What are you reading the week of June 12, 2021?

I went out to a Barnes and Nobles last weekend in search of a sense of normality. They were out. Each time I go, they have fewer and fewer books on display. They also keep rearranging the store so that I can't find anything. *sigh*

However, I came away with The Attack on Troy by Rodney Castleden which I am enjoying. It's not very long, so I'll finish it this evening.

I'm about 3/4 through The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois' classic set of essays about Black life and conditions in America, particularly in the American South, at the turn of the 20th Century.

Just finished reading the novel THE COLOR PURPLE by author ALICE WALKER.

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Currently splitting:

1. A Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

2. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Milk, M.D.

I'm reading The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory with my sister.

Continuing with Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan. There may be light at the end of the tunnel in spite of the author's insistence on giving the historical details behind the troublesome issues to the attempts at starting the League of Nations and reaching accord with a peace treaty that postpones reaching it.

Now dealing with the Japanese and Chinese relationship as the allies struggle to untie the knots ranging from German concessions in Shantung, to Japanese secret agreements of 1917, to Australian racism at the Japanese desire to have racial equality formally acknowledged in the League of Nations preamble, and down to the US's desire to maintain a coal refueling base for its battleships in one country or another. This chapter is like watching a hyper-speed table tennis match.

Just so you know, I discovered today that MacMillan wrote another history: The War That Ended Peace about WW I. Had I known earlier, obviously, I would have read it first. Because "Paris 1919" seems to be a book about the peace that fathered war. She has written several other histories. I wonder how she escaped my notice until now.

The Voyage of the Dawn Trader
C.S. Lewis
4/5 stars
King Caspian has built the ship, the Dawn Treader to take his crew to find the End of The World (Aslan’s country). Invited on the voyage is Edmund, Lucy and their cousin Eustace (Peter and Susan are now too old to go on the journey). Caspian is looking for the seven lords that were banished by his uncle. They go to where no other ship has gone. This has to be my favorite book so far in the series and I couldn’t wait to see what happened.

reading Neuromancer, Juniper Wiles, an The Mists of Avalon.

Finished Sukhoi Interceptors. Switching off between Fighting for Atlanta, The Europeans, and Hench.

Finished listening to A Word Child by Iris Murdoch. Very good.

Next up for listening is The Book Woman Of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson.

I've been reading Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart for a week now; I try to read all the Booker winners. Stuart's prose is beautiful. The story is only bearable to those people who like stories about young gay men who grow up in the Glasgow slums to an alcoholic mother and a philandering father in dire poverty, with domestic abuse thrown in hither and thither. I'm beginning to think that I am not one of those people who enjoy feeling miserable while reading. I've been reading it for six days and am 192 pages in (not even half way) and I'm going to have to put it aside and pick up something more cheerful. I don't know what yet.

Am planning to read a work of non-fiction, a bit at a time, whilst reading fiction. I really want to read more non-fiction. The book on hand at the moment is How Language Began by Daniel L. Everett, who wrote the incredibly Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle.

I finished The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. This classic set of essays, first published in 1903 during the full savagery of Jim Crow America, is W.E.B Du Bois' heartfelt and detailed description of race relations, particularly in the South, and the plight of African Americans trying to attain some level of dignity and prosperity in the face harsh and determined resistance from white America. My somewhat longer review can be found on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

I'm still working The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan for my book group, which meets next week.

Next up for me will be We Band of Brothers, which is not a World War Two account, but is the memoir by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Edwin O. Guthman about his time working for Robert Kennedy, both in the Justice Department and in the U.S. Senate.

I couldn't engage with The Book Woman Of Troublesome Creek.

Next up for listening is a collection of short stories all set in one town, If I Had Two Wings by Randall Kenan.

finished Juniper Wiles by Charles de Lint. enjoyed it. next up is After the Downfall by Harry Turtledove.

Just finished Jasper Fforde's Early Riser and enjoyed the humor and the world-building, but could have done without the sub-plot, which got progressively darker as the story advanced.

Going to start This Perfect Day, by Ira Levin today.

Enjoying a revisit with this audiobook via hoopla ~

The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

Additionally to being caught in the library listing trap, dipping again into books while doing so... re-re-read and finished again the Wislawa Szymborska collection of 100 poems in View with a Grain of Sand - just tremendous range from touching to very conceptual; and always surprising, sometimes with every line yet so few words... recommend!! Might not like all equally but quite a few are just remarkable. And, also back into Boris Pasternak My Sister-Life - yes, it's poetry time; suits pattern while also writing and editing.
Still juggling when possible Team of Rivals and The Anchor Anthology of French Poetry from Nerval to Valery in English Translation by Angel Flores, with Don't Know Much About History taking a bit of a back seat for now.

Less than impressed by short story collection, If I Had Two Wings.

Next up for listening is Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker.

I just finished Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and enjoyed it, although it seemed a little predictable to me.

Next up, I'm going to finish the German book Die kleinste gemeinsame Wirklichkeit, which is great so far, and then on to Eartheater by Dolores Reyes, which I have been wanting to read for months now.

The Silver Chair
C.S. Lewis
4/5 stars
In this book, the storyline follows Cousin Eustace and Jill Pole and their adventures since the 4 siblings of the previous books are now too old. Eustace and Jill are being pursued by bullies at school and while running away from them they found a locked gate which is now unlocked and the kids are able to escape their bullies. However, they are now on the edge of a precipice and Jill accidentally pushes Eustace over it. She then sees Aslan, the lion and he has a task for her and Eustace. They are to find the missing Prince Rilian who is believed to have been kidnapped! This was good. This is the second to the last book in the series.

>1 fredbacon: I've noticed the same thing at my local Barnes & Noble! I don't "get" with the rearrangement.

Enjoying this OverDrive ensemble-cast audiobook ~

The President's Daughter: A Thriller
by James Patterson and Bill Clinton

Just finished This Perfect Day, which I had apparently begun back-in-the-day. I remembered the hero's mismatched eyes (probably because my dad also had one green and one brown eye), but nothing else. Reading it now, I was underwhelmed.

Getting ready to start House of Rougeaux for LTER.

The new thread is up over here.

>6 Limelite: You began with the much better book. Paris: 1919, with it's smaller cast of core "characters" and its more focused subject matter, is great read. The War That Ended Peace is more diffuse. There are no clear central characters with which to shape the form of the book. I found it a very disappointing follow up to Paris: 1919.

>25 fredbacon: I'll admit to enjoying the acerbic comments on the participants' personalities by fellow participants, but I'm finding the repetitive comments of the reactions by those participants on any and every provision under consideration about which they are nervous to be tiring. MacMillan certainly makes her reputation on including all the minutiae surrounding what was being wrestled over in those 6 months.