK for the most part; thee were only a couple of places where I really wanted to continue the current thread. Some of the chapters are quite long--at least they seem that way at bedtime--which made the switching easier to take. I would say all the characters that were in the first book have undergone some changes, rather than being static, which I consider a good thing.

I think I'll take a break from these for the time being, but I plan to finish the eight books of the currnt series, and I might dip my toe into the others.

I've started George Saunders's A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which consists of extracts from his Syracuse University class on great short stories. After some introduction, he works his way through several short stories, a page or two at a time, asking questions about what we know at any point, what do we care about/wonder about, what expectations do we have about what might ensue. Each passage, as he demonstrates, refines the story, eliminating other options and possibilities to make it more particularly this story. I've read through the first one, in which he dissects/discusses Anton Checkov's "In the Cart," a fairly simple story from which he draws multiple insights.

I think the best way to read this book will be to alternate sections of this with other reading, so that's what I plan to do.

>25 Jim53: I have these on my list of books to get to, glad you are enjoying them. That short story book also sounds interesting, it might help my lack of enjoying short stories lately.

A bit late, but good to hear that you've got the shingles behind you. It's definitely one of the vaccinations that I have on my to do-list; I'm in the better safe than sorry-camp when it comes to vaccines.

Official sources in Sweden is clear in stating that no existing vaccine will prevent shingles from developing with anywhere like 100% certainty but it will at least make it less nasty.
And yes, I had chicken pox as a kid. Nowhere near as horrible as having the measles, but based on my personal experience it is hard to beat that one.

On impulse I picked up a copy of Leaves of Grass at the library last week, and I've been working through it slowly, rereading stanzas to answer the eternal question WTF? I'm enjoying it but wishing I were reading it as part of a class, with others with whom to discuss it. Oh well. I wonder if I'll ever be on a campus again.

>29 Jim53: Even before the pandemic turned everything upside down, I was taking so-called distance learning classes offered by a local community college, just for the enjoyment of it.

The instructors were experienced in facilitating learning in a nontraditional format. They supplied a framework for reading and study and a reading list. The online discussions were surprising in their breadth and depth, given that the participants were mostly youngsters in their late teens and early twenties without any special background. The assignments were about as challenging as I chose to make them. Even though I did not fit the typical student profile, with my gray hair and my degree in English from nearly five decades ago, I got a lot out of them.

I took classes in literature, philosophy, history, and mythology and folklore. I would have kept it up but for my husband's illness, which took precedence over everything else.

When everything suddenly went offsite last year, these were the courses and the teachers that were already oriented to a remote structure. They didn't have to invent something outside of everyone's comfort zone and fumble their way through it.

At some point I realized that I didn't have to limit myself to a local school if I was going to do it from a distance anyway. I could attend classes anywhere that offered a distance learning program. It's not the same as being on campus in an atmosphere that for me is always electrically stimulating, but it's something.

>30 Meredy: I am housebound for much of the time anyway (before cancer or Covid-19 ever raised their ugly heads).

I completed a second (BA) degree with the Open University a few decades after my first (BSc), which was through the traditional route. Its tutorials were optional, but provided an opportunity for face to face discussion that were usually very lively.

I second your positive experience of online higher education.

I got a whole law degree externally (back in the 1980s—none of this newfangled online stuff then, just a lot of bulky packages back and forth in the mail!) from Macquarie University in Oz, and it has served me well. Even though some of the best bits were the obligatory face to face tutorials.

-->30 Meredy: >31 -pilgrim-: >32 haydninvienna: Interesting. Thanks for your perspective. Maybe when we're able to do other things in person, online education will have more appeal. At the moment I am quite sick of Zoom, which I use a lot, and am very eager to do more things in person. I took a good number of grad courses in English at NC State when I worked there, and at UNC-Wilmington when my wife taught there, and it was great fun. Of course, now that I don't have any affiliation to claim, it will probably be more expensive too. Ah well, probably worth it.

It's hard to know what to say about Leaves of Grass. After a while, I gave up on reading closely for meaning and went with the flow, enjoying the rollicking gait, the exuberance, the wordplay. It confirmed my desire to read more poetry. I think I'd give it a seven, good beat, easy to dance to.

I read Sex and Salmonella (no touchstone confusion on that title!) at the suggestion of a book-club friend. She knew of my love for mysteries and said that this one is not great, but it's funny. I would rephrase that to say, it's not very good at all, but I do enjoy the first-person narrator. To begin listing its shortcomings would be to take it more seriously than it deserves. I was delighted to see that it has some five-star ratings here on LT, proving that... well, I have no idea what it proves. Mainly that there are lots of people with taste that differs from mine, which is of course a very good thing.

>35 Jim53: Diversity makes the world go round.

>35 Jim53: Now I'm curious because that book has a very high rating here on LT.

>34 Jim53: Nice review, but I just can't do poetry most of the time.

>36 pgmcc: Indeed.

>37 clamairy: I suspect it might go over better with hardcore fans of cozy mysteries. And it's always possible that it has charms that I missed.

>38 Karlstar: I hadn't read much poetry since school, but a couple of years ago I gave a few things a try and found myself liking them, if not grokking all their elements. I've read a bit about how they work, at least in the simplest cases, and find myself enjoying some poetry pretty well. It's something new and different for me.

Like all people with good sense and taste ;-), I'm a Yankees hater. However, there is one old Yankee whom I've always admired, in spite of his wearing the pinstripes. Who has the most World Series rings of any player? That's right, the inimitable Yogi Berra, arguably the greatest catcher of all time (I hear you, fans of the Homestead Grays and Cincinnati Reds), and the purveyor of multitudes of hilarious aphorisms.

And just what does all this have to do with my reading record? While at the library, looking for something else, I spied a copy of Driving Mr. Yogi and decided to try it out. It's the sort of thing a more dedicated fan than I am would probably appreciate better. A sportswriter describes many years of retired Yankees pitcher Ron Guidry being Yogi's personal driver at Yankees spring training camps. It's fun from time to time, more touching than anything else. Recommended for those who like stories about baseball and individual players. Three stars.

I've started Unsheltered for my book club. I don't know why it's taken me so long to get back to Kingsolver after I loved The Poisonwood Bible. This one is off to a very interesting and rather brutal start.

>41 Jim53: Hope you enjoy it. The last thing of hers I read was non-fiction (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) and I did enjoy it, but I prefer her fiction.

I'm finding Unsheltered to be a bit of a slog so far. She's telling us about two families who (I think) live in the same house, one more or less in the current day and one in the 1870s (Grant is president). I'm nearing the midpoint and have no idea where it's really going, but there are a couple of interesting characters (my favorite is named Antigone, commonly called Tig). I hope it will come together fairly soon.

I finished Unsheltered and ended up liking it pretty well. She draws correspondences between the current fad for "alternative facts" and the refusal of folks in the 1870s to accept Darwin's ideas. Several characters in both time periods turned out to be quite well drawn. Tig is still my favorite.

I've been making a point of reading things at bedtime that won't get me excited, in either good or bad ways. I've found myself enjoying a couple of cozy mysteries, which have never been exactly my thing, but they're very appropriate for the setting. I'll probably read a few more.

Recently back from a week-long trip to Asheville, NC, my wife's home town. Fabulous views and walks, plus we got to see some old friends. I didn't do a lot of reading there, but I did finish up The Girl in the Tower. I didn't like it quite as much as The Bear and the Nightingale, but it had a number of enjoyable elements, especially the developing relationship between Vasya and Morozko (sp?).

>45 Jim53: I'm happy to hear you had such a good trip. Are you going to continue to the 3rd book in the series, then?

>46 clamairy: Yes, but maybe not right away. I've got a couple of books that will need to go back to the library soon, and I want to at least take enough of a look to decide whether to get them again at some point. Plus all these non-reading activities have been interfering with my life.

I just finished Eric Ambler's Background to Danger, which was a pretty basic between-the-wars espionage thriller, a bullet that I took from Peter. I wouldn't call it extraordinary, but it was a good bit of fun and I'm sure I'll go back for more before too long.

>47 Jim53: Some of the things I enjoy about Ambler's stories are:
- learning a bit about what people were thinking at the time the story was written (his pre-WWII stories give me a bit of insight into Europe of the time and how people were anticipating war, or not.)
- the glimpse at society in the place the story is set.
- Ambler's understanding of the motivations of the organisations and national/international players of the time.
- a sense of watching an old black & white movie from a less technologically sophisticated time. I have felt this with all his books that I have read to date.
- realising that in terms of political motivations and forces nothing has changed since the writing of these tales. I find this with many old books I read, be they eighty years old or one hundred and eighty years old.
- the way the socio-political environment of the time is reflected in his books. I feel his books can often be his commentary on the contemporary happenings in The World.
- Ambler's pithy character descriptions that capture the person instantly. This is something he has in common with John Le Carré.

I use his books as a comfort read. It feels like I am back home with my parents watching the black and white telly on a Sunday afternoon when the weekly spy film was on.

Just checking in, everything ok?

>49 Karlstar: Thanks for checking! I've been having some health issues, which have combined with a couple of trips to suck all the energy out of me. I've been reading some lightweight stuff, including some cozy mysteries. I also finished Winter of the Witch, which was a pretty satisfactory conclusion to the Winternight story. Currently mostly enjoying Sinead O'Connor's Rememberings.

>50 Jim53: I hope you are feeling better.

Ditto what >51 Karlstar: said, >50 Jim53:. Hope you're in full health soon.

Glad to see you back.

Me too, mate.

thanks, all. Life has been stressful but might be settling down. I started Matt Haig's The Midnight Library, but I DNF'd it because he painted such a detailed and realistic portrait of a depressed character that it hit a bit too close to home. I did get through Nice Racism, DiAngelo's follow-up to White Fragility. It was a solid read, with good information, but she really did beat a couple of topics to death.

I've mostly been reading some inoffensive cozy mysteries. I've rediscovered my enjoyment of Donna Andrews's humorous tales. I've read a few of them out of order, but I'm going back and reading them in order now to see the progression of the relationships, etc. The book titles all seem to involve bad puns on bird names--her most recent is The Gift of the Magpie, a Christmas story--and I find them appealing.

>55 Jim53: I did the same with The Midnight Library just last week. I think I only made 20% in. Someone I know called it a good Summer read. Really? I suspect the ending is uplifting, but it wasn't worth the slog for me.

So glad life is settling down!

I finally got around to reading Paladin of Souls. I had very high expectations because of my experience with The Curse of Chalion and various comments on LT. I would say Paladin was a solid read, but not nearly as enjoyable for me as Curse.

>57 Jim53: That was my impression also. I enjoyed Curse of Chalion much more.

>57 Jim53: & >58 Karlstar: I did not. Might be some gender issue here.

>59 clamairy: Dunno, I thought Curse was a stronger book than Paladin. Possibly it's because it was first - with Curse, it's the effect of the new, whereas with Paladin, there's some familiarity.

It's possible it was originally meant to be a trilogy, and you've the usual middle book effect. Hunt was chronologically much earlier, and written much later.

>57 Jim53:, >58 Karlstar:, >59 clamairy:

I liked them about equally and gave each a rating of 4 stars. Reading Paladin, I appreciated the shift to a different main character, one that was a relative side character in Chalion. I also liked that Cazarel is only occasionally mentioned in passing, which helps to truly make this Ista's tale. The change of protagonist reminded me of the structure of the Dublin Murder Squad 'series' by Tana French, where each book delves into a different perspective from the previous, all while telling a separate, but loosely connected story.

I don't think it's a gender issue on my part, altho I'm always open to convincing. I liked Ista a lot as a main character, and I enjoyed a fair amount of the story. I was looking forward (can't really say why) to a more spiritually insightful resolution. Maybe we got one and I just missed it, but it felt more like a sudden onset of magic, not unearned but not adequately prepared for. It's entirely possible that Curse, which I began without many expectations and not having read a really good fantasy in a while, was more of a pleasant surprise, and Paladin wasn't because it wasn't first.

>62 Jim53: It is likely that I need to re-read Paladin, now that the read of Chalion is fresh.

I finished and reviewed The Code Breaker, which I found quite readable and fascinating. Isaacson takes us through the development of genetic engineering and calls attention to ethical issues.

Louise Penny's latest, The Madness of Crowds, is very much like its sixteen predecessors in her series featuring Armand Gamache. She puts it in a post-pandemic world, in which Canada is trying to figure out how to survive financially. One woman's horrific suggestion attracts many supporters and opens several related cans of worms. This book has much more of the officers going back and forth between theories than usual, and more than I really needed. Matters get quite personal for some characters, enabling Penny to show us lots of deep thoughts. OTOH, she seems to have exorcised some of the annoying stylistic tics that were present in the last few books. A solid, if not fabulous, entry in one of the best series going.

I slogged through Kristin Hannah's The Four Winds for our community book club. I definitely would have abandoned it in the middle had it not been a book-club read. Her ongoing description of the dust bowl experience in the Texas panhandle is long and depressing. The story picks up a bit when the family heads for California, only to encounter the same problems as all the other "Okies." The relationship between a mother and her children is well portrayed, as are the problems that they run into. But I didn't need to read quite that much about how awful everything was.

It's been about fifty years since I read The Grapes of Wrath, and I don't remember it particularly well, so I can't comment on what Hannah does to distinguish her story from Steinbeck's.

Unfortunately, one of the most disturbing aspects of the story was the extent to which the problems of the 1930s are still with us.

>66 Jim53: I had the same thought with Of Mice and Men, it doesn't seem like much has changed. The Grapes of Wrath is on my TBR pile.

I just finished Rachel Howzell Hall's new one, These Toxic Things. I liked a lot of it and had a few quibbles. Not her best, but a solid 4-star read. Her protagonist has an interesting job: she is a digital archaeologist, who creates holographic memory collections for people who want to keep their memories intact. When a new customer dies, she completes the task nonetheless, using objects and notes left by the deceased woman, and finds herself involved in all sorts of stuff.

Just finished Hank's new standalone, Her Perfect Life. I liked it a little better than a couple of her recent books. I was pretty sure I saw the twist coming, but it wasn't quite what I expected.

>68 Jim53: that sounds fun. Is it part of a series? Haven't come across the author before. Would you describe it as Science Fiction?

>70 reading_fox: Her Perfect Life is a standalone. Definitely not SF. It's a mystery/thriller. I had fixed the original touchstone twice, but it kept reverting to the wrong book. I've fixed it again. Sorry for the confusion.

Interestingly, HPR is an multiple-Emmy-winning investigative reporter, like her main character, so I'm sure there's a certain amount of reflection involved.

I think I must be missing something that should be obvious. I hope someone can help. How do I see how many pages a book has? I've looked at the main page, work details, editions, etc., and don't see it anywhere.

I think you'd need to look at the book record in the catalog of someone who has the book. It isn't the same for all editions so it wouldn't be copied to the work.

>72 Jim53: I randomly clicked on one of my books, then from the popup image, selected work page (first icon on the left), then from that page, selected book details on the left, and that gave me the number of pages. That worked for an 'old' book (1980's), I then tried the same for a brand new book and it only sort of worked, there was no 'pages' field, but the number of pages was on the publication line. It appears it is not consistent.

It's getting that information from the book in your library so the data is as consistent as your own data is consistent.

>75 jjwilson61: Except that's not data entered by me, that's data from the search function in LT. I thought it was strange that an old book had the 'pages' field, but a newer book did not. I know that's inconsistent, was just trying to answer Jim's question.

>76 Karlstar: You said you selected one of your books and then did something with a popup image. You lost me there. From where and how did you click select your book and how does search enter into it?

I got to #11 in Donna Andrews's humorous mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Meg Lanslowe. This series has been my bedtime reading for a while now, and I think it's time for a break. They're still fun, but there's not enough variety to make them really good consecutive reads.

I used the literature map and searched for writers similar to Julia Spencer-Fleming, who is probably my favorite mystery writer. The map came up with Emily Littlejohn, and I read her first one, Inherit the Bones, which featured a cover blurb by another writer I like, Deborah Crombie. The protagonist is a very pregnant police detective, and I enjoyed her personality and how she dealt with various issues in her life and with her partners. I liked it pretty well, and I have gotten the second one out of the library but not started it yet.

I read the second of Emily Littlejohn's series about detective Gemma Monroe. It didn't capture my attention as well as the first. I'll try the third some time soon.

I ended up going back to Donna Andrews for a bedtime read. Stork Raving Mad was good fun. The title refers to Meg's advanced state of pregnancy with twins. She and Michael have chosen to find out their genders and decide on names when they're born; she refers to them throughout with the names of famous pairs, including Heckel and Jeckel, Butch and Sundance, Rocky and Bullwinkle. It's a cute way to add a little touch of humor without slowing down the story.

Not sure how much I should say about Practicing the Presence of God. I don't want to offend anyone with talk of God. But I saw references to this 18th 17th-century work in a couple of places, and found it a quick and interesting read. The author is a humble brother, who despite his humility is ready to parcel out a lot of advice, especially to nuns and "women in the world." I liked his emphasis on keeping God top of mind while going through the day. My main problem was his insistence that everything else about living in the world was terrible. I have preferred to see the world and many things in it as gifts from God and ways to approach thinking about God's goodness, feeling gratitude, etc. I'm glad I read it, as I was curious about it, but it didn't add much to my own thinking.

>80 Jim53: So the book was written a century after the life it was written about?

Or is the Touchstone wrong?

I was curious to see how State of Terror would turn out. I have no idea how HRC and Louise collaborated; I would guess that Clinton supplied ideas and plot developments and Penny did most of the writing. But I really don't know. Apparently they are still friends after this collaboration, which is a good sign. The story is pretty good, involving a new secretary of state, working with a new president whose election she did not support. We hear a good bit about the greed and incompetence of the previous administration. I shall say no more about this.

The characters are thrown into an international mess when they learn that bombs have exploded in three trains in Europe, each of which was carrying a nuclear physicist who had been working with a middle-east terrorist group. Things progress quickly, and are rarely what they seem at first look. The plot holds together fairly well, and there are several well drawn characters. There are some references to Three Pines (the locale of Penny's best-selling crime series), which seemed to me to be entirely gratuitous. Overall, though, I enjoyed the book quite well. I'll be interested to see what others have to say.

>81 -pilgrim-: No, I converted the dates wrong in my mind: 17th century -> 1700s -> 18th century. The touchstone is correct. I know better but am not particularly sharp today. As someone said somewhere, none of this would have happened if we'd just gotten some sleep. Thanks for noticing; I have fixed the mention above.

>83 Jim53: Don't worry, it happens to us all. (In my case, not noticing what autocorrect has done to what I typed has been a particular bane!)

I totally bombed out on My Brilliant Friend, which is our book club book for November. I tried to start it several times, but found it too disjointed to enjoy. It's always possible that this has to do with me as well as the book. I've been feeling less adventuresome in my reading lately.

>85 Jim53: I tried to follow a radio serialisation a few months back; I bombed out. You are not alone.

>85 Jim53: I did get through it, but didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped. I did wonder if something was lost in the translation from Italian to English. I even tried to read the second one, but bailed out a few pages in.

I've begun Hamnet, which I'm reading for our book club. Ninety pages in I find it fascinating: the switches of tone as we change viewpoint characters are very well done.

I made a start on Jack Kornfield's A Path with Heart, and once I got past the memoirish introduction I've enjoyed it. He has lots of detailed ideas about ways to meditate, how to focus, etc. I had to take it back to the library--someone had the audacity to put a hold on it before I tried to renew it--but I'll just get it again in a couple of weeks and read the rest.

>89 Jim53: Good to see you back!

>88 Jim53: This one has been on my OverDrive wishlist for a few years. I am hoping my new book group tackles it next year.

>90 Karlstar: Thanks, Jim! Hope all is well with you.

>92 Jim53: All is well, thank you! How about you?

>93 Karlstar: Quite well, indeed, despite various physical challenges. My new ortho has a procedure called neurotomy that may alleviate my back problems, and we're excited about seeing all the family later this month as we celebrate my dad's 98th birthday. Also having fun picking out presents for the grandkids.

I found Hamnet quite wonderful. Her picture of Agnes, who IMHO is by far the most interesting character in the book, is very successful. I found the beginning a little confusing, but then I realized that she was setting a slightly different tone for each viewpoint character, helping us to see the different ways that they see the world. Overall I loved the writing and the way she reflected not only the characters but also their circumstances. Her depiction of grief is very effective and a main theme. Her refusal to name Will was sometimes cute, sometimes mildly annoying, but not really a problem. I'll be looking for more by Ms. O'Farrell after I knock off a few more of the books on the shelf. 4.5 stars.

I've got a couple of books going at the moment. My daytime read is After Jesus, Before Christianity, which purports to describe a period about which we've tended to make a lot of assumptions and accept the party line, which is designed to give legitimacy to the Church. It's starting slowly, hitting us several times with a discussion of its methods; I'm hoping for more meat as we proceed.

My current bedtime book is Good Omens. I've never clicked with Pratchett, but I have liked almost everything I've read by Gaiman, and I was ready for a break from the Donna Andrews series that I've been reading. I'm just getting started, but so far GO looks pretty hilarious.

I worked at Heir of Novron for a while, but I found it to move excruciatingly slowly, so I've given up after the first of the two stories.

>96 Jim53: Good Omens is brilliant. Enjoy!

After Jesus Before Christianity makes a number of interesting points, among them:

- The violence of the Roman empire was the most important factor in understanding life in the first two centuries CE.
- Participation in Jesus groups helped people identify with a new kind of ruler and purpose.
- During that time, there was no orthodox creed shared by the various Jesus groups; they had some common practices, such as communal dining, but no common beliefs.
- Most of the people alive at that time, and particularly the workmen and women who made up most of these groups, could not read. Those who could might read letters or other notes to the groups assembled at communal meals. Documents were rare and not a basis for agreement.
- Modern history, including the history of the Christian churches, was constructed backwards toward the stories needed to support later developments. There was no Christian church by the end of the second century.

The book ends rather suddenly at this point. I had been looking forward to seeing what they had to say about how all these disparate and different groups came together to form the institutional church, but that, apparently, must wait for this group's next project.

There was an awful lot of talk about methodology; it reminded me of a meeting that could have been an email. The authors spent a lot of pages on the empire and the cruelty of its practitioners; I wanted to say, OK, I got it, move on. The later chapters were better focused (IMHO) and flowed better with less repetition. I'm curious to see other approaches to the state of the world during this period, but not enough so to run out for more right away.

I was finding Good Omens mostly a series of one-liners, but I'm starting to get into it a bit. The two main characters are pretty funny, and I'm particularly enjoying the Them, especially Pepper. I'm not reading it at bedtime, tho.

I've got several other things going now:

Call Us What We Carry, Amanda Gorman's first full-size collection of poems. I'm pretty impressed so far.
Unrequited Infatuations, Steven Van Zandt's memoir. Just getting started.
Spiritual Direction by Henri Nouwen
The Good, the Bad, and the Emus. the latest in my read-through of Donna Andrews's series.

The Sagan Diary just showed up, so that will fit in there somewhere too.

Well, the year is over. A very strange one, with some challenges and some unexpected joys. I somehow managed to read a total of 90 books. These were the highlights:

fiction:
The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. I liked all three of these, this one the best.
Stork Raving Mad by Donna Andrews. Probably my favorite of her Meg Langslow series.

poetry:
Owls and Other Fantasies by Mary Oliver

nonfiction:

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
One Life by Megan Rapinoe
God's Joyful Surprise by Sue Monk Kidd

On to next year!

I'm very behind catching up on everyone's 2021 threads, but I did want to let you know that we had talked about The Widening Stain on my thread back in 2020 or perhaps it was 2019. At any rate, I recall the discussion about limericks.

And I'm glad to see The Curse of Chalion as one of your top reads. I enjoyed it as well.